Aristocratic Power in the Spanish Monarchy

Aristocratic Power in the Spanish Monarchy PDF Author: Samuel Weber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198872615
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
In Italy, the powerful Borromeo family of Milan have long been held up as a rare example of paternalist aristocrats who withstood the temptations of self-enrichment so many of their peers succumbed to during the period of Spanish rule. Aristocratic Power in the Spanish Monarchy, the first major study of the family in the seventeenth century, challenges this myth and explains how it came about. Based on research in the previously inaccessible Borromeo private papers, the volume details the Borromeo's increasing involvement with, and dependence on, the patronage of the kings of Spain. At the center of the analysis are the ways in which one family sought to rationalize and conceal this controversial relationship in the face of popular opposition to their methods of buying their way into political power. As their self-seeking behavior came under scrutiny, the clients of successive minister-favorites reinvented themselves as paternalist courtiers committed to delivering good governance for the subject populations under their rule. In doing so, the book offers new perspectives on broader questions: through a case study of three brothers from a representative noble family, it explains a major shift in aristocratic power in the seventeenth century, uncovering how dissimulation and subterfuge became central to the preservation of social privilege in an age of unprecedented threats to established power from below. Steeped in sociological and anthropological research on elite power, this captivating story from seventeenth-century Italy tells us much about the reproduction of social inequality in our own times.

The Lara Family

The Lara Family PDF Author: Simon R. DOUBLEDAY
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674034295
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
For much of the Middle Ages, the Lara family was among the most powerful aristocratic lineages in Spain. Proteges of the monarchy at the time of El Cid, their influence reached extraordinary heights during the struggle against the Moors. Hand-in-glove with successive kings, they gathered an impressive array of military and political positions across the Iberian Peninsula. But cooperation gave way to confrontation, as the family was pitted against the crown in a series of civil wars. This book, the first modern study of the Laras, explores the causes of change in the dynamics of power, and narrates the dramatic story of the events that overtook the family. The Laras' militant quest for territorial strength and the conflict with the monarchy led toward a fatal end, but anticipated a form of aristocratic power that long outlived the family. The noble elite would come to dominate Spanish society in the coming centuries, and the Lara family provides important lessons for students of the history of nobility, monarchy, and power in the medieval and early modern world.

Framing Majismo

Framing Majismo PDF Author: Tara Zanardi
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271076682
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 583

Book Description
Majismo, a cultural phenomenon that embodied the popular aesthetic in Spain from the second half of the eighteenth century, served as a vehicle to “regain” Spanish heritage. As expressed in visual representations of popular types participating in traditional customs and wearing garments viewed as historically Spanish, majismo conferred on Spanish “citizens” the pictorial ideal of a shared national character. In Framing Majismo, Tara Zanardi explores nobles’ fascination with and appropriation of the practices and types associated with majismo, as well as how this connection cultivated the formation of an elite Spanish identity in the late 1700s and aided the Bourbons’ objective to fashion themselves as the legitimate rulers of Spain. In particular, the book considers artistic and literary representations of the majo and the maja, purportedly native types who embodied and performed uniquely Spanish characteristics. Such visual examples of majismo emerge as critical and contentious sites for navigating eighteenth-century conceptions of gender, national character, and noble identity. Zanardi also examines how these bodies were contrasted with those regarded as “foreign,” finding that “foreign” and “national” bodies were frequently described and depicted in similar ways. She isolates and uncovers the nuances of bodily representation, ultimately showing how the body and the emergent nation were mutually constructed at a critical historical moment for both.

Iberian World Empires and the Globalization of Europe 1415–1668

Iberian World Empires and the Globalization of Europe 1415–1668 PDF Author: Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811308330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 531

Book Description
This open access book analyses Iberian expansion by using knowledge accumulated in recent years to test some of the most important theories regarding Europe’s economic development. Adopting a comparative perspective, it considers the impact of early globalization on Iberian and Western European institutions, social development and political economies. In spite of globalization’s minor importance from the commercial perspective before 1750, this book finds its impact decisive for institutional development, political economies, and processes of state-building in Iberia and Europe. The book engages current historiographies and revindicates the need to take the concept of composite monarchies as a point of departure in order to understand the period’s economic and social developments, analysing the institutions and societies resulting from contact with Iberian peoples in America and Asia. The outcome is a study that nuances and contests an excessively-negative yet prevalent image of the Iberian societies, explores the difficult relationship between empires and globalization and opens paths for comparisons to other imperial formations.

Monarchy Transformed

Monarchy Transformed PDF Author: Robert von Friedeburg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316510247
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

Book Description
"Until the 1960s, it was widely assumed that in Western Europe the 'New Monarchy' propelled kingdoms and principalities onto a modern nation-state trajectory. John I of Portugal (1358-1433), Charles VII (1403-1461) and Louis XI (1423-1483) of France, Henry VII and Henry VIII of England (1457-1509, 1509-1553), Isabella of Castile (1474-1504) and Ferdinand of Aragon (1479-1516) were, by improving royal administration, by bringing more continuity to communication with their estates and by introducing more regular taxation, all seen to have served that goal. In this view, princes were assigned to the role of developing and implementing the sinews of state as a sovereign entity characterized by the coherence of its territorial borders and its central administration and government. They shed medieval traditions of counsel and instead enforced relations of obedience toward the emerging 'state'."--Provided by publisher.

The Fight for Status and Privilege in Late Medieval and Early Modern Castile, 1465–1598

The Fight for Status and Privilege in Late Medieval and Early Modern Castile, 1465–1598 PDF Author: Michael J. Crawford
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271063955
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253

Book Description
In The Fight for Status and Privilege in Late Medieval and Early Modern Castile, 1465–1598, Michael Crawford investigates conflicts about and resistance to the status of hidalgo, conventionally understood as the lowest, most heavily populated rank in the Castilian nobility. It is generally accepted that legal privileges were based on status and class in this premodern society. Crawford presents and explains the contentious realities and limitations of such legal privileges, particularly the conventional claim of hidalgo exemption from taxation. He focuses on efforts to claim these privileges as well as opposing efforts to limit and manage them. Although historians of Spain acknowledge such conflicts, especially lawsuits associated with this status, none have focused a study on this extraordinarily widespread phenomenon. This book analyzes the inevitable contradictions inherent in negotiation for and the implementation of privilege, scrutinizing the many jurisdictions that intervened in these struggles and debates, including the crown, judiciary, city council, and financial authorities. Ultimately, this analysis imparts important insights about the nature of sixteenth-century Castilian society with wide-ranging implications about the relationship between social status and legal privileges in the early modern period as a whole.

Crisis and Renewal in the History of European Political Thought

Crisis and Renewal in the History of European Political Thought PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004466878
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 397

Book Description
This volume advances a better, more historical and contextual, manner to consider not only the present, but also the future of ‘crisis’ and ‘renewal’ as key concepts of our political language as well as fundamental categories of interpretation.

Capitalists in Spite of Themselves

Capitalists in Spite of Themselves PDF Author: Richard Lachmann
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195159608
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Book Description
Here, Lachmann offers a new explanation for the origins of nation-states and capitalist markets in early modern Europe. Comparing regions and cities within and across England, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands from the 12th through 18th centuries, he shows how conflict among feudal elites---landlords, clerics, kings, and officeholders---transformed the bases of their control over land and labor, forcing the winners of feudal conflicts to become capitalists in spite of themselves as they took defensive actions to protect their privileges from rivals in the aftermath of the Reformation.

Myths of Power

Myths of Power PDF Author: Jeroen Frans Jozef Duindam
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description


History of Western Society Since 1300 for Advanced Placement

History of Western Society Since 1300 for Advanced Placement PDF Author: John P. McKay
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312640587
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 873

Book Description
A History of Western Society continues to capture the attention of AP European history students because it recreates the lives of ordinary people and makes history memorable. Brought to you by the highly regarded editors at Bedford/St. Martins, every element of the text has been rethought, reconsidered, and revised to bring the original vision to a new generation of students. The tenth edition continues to tie social history to the broad sweep of politics and culture, heightening its attention to daily life, and strengthening the treatment of European exploration. With a dynamic new design, new special features on visual evidence, and a robust companion reader, A History of Western Society helps AP students master the concepts and content of European history.