Don John of Austria is Riding to the Sea. The Anglo-Spanish Conflict over the Oceanic Domain (16th and 17th Centuries)

Abstract

Dominion over the sea during the 16th and 17th centuries entailed a triple paradigmatic shift: the Atlantic axis displaced the Mediterranean axis; British bourgeois hegemony seized the scepter from the Hispanic aristocratic empire; and the modern Anglican worldview (liberal, dynamic and optimistic) challenged and paralyzed the traditional Catholic one (faltering, incapable and pessimistic). In the struggle for oceanic control, scientific (new models and naval techniques), economic (American trade) and social (rise of a social class and a generation of people with initiative) means were decisive. The literature of the time presents remarkable traces and expressions of these changes —i. e. the Robinson