Chapter Two. The kingdom of Sardinia: A province in balance between Catalonia, Castile,and Italy

Abstract

Sardinia is the region in Italy that can boast of having, if not the oldest, certainly the most longstanding political and cultural ties with Spain. In the late thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century, the Catalans, in the phase of their mercantile expansion along the “diagonal of the islands,” reached the western coast of Sardinia. During the sixteenth century new social forces arose within the government of the Sardinian cities. New men gradually preempted the areas of power of the old Catalan dynasties, establishing themselves as an urban governing class. It is in the light of these premises that the urban patriciate reached an agreement with the new Habsburg monarchy. The chapter traces Sardinia in three periods: Catalan commercial interests in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; Sardinia in the Spanish Habsburg imperial system during the sixteenth century; and strong Castilian imprint in the seventeenth century. Keywords: Castilian; Catalonia; commercial interests; Italy; Sardinia; Spain; Spanish Habsburg imperial system