Spain

Contemporary Spain occupies approximately 195,000 square miles of the Iberian Peninsula. Its land connection to continental Europe is in the northeast quadrant, where the Pyrenees span the border with France. The Mediterranean Sea forms its eastern and southern boundaries, extending to the Strait of Gibraltar. Most of its western boundary is shared with Portugal, and the remainder is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean (Bay of Biscay). Mountains dominate the Spanish landscape, and there are few navigable rivers.

From the voyages of Columbus to the nineteenth century, Spain was committed to the exploration, settlement, development, administration, defense, and exploitation of its colonies in the Americas. It emerged as a major European power in the 1490s, declined in the seventeenth century, reemerged in the eighteenth century, and then fell to the rank of a minor power in the nineteenth century.

In the mid-fifteenth century, "Spain" did not exist as a political entity. The term simply referred to the Iberian Peninsula and included several kingdoms. The marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1469 and the couple's succession to their respective thrones in 1474 and 1479 brought about a union of crowns, but each realm retained its distinctive institutions, language, customs barriers, and other pre-union features. Each considered itself in a separate, patrimonial relationship to the monarch rather than part of a political entity known as Spain.

When Charles I (1516–1556), who later became Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1519–1556), ascended the throne in 1516, Spain had a population of just under five million. Castilian society was stratified, with relatively few titled nobles who controlled most of the land, a larger group of untitled nobles, a few professionals, some merchants, and a large overtaxed peasantry.

New World bullion, which began to arrive in significant quantities late in Charles's reign, provided substantial revenues to his successor, Philip II (1556–1598), in some years furnishing as much as a quarter of the crown's income. Military expenses, especially in the Low Countries following the revolt of the Netherlands in 1566, however, constantly drained state finances. The government was always in debt and periodically, beginning in 1557, was forced into bankruptcy. Although the population rose in the sixteenth century, inflation adversely affected the economy and trade.

The following Hapsburg monarchs—Philip III (1598–1621), Philip IV (1621–1665), and Charles II (1665–1700)—struggled against a decline in population, a weak economy, an ongoing fiscal crisis, and, by the 1620s, a trade system with the New World colonies that was rapidly disintegrating as a result of extensive contraband trade. The revolt of Catalonia and Portugal that began in 1640 further strained the crown's coffers, and military defeat at the hands of the French in 1643 put a definitive end to Spain's era of glory. Fiscal crisis followed fiscal crisis until a deflationary policy implemented in the mid-1680s provided a base that made subsequent economic recovery possible.

Charles II's designation of Philip, duke of Anjou and a grandson of Louis XIV, as his heir provoked the War of the Spanish Succession. In the end, the Bourbon Philip V (1700–1746) gained the Spanish throne. Philip strengthened royal administration in Spain. Population rose in the eighteenth century and the economy improved. Philip's successors—Ferdinand VI (1746–1759), Charles III (1759–1788), and Charles IV (1788–1808), paid increased attention to reestablishing control over the colonies and securing for Spain the economic benefits of empire. Efforts at reform, especially during the reign of Charles III, paid dividends. Registered bullion production from Mexico, Peru, and Upper Peru almost quadrupled during the eighteenth century, and significant amounts entered the royal treasury. Trading restrictions were loosened and legal trade expanded rapidly between the late 1770s and the mid-1790s.

The outbreak of the French Revolution and Spain's almost constant involvement in European wars beginning in 1793 ended an era of relative prosperity. After Napoleon forced the abdications of Charles IV and Ferdinand VII (1808, 1814–1833), Spain was occupied by French troops and was the site of the bloody Peninsular War. The constitutional crisis provoked by the abdications led both Spaniards and Americans to proclaim that sovereignty had reverted to the people and they, through their juntas, would exercise it until Ferdinand returned. The crisis, war on the peninsula, the promulgation of a liberal constitution in 1812 that established constitutional monarchy, and the emergence of autonomist and independence movements on the American mainlands presaged the end of empire. By 1826 all of the mainland colonies were independent and Spain was left with only Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Political stability was gone as well, both in Spain and in its erstwhile colonies.

SPANISH MONARCHS FROM 1474

Isabella I of Castile, 1474–1504

Ferdinand II of Aragon, 1479–1516

Charles I, 1516–1556 (Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V, 1519–1556)

Philip II, 1556–1598

Philip III, 1598–1621

Philip IV, 1621–1665

Charles II, 1665–1700

Philip V, 1700–1746

Ferdinand VI, 1746–1759

Charles III, 1759–1788

Charles IV, 1788–1808

Ferdinand VII, 1808, 1814–1833

Isabella II, 1833–1868

Alfonso XII, 1874–1885

María de las Mercedes, 1885–1886

Alfonso XIII, 1886–1931

María Cristina, queen regent, 1885–1902

Juan Carlos I, 1975–present

See alsoSpanish Empire .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

John Huxtable Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469–1716 (1964).

John Lynch, Bourbon Spain 1700–1808 (1989).

Henry Kamen, Spain 1469–1714: A Society of Conflict, 2d ed. (1991).

John Lynch, Spain 1516–1598: From Nation State to World Empire (1991) and The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change 1598–1700 (1992).

Additional Bibliography

Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge. How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Elliott, Jorge. Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Morales Folguera, José Miguel. La construcción de la utopía: El proyecto de Felipe II (1556–1598) para Hispanoamérica. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva: Universidad de Málaga, 2001.

Ramos Pérez, Demetrio. La formación de las sociedades iberoamericanas (1568–1700). Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1999.

Romano, Ruggiero. Mecanismo y elementos del sistema económico colonial americano, siglos XVI-XVIII. México: El Colegio de México, Fideicomiso Historia de las Americas: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004.

Stein, Stanley J. and Barbara H Stein. Apogee of Empire: Spain and New Spain in the Age of Charles III, 1759–1789. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Stein, Stanley J. and Barbara H Stein. Silver, Trade, and War: Spain and America in the Making of Early Modern Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

                              Suzanne Hiles Burkholder