Bourbon Reforms

Philip V of Anjou assumed the throne of Spain in 1700 with ambitions to reform the state in the French image. Instead, his ascension provoked the War of Spanish Succession.

The peaceful interlude that followed the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht gave him an opportunity to implement Jean Orry’s recommendations for consolidating authority in a more unified state. He replaced councils dominated by the landed nobility with ministries modeled on a French cabinet loyal to the king.

The Consejo de Indias saw most of its functions transferred to the ministry of the Navy and Indies in 1714, which began issuing the royal cédulas in the king’s name. Among the powers it lost was oversight for appointments and incomes of religious leaders from archbishops down to the men serving in the provinces. The council continued the detailed work involved in processing judicial and ecclesiastical appointments, and retained its role as court of appeal.

Internally, Spain was divided into 21 provinces. In 1715, Philip revoked the traditional rights of the historic kingdoms and placed all but Navarre and Viscaya under the code of Castile.

While he was imposing some administrative uniformity onto a patchwork of privilege, other European monarchies became less stable. Anne, the last of the Protestant Stuarts ruling Great Britain, died in 1714. A distant German-speaking relative was enthroned simply because he was a Protestant descended from Anne’s great-uncle James I.

After Anne’s mother died, James II had married Mary of Modena. Catholics agitated for installing her son, James Francis Edward Stuart, instead. The 1707 Act of Union had had the same effect as Philip’s expansion of Castilian law: it had eroded the autonomy of large provinces. Scotland no longer had a separate monarch who just happened to be the same as the king or queen of England.

A year later, Louis XIV died, leaving his five-year-old great-great-grandson next in line. Orry’s successor, Giulio Alberoni, lobbied Philip V to stake his claim as closer through a secondary line, thus provoking war with France, Great Britain and Austria.

To finance the new conflict, Alberoni sought to eliminate custom barriers within the Iberian peninsula. He moved duty collection from the Ebro river to the Pyrenees in 1718. Thirty Basque towns rebelled.

Soon after, the French deployed the Duke of Berwick in northern Spain. Three Basque provinces, Gipuzkoa, Viscaya and Álava, volunteered to accept French rule if it would honor their fueros threatened by the laws of Castile.

Berwick in fact was James FitzJames, grandson of James II and his mistress, Arabella Churchill. His loyalties lay with the Spanish, where his son was Duque de Liria. He didn’t accept Basque submission and tended to release Spanish prisoners.

Cardinal Alberoni, whose loyalties lay with the pope, sent a flotilla from Cádiz to support Jacobites trying to elevate FitzJames’s half-uncle to the throne of Great Britain in March of 1719. In September, the British destroyed ports in Galicia and laid waste to the countryside.

George I’s loyalties lay with the Hanovers.

Philip dismissed Alberoni and restored liberties to the Basques, who had supported his claim to the Spanish crown. However, his actions did little to slow emigration from the northern provinces to Nueva España.

José Manuel Azcona noted, politics rarely were the reason young men left. Unlike traditional Castilian law that divided property among all legitimate heirs, Basque inheritance laws were designed to maintain the integrity of estates. Parents selected one child as their successor. The others were given cash or other gifts when they reached maturity.

There was little they could do with their bounties. Population densities were high while investment opportunities and jobs were few. The British had destroyed the restored shipyards.

Many in Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Navarre and the Basque lands grew up hearing success tales relayed by earlier family migrants to the New World. Some went as soldiers or clergymen. Others, like the Bustamantes, Tagles, and Valverdes, went to towns where relatives already were living, especially the commercial hub of Mexico City that lay between the ports of Acapulco and Veracruz. Still others went to the mining towns.

El Real de Minas de San Francisco de Cuéllar was founded in 1709, and elevated into the villa of San Felipe el Real de Chihuahua in 1718. The next year most of the 44 merchants serving the miners were Basques.

Notes:
Azcona Pastor, José Manuel. Possible Paradises: Basque Emigration to Latin America, 2004.

Jones, Okayh L. Junior. Nueva Vizcaya, 1988.

Kamen, Henry. Philip V of Spain, 2001.

Kuethe, Allan J. and Kenneth J. Andrien. The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century, 2014.