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20 SYIL 1 (2016)

handle is hein.intyb/spanyb0020 and id is 1 raw text is: On the contribution of Imperial Spain to the construction of classical international law in Cervantes' Times Carlos R. FERNANDEZ LIESA* Abstract: The new world order established by the Peace of Westphalia was consolidated in 1648, but the foundations of what would later be known as classical international law had begun to be laid long before that date. Spain played an important role in this process during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Age of Cervantes. This was clearly demonstrated by the great author in his works, which reflect an Imperial Spain that had already embarked on its decline. The gradual disappearance of the notion of empire, however, is belied by reality, since history shows that empires continued to exist throughout the modern age in one form or another. The period in question also reveals the important contribution made by Spain to the shaping of international law, not only in matters of its norms, but also from other perspectives, such as humanism, having to do with the universal conception of government and human rights-although one that in both cases came from grounds that were largely incipient. Keywords: Empires - Classical international law - Cervantes - Universalism - human rights (A) EMPIRE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Aragon, died in 1516, exactly a century before the death of Miguel de Cervantes in 1616. The century in question saw the birth of Imperial Spain and the beginnings of its decline, which gave birth to modern international law, in which Spain played a decisive role. By the mid-sixteenth century, when Charles V abdicated and withdrew to the Monastery of Yuste, transferring sovereignty over Spain and the Spanish Empire to his son Philip II (i56), his idea of uniting all Europe in a Roman Catholic empire was already doomed to failure in both political and religious terms.' This, together with the collapse of religious unity in Europe and the appearance of the first modern states in Europe, constitutes the origin of the European state system within which modern international law took form. The period was one of profound transformation: the unity of the Christian Empire was coming to an end and the system of European states was gradually taking shape. Spain and Portugal had successfully reconquested the Iberian Peninsula and embarked on the conquest of the New World. National unification, which had commenced under the Catholic Monarchs, was well under way with catholicism as its instrument of assimilation. The great Spanish writer Cervantes lived at a somewhat later time, in a nation forged from these elements, a fact that becomes apparent in his works. He is a Spaniard of the Empire, already in decline, who nevertheless continues to believe in its glory; a Spaniard experiencing the transition from the old world of Christendom to the modern age. * Professor of Public International Law, University of Carlos III de Madrid. This article forms part of the I+D project DER 104-55484. E-mail: carlos@inst.uc3m.es I W. Blockmans, Carlos V. La utopia del Tmperio (Alianza Editorial, Madrid, ZOO), Z015, at 35.

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