SPAIN

SPAIN. Although the term "Spain," from Latin Hispania, had long been used to refer to the greater part of the Iberian Peninsula, that nation did not become a political reality until the marriage of Isabella of Castile (1474–1506) to Ferdinand of Aragón (ruled 1479–1516) united the kingdom of Castile and León with the crown of Aragón. Castile added the Canary Islands during the fifteenth century, Granada in 1492, Melilla in 1497, and most of Navarre after 1512. The crown of Aragón possessed the kingdoms of Aragón and Valencia, the county of Barcelona (Catalonia), and the Balearic Islands. Between 1707 and 1716, Philip V (ruled 1700–1746), first king of the Bourbon dynasty, unified these regions into the single kingdom of Spain, with its sole capital at Madrid.

Prior to the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), the crown of Aragón also held the Mediterranean kingdoms of Sardinia (after 1323), Sicily (from 1409), and Naples (from 1443). Castile, beginning in 1492, acquired a vast empire in the Americas and the Philippine Islands, along with a few towns and forts on the North African coast.

GEOGRAPHY

Spain occupies 85 percent of the Iberian Peninsula. It borders France to the north, the boundary defined since 1659 by the crest of the Pyrenees, following Spain's cession to France of Roussillon and most of Cerdagne. To the west Spain borders Portugal, with the boundary running through rugged, sparsely inhabited country save in its southern reaches, where the Rio Guadiana defines it. For the rest, Spain is surrounded by sea: its northwest and southwest coasts face the Atlantic, its east coast, the Mediterranean. Some eleven miles of the Strait of Gibraltar separate Spain from North Africa.

Spain is mountainous, and its climate, apart from the rainy northwest, ranges from Mediterranean to semiarid. Much of Castile is a high tableland, known as the meseta. Barely half Spain's terrain was historically productive, only a fraction rich. Four important rivers, the Duero, Tagus, Guadiana, and Guadalquivir, flow west to the Atlantic. None is navigable for other than small craft until it nears the sea. Each defines a valley with mountains separating it from the others. Of the rivers that flow east, only the Ebro is long, allowing barge traffic in its lower reaches. Shorter rivers that flow east water fertile soils in Catalonia and Valencia and irrigate semiarid vegas ('fertile plains') in Murcia and eastern Granada.

For most of the early modern period the historic kingdoms and principalities of Spain defined its political geography. The largest kingdom, Castile, incorporated many others: Galicia in the northwest; the principality of Asturias and the Basque lordships of Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa facing the bay of Biscay; a third Basque lordship, Álava, inland of them; León and Old Castile in the Duero valley; the kingdom of Badajoz, today's Extremadura; New Castile, often called the kingdom of Toledo; the kingdoms of Jaén, Córdoba, and Seville along the course of the Guadalquivir; and, in the mountainous southeast, the kingdoms of Granada and Murcia. The Bourbon King Ferdinand VI (ruled 1746–1759) replaced Castile's historic kingdoms with twenty-four provinces in 1749, each based in a populous capital. In 1799, further subdivision increased the number to thirty-two.

POPULATION AND LANGUAGES

The first attempt at a modern census occurred in 1768. Earlier population figures derive from counts of heads of household (vecinos), usually undertaken by bishops. Sometimes their figures are precise, more often they are rounded guesses. Demographers use multipliers that range from 4 to 6, with 4.5 most common. Philip II (ruled 1556–1598) undertook a detailed census, the Relaciones topográficas, but data for only a few regions were actually collected. His counselors thought Castile had about 1,250,000 households. Around 1500 there may have been 6,000,000 Castilian subjects, another 100,000 in Navarre, 300,000 in Aragón, 400,000 in Catalonia, and 600,000 in Valencia. Most were Roman Catholics. In 1492 at least 40,000 Jews, of a population that had numbered over 200,000, chose to leave rather than accept Christianity. The rest became or had earlier become "New Christians," mainly under pressure, and were known as Conversos. Many Muslims left after 1500, when Islam was proscribed; most, however, some 400,000, remained and accepted Christianity, as often as not superficially, and became Moriscos.

During the sixteenth century Spain's population grew until checked in the late sixteenth century by agrarian crises and recurring epidemics that decreased it by as much as 20 percent by 1660. In 1609–1611, over 200,000 Moriscos were expelled to North Africa. Economic shifts depopulated many northern Castilian cities, even as Madrid and Seville grew. Emigration to the Americas attracted a few thousand each year, while endless foreign wars took more. Growth in population did not return till after 1680, and the 7,500,000 estimated for the early eighteenth century matched the figure for the sixteenth. By the end of the eighteenth century, Spain's population had reached 11,000,000, with much of the growth in Catalonia, Valencia, the Basque Country, and Andalusia. Apart from the overpopulated capital of Madrid and its vicinity, the Castilian heartland recovered more slowly.

Spain's people spoke several languages. Castilian in its several dialects prevailed in Old and New Castile, Andalusia, Murcia, old Aragón, and most of Navarre. In Galicia people spoke Gallego, a dialect very close to Portuguese. In Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearics, people spoke Catalan. All these were Romance languages and mostly mutually intelligible. In the Basque Country and parts of Navarre. people spoke Basque, a unique language with no relation to the Romance languages. At court, for government, in correspondence, printing, and literature, Castilian came to dominate. Antonio de Nebrija published a grammar for Castilian in 1492, but, until the establishment of the Royal Academy in 1713, spelling continued to vary widely. Catalan and Galician literature, rich in the Middle Ages, would experience a revival in the nineteenth century.

ECONOMY

Most Spaniards worked the soil and lived at a subsistence level. They dwelled communally in villages, towns, and cities. Many peasant proprietors were found across northern Spain, but in the south large estates (latifundia) prevailed, owned by a few and worked by landless laborers. In the seventeenth century high taxes and hard times forced many from the land, and Spain had a conspicuous number of vagabonds. Where lands were arable, cereal crops predominated, save in Valencia, where rice provided an alternate staple. Maintained close to dwellings, gardens provided vegetables and fruit, and poultry provided meat and eggs. Orchards were widespread and Spanish citrus fruit, fortified wines, and olive oil proved profitable exports. While scrub woods suited pigs, much of Spain's land was suitable only for grazing cattle and sheep. Wool provided a major export. Each year vast flocks of sheep walked from winter pastures in southern New Castile and Andalusia to summer pastures in Spain's northern mountains. In a trade that had its ups and downs, Burgos became the center for shipping wool to the mills of northwest Europe. Wool shipments to Italian looms were also considerable.

Given Spain's topography, cities of 20,000 people and more, or towns greater than 10,000, generally stood thirty to forty miles distant from one another. Each served as the economic, political, and ecclesiastical hub for its surrounding villages, and provided a focus for the larger regional economy. The lack of navigable rivers and the many mountain barriers limited long-distance transport as well as communication. Most transported goods rode the backs of pack animals. Before the serious improvement of roads in the eighteenth century, wagon transport seldom left its home region. Until that century, little was done for inland water traffic, despite discussion and periodic planning.

The chief regional economies were those of the major river valleys, the valleys of Catalonia and Valencia, and the maritime economies of the north coast, the gulf of Cádiz, and the coasts of Granada, Murcia, Valencia, and Catalonia. Barcelona, a great medieval commercial center, had been devastated by fourteenth-century plagues, and not till the eighteenth century did it reach its former prosperity. Until that century, local privilege in Castile and the Aragonese realms added further restrictions to internal commerce. Thereafter, Spain's maritime regions became more closely linked, with a revived Catalonia and the Basque Provinces leading.

Manufacture was chiefly limited to local markets. In ironware, military hardware, and shipbuilding, the Basque Provinces dominated, although ships were built along the entire north coast. Old Castile for a long time had a lively textile industry, but that declined in the seventeenth century because foreign goods were cheaper. In the eighteenth century textiles revived, but mainly in Catalonia and Valencia. Catalonia also built ships, though primarily for the Mediterranean. In the sixteenth century Barcelona's arsenal built Spain's Mediterranean galleys, and Málaga founded bronze cannon.

With the opening up of the Americas, their commerce became an important element in Spain's economy and fed many exaggerated notions of Spain's wealth. The crown made Seville the center of American commerce in 1503, but it soon became a clearinghouse. The influx of treasure in the sixteenth century drove Spanish prices up till Spain could only compete through tariffs and restrictions. Other parts of Europe, with longer experience and better resources, produced cheaper goods that came to dominate the American trade, so long as they cleared Seville. By the mid-seventeenth century, Spain could not even provide sufficient shipping for its American trade.

The European wars of the Habsburg dynasty, a heavy tax burden, and the diversion of treasure, goods, and people to warfare abroad, were the chief causes of Spain's economic woes. In the seventeenth century, inflation was compounded by the debasement of currency. In finance and banking, foreigners, above all the Genoese, supplanted less-experienced Spaniards and took their cut. Though popular theorists known as arbitristas proposed plans for economic reform, many of them harebrained, little was achieved before the eighteenth century, when Spain made a remarkable economic recovery under more efficient government, even if its Bourbon rulers continued to go to war.

The recovery was most marked on the periphery, where population and industry grew in what became a relatively free market. Influenced by Enlightenment ideas, many of Spain's elite formed societies of amigos del país ('friends of the country') and stimulated improvements in education, local industry, and agriculture, while the crown promoted agricultural colonies in long-deserted areas. Economic recovery enabled Spain to tighten control over commerce with its empire, which, along with positive results, bred Spanish-American resentment and inflamed aspirations for independence after 1800.

SOCIETY

Spanish society was based on the three Estates: clergy, nobles, and commoners. The clergy was entered by vocation, the others by birth, although service or money might bring a commoner noble status. Spanish religious life was strong, and the church rich, attracting some 200,000 men and women to the clergy at any time. For ambitious people of humble origins, it offered an avenue to fortune and power. In annual income Spain's primate, the archbishop of Toledo, was second only to the pope.

Perhaps 400,000 Spaniards claimed noble status. At the top stood the grandees, whose number grew from twenty-five in 1520 to 119 by 1787. With great wealth and often great debts, they maintained their domains through mayorazgo ('primogeniture'), and dominated provincial life. Like the number of grandees, the number of other nobles with titles grew from perhaps a hundred in 1500 to 585 in 1787. The Bourbon monarchs after 1700 opened a new round in the creation of titles to reward those who served them. With few exceptions, Spanish titles were personal, usually based on one of the holder's domains. Alba de Tormes, from which the duke of Alba's title comes, is simply a lordship, not a duchy. Many without titles possessed domains and were known simply as señores de vasallos, 'lords of vassals'. The term vassal in Spain, where vestigial feudalism was limited to Aragón and Catalonia, meant anyone under a lord's jurisdiction.

For those claiming noble status, but without domains, the terms hidalgo ('nobleman') and caballero ('knight') were loosely applied. One was born a hidalgo; the king could create a caballero, most often as a reward for military service. All natives of some regions, most notably Guipúzcoa, Vizcaya, and Navarre, claimed hidalgo status.

Most Spaniards, at whatever economic level and whether they lived in town or country, were commoners. Unlike the clergy and nobility, they were subject to direct taxes and were often referred to as pecheros ('taxpayers').

GOVERNMENT

A monarchy, Spain came under royal jurisdiction. The crown provided justice, made law, organized defense, upheld the church, and collected taxes. From the early sixteenth century, Spanish rulers resided chiefly in Castile and appointed viceroys to their Aragonese and other dominions. To assist the sovereign at court, a system of councils developed that continued through the seventeenth century. The Council of State advised on high policy for all the sovereign's possessions. For Spain there were councils for Castile and Aragón that dealt with administration and law. The Council of War handled military and naval matters. Spain's overseas empire was the business of the Council of the Indies. As Castile provided most of the revenues, its Council of Finance set fiscal policy, largely a matter of struggling with crown debts. The poorer Aragonese realms contributed little, and that with strings. A Council of Military Orders, of which the king became grand master, managed the orders' properties. Most notorious was the Supreme Council of the Inquisition, established in 1480, with jurisdiction over Christians throughout Spain, an organization suspected of being used for political as well as religious ends.

Spain's Bourbon kings after 1700 eliminated the councils, regarded as clumsy and dilatory, save for an honorific Council of State. In their place they appointed responsible ministers for justice, finance, foreign affairs, interior, army, navy, and overseas possessions. Captains general replaced viceroys in the former Aragonese realms and Navarre. In Castile, hereditary offices were suppressed and captaincies general of maritime regions became appointive.

If the sovereign ruled all Spain, at the bottom, in villages, towns, and cities, noble and taxpaying householders elected councils on which both commoners and nobles served. While female heads of household with underage children might not hold office, they enjoyed limited voting rights until they remarried or a son came of age.

Into the major cities of Castile that came directly under its jurisdiction, the crown sent corregidores ('magistrates') to look after its interests. Most corregidores were well trained in law, and tended to dominate elected counselors, part-timers who had their own private interests to look after. In fortress towns, the corregidor was often a soldier, who was assisted by a legist (a specialist in civil law). In the Aragonese kingdoms cities retained greater autonomy until Spain's Bourbon rulers introduced corregidores into them. Everywhere they increased corregidores' powers, and later appointed intendants (governors) to each province with even greater authority.

Smaller towns and villages might come under the crown's jurisdiction, or that of an ecclesiastical or secular lord, or the nearest city. It was jurisdiction that defined a seignorial domain and produced income through offices, taxes, dues, and fines. Both jurisdictions and offices were often for sale. The lord of a domain, whether king, churchman, or noble, usually owned some lands and businesses in it, but hardly all. Most belonged to vassals, whether noble or common. Much land, especially pastures and woods, was considered common, and there were understood rights to grazing, cutting wood, hunting, and fishing. In Castile señores might appoint their own corregidores to villages. Villages often sought greater liberty with payments to crown or lord.

In the provision of justice and making of law, Spain's sovereign was in theory absolute, bound only by divine and natural law, and the fundamental laws of Spain, such as the right of female succession. Legal advisers assisted the sovereign. Two chancelleries, in Valladolid and Granada, served Castile as high appellate courts, with broad authority to supervise municipal and seignorial courts. Audiencias, lesser appellate courts, existed in Seville and elsewhere. The Aragonese realms had their own appellate system, and Aragón itself had a justiciar, who might challenge the king's rulings. After the Chief Justiciary in Saragossa joined a revolt in 1590, the office was suppressed. Under the Bourbon dynasty, Spain's court system was centralized and further refined.

The church served in many respects as a branch of government. The pulpit was the surest way to reach the entire population. The church was also a great landholder. Churchmen served in high office for the crown. Through concordats with the papacy, the crown gradually gained the right to nominate Spain's bishops for papal approval. Education, hospitals, and feeding the poor were the church's business. In theory, Spaniards tithed, though a third of the tithe went to the crown.

For revenues the crown derived many rights from Roman law, including customs and the royal fifth of minerals, which extended to the gold and silver mines of the Americas. Some rights to salt flats and customs duties had been transferred to nobles during the later Middle Ages, but from the reign of Philip II the crown gradually recovered them. Much of the historic crown domain had been transferred as well, but by Ferdinand and Isabella's acquisition of the grand masterships of the Military Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, Alcántara, and Montesa, the crown regained extensive, though seldom rich, domains. These soon became encumbered with debts.

On Castile, richer than the Aragonese realms at the time of union, fell the chief burden of direct taxes till the advent of the Bourbons. After 1538 nobles no longer sat in the Castilian Cortes ('parliament'), which voted subsidies and approved tax increases. Only thirty-six delegates, two each from eighteen royal towns, attended. While stubborn, they generally yielded to the crown's demands.

From Moorish times the crown held the right to the alcabala, in theory a ten-percent tax on sales and business transactions. Its actual rate was lower and required bargaining with the Cortes for its collection by municipal corporations, and increasingly by royal tax collectors and agents of creditors. Only reluctantly, because of mounting debt and repeated bankruptcies, did the crown agree to levies on basic foodstuffs. The Cortes also granted periodic subsidies in addition to the sums raised through the alcabala. As the delegates to the Cortes largely came from the elite, the tax burden fell unduly on the poor. Church wealth provided another big source of royal revenue, mainly arranged through the papacy, on the argument that Spain crusaded against infidels and heretics.

The Bourbon dynasty, which summoned the Cortes only to acclaim succession to the crown, proved unable to overhaul the Castilian tax structure, but, by eliminating regional privileges in the Aragonese realms, it increased revenues from Catalonia and Valencia as prosperity returned to those areas. From the mid-seventeenth century, corporations of tax farmers undertook much of the revenue collection. Beginning in the early eighteenth century, government finances improved and debt began to decline. Ferdinand VI, whose reign was peaceful, saw a surplus. Mexican silver financed the wars of Charles III (ruled 1759–1788), but with the coming of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, debt mounted and government finances turned chaotic.

EDUCATION AND CULTURE

Education was in the hands of the church. Colleges and universities, established in the Middle Ages, concentrated on theology and canon and civil law. To career-oriented students law had the greatest appeal. Science was pursued largely outside the university. Interest in navigation led to an academy of mathematics in Madrid in 1582, while the exotic plants of empire encouraged botanical studies. Though Philip II brought anatomist Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) to Spain, Spanish medicine remained undistinguished before the work of Andrés Piquer (1711–1772) at the University of Valencia.

Spanish literature of the "Golden Age" peaked with Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616). Theater flourished with Lope de Vega (1562–1635), Tirso de Molina (1583–1648), and Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681), poetry with St. John of the Cross (1542–1591) and Luis de Góngora (1561–1627). Tomás Luis de Victoria (c.1548–1611) proved a giant of Renaissance music. The Cretan El Greco (1541–1614) caught Spain's religious fervor in paint, while Diego de Velázquez (1599–1660) took painting to unsurpassed levels. For all its renewed prosperity, however, the eighteenth century produced little remarkable, apart from the powerful art of Francisco de Goya (1746–1828), and some good music, with that of Antonio Soler (1729–1783) perhaps the best.

POLITICAL HISTORY, 1474–1516

Ferdinand and Isabella put an end to endemic civil war, restored government, and in 1492 completed the seven-hundred-year "reconquest" of Spain from the Moors with the conquest of Granada. They expelled Spain's Jews, avowedly to prevent those Jews who had become Christian from backsliding. Also in 1492 Isabella commissioned Christopher Columbus to seek Asia by sailing west. His discoveries brought an American empire to Spain.

Rebellion by the Muslims of Granada brought expulsion after 1500 of those who did not accept Christianity. Perhaps 400,000 remained in Spain as New Christian Moriscos, suspected nevertheless by Old Christian Spaniards of insincerity and collaboration with Barbary corsairs and the Ottoman Turks.

Ferdinand's foreign policy led to the dynastic marriage of Princess Joanna to Archduke Philip, son of the Habsburg Holy Roman emperor Maximilian I. The deaths of her only brother Juan, older sister Isabel, and Isabel's infant son made Joanna her parents' heir. When Isabella died in 1504, Queen Joanna (1504–1555) and her consort, Philip I, succeeded to Castile. Philip died in 1506 and Ferdinand became regent for Joanna, who was known as la loca ('the Mad'), deemed unfit to rule and confined to a palace at Tordesillas.

HABSBURG SPAIN, 1516–1700

When Ferdinand died in 1516, Joanna's Habsburg son Charles (Carlos I, ruled 1516–1556) succeeded to Castile, Aragón, and the Italian possessions. Born in the Low Countries, which he inherited from his father, Charles also inherited the Austrian lands on Maximilian's death in 1519, and was elected Holy Roman emperor Charles V (ruled 1519–1558). Dunning Spain for money, Charles hurried to Germany in 1520, provoking many Castilian towns to rise in the revolt of the Comuneros. Feeling threatened, the landed nobility rallied to Charles and crushed the revolt. A revolt in Valencia that mixed urban grievances and hostility to Moriscos was also crushed by the nobility.

Charles bequeathed his Austrian inheritance to his brother Ferdinand in 1522 and returned to Spain to restore his rule, yet after 1530 he spent little time in Spain. Wars with France in defense of his Low Countries and Italian possessions, with German Lutherans and the Ottoman Turks, drained his energies and increased Spain's debts. In 1556 he abdicated to his Spanish-born son Philip II (ruled 1556–1598). Philip wished to improve government in Spain, but became embroiled in foreign wars. He began his reign with a bankruptcy in 1557 that allowed him to renegotiate his debts. Gaining an edge on France at the battle of St. Quentin (1557), he achieved a favorable peace at Cateau-Cambrésis (1559). Both he and the king of France feared the spread of Protestant heresy. Extirpated by the Inquisition in Spain, Protestantism would prove the chief issue in the Low Countries, where growing unrest led to open revolt in 1568. By 1580 the Low Countries had divided into a Protestant, Dutch-dominated United Netherlands in the north and the "Spanish" Netherlands in the south. Battling the Dutch Revolt proved a drain on both the Spanish treasury and manpower.

In the same years, Ottoman Turkish ambitions fired conflict in the Mediterranean, and in 1568–1571 the Moriscos of Granada rebelled. Though Philip's half-brother Don Juan of Austria crushed the Morisco revolt and, in league with the pope and Venice, defeated the Turkish navy at Lepanto (1571), Philip could not sustain simultaneous wars in the Mediterranean and Low Countries. In 1575 he declared bankruptcy again, and in 1578 achieved a truce with the Turks.

In 1580 he annexed Portugal when its legitimate male line died out, and acquired Portugal's Asian empire with its African way stations. Increasingly fearful of his power, both Protestant England and Catholic France fed the Dutch revolt and attacked Philip's overseas empire and treasure routes. In 1588 Philip launched his great armada to overthrow Queen Elizabeth and restore England to Roman Catholicism, or at least compel her to cease aiding the Dutch. The armada was defeated, but an English attack on Portugal in 1589 also failed. That year Protestant Henry IV succeeded to the French throne. Philip encouraged Catholic rebels and sent his army of Flanders into France against Henry. In 1590, local issues led to a brief revolt in Aragón.By 1595, Philip was at war with the Dutch, England, and France. In 1596 an Anglo-Dutch fleet sacked Cádiz. Philip vainly counterattacked with armadas in 1596 and 1597, and again declared bankruptcy. In 1598 he made peace at Vervins with Henry IV, now Catholic, and tried to separate the Low Countries from Spain by bestowing them on his daughter Isabel and her husband, Archduke Albert.

Though disease and famine racked Spain in 1599–1601, Philip III (ruled 1598–1621) persisted in war with England and the Dutch. Winning no advantage, he made peace in 1604 in London with James I of England, and in 1609 accepted a Twelve Years' Truce with the Dutch, but refused to relinquish his claims on their lands. Blame for Spain's shortcomings fell on his valido ('favorite'), Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas (1553–1625), duke of Lerma. Unsuccessful abroad and facing economic problems at home, Spain's government expelled the Moriscos, who did not seem sufficiently assimilated and were suspected of conspiring with North Africa. In 1618, war in central Europe involving the Austrian Habsburgs sucked in Spain as well.

In 1621 Philip III died, the Low Countries reverted to the Spanish monarchy when Albert died childless, and the truce with the Dutch expired. Sixteen-year-old Philip IV (ruled 1621–1665) ascended the throne, while a new valido, Don Gaspar de Guzmán (1587–1645), count-duke of Olivares, acquired direction of policy. He determined to make Philip IV the greatest of sovereigns, though most Spaniards had become disillusioned by endless wars, heavy taxes, and relentless recruiting. Olivares knew that Castile bore a disproportionate share of the monarchy's burdens and called for a Union of Arms, which would require more from the Aragonese realms and Portugal. Opposition proved immediate. After early victories, the tide of war turned against the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs. In 1628 the Dutch captured a treasure fleet, impairing Spain's credit even as Olivares pushed into the Mantuan succession crisis that brought war to Italy. In 1635, France openly joined the anti-Habsburg forces it had long aided, and in 1639 the Dutch shattered Spain's last great armada in the battle of the Downs.

Early in 1640 Olivares's policies provoked rebellion in Catalonia. At the end of that year Portugal, its empire savaged by Spain's Dutch foes, declared independence under John IV of Braganza. The growing cry for Olivares's removal succeeded in 1643, when Philip dismissed him. Don Luis de Haro took over direction of policy and sought peace. In 1648 Philip conceded Dutch independence at Münster, but war with France continued over holdings both crowns claimed. Even as Philip recovered Catalonia in 1655, England joined France against Spain. Beaten, in 1659 Philip signed the Peace of the Pyrenees, which both ceded territory and gave his eldest daughter Maria Teresa as bride to Louis XIV of France. Though she renounced all claims to Spain's throne for herself and her heirs, most jurists held that she could not bind them. When Philip IV died in 1665, his sickly four-year-old son Charles II (ruled 1665–1700) became king. Charles's sister, Margarita, married Emperor Leopold I (ruled 1658–1705).

The reign of Charles proved the nadir of Spain's fortunes, though after 1680 there was some faint hope for recovery. Always sickly, he sired no offspring. Bourbon Louis XIV and Habsburg Leopold I each sought to win Spain's throne for a candidate of his dynasty, while Louis nibbled at Charles's possessions that bordered France. In Spain Juan Joséde Austria (1629–1679), Philip IV's bastard, and the count of Oropesa, chief minister (1685–1691), struggled to maintain government while England and the Dutch tried to arbitrate the anticipated Spanish succession by partition of the inheritance among rival candidates. But Charles rejected partition and Spaniards supported him. Irritated by the Habsburg party at court and aware that France, not Austria, had a navy, Charles's counselors, led by Cardinal Portocarrero of Toledo, persuaded Charles to will his inheritance to Philip (1683–1746), duke of Anjou, grandson of Maria Teresa and Louis XIV, who became Philip V of Spain.

BOURBON SPAIN, 1700–1808

On Charles's death (1 November 1700), Louis accepted Charles's will and dispatched Philip V (ruled 1700–1724, 1724–1746) to Spain. Leopold declared war and claimed Spain for his younger son Charles. In 1702 England and the Dutch joined Leopold in the War of the Spanish Succession. When it ended in 1713, Philip retained only Spain and its overseas empire. Aided by Frenchman Jean Orry, dedicated ministers undertook fruitful reforms. In 1724 Philip abdicated to his son Luis, who quickly died, and Philip resumed the throne. His second wife, Elisabeth Farnese, involved Spain in wars that successfully won the Two Sicilies for her son Charles and Parma for her son Felipe. Philip and his son Ferdinand VI (ruled 1746–1759) continued to enjoy the services of ministers committed to improvements, such as Zenón de Somodevilla (1702–1781), marquis of La Ensenada. As Ferdinand was childless, Charles III (ruled 1759–1788) came to Spain from the Two Sicilies.

His enlightened reign saw Spain prosper, after the so-called Esquilache riots of 1766, spurred by the high cost of bread, prompted further reform. Modernizing ministers included the counts of Aranda, Campomanes, and Floridablanca, and Gaspar de Jovellanos (1744–1811), the most renowned. Threatened, the church and old nobility opposed many reforms, and in 1767 Charles expelled the Jesuits, but the Inquisition, an embarrassment to many, survived. Spain allied with France against Britain in the war of American Independence. With Louisiana ceded to Spain by France in 1763, and California opened to colonization, the empire reached its greatest extent.

A year after Charles IV (ruled 1788–1808) succeeded his father, revolution erupted in France. Spain joined the antirevolutionary coalition and went to war. When the regicides who guillotined Louis XVI were overthrown, Spain made peace with France. Manuel de Godoy (1767–1851), Charles's chief minister and purported lover of Queen Maria Luisa, came to dominate the Spanish government and renewed the French alliance. War as France's ally, however, proved disastrous. The battles of Cape St. Vincent (1797) and Trafalgar (1805) destroyed Spain's navy. Napoleon coerced Louisiana from Charles and sold it to the United States. Spaniards demanded peace and at Aranjuez in 1808 popular riots forced Charles IV to abdicate to his son Ferdinand VII (ruled 1808–1833). Napoleon promptly invaded Spain, imprisoned Charles and Ferdinand in France, and put his brother Joseph Bonaparte on Spain's throne. Spain's war of Independence (1808–1813) followed, leaving Spain devastated and its American empire in revolution. The restoration in 1814 of the absolutist Ferdinand quashed the effort of the 1812 Cortes of Cádiz to make Spain a constitutional monarchy, and created a state of political instability that racked Spain during the nineteenth century.

See also Armada, Spanish; Barcelona; Bourbon Dynasty (France); Bourbon Dynasty (Spain); Cádiz; Catalonia; Cateau-Cambrésis (1559); Cervantes, Miguel de; Charles III (Spain); Charles V (Holy Roman Empire); Charles VI (Holy Roman Empire); Columbus, Christopher; Comuneros Revolt (1520–1521); Conversos; Dutch Revolt (1568–1648); Ferdinand of Aragón; Ferdinand VI (Spain); Góngora y Argote, Luis de; Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de; Habsburg Dynasty; Inquisition, Spanish; Isabella of Castile; Joanna I, "the Mad" (Spain); Juan de Austria, Don; Leopold I (Holy Roman Empire); Lepanto, Battle of; Lerma, Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, 1st duke of; Louis XIV (France); Madrid; Mantuan Succession, War of the (1627–1631); Maria Theresa (Holy Roman Empire); Moriscos; Moriscos, Expulsion of (Spain); Netherlands, Southern; Olivares, Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel, Count of; Philip II (Spain); Philip III (Spain); Philip IV (Spain); Philip V (Spain); Pyrenees, Peace of the (1661); Spain, Art in; Spanish Colonies; Spanish Literature and Language; Spanish Succession, War of the (1701–1714); Thirty Years' War (1618–1648); Utrecht, Peace of (1713); Vega, Lope de; Wars of Religion, French.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, Jonathan. The Golden Age of Painting in Spain. New Haven, 1991.

Callahan, William. Church, Politics, and Society in Spain, 1750–1874. Cambridge, Mass., 1984.

Defourneaux, Marcelin. Daily Life in Spain in the Golden Age. Translated by Newton Branch. Stanford, 1979.

Domínguez Ortiz, Antonio. The Golden Age of Spain, 1516–1659. Translated by James Casey. London, 1971.

Elliott, John H. The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline. New Haven, 1986.

——. Imperial Spain, 1469–1716. London, 1963.

——. The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain, 1598–1640. Cambridge, U.K., 1963.

——. Spain and Its World, 1500–1700: Selected Essays. New Haven, 1989.

Glendinning, Nigel. The Eighteenth Century. New York, 1972. (In series The Literary History of Spain.)

Goodman, David C. Power and Penury: Government, Technology, and Science in Philip II's Spain. Cambridge, U.K., 1988.

Haliczer, Stephen. The Comuneros of Castile: The Forging of a Revolution, 1475–1521. Madison, Wis., 1981.

Herr, Richard. The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain. Princeton, 1958.

Hilgarth, Jocelyn. The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250–1516. Vol. 2. Oxford, 1978.

Hilt, Douglas. The Troubled Trinity: Godoy and the Spanish Monarchs. Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1987.

Jones, Royston O. The Golden Age: Prose and Poetry: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New York, 1971. (In series The Literary History of Spain.)

Kagan, Richard L. Students and Society in Early Modern Spain. Baltimore, 1974.

Kamen, Henry. Spain, 1469–1714: A Society in Conflict. 2nd ed. London, 1991.

——. The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision. London, 1997.

——. The War of Succession in Spain, 1700–15. London, 1969.

Lynch, John. Bourbon Spain, 1700–1808. Oxford, 1989.

——. Spain under the Habsburgs. 2 vols. Oxford, 1991, 1992.

Nader, Helen. Liberty in Absolutist Spain: The Habsburg Sale of Towns 1516–1700. Baltimore, 1990.

Phillips, Carla Rahn. Ciudad Real 1500–1750: Growth, Crisis, and Readjustment in the Spanish Economy. Cambridge, Mass., 1979.

——. Six Galleons for the King of Spain: Imperial Defense in the Early Seventeenth Century. Baltimore, 1986.

Phillips, Carla Rahn, and William D. Phillips, Jr. Spain's Golden Fleece: Wool Production and the Wool Trade from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore, 1997.

Pike, Ruth. Aristocrats and Traders: Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century. Ithaca, N.Y., 1972.

Reher, David S. Perspectives on the Family in Spain, Past and Present. Oxford, 1997.

Ringrose, David. Spain, Europe, and the "Spanish Miracle," 1700–1900. Cambridge, U.K., 1996.

Sahlins, Peter. Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees. Berkeley, 1989.

Thompson, I. A. A. War and Government in Habsburg Spain, 1560–1620. London, 1976.

PETER PIERSON