Description
Regularly dismissed as ineffective, indolent, and dominated by his second wife, Philip V of Spain (1700–1746), the first Bourbon king, was once in reality the greatest threat to peace in Europe all through his reign. Under his rule, Spain was once a dynamic force and expansionist power, especially in the Mediterranean world. Campaigns in Italy and North Africa revitalized Spanish regulate in the Mediterranean region, and the arrival of the Bourbon dynasty signaled a sharp break from Habsburg attitudes and practices. Challenging long-held understandings of early eighteenth-century Europe and the Atlantic world, Christopher Storrs draws on a wealthy array of number one documents to trace the political, military, and financial innovations that laid the framework for the brand new Spanish state and the coalescence of a national identity. Storrs illuminates the remarkable revival of Spanish power after 1713 and sheds new light at the Regularly underrated king who made Spain’s resurgence imaginable.