Border line

摘要

In The 1580s King Philip Ⅱ of Castile ruled over a huge empire. Iberia, much of Italy, the Low Countries, the Americas from California and Florida to Buenos Aires, the Caribbean and the Philippines were all under his suzerainty. Spanish officials even went as far as to consider the conquest of China; one thought it could be taken by fewer than 60 "good Spanish soldiers". Hugh Thomas, a British historian, has devoted much of his life to chronicling the achievement of the Spanish conquistadors in America. In "World Without End" he completes his trilogy on imperial expansion in the century after Columbus's first transatlantic voyage. This final volume covers the period of consolidation, the "age of administration" in which professional officials, many of them clerics, gradually took over from conquistadors.