Book Review: Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars by Vincent P. O’Hara and Leonard R. Heinz

written an important book which not only pays more attention than is usual to some of Spain’s fighting units (including the Army of Flanders after 1659), but also – more important – makes clear that Spain remained a key player in the international struggle, as actor rather than passive victim, operating on more fronts than most other contenders in the wars of the period. There is no excuse now for writing off – ignoring – Spain as a military power in the last decades of the seventeenth century; we may also have to reassess the military achievement of Carlos II’s Bourbon successor, Philip V, in the first half of the following century.