Forging Faithful Subjects: Dynastic State Formation in Early Modern Spain (New Hispanisms: Cultural and Literary Studies)

The Habsburg dynasty in Spain came to an end with the death of Charles II in 1700 and his replacement by Philip V, the teenage grandson of Louis XIV of France and founder of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain.The transition was complicated by the continent-spanning War of Spanish Succession (1702-1714), which provided an opportunity for the transformation and renewal of the Spanish state.Forging Faithful Subjects traces the Habsburg precedents for these reforms, the dynamic transition in the crucible of war, and the governing strategies through which Philip established remarkably durable nondemocratic politics in the changing world of the Age of Enlightenment. In this innovative study of dynastic change, Phillip D.Fox challenges conventional accounts of Spanish political history and European state formation.Philip V's experience of the war and sense of betrayal by the Catalans and others drove him to cultivate loyalty in his subjects, while the monarch's sensitivity to his subjects' interest