ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, political competition gave rise, among other things, to a political system that incorporated several smaller powers under the leadership of the Spanish kingdoms. By the middle of the century this new construction, the Spanish monarchy, successfully limited the expansionist aspirations of its main international rivals, the Turkish empire and the kingdom of France, thus conserving its political, juridical, and territorial integrity. In the second half of the century, a number of circumstances and factors—the political crisis engulfing many neighbouring countries; the confessional breakdown; the relative efficacy of the monarchy’s structure, due to its flexible and hierarchical organisation—allowed the king of Spain to claim European hegemony, and to come to be seen as the political leader of the Catholic world. As a consequence, requests for intervention and assistance soon multiplied and surpassed the monarchy’s available resources. The allies of the Catholic king were defeated in most of the conflicts that took place after 1586, frustrating the possibility of further large-scale expansion of the monarchy. By the end of the century, the possibility of indirect domination over the continent had completely vanished. New rivals (especially the United Provinces) and old ones (the kingdom of France) consolidated themselves and challenged the supremacy of the Spanish monarchy as the main political power, eventually displacing it after 1635 (Bennassar and Vincent 1999; Elliott 2006).
