This article needs additional citations for verification. (March 2013) Habsburg Spain was at the height of its power and cultural influence at the beginning of the 17th century, but military, political, and economic difficulties were already being discussed within Spain. In the coming decades these difficulties grew and saw France gradually taking Spain's place as Europe's leading power through the later half of the century. Many different factors, including the decentralized political nature of Spain, inefficient taxation, a succession of weak kings, power struggles in the Spanish court and a tendency to focus on the American colonies instead of Spain's domestic economy, all contributed to the decline of the Habsburg rule of Spain.[1] The end of the century also brought the end of Habsburg rule. The 18th century began with the War of the Spanish Succession, which concluded in the establishment of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain.
In 1469, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile united the Crowns of Aragon and Castile into one, creating the early modern Spanish state. Although this ensured future Spanish rulers would rule over both Aragon and Castile, both regions had their own administration and legal systems. In addition, Aragon itself was divided into Aragon proper, Valencia, and Catalonia - each with its own institutions, customs, and regional identity.[2] As Ferdinand and Isabella both outlived their only son to survive infancy, they were succeeded by their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor upon Ferdinand's death in 1516. Being Flemish born and not a native Spanish speaker, Charles never completely assimilated into Spanish society and as Holy Roman Emperor, had to rule over two empires at once. Determining it to be too difficult for one person to rule over all of his domains, Charles gave the Holy Roman Empire to his younger brother and the Spanish Empire to son, Philip II.
Although the Spanish Empire was at the height of its power under Philip II, a number of factors foreshadowed its eventual, gradual decline. There was a revolt in the Netherlands which started in 1568 and lasted the rest of Philip's reign. Also, the moriscos in Andalusia rebelled in 1570 against Philip's imposition of Spanish language and customs on them. Philip was at war with the Dutch republic, France and England during the last 10 years of his reign. These and other wars and difficulties in maintaining the vast Spanish Empire led to four bankruptcies during Philip's reign.
Signs that Habsburg Spain was declining became visible during the reign of Philip III. Throughout Philip III's reign the main currency was a copper-based coin called vellon, which was minted in response to the fall in imports of silver. Ironically, the copper needed to make vellon was purchased in Amsterdam with silver.[3] Imports of silver bullion from the Americas fell by half during Philip III's reign. In 1599, a year after Philip took the throne, a bubonic plague killed about half a million people (1/10 of the Spanish population at the time). Philip IV of Spain Europe after the Peace of Westphalia, 1648 Philip IV's father passed on a kingdom in decline already.[4][5] Philip IV of Spain was not competent enough to give the kind of clear direction that Spain needed. Responsibility passed to aristocratic advisers. Gaspar de Guzmán, count-duke of Olivares,[6] attempted and failed to establish the centralized administration that his contemporary, Cardinal Richelieu, had introduced in France.[7] Under the immense pressures of the Thirty Years' War, Olivares attempted to bureaucratically centralise administration and to extract further taxes via the Union of Arms: Catalonia revolted and was virtually annexed by France.[8] Portugal reasserted its independence in 1640, with the Restoration War sparked by a Braganza claimant to the Spanish throne; and an attempt was made to separate Andalusia from Spain. Spanish forces recovered Naples and most of Catalonia from French control but Portugal was lost permanently. In 1648, at the Peace of Westphalia, Spain assented to the emperor's accommodation with the German Protestants, and in 1654 it recognized the independence of the northern Netherlands. During the long regency for Charles II, the last of the Spanish Habsburgs, validos milked Spain's treasury, and Spain's government operated principally as a dispenser of patronage. Plague, famine, floods, drought, and renewed war with France wasted the country. The Peace of the Pyrenees (1659) had ended fifty years of warfare with France which had achieved some minor territorial gains at the expense of the Spanish Crown. As part of the peace settlement, the Spanish infanta Maria Teresa, had become the wife of Louis XIV. However, Louis XIV, found the temptation to exploit a weakened Spain too great. Using Spain's failure to pay her dowry as a pretext, Louis instigated the War of Devolution (1667–68) to acquire the Spanish Netherlands in lieu of the dowry. Most of the European powers were ultimately involved in the wars that Louis fought in the Netherlands.[9] Spanish Inquisition's auto-da-fé held in the Plaza Mayor, Madrid in 1680 Spanish society in the 17th century Habsburg Spain was extremely inegalitarian. The nobility, being wealthier than ordinary people, also had the privilege of being exempt from taxes, which the lower classes did not have. Spanish society associated social status with leisure and thus work was undignified for nobles. Even wealthy merchants invested in land, titles and juros. Two acceptable careers for the nobility were the church and education. In 1620, there were 100,000 Spaniards in the clergy, by the late 17th century there were 150,000. Many Spaniards spent long years in universities, taking advantage of the increase in the number of universities. By 1660, there were about 200,000 Spaniards in the clergy and the Church owned 20% of all the land in Spain. Commentators in Spain known as arbitristas proposed a number of measures to reverse the decline of the Spanish economy but they had little effect. Aristocractic contempt for trade was reinforced by its association with conversos and moriscos who were distrusted by the Spanish general population because of their Jewish or Muslim background. More importantly, many arbitristas believed that the influx of silver from the American mines was the cause of inflation which hurt Spanish manufactures. A European price revolution was first fed by silver from central Europe, but then by that from the Spanish American mines. Spain's increasing dependence on resources from the New World over the last century reduced incentives to develop or stimulate domestic production and to create a more efficient tax bureaucracy. Instead, operating expenses were covered by borrowing funds, like the Asiento de Negros. This was unsustainable, and Spanish kings were forced to declare sovereign defaults nine times between 1557 and 1666.[10] Another prominent internal factor was the Spanish economy's dependence on the export of luxurious Merino wool, the demand of which was replaced by cheaper textiles from England and the Netherlands. A reliance on revenue from resources obtained from the New World and Merino wool was not sustainable, and ultimately the economy stagnated.
Page 2The 17th century lasted from January 1, 1601 (MDCI), to December 31, 1700 (MDCC). It falls into the early modern period of Europe and in that continent (whose impact on the world was increasing) was characterized by the Baroque cultural movement, the latter part of the Spanish Golden Age, the Dutch Golden Age, the French Grand Siècle dominated by Louis XIV, the Scientific Revolution, the world's first public company and megacorporation known as the Dutch East India Company, and according to some historians, the General Crisis.
Establishments – Disestablishments From the mid-17th century, European politics were increasingly dominated by the Kingdom of France of Louis XIV, where royal power was solidified domestically in the civil war of the Fronde. The semi-feudal territorial French nobility was weakened and subjugated to the power of an absolute monarchy through the reinvention of the Palace of Versailles from a hunting lodge to a gilded prison, in which a greatly expanded royal court could be more easily kept under surveillance. With domestic peace assured, Louis XIV caused the borders of France to be expanded. It was during this century that the English monarch became a symbolic figurehead and Parliament was the dominant force in government – a contrast to most of Europe, in particular France. By the end of the century, Europeans were aware of logarithms, electricity, the telescope and microscope, calculus, universal gravitation, Newton's Laws of Motion, air pressure and calculating machines due to the work of the first scientists of the Scientific Revolution, including Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Pierre Fermat, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Christiaan Huygens, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. It was also a period of development of culture in general (especially theater, music, visual arts and philosophy). It was during this period that the European colonization of the Americas began in earnest, including the exploitation of the silver deposits, which resulted in bouts of inflation as wealth was drawn into Europe.[1] Also during this period, there would be a more intense European presence in Southeast Asia and East Asia (such as the colonization of Taiwan). These foreign elements would contribute to a revolution in Ayutthaya. While the Mataram Sultanate and the Aceh Sultanate would be the major powers of the region, especially during the first half of the century. In the Islamic world, the gunpowder empires – the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal – grew in strength. Especially in the Indian subcontinent, Mughal architecture, culture and art reached its zenith, while the empire itself, during the reign of Emperor Aurangzeb, is believed to have had the world's largest economy, bigger than the entirety of Western Europe and worth 25% of global GDP,[2] and its wealthiest province, the Bengal Subah, signaled the period of proto-industrialization.[3] The southern half of India would see the decline of the Deccan Sultanates and extinction of the Vijayanagara Empire. The Dutch would colonize Ceylon and endure hostilities with Kandy.  In Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Tokugawa shogunate at the beginning of the century, beginning the Edo period; the isolationist Sakoku policy began in the 1630s and lasted until the 19th century. In China, the collapsing Ming dynasty was challenged by a series of conquests led by the Manchu warlord Nurhaci, which were consolidated by his son Hong Taiji and finally consummated by his grandson, the Shunzhi Emperor, founder of the Qing dynasty. The greatest military conflicts of the century were the Thirty Years' War,[4] Dutch–Portuguese War, the Great Turkish War, the Nine Years' War, Mughal–Safavid Wars, and the Qing annexation of the Ming. Persian Ambassador during his entry into Kraków for the wedding ceremonies of King Sigismund III of Poland in 1605.
The Night Watch or The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, 1642. Oil on canvas; on display at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Major changes in philosophy and science take place, often characterized as the Scientific revolution.
Detail of a 17th-century Tekke Turkmen carpet
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What factors led to the decline of the Spanish and Portuguese based on their height of power in the 1450 to 1750 time period quizlet?
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