ASSIGNMENT 2. Tradition and Enlightenment

When Carlos II died on November 1, 1700, and his will was read, France had won. He preferred the Bourbon candidate to the Habsburg candidate. The will stipulated that Philip of Anjou had to accept the entire inheritance, which meant that Louis XIV would have to reject the partition agreements. If Philip did not, then Spain and its empire would pass to Archduke Charles. In February 1701, seventeen-years-old King Philip V arrived in Madrid. His House of Bourbon replaced the House of Habsburg on Spain's throne.

Madrid gave enthusiastic welcome to teenaged King Philip V. The Habsburgs of Viena had not given Spain up, and Austrian armies marched on Philip's Italian possessions. Louis XIV provoked the English and Dutch into war when he sent French troops into the Spanish Netherlands to secure them for Philip. Thus erupted in 1702 the War of the Spanish Succession, which arrayed the Grand Alliance of Emperor Leopold, england, the Dutch, Savoy, and Portugal against Spain and France.

By the Peace of Utrecht, Philip kept Spain and its overseas possessions. Charles VI received Naples, Milan, Sardinia, and the Spanish Netherlands. The duke of Savoy got Sicily. England won trading concessions in the Spanish empire, including the lucrative African slave trade, and kept Gibraltar and Minorca.

In 1714 Philip reconquered Barcelona. To punish the Catalans, he stripped Catalonia of its ancient privileges, as he had stripped Aragón and Valencia of theirs, and went further, suppressing its universities.

Bourbon Spain was no longer a union of crowns but had become a unified kingdom. It had its capital in Madrid, centralized departments of government, and a single Cortes rendered largely ceremonial. The historic kingdoms became administrative regions and were each subdivided, giving Spain some thirty provinces. The old organization of government by councils, given to passing the buck among councilors, gave way to a government of ministries, each headed by a single responsible minister, on the French model. Not happy with centralized government, the old grandees largely withdrew from public service, though they maintained palaces in the capital for its social whirl. Philip and his Bourbon successors proved generous in bestowing new titles on their public servants an soon created a titled nobility beholden to them.

1. By the time Carlos II died, there were two candidates for the Spanish crown. Who were they? Which Royal Houses did they belong to?
2. What territories did the Hapsburgs win after the war? England got some territories too. Which ones? Why did England get them?
3. Philip punished Catalonia, Why and how did he do?
4. Explain how the Bourbons changed the administration of the Kingdom

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