The Habsburg Monarchy and the Spanish Empire (1492–1757)
In the sixteenth century the Spanish monarchy became one of the largest and most expansive political entities in the world. From then until the War of the Spanish Succession in the early eighteenth century, it synchronized a complex and entirely new institutional system in its European dominions with its vast American possessions. This system had been forged through conquest and rule over Amerindian and Filipino peoples since the Europeans’ arrival in the New World. The wars against European Protestant powers and the Ottomans in the Mediterranean during the reigns of Charles V and Philip II, along with inter-imperial conflicts with France and England, had enormous costs in terms of internal stability and in the shape of the colonial system in America. By the mid-seventeenth century, Spain’s inability to project its monarchical ambitions over Europe was obvious, and its efforts to recapture its lost powers were a failure, as was evident at the turn of the century with the arrival on the Spanish throne of Philip of Anjou, Louis XIV’s nephew, the next generation of the French dynasty.