Sibling Bonding and Dynastic Might: Three Sixteenth-Century Habsburgs Manage Themselves and an Empire

Abstract

Histories of dynastic empires frequently add upto studies of power, its attributes, and its expressions. Much attention is paid to how skillfully sovereign families turned to their advantage control of far-flung territorial holdings, their political and legal institutions, and fiscal resources, credit included. Military superiority, diplomatic ingenuity, variants of cultural hegemony, and cultivation of good public relations are usually part of the story as well, along with opportunism and sheer ruthlessness. All these considerations had roles in the story of the rise of the sixteenth-century Habsburg House of Austria to global eminence. By 1550, the totality of their patrimony would stretch from east central Europe to Spain, the Netherlands, the Americas, and the maritime fringes of Asia.