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Spain Charles V and Philip II
Ferdinand and Isabella were the last of the
Trastamaras, and
a native dynasty would never again rule Spain. When their
sole
male heir, John, who was to have inherited all his
parent's
crowns, died in 1497, the succession to the throne passed
to
Juana, John's sister. But Juana had become the wife of
Philip the
Handsome, heir through his father, Emperor Maximilian I,
to the
Hapsburg patrimony. On Ferdinand's death in 1516, Charles
of
Ghent, the son of Juana and Philip, inherited Spain (which
he
ruled as Charles I, r. 1516-56), its colonies, and Naples.
(Juana, called Juana Loca or Joanna the Mad, lived until
1555 but
was judged incompetent to rule.) When Maximilian I died in
1519,
Charles also inherited the Hapsburg domains in Germany.
Shortly
afterward he was selected Holy Roman emperor, a title that
he had
held as Charles V (r. 1519-56), to succeed his
grandfather.
Charles, in only a few years, was able to bring together
the
world's most diverse empire since Rome
(see
fig. 3).
Charles's closest attachment was to his birthplace,
Flanders;
he surrounded himself with Flemish advisers who were not
appreciated in Spain. His duties as both Holy Roman
emperor and
king of Spain, moreover, never allowed him to tarry in one
place.
As the years of his long reign passed, however, Charles
moved
closer to Spain and called upon its manpower and colonial
wealth
to maintain the Hapsburg empire.
When he abdicated in 1556 to retire to a Spanish
monastery,
Charles divided his empire. His son, Philip II (r.
1556-98),
inherited Spain, the Italian possessions, and the
Netherlands
(the industrial heartland of Europe in the mid-sixteenth
century). For a brief period (1554-58), Philip was also
king of
England as the husband of Mary Tudor (Mary I). In 1580
Philip
inherited the throne of Portugal through his mother, and
the
Iberian Peninsula had a single monarch for the next sixty
years.
Philip II was a Castilian by education and temperament.
He
was seldom out of Spain, and he spoke only Spanish. He
governed
his scattered dominions through a system of councils, such
as the
Council of the Indies, which were staffed by professional
civil
servants whose activities were coordinated by the Council
of
State, which was responsible to Philip. The Council of
State's
function was only advisory. Every decision was Philip's;
every
question required his answer; every document needed his
signature. His father had been a peripatetic emperor, but
Philip,
a royal bureaucrat, administered every detail of his
empire from
El Escorial, the forbidding palace-monastery-mausoleum on
the
barren plain outside Madrid.
By marrying Ferdinand, Isabella had united Spain;
however,
she had also inevitably involved Castile in Aragon's wars
in
Italy against France, which had formerly been Castile's
ally. The
motivation in each of their children's marriages had been
to
circle France with Spanish allies--Habsburg, Burgundian,
and
English. The succession to the Spanish crown of the
Habsburg
dynasty, which had broader continental interests and
commitments,
drew Spain onto the center stage of European dynastic wars
for
200 years.
Well into the seventeenth century, music, art,
literature,
theater, dress, and manners from Spain's Golden Age were
admired
and imitated; they set a standard by which the rest of
Europe
measured its culture. Spain was also Europe's preeminent
military
power, with occasion to exercise its strength on many
fronts--on
land in Italy, Germany, North Africa, and the Netherlands,
and at
sea against the Dutch, French, Turks, and English. Spain
was the
military and diplomatic standard-bearer of the CounterReformation . Spanish fleets defeated the Turks at Malta
(1565)
and at Lepanto (1572)--events celebrated even in hostile
England.
These victories prevented the Mediterranean from becoming
an
Ottoman lake. The defeat of the Grand Armada in 1588
averted the
planned invasion of England but was not a permanent
setback for
the Spanish fleet, which recovered and continued to be an
effective naval force in European waters.
Sixteenth-century Spain was ultimately the victim of
its own
wealth. Military expenditure did not stimulate domestic
production. Bullion from American mines passed through
Spain like
water through a sieve to pay for troops in the Netherlands
and
Italy, to maintain the emperor's forces in Germany and
ships at
sea, and to satisfy conspicuous consumption at home. The
glut of
precious metal brought from America and spent on Spain's
military
establishment quickened inflation throughout Europe, left
Spaniards without sufficient specie to pay debts, and
caused
Spanish goods to become too overpriced to compete in
international markets.
American bullion alone could not satisfy the demands of
military expenditure. Domestic production was heavily
taxed,
driving up prices for Spanish-made goods. The sale of
titles to
entrepreneurs who bought their way up the social ladder,
removing
themselves from the productive sector of the economy and
padding
an increasingly parasitic aristocracy, provided additional
funds.
Potential profit from the sale of property served as an
incentive
for further confiscations from Conversos and Moriscos.
Spain's apparent prosperity in the sixteenth century
was not
based on actual economic growth. As its bullion supply
decreased
in the seventeenth century, Spain was neither able to meet
the
cost of its military commitments nor to pay for imports of
manufactured goods that could not be produced efficiently
at
home. The overall effect of plague and emigration reduced
Spain's
population from 8 million in the early sixteenth century
to 7
million by the mid-seventeenth century. Land was taken out
of
production for lack of labor and the incentive to develop
it, and
Spain, although predominantly agrarian, depended on
imports of
foodstuffs.
Data as of December 1988
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