982-1469 - Castile
In the tenth century, strongholds were built as a buffer for the kingdom of Leon along the upper Rio Ebro, in the area that became known as Castile, the "land of castles." The region was populated by men--border warriors and free peasants--who were willing to defend it, and were granted fueros (special privileges and immunities) by the kings of Leon that made them virtually autonomous. Castile developed a distinct society with its own dialect, values, and customs shaped by the hard conditions of the frontier. Castile also produced a caste of hereditary warriors whom the frontier "democratized"; all warriors were equals, and all men were warriors.
The counts of Castile, centering around Burgos, had repeatedly declined to obey the kings of Oviedo and Leon, - for example, when they were called to serve in the royal armies. During the reign of Ramiro II (930-950), Count Fernan Gonzalez united the Castilians under his standard, and after repeated wars was able to make Castile independent of the king of Leon.
Castile, which had been subject to Leon, recovered its independence about AD 982, and was erected into a kingdom early in the next century. In 1037 Ferdinand I., The Great, of Castile, united the Kingdom of Leon with Castile, which was thenceforth the strongest power in Spain. Ferdinand the Great died in 1065, assigning Castile to his eldest son, Sancho II., and Asturias and Leon to his other son, Alfonso VI., The Valiant. There was almost constant war between these two brothers; and on the death of Sancho II.j in 1071, Alfonso the Valiant obtained the crown of Castile, thus reuniting the two kingdoms; but at his death, in 1109, his dominions were divided among his children. Alfonso the Valiant recovered Toledo, the old capital of Spain, from the Moors, whom he came near driving from Spain. He destroyed the old Moorish kingdom of Toledo, made that city his capital, and named the territory which he had thus acquired New Castile. In 1095 Alfonso the Valiant erected Portugal into a separate earldom, and in 1139 that country renounced its allegiance to Leon and Castile and became an independent kingdom.
Castile and Leon were reunited periodically through royal marriages, but their kings had no better plan than to divide their lands again among their heirs. The two kingdoms were, however, permanently joined as a single state in 1230 by Ferdinand III of Castile (d. 1252).
Weakened by their disunity, the eleventh-century taifas fell piecemeal to the Castilians, who had reason to anticipate the completion of the Reconquest. Ferdinand III took Seville in 1248, reducing Al Andalus to the amirate of Granada, which had bought its safety by betraying the Almohads' Spanish capital. Granada remained a Muslim state, but as a dependency of Castile.
Alfonso X "the Learned," or "the Wise" (1252-1284), was one of the kings whose reign seemed to be a failure, but in fact it was he who sowed the seed which was to bring about an eventual victory for the principles of monarchy and national unity. Besides being a profound scholar Alfonso was a brave and skilful soldier, but his good traits were balanced by his lack of decision and will power, which caused him to be unnecessarily stubborn and extremely variable. In 1257 the imperial electors chose Alfonso X as Holy Roman Emperor, but many German princes supported the pretensions of an English earl of Cornwall, and on the latter's death those of Count Rudolph of Hapsburg. For sixteen years Alfonso endeavored to get possession of the imperial title, going to great expense in wars for that purpose, but the opposition of the popes, wars with Granada and with his own nobles, and a general lack of sympathy with the project in Castile combined to prevent him from even making a journey to Germany in order to be crowned. In 1273 Rudolph of Hapsburg was formally chosen emperor, and Alfonso's opportunity passed.
Through civil wars and the weakness of the kings the power of the nobles, both socially and politically, appeared to increase. They did not confine their strife to opposition to the king, but fought one another incessantly, not for any political or other ideal, but mainly for personal reasons. As regards social organization this period represents merely an evolution of the factors which had already appeared in the preceding era, and its chief results were the following: the end of serfdom; the advance of the middle class and its opposition to the lords, principally through its jurisconsults and the caballeros of the towns; an increase in the privileges of the clergy; and additional landed wealth for the nobles through the donations of the kings or private conquests. The principal social struggle was no longer that of the serfs against their lords, but rather of the middle class, as represented by the wealthier citizens of the towns, against the nobles and clergy for legal equality, especially as regards taxation and other duties to the state. The disappearance of serfdom did not bring economic well-being to the agricultural laborers; their fortunes in this regard were often as vexatious and hard to bear as their former personal dependence had been. At the same tune, the poorer people of the towns became a fairly numerous class, but they were in a position of inferiority as compared with the wealthier citizens.
Castile, which had traditionally turned away from intervention in European affairs, developed a merchant marine in the Atlantic that successfully challenged the Hanseatic League (a peaceful league of merchants of various free German cities) for dominance in the coastal trade with France, England, and the Netherlands. The economic climate necessary for sustained economic development was notably lacking, however, in Castile. The reasons for this situation appear to have been rooted both in the structure of the economy and in the attitude of the Castilians. Restrictive corporations closely regulated all aspects of the economy--production, trade, and even transport. The most powerful of these corporations, the mesta, controlled the production of wool, Castile's chief export. Perhaps a greater obstacle for economic development was that commercial activity enjoyed little social esteem. Noblemen saw business as beneath their station and derived their incomes and prestige from landownership. Successful bourgeois entrepreneurs, who aspired to the petty nobility, invested in land rather than in other sectors of the economy because of the social status attached to owning land. This attitude deprived the economy of needed investments and engendered stagnation rather than growth.
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