Imperial Hiatus: War in Spain and Crisis in Peru, 1700 to 1720s

Abstract

Spain’s eighteenth century opened in war. The Bourbon succession was contested by the British, Austrian Habsburgs, Dutch, and lesser powers, in what became the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13). This war was for the control of Spain and its colonies in Europe and the Americas, and pitted the Allies and their candidate, the Austrian Archduke Charles, against the Bourbon Crowns of France and Spain, in the person of Philip V.1 The war, with all its attendant circumstances, made the following quarter-century a unique period in Spanish history. Large bodies of foreign troops campaigned on Castilian soil for the first time in centuries, and the last before the Napoleonic invasion. The conflict was not only a general European one with a major theatre in the Peninsula, but a Spanish civil war that pitted Castile against the eastern kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia. Much of the Castilian nobility opposed the new dynasty, and the Catholic Church itself splintered along lines of region or hierarchy. A further distinctive characteristic was the great influence of foreign factions at court, where the French dominated from 1700 to 1709, to be displaced thereafter by Italians. The physical disruption and damage caused by the war, consequent fiscal ruination, and bitter factional strife surrounding Philip V combined to create an extreme political instability that paralyzed government.KeywordsTrade FairColonial AdministrationFiscal CrisisAmerican TradeRoyal CourtThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.