century but got stronger in Spain. The Spanish equivalent of
the English Parliament, the Cortes, existed in name only.
Spain was forged in 1492 with the merger of the kingdoms
of Castile and Aragon via the marriage of Queen Isabella
and King Ferdinand. That date coincided with the end of
the Reconquest, the long process of ousting the Arabs who
had occupied the south of Spain, and built the great cities
of Granada, Cordova, and Seville, since the eighth century.
The last Arab state on the Iberian Peninsula, Granada, fell
to Spain at the same time Christopher Columbus arrived in
the Americas and started claiming lands for Queen Isabella
and King Ferdinand, who had funded his voyage.
The merger of the crowns of Castile and Aragon and
subsequent dynastic marriages and inheritances created a
European superstate. Isabella died in 1504, and her
daughter Joanna was crowned queen of Castile. Joanna
was married to Philip of the House of Habsburg, the son of
the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Maximilian I. In
1516 Charles, Joanna and Philip’s son, was crowned
Charles I of Castile and Aragon. When his father died,
Charles inherited the Netherlands and Franche-Comté,
which he added to his territories in Iberia and the
Americas. In 1519, when Maximilian I died, Charles also
inherited the Habsburg territories in Germany and became
Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. What had
been a merger of two Spanish kingdoms in 1492 became
a multicontinental empire, and Charles continued the
project of strengthening the absolutist state that Isabella
and Ferdinand had begun.
The effort to build and consolidate absolutism in Spain
was massively aided by the discovery of precious metals in
the Americas. Silver had already been discovered in large
quantities in Guanajuato, in Mexico, by the 1520s, and
soon thereafter in Zacatecas, Mexico. The conquest of
Peru after 1532 created even more wealth for the
monarchy. This came in the form of a share, the “royal fifth,”
in any loot from conquest and also from mines. As we saw
in chapter 1, a mountain of silver was discovered in Potosí
by the 1540s, pouring more wealth into the coffers of the
Spanish king.
At the time of the merger of Castile and Aragon, Spain
was among the most economically successful parts of