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wrote an official in the Philippines. The value of the treasure taken from the Americas during the Spanish reign ranges from $4 to $6 billion
in unadjusted dollars;
its present-day worth would be many times that.
    By the time that Penn and Venables sailed, however, the Spanish dream of universal monarchy was growing confused and dark. Fernand Brandel called the empire of Philip II
“un total de faiblesses,”
—“a total of weaknesses”—and by the mid-1600s they were everywhere to be seen. The reasons were many and complicated, but in the end Spain was radically overextended: Every mile of territory that was conquered had to be pacified, guarded, supplied, administered, and, once any treasure was carted off, made self-sustaining. As the decades passed, it seemed that everyone was benefiting except the Spanish: The Crown was forced to borrow huge amounts from the Genoese financiers who underwrote the galleon fleets; when the ships returned from the New World, brimming with escudos and pearls, the majority would be parceled out to lenders across Europe, leaving only a small percentage for the Crown’s actual operating costs. “Everything comes down to one thing,” sighed Philip II. “Money and more money.” The king’s 1584 income was estimated at 6 million pesos; his debts totaled nearly 74 million. By the time of Philip IV, the kingdom was in even worse shape. Foreign affairs absorbed a staggering 93 percent of the budget. The kingdom was dependent on the treasure of the West Indies to support its empire, and Philip’s European armies waited for the galleons’ arrival to march. On October 4, 1643, the king wrote a correspondent that the silver fleet had arrived and the money had instantly been used “to dispose my forces.” Other times he tied the galleons even more closely to the fate of Spain. “We are expecting hourly, by God’s help, the arrival of the galleons,” he wrote, “and you may imagine what depends on it for us. I hope that, in His mercy, He will bring them safely…. It is true, I do not deserve it, but rather great punishment; but I have full confidence that He will not permit the total loss of this monarchy….” Any disturbance in the flow of gold could threaten the very existence of the empire.
    The treasure of the New World had acted like a steroid on the empire, expanding it beyond its natural dimensions. And the king depended on it like a drug. Jealous of the source, he wouldn’t let non-Spaniards set foot in the Americas or trade with their inhabitants. The empire ballooned, but the Spanish mind closed in on itself. Religious fervor hardened into ceremony; the vast bureaucracy stifled ambition; a rigidly hierarchical society replicated itself in all its colonies. To take only the humblest example of the iron bureaucracy that ruled men’s lives in the empire: In Panama or Havana, poor men needed state-approved licenses simply to beg on the streets. No human activity escaped the hand of tradition and state control. The empire had shut itself off to the idea of flexibility and change.
    As their fortunes slowly darkened, the Spanish increasingly felt that God was rebuking them, just as the Bible told them He had the Israelites when they failed to take the promised land of Canaan. The glory days had been an
engaño,
a trick; the Spanish believed they’d gone from being God’s darling to his bewitched plaything. No one felt the curse more than Philip IV. When news reached Madrid that Jamaica had been lost, Philip was convinced he’d doomed the nation. “The news fell upon Philip like an avalanche,” wrote one historian. “Panic spread through Seville and Cadiz, and curses loud and deep of the falsity of heretics rang through Liars Walk and the Calle Mayor.” England had successfully been kept out of direct conflict with Spain for decades, but now they’d obviously cast their fortunes against their ancient enemy. And the fact that they’d done so in the West Indies, the source of