The Habsburg Fiscal and Financial Inheritance

Abstract

When the new Bourbon king Philip V came to Spain in 1700 he inherited a declining empire from the previous Habsburg monarch Charles II (1665–1700). It had been run ragged by nearly 200 years of continual struggles across the globe and also many internal territorial problems. Its finances and resources were by now entirely unable to maintain any substantial war effort, and the international supremacy of Spain’s imperial forces had hence been slipping away. By the middle of the seventeenth century this financial and military decadence had become irreversible. Nonetheless this unquestionable decadence did not spell the collapse of either the monarchy or the empire. The unity and variety of territories making up the Spanish monarchy were maintained and Philip V finally inherited an empire — and therewith some subjects and finances — upon which the sun still never set.