Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Unfortunately for the progressive trends initiated under the first
Bourbon king of Spain, Philip soon allowed himself to become dis-
tracted by his desire to meddle in the affairs of France. Despite the fact
that the two countries were pledged to remain separate, Philip sought
the regency when his young kinsman, Louis XV, succeeded “the Sun
King” in 1715. Even after these pretensions had been abandoned, Philip
was subjected to the Italian ambitions of his wife, Elizabeth Farnese.
This formidable stateswoman calculated that Spain would surely go to
her husband's sons by his first marriage and therefore set herself, over
the course of more than 20 years, to secure prizes for her own two
children. As the sister of the last of the Farnese dynasty in Parma, she
envisioned a throne in northern Italy for one son and a domain in
Naples for the other. By the time Philip V died in 1746 she had suc-
ceeded in both ambitions, although at the price of involving Spain in
several unnecessary wars. These subsidiary Bourbon monarchies—the
kingdom of Naples ruled by Charles and the Duchy of Parma ruled by
Philip—were technically not Spanish possessions, but they did some-
thing to repair the humiliation sustained in Italy during the War of the
Spanish Succession.
In the meantime King Philip V had gone through several periods of
depression and recovery and actually abdicated in 1724 in favor of his
eldest son, who became Louis I. This virtually forgotten Spanish mon-
arch occupied the throne only six months before his death, by which
time his father had grown weary of retirement and resumed his reign
for another 22 years. Although probably not as severely unbalanced as
contemporary rumor suggested, Philip V was certainly far less effective
in his later years than he had been in his youth. The early impetus for
reform had petered out in the distractions of foreign adventurism and
the all-too-familiar reluctance of entrenched interest groups to cooper-
ate in the reduction of their own power.
The following monarch, Ferdinand VI, inherited some of his father's
instability and if left to himself would probably have succumbed to a
natural preference for inertia. Spain was fortunate, however, in secur-
ing the service of a new crop of reform-minded officials who pushed
and pulled the king along the path of progress. Undoubtedly the most
important of the institutions created during the reign of Ferdinand VI
was the position of
intendente
(intendant). Originating in France, this
was a title bestowed upon professional administrators, usually lawyers
by training. Their task essentially was to manage a wide variety of
financial, logistical, and infrastructural matters within a designated
jurisdiction. They became the pragmatic men of affairs who held the
real responsibility for running the Spanish provinces at home and over-
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