How Did The Rise And Fall Of The Spanish Empire

The year was 1600, and Spain was unquestionably at the zenith of its power. After a successful Reconquista and explosion of colonization, the Spanish Empire had built a powerful military, a cohesive empire throughout Europe and the North and South of the Americas, and was looking forward to Cultural Revolution and continued growth in overseas trade. This was the Spanish Golden Age, when the Iberian Nation was unrivaled as the cultural and economic hegemon of Europe. It seems insanity that in one short century, Spain would suffer a complete national breakdown, a partition, and one of the greatest falls from grace Europe had ever seen. It was a rotting national pyramid and administration, coupled with declining industry competitiveness and
Castile, the Center of the Empire, was dying from within, as plague and migration caused the population to drop by over twenty-five percent, a disastrous amount in a period of warfare and constant need for a steady supply of crops (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict the Period 1500 to 2000, Paul M. Kennedy). Those who did survive had little motivation to rebuild the nation’s heartland, as Spanish society became a rush to avoid work; the clergy grew to almost ten percent of the national male demographic, the people more likely motivated to avoid hard but economically valuable work in farming or industry and to gain tax-exempt status than for any religious or theological revival within the nation (Early Modern Spain: A Documentary History, Jon Cowans). Tax exemption for students meant that many Spaniards would spend much longer in new universities than warranted instead of working in the nations body-starved industries, all the while propped up by the growing number of churchmen (Early Modern Spain: A Documentary History, Jon Cowans). There was another problem with the growth of the Clerical Classes, namely land; by the midcentury, approximately twenty percent of the land in Spain was owned by the church, meaning that by this time, less than
In 1607, war with the Dutch lead Spain to bankruptcy, and peace broke out. Spain recovered fairly well, and could have rebuilt their shaky economy through reforms easily managed in this time of peace- however, Spain elected to enter the Thirty Year’s War instead, and soon found themselves fighting the Dutch again (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict the Period 1500 to 2000, Paul M. Kennedy). In response, the Dutch soon began naval raids upon the Spanish, further reducing their export and weakening the Spanish economy, which was already taxed simply to pay for the war on land (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict the Period 1500 to 2000, Paul M. Kennedy). The belief that “One More Victory” would win the war exhausted the Spanish nation and severely weakened their army to the point where National rebellions threatened to tear Spain apart (Early Modern Spain: A Documentary History, Jon Cowans). Portugal was able to gain independence, and rebellions in Catalonia crippled the nation, giving France an open doorway to invasion. By the middle of the century, Spain had lost Portugal as a vassal and the Netherlands as a dominion because of their inability to quit (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and