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Escorial, as the center of a spider web of international intrigue. He was
seen as the implacable enemy of Christian reconciliation who had pre-
vented the Council of Trent from instituting meaningful Catholic
reforms. He was believed to be the true overlord of the Jesuit order
(founded in 1540 by the Spaniard Ignatius of Loyola), which was
thought to be a subversive force in all corners of Europe. His colonial
administration was reported to be rigid, repressive, and insatiable for
wealth extracted from the sufferings of the native peoples. Even the
relatively casual enforcement of the Inquisition in Portugal and that
country's notoriously careless management of its colonies were held up
in positive contrast to the ruthless efficiency of the grim black-clad
Spaniards.
Philip II would soon make the Counter-Reformation his principal
project, but there was the matter of Portugal. By the third quarter of
the 16th century Portugal's expansion overseas had attained dimen-
sions vast enough to satisfy the greediest imperialist. Portugal's outposts
included forts and trading settlements in West and East Africa, as well
as the stronghold at what is now Capetown, the entrances to the Red
Sea and the Persian Gulf, and ports in India. The Portuguese also domi-
nated present-day Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia, while having a
trade monopoly with China based at Macao and Japan based at Naga-
saki. Given the small size of Portugal's population (perhaps one-tenth
of Spain's), all of these outposts amounted to a lightly held commercial
empire rather than a secure overlordship.
The always-strained relationship between Spain and Portugal reached
the ultimate crisis in 1580, after the extinction of the House of Aviz
precipitated a Spanish invasion of the smaller country. With most of the
Portuguese aristocracy supporting Habsburg claims that were based on
marriage ties to the former rulers, a popular resistance was quickly
crushed, and Portugal and its vast empire became a dynastic appendage
of Spain. This integration of the Iberian states and their territories
abroad would last from 1580 to 1640 and become known in Portuguese
history as the “Sixty Years' Tyranny.”
It was during the period of Spain's total control of the Iberian Penin-
sula that its power reached its apogee on the Continent. Philip's empire,
like that of Britain's Victoria in the 19th century, had become one on
which the Sun never set. In the latter part of his reign he became
absorbed in the great enterprise of rolling back the Reformation and
restoring the dominance of Catholicism, whose outreach was already
being furthered by missionaries in Spanish and Portuguese America.
The champion of the Counter-Reformation, he was also the cham-
pion of Spanish mastery in Europe. Since the 1560s he had been fight-
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