The War of the Spanish Succession was a major European war which was fought between 1701 and 1714. The ostensible cause of it was over a dispute to the succession to the throne of Spain following the death of King Charles II there in November 1700. However, the war took on a number of different faces over time and became about a wide range of regional and colonial interests of the various powers which were involved. It pitted an alliance led by France, who had the stronger claim to the Spanish throne, allied with Spain, Bavaria and Savoy, against Britain, Austria, the Dutch Republic, Portugal and Prussia. This alliance was ostensibly led by Austria, where the royal Habsburg family also had a claim to the Spanish throne. The war had an international dimension and was also fought extensively in the Americas across the European colonies there. It ended in something of a draw as a member of the French royal family was eventually recognized as King Philip V of Spain, but territorial concessions were made to Britain and Austria as compensation. The war led to considerable migration, notably through Austria’s receipt of lands in northern Italy, while British ownership of the Rock of Gibraltar in southern Spain can also be traced to the war.[1]
War of the Spanish Succession chronology of events
During the seventeenth century Spain had gone through a period of lengthy political and economic decline after briefly being the foremost European power in the sixteenth century. The gold and silver bullion which had arrived in vast quantities from Mexico, Peru and Bolivia during the long reign of King Philip II (1556–1598) had dried up to a large extent by 1650. Spain’s domestic economy was backwards and falling behind those of countries like England and France, while the country’s military might had also been undermined by years of imperial over-reach as it fought wars without a break across Europe from 1494 down to 1648.[2] Then, to compound matters, in 1665 Charles II ascended as King of Spain. His reign was utterly problematic. Firstly, he was only three years old when he became monarch and so a lengthy minority government followed. Secondly, he was a very ill man as he grew up, suffering from numerous ailments which are understood to have been the product, at least in part, of inbreeding within the royal House of Habsburg which ruled both Spain and Austria in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Finally, when he grew older, despite two marriages, he failed to have any children. This created a succession crisis, one which came to the fore of European politics when he died at just 38 years of age in November 1700.[3]
There was no clear successor to Charles upon his death in 1700. Many people believed that the line of succession should now be found in a male member of the collateral branch of the House of Habsburg, that is amongst the Austrian Habsburgs. However, despite his incapacity, Charles had prepared a will in which he acknowledged Philip, Duke of Anjou, a grandson of King Louis XIV of France, as his successor. Philip’s grandmother, Maria Theresa of Spain, had been a much older sister of King Charles II, and so her descendants in France also had a claim to the Spanish throne. In the course of early 1701 two things became clear. First, the French were evidently determined to pursue the claim to the Spanish throne which Charles’s will had bestowed on them, while, secondly, the Austrians and other powers including Britain and the Dutch Republic, both of which had been perennial adversaries of the French for decades, were equally determined to ensure that a French claimant did not end up as King of Spain. Thus, in July 1701 the European powers went to war. The War of the Spanish Succession would last for the next thirteen years.[4]
The conflict which followed ebbed and flowed over the long course of it. It was most intense in the first years when Britain dispatched an expeditionary force to the continent and there was much conflict on land. For instance, the famed Battle of Blenheim was fought in Bavaria in southern Germany in August 1704. There the alliance of Britain, Austria, the Dutch Republic and Prussia, defeated France and one of its major allies, Bavaria, preventing French designs to campaign eastwards into Austria and strike a decisive blow by capturing Vienna. Thereafter much of the most intense fighting occurred at sea or in engagements in the Americas and in the Mediterranean, with Spain and Italy becoming substantial theatres of the war. Yet, by the late 1700s all sides were exhausted, physically and financially, and peace negotiations began tentatively, even as the fighting continued in a half-hearted fashion.[5]
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The War of the Spanish Succession came to an end in sequences in 1713 and early 1715 (though the fighting stopped in 1714) as the various warring countries signed individual peace agreements with each other. These are generally termed collectively as the Peace or Treaty of Utrecht after the Dutch city where negotiations were held. Under the terms of these the British, Austrians, Dutch and their other allies agreed to recognize Philip of Anjou as King Philip V of Spain. In order to prevent France from becoming too powerful a clause was included which stipulated that the thrones of France and Spain would have to remain divided permanently, meaning that no member of the French Bourbon royal family could ever sit as both King of France and King of Spain at the same time. Austria was compensated for relinquishing its claims to the Spanish throne by receiving many of the lands which Spain held elsewhere in Western Europe, specifically the Spanish Netherlands around modern-day Belgium and territories in Italy including the Duchy of Milan and Naples. The British were able to claim the Rock of Gibraltar and the island of Menorca, both of which had been occupied by the Royal Navy during the war. Hence, Britain’s presence in the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula dates to the War of the Spanish Succession.[6]
Extent of migration associated with the War of the Spanish Succession
Like all wars, the War of the Spanish Succession led to a movement of people during it as civilians attempted to move out of the way of the fighting. More lasting was the population movement following the Peace of Utrecht as various countries lost and gained land. For instance, British administrators and soldiers were sent out to live in Gibraltar, Menorca and other territories gained by Britain during the conflict.[7] Britain had also gained some of the islands and coastal territories of what is now eastern Canada from the French, including Newfoundland and Acadia. Colonization of this region by the British gained pace in the decades that followed. The post-war years also witnessed a growing migration of Austrians into the regions it now controlled in the north of Italy.[8]
Demographic impact of the War of the Spanish Succession
The demographic impact of all of this was significant, though not enormous. For instance, while British colonists arrived to Menorca in the 1710s and 1720s, Britain’s control of the island lapsed during the American Revolutionary War when Spain reoccupied the Balearic Island. As such, the demographic impact here was fleeting. More substantial was the impact in Gibraltar, which remains a British possession to this day over three centuries later. The Rock became a significant British naval base and drew British settlers to the south of Spain, beginning in many ways the process of the Costa del Sol becoming a haven for British expats. The most substantial of all British movements associated with the war was the migration during the eighteenth century of tens of thousands of colonists to Newfoundland and Acadia in North America, though the British component of this did not become substantial until the 1760s and 1770s.[9]
Finally, the impact of Austrian settlement in northern Italy was very extensive. To this day, the Trentino-Alto region of northern Italy bordering on the Tyrol region of Austria contains a very large Germanic minority. Of the 1.1 million people who lived here, approximately one-third speak Tyrolean German, an Austrian dialect, while ethnically the region is a mix of Austrian Germanic and Italians. As such, the long-term demographic impact of the War of the Spanish Succession is perhaps most keenly felt here.[10]
Explore more about the War of the Spanish Succession
- Gibraltar, Births and Baptisms, 1704-1876 record collection on MyHeritage
- Record Collections from Austria and Eastern Europe at the MyHeritage blog
- The War of the Spanish Succession at the National Army Museum
References
- ↑ https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/Spanish-succession
- ↑ https://www.gale.com/intl/essays/christopher-storrs-decline-spain-seventeenth-century
- ↑ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/how-inbreeding-killed-off-a-line-of-kings
- ↑ M. A. Thomson, ‘Louis XIV and the Origins of the War of the Spanish Succession’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 4 (1954), pp. 111–134.
- ↑ https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/Spanish-succession
- ↑ https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199743292/obo-9780199743292-0101.xml
- ↑ Geoffrey Plank, ‘Making Gibraltar British in the Eighteenth Century’, in History, Vol. 98, No. 3 (331) (July 2013), pp. 346–369.
- ↑ https://www.gale.com/intl/essays/peter-h-wilson-holy-roman-empire-eighteenth-century
- ↑ https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/history-of-acadia
- ↑ Olinto Marinelli, ‘The Regions of Mixed Populations in Northern Italy’, in Geographical Review, Vol. 7, No. 3 (March, 1919), pp. 129–148.