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' interests led him to balance royal control with local privilege, sometimes choosing to preserve administrative complexity rather than impose simpler centralizing reforms. These decisions paradoxically enabled Philip to secure his family's rule, increase royal resources, and recover some of the territory lost in the War of Spanish Succession. By showing how dynastic concerns inspired such flexible strategies of governing and patronage, Forging Faithful Subjects reveals new approaches to the study of early modern state formation and the administration of empires. Fox's accessible narrative account of an often-neglected period draws on political, social, and economic history to make a groundbreaking argument demonstrating the logic behind European and Atlantic state formation during the long eighteenth century.
Phillip D. Fox is professor of history at Wayne State College in Nebraska.
"Conventional wisdom holds that the accession of the Bourbons to the Spanish throne portended a centralized governing apparatus modeled on French absolutism. Extant interpretations also tell us that this project failed to become a modern fiscal-military state because of institutional weakness and elite resistance. In this bold book, Phillip D. Fox invites us to leave this teleology behind, arguing that in a context of jurisdictional fragmentation, unilateral revenue extraction threatened to alienate subjects and incite revolt. Spain's first Bourbon king, Philip V, solved the vexing problem of financing war by way of a prudent middle ground: he eliminated the historical constitutions of rebel territories yet preserved the negotiated politics of the Spanish Habsburgs. In deftly telling this story, Fox reveals the Spanish Bourbon state as a successful effort to balance centralization with the preservation of a society based on privilege and patronage, thus avoiding the fragilities of the absolutist model. Undoubtedly, this is a necessary read for scholars of the modern state."--Fidel J. Tavarez, author of Assembling an Imperial Machine: Spanish Commercial Reform in the Age of Enlightenment "Phillip D. Fox's Forging Faithful Subjects is a significant, original contribution to the historiography of early modern Spain. Challenging the notion of a decisive break between the Habsburg and Bourbon dynasties, Fox sheds new light on the long reign of Philip V, including his Nueva Planta decrees. A well-researched and tidily argued study, Fox's book enables readers to understand the complexities and vicissitudes of kingship in eighteenth-century Spain."--Gabriel Paquette, author of The European Seaborne Empires: From the Thirty Years' War to the Age of Revolutions
