Bourbon Kings Research Articles

Gift Exchanging Practices between the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Ottoman Empire: ‘Cose Turche’ and Strange Animals

Between August 1741 and the spring of 1743, following the conclusion of a treaty between the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Porte, Naples became the stage of a series of attentively choreographed events starring two special guests: Hacı Hüseyin Efendi, an envoy of the sultan Mahmud I and an elephant, presented as a sultan's gift to the King Charles of Bourbon. Both guests became a public spectacle, aroused great curiosity, and generated many written and visual responses. Resorting to both the Neapolitan court-sponsored textual and visual reconstructions and to unpublished archival documents, this article shows how the both on- and off-stage performances arranged to present the envoy, and the sultan's gifts, had the clear intent of leaving a long-lasting impression on the new Ottoman ally, but also aimed to assert the power of the Bourbon king inspiring sentiments of wonder, admiration and devotion in his subjects.

The nineteenth-century experience of the kingdom of the two Sicilies on mandatory vaccination: An Italian phenomenon?

The current health emergency caused by COVID-19 disease shows several similarities with well-known epidemics of the past. The knowledge of their management and overcoming could give us useful tools to face the present COVID-19 pandemic. The Bourbon king Ferdinand I planned the first free large-scale mass vaccination programme conducted in Italy and one of the first in Europe to counteract smallpox. The vaccination campaign was characterized by many difficulties and the efforts made by the Southern Kingdoms governors were enormous. For example, the “ante litteram communication campaign”, aimed at convincing the so-called “hesitant” people and at confuting the arguments of vaccination opponents, was impressive. In 1821, the compulsory vaccination significantly reduced smallpox infections and death rates. Subsequently, several experiences followed this initiative, not without doubts and debates. Smallpox was finally eradicated worldwide only on the 9th December 1979.Despite to other countries, the “mandatory vaccination” is a topic often debated by Italian scientific and social communities.

La España romántica y una partitura de excepción. Coriolano, de Francisco Andreví

Cuando se celebra el 250 aniversario del nacimiento del inconmensurable Ludwig van Beethoven, autor de una célebre Obertura Coriolano, Op. 62 en Do menor (Ouvertüre zu Coriolan), se ha planteado la oportunidad de dar a conocer la obra homónima, realizada por Francisco Andreví (*1786; †1853), que fuera maestro de la Real Capilla española entre 1830 y 1836, es decir, con Fernando vii, y durante los primeros años de la regencia de María Cristina de Borbón-Dos Sicilias. Compositor dado a conocer más tarde en Burdeos y París, se trata ésta de la única obra hoy conocida para la escena de este músico catalán, la cual se ha conservado en una sola copia manuscrita. Una música, sin duda, condicionada por la compleja situación política del momento en la corte española, la cual deja traslucir las luces y sombras de un tipo de composición “de circunstancias”, y “de consumo”, embebida de la literatura operística italiana entonces en boga ―y por su reflejo en Francia― (Rossini, Auber, Meyerbeer), aquí muy de segundo orden, aunque con breves destellos, en ocasiones, brillantes, aunque sobre todo y principalmente, chocantes, que no dejan de ser sino un testimonio, llamativo, y acaso paradigmático, de aquello que pudo haber sido y en lo que se acabó por convertir, la música de una nación en pleno desmantelamiento. Véase, aquí, la edición en partitura de la citada composición, acompañada, por otra parte, de un amplio estudio, al que se remite al lector.

The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America

The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America

Inbreeding and serious mental illness in the first Spanish Bourbons

There is an argument about inbreeding as a risk factor in the development of major mental illnesses like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. The genealogical trees of European royal dynasties represent an opportunity to study this relationship. Felipe V was the first Bourbon king to rule in Spain, who was thought to have possibly suffered a severe mental disorder. Felipe's son Fernando VI, also had a mental disease. Nevertheless Carlos III, Felipe V's son born from a different, unrelated mother, apparently showed no trace of such disorder. We hypothesize that consanguinity or inbreeding could explain the tendency in the acquiring of severe mental disorders. Biographies of three Spanish Bourbon kings (Felipe V, Fernando VI and Carlos III) were analysed in order to evaluate if they were likely to have suffered from some mental disorder, according to DSM-5 and ICD-11 criteria. An inbreeding coefficient was determined with the PedPro Program. Felipe V and Fernando VI could have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, whereas Carlos III could have been diagnosed with a mild personality disorder. Both Felipe V and Fernando VI had a high inbreeding coefficient (0.091109 and 0.095023, respectively), while Carlos III had a lower one (0.038264). The inbreeding coefficient of siblings of couples of first grade cousins is 0.0625. A high inbreeding coefficient is a risk factor in developing bipolar disorder. Felipe V and Fernando VI suffered from bipolar disorder. The analysis of genetic trees by the inbreeding coefficient is a valuable tool in the study of heredability of bipolar disorder. Endogamy accumulates pathogenic alleles and increases risk to suffer it. These kings had a high consanguinity which was an important risk factor to the illness. High consanguinity is a risk factor to suffer bipolar disorder.

Andrés Piquer (1711–1772) et sa contribution à la conceptualisation du trouble bipolaire maniaco-dépressif

Andrés Piquer (1711–1772) was the physician of the first Bourbon kings of Spain. He gave us a precise description of their pathological behavior. He was the first to consider mania and depression as the two aspects of a unitary manic depressive bipolar disorder.

“A King, not foreign”: The Creation of a Spanish Heritage for the Bourbon Kings

“A King, not foreign”: The Creation of a Spanish Heritage for the Bourbon Kings

El legendario Gran Proyecto de Enrique IV y Sully: Soberanía y confederación europea

This paper dwells on the Grand Dessein attributed to Henri IV but whose conception really belonged to his great Calvinist minister, the Duque of Sully. First we explain how this project of European unity became one of the essential elements to create the myth of the Bourbon king. We then come to analyze both its realistic attempt to reorganize the European territory and its more utopian proposal aiming at a European confederation. Though it may appear as a real alternative to the terms of Peace of Westphalia, this project actually assumed many of the convictions which inspired such peace, starting from the principles of State sovereignty and international equilibrium.

El Alcázar de Madrid. Del castillo Trastámara al palacio de los Austrias (Ss. XV-1543)

The medieval Alcazar (fortress) of Madrid was transformed into the residential palace of the Austrian dynasty in Spain from the reign of Charles I through that of Charles II. On Christmas Eve 1734, during the reign of the Bourbon king Philip V, the palace suffered a devastating fire, resulting in the construction of a new Royal palace, already baroque, on the same site. This research reconstructs the history – until now fragmented – of this lost medieval castle, contributing new source materials concerning the successive interventions carried out on the building. Specifically, this investigation focuses on the improvements realized during the period of the Catholic Monarchs and the first works commissioned by Charles V, prior to the definitive royal bond of 1536. This document marks the beginning of a new chapter in the constructive history of the building, when the old castle was transformed definitively into a residential palace, while highlighting the symbolic value of the Sala Rica and the rooms of protocol constructed during the Trastamara period.

Die Hypospadie und Infertilität von Heinrich II von Frankreich (1519–1559)

Henry II (1519-1559) of France was the second son of Francis I (1494-1547) and Claude de France (1498-1524) born in 1519 in St. Germain-en-Laye. After his older brother's and his father's death in 1547, he was anointed the French king in Reims. In 1533 already, as a 14-year-old boy, for reasons of state, he was married to the same aged Catherine de Medici (1519-1589), as her uncle was Pope Clement VII (1478-1534). The marriage remained childless for 11 years since Henry, due to a distinct hypospadia and a completely sexually inexperienced wife was unable to conceive children with her. His existing liaison to Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566) - a 19-year-older maid of honor of his father Francis I from 1537 until his death - influenced his sexual life immensely.The blame for the childless marriage was placed primarily on his wife, as Henry had become father of an illegitimate daughter with a mistress. Catherine then underwent all possible medical and alchemical procedures to finally give birth to the hoped Dauphin. Ironically, her rival for the favor of her husband, Diane de Poitiers was one of her greatest allies. She made clear that the cause lay with Henry and not with his wife. This was confirmed by the added solid physician Jean Fernel (1497-1558). His treatment of Henry and the simultaneous training of the unexperienced Catherine by Diane de Poitiers led to success.The result was the birth of Francis II (1544-1560) in 1544, the first of 10 children in 12 years. Thus, the dynasty was saved. After the death of Henry in a tragic tournament accident in 1559, three of his sons became kings of France. But the line of Valois remained without further descendants and was continued by Henry IV, the first Bourbon king in 1589.

Corrado Giaquinto’s Medea Rejuvenating Aeson and Other Modelli for the Palacio Real of Madrid

Corrado Giaquinto’s <i>Medea Rejuvenating Aeson</i> and Other Modelli for the Palacio Real of Madrid

The Bourbon Reforms in Spanish America: a Semi-Autobiographical Re-Evaluation

The aim of this article is to demonstrate, from a subjective point of view, how interpretations of the Bourbon reforms in Spanish America have shifted since the 1960s. It examines whether they should be seen as a smooth, coherent, rational programme, introduced in the first half of the eighteenth century in peninsular Spain by its first two Bourbon kings, Philip V and Ferdinand VI, and thereafter extended to Spanish America primarily during the reign of Charles III, or, alternatively, as a programme characterised by procrastination, hesitation, and bureaucratic incompetence. It concludes that, on balance, the latter interpretation is more persuasive. It suggests, nevertheless, that by giving Spanish Americans a glimpse of the benefits that the relaxation of commercial restrictions might bring, the reforms helped to create the attitudes that would lead to the Revolutions for Independence in the wake of the collapse of the Bourbon monarchy in 1808.

Les « Basiliques et palais du Roi ». Architecture et politique à la cour de Henri IV

The «Basilicas and king’s palace » . Architecture and politics at the court of Henri IV, by Emmanuel Lurin The article is a reflection on the buildings of Henri IV, centred on the royal residences ; it clarifies their meaning as monuments in the context of the reconstruction of the realm and the arrival of the new dynasty. The first Bourbon king began a vast programme of renovation of royal buildings, a particularly skilful and ambitious project, intended to consecrate his own triumph and promote the restoration of royal

Propaganda e información en tiempos de guerra: España y América (1700–1714) (review)

Gonzalez cruz, david. Propaganda e informacion en tiempos de guerra: Espana y America (1700-1714). Madrid: Silex, 2009. 304 pp.In the aftermath of a constitutional court rescinding Catalonia's 2006 Statute of Autonomy - a decision which brought over a million protestors onto the streets of Barcelona on July 10, 2010 - issues of identity and culture in Spain have received renewed attention in the press. Many Catalans trace the loss of their autonomy to the defeat of the Habsburg contender for the Spanish throne in the early eighteenth century. During and immediately after the war, the Bourbon King Philip V punished the rebellious kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia by decreeing a series of reforms that established uniform legal codes in lieu of their regional privileges fueros). Contemporary Barcelona commemorates the 1714 siege of the city with a monument to Catalan liberties, taken away at the hands of a centralizing monarch. The prominence of the period is such that, since the early twentieth century, Catalans celebrate their National Day on September 11, the anniversary of the end of the war. In Propaganda e informacion en tiempos de guerra, historian David Gonzalez Cruz concludes that the War of the Spanish Succession (1700-1714) did not precipitate separatism or protonationalism in provinces such as Catalonia. While a great deal of propaganda appealed directly to Catalans in their own language, and questions concerning foralism became increasingly contentious, Gonzalez Cruz maintains that the war must be understood as a struggle for legitimacy between competing dynasties rather than as a battle between nations.Scholars have noted the importance of economics in the contest for dynastic supremacy in early- eighteenth- century Europe. The English and French invested a tremendous amount of resources into the War of the Spanish Succession precisely because they coveted the trade and mineral wealth of Spanish America. Drawing upon the paradigm of Atlantic history, Gonzalez Cruz thus offers a corrective to the view of the war as a purely European affair. Mining the archives of more than ten nations, including Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Mexico, Spain, and France, the author demonstrates the interconnectedness of the Hispanic monarchy, even in times of crisis and conflict. Propaganda was spread through the networks that linked far-flung provinces together, from European and Atlantic trading routes to religious and even academic circles. In spite of censorship and attempts to control information across war-torn regions of Spain, many printing presses functioned at the margins of legality and distributed potentially subversive materials. For example, champions of the Bourbon cause deliberately fabricated news of the death of Archduke Charles, published in an official-looking gazette in Seville. Strategies of dissimulation were pervasive, and networks of spies worked assiduously to gather intelligence. The importance of overseas opinion was not underestimated, as clerics from Catalonia and Valencia, areas of strong support for Charles, were prohibited from travel to the Indies by 1706. Documents indicate that Philip worried particularly about the effects of religious propaganda on the indigenous peoples of America. Smuggling became increasingly fraught, as ships from ports not authorized to engage in transatlantic commerce might be carrying seditious letters to Spanish America. Ensconced in Curacao, the Dutch circulated periodicals along the coast of Venezuela that may have induced the city of Caracas to embrace the cause of the Habsburgs in 1702. Agitators in English Jamaica likewise attempted to sway officials in the Spanish Antilles to the Austrian side. For the most part, however, America remained an outpost of almost unanimous support for Philip during the course of hostilities.The Church served as a crucial conduit for selling the claims of competing factions to the populace. Even the Papacy weighed in on the subject, initially supporting Philip prior to recognizing Charles in 1709. …

Napoléon et Ferdinand VII

For Napoleon, Fernando was an enemy by the simple fact of being a Bourbon king. Moreover, Napoleon hardly knew about Fernando until the incidents of El Escorial revealed to him he was a coward and an easy to deceive. The ease with which Fernando fell in the trap of Bayona and his little resistance to his requirements confirmed the Emperor of his opinion. In this way, Napoleon in disdain, kept humiliating him by exasperated by the servility he demonstrated. The military situation in 1813 obligated Napoleon to negotiate with Fernando and even to suggest a marriage with his niece, Zenaide. However, his hatred was such that, as soon as the circumstances permitted, he was determined to dethrone the king.

At the Mercy of the Harbor: Port Life, Prostitution, and Charitable Discipline in Seventeenth-Century Marseilles

At the Mercy of the Harbor: Port Life, Prostitution, and Charitable Discipline in Seventeenth-Century Marseilles Zuzana Stastna-Wilcox Of all the sins and malice that mankind is capable of in its natural sinfulness, none is more irritable to Heaven and attracts more chastisement to Earth than the unfortunate sin of impurity. Those who by divine providence find themselves elevated and charged with the duty to awake others towards the glory of their souls, must channel their care towards stopping the despicable sin of mankind. God is our protector in this fight. —“Lettres patentes: Confirmation d’établissement de la maison du Refuge de Marseille” Décembre 1685 In the founding charter of Marseilles’ new Refuge asylum for debauched women, the bishop’s galvanizing words1 convey exasperation and a sincere concern for the spiritual well-being of his flock. Prostitution may well have been in an expansion phase, responding to the growing numbers of sailors, merchants, and other travelers arriving at the bustling port. A closer scrutiny of Marseilles’ ideological and political climate reveals, however, that many women likely came under the authorities’ suspicion, not for proven debauchery, but because they were vulnerable, alone and poor. The case of twenty-year-old Janneton elucidates the more complex reality of prostitution. In March 1694, Janneton was romantically involved with Jean-Baptiste Gasein, a Spanish merchant whom she presumably met in Lyon. The young girl found herself pregnant with his child, and though she wanted to accompany him back to Spain, Gasein refused. He first unsuccessfully turned to the Hotel-Dieu in Lyon to commit her. Though he fled to Avignon, Janneton followed her lover. The unrelenting Gasein attempted to leave her there, claiming that his father would [End Page 239] kill them both if she went to Spain. Still unable to convince the girl to return to Lyon, Gasein sought her institutionalization once again, this time in Marseilles’ Refuge. The directors agreed to admit Janneton on grounds of the “debauchery” she had allegedly committed in Lyon, finally putting an end to her marital ambitions.2 The anecdote and the bishop’s sermon offer a glimpse into the dark underbelly of poverty-related prostitution in the rapidly expanding Mediterranean metropolis. Though separated by several decades, both these episodes were connected in one place—Marseilles’ port. This essay exposes the fates of a specific category of Marseilles’ women, who were indirectly but profoundly affected by naval expansion in the volatile and porous environment of Marseilles’ harbor. As the Bourbon kings grew increasingly interested in Levantine trade in the seventeenth century, they hoped to harness the military and commercial opportunities that Marseilles offered as a gateway to the Mediterranean. While economically the kingdom and the city eventually benefited from these changes, the immediate social ramifications were negative, especially for Marseilles’ women with connections to the port, married and unmarried alike. The establishment of the royal galleys particularly altered the reality of many women; if the transformed galley arsenal did not increase the incidence of prostitution it certainly made it more visible to the local authorities. Influenced by the spirit of the Catholic Reformation, the civic leaders then subjected women to corrective justice more readily than before. To be sure, the web of coalescing forces that ultimately sent many poor port women into the Refuge asylum was permeated with great irony, for the same elites—not least the king—that spearheaded trade and grandeur in Marseilles’ harbor also promoted spiritual and moral ideologies that were difficult to navigate for the wives of sailing merchants and galley prisoners as well as single young girls in search of work. In the restructured port, where elite citizens and sailors shared public space with convicts, Ottoman slaves, and migrating beggars, lone women were made to be the sinister face of poverty and alleged moral depravity. The first part of this essay highlights the structural changes in the port and the demographic shifts they brought, also revealing that the “aloneness” of a woman—not necessarily her married state—often classified her as a source of disorder. The second part then concerns the magistrates’ remedy to the problems of sexual impurity and poverty—the Refuge asylum (est. 1640). The institution’s...

La militarización borbónica de las Indias como trasfondo de las experiencias políticas revolucionarias rioplatenses

As an expression of the line of investigation that the author has pursued for several years, this essay examines not only the renewed administrative design that the Bourbon kings implemented in Spanish America during the 18th century but also its impacton the region. It is worth noting that it describes the characteristics and institutional modalities that are inherent in the militarization of the monarchy, which implied the transfer to the civil sphere of the military order, hierarchy, precision and uniformity. All this came about through the conviction that the perspectives and political absolutist styles represented unavoidable elements in the later construction of an institutional identity of the Hispano-American states of the 19th century; nevertheless, adequate historiographical attention has not been devoted to this phenomenon. Recommended citation: Wang, Tay-sheng, La militarización borbónica de las Indias como trasfondo de las experiencias políticas revolucionarias rioplatenses, in: Rechtsgeschichte - Legal History Rg 16 (2010) 154-164, online: http://dx.doi.org/10.12946/rg16/154-164

The making of Saint Louis: kingship, sanctity, and crusade in the later Middle Ages

Canonized in 1297 as Saint Louis, King Louis IX of France (r. 1226-1270) was one of the most important kings of medieval history and also one of the foremost saints of the later Middle Ages. As a saint, Louis became the centerpiece of an ideological program that buttressed the ongoing political consolidation of France and underscored Capetian claims of sacred kingship. M. Cecilia Gaposchkin reconstructs and analyzes the process that led to the monarch's canonization and the consolidation and spread of his cult. Differing political and religious ideals produced competing images of the sanctity of Louis in late-thirteenth and early fourteenth-century France. Drawing on hagiography, sermons, and liturgical evidence-the latter a rich but little-explored historical source-Gaposchkin shows how various groups (including Dominicans, Cistercians, and Franciscans) and individuals (such as Philip the Fair and Joinville) used commemoration of the saint-king to sanctify their own politics and notions of identity and religious virtue. Louis' cult was disseminated to a wider, nonelite public through sermons in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and then revived by the Bourbon kings in the seventeenth century. In deepening our knowledge of this royal saint, this elegantly written book opens the curtain on the religious sensibilities and secular politics of a transitional period in European history.

Socializing the King's Debt: Local and Atlantic Financial Transactions of the Merchants of Buenos Aires, 1793-1808

Between 1722 and 1779, the Bourbon kings managed to achieve financial stability without broadening the tax base or borrowing on a large scale. The incorporation of Aragon's territories under the crown of Castile, the Bourbon administrative reforms, sustained population and economic growth during the first half of the eighteenth century, added to the silver coming from the Americas, explain the general increase in income within the existing fiscal constitution. The revenues extracted from the American possessions, in particular from New Spain, were essential in keeping the metropolitan budget balanced. However, from the 1790s onwards, constant international warfare made ordinary revenues collected in the Americas insufficient for financing deficit spending in Spain. To meet shortfalls, the crown implemented extraordinary measures including the collection of loans,donativos, ecclesiastical subsidies, and the enforcement of theDecreto de Consolidación de vales realesin 1804. These measures demonstrate that the Spanish crown increasingly relied on its imperial financial network to balance its budget, and simultaneously postponed the politically costly implementation of a thorough fiscal reform in the metropolis.

England and France in the Sixteenth Century

AbstractThis article summarises the main developments in Anglo‐French relations in the context of Tudor foreign policy. It reviews the historiography of the subject, highlighting the main developments in twentieth century research. It argues that this research demonstrates that it was in the sixteenth century, under the later Valois monarchs and the first Bourbon king of France that Franco‐English relations changed significantly. From being openly hostile they became more ambivalent in the true meaning of the word. Under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I the two nations began to create a still‐difficult but sometimes more productive relationship with each other. This set the broad pattern for relations up to and beyond the Entente‐Cordiale of 1904.