The Grand Strategy of Philip II by Geoffrey Parker

While it is doubtless only fair to point out that the volume reflects the surviving source material, the fact that the author is Geoffrey Parker makes the reader feel comfortable that this is as near to historical reality as we are readily going to get. Over thirty years of top-class scholarship shine through a masterclass in understanding how governments worked, and how they did not. Numerous illustrations and tables, complemented by full and discursive footnotes, make the volume an accessible tool for the most serious academic and a fascinating insight for the general reader.įollowing his excellent Philip II (Little, Brown & Co, 1978) and other valuable volumes on Spain and her Empire, this book puts in place an in-depth understanding of the political, administrative and personal attributes of Philip II and his 'Grand Strategy'.

The Grand Strategy of Philip II is a book for everyone from the keenest Armada-wonks to the most frustrated of corporate middle-managers. The book will do so and it will engage many more. Parker aims to engage three types of reader: scholars interested in Philip II strategic analysts and those interested in the rise and fall of great powers. In a fantastic book, Geoffrey Parker gives the reader a wealth of detailed information on how the strategist behind the Armada, Philip II of Spain, thought, worked, administered and went about his day-to-day business. Spain - the first 'Global Empire' - was bested by Mother Nature and a considerably smaller political power with the result that as her imperial pretensions stuttered, England's flourished. The naval confrontation in the Channel in 1588 and the subsequent disastrous Spanish circumnavigation of the storm-lashed British coastline, helped shape world history from the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth. Academics and the general public alike have an understandable fascination regarding the Spanish Armada.

The Grand Strategy of Philip II by Geoffrey Parker