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Publication

Marriage Politics. Transregional Families in the Spanish Habsburg Netherlands, ca. 1650-1700

Book - Dissertation

Throughout the early modern period, the Spanish Habsburg crown needed the support of local elites to maintain a grip on the government of its polycentric empire, a global patchwork of territories governed through a network of viceroys and governors, military leaders, and hundreds of councils. A Hispano-Flemish world of political, cultural and economic exchanges shaped the lives of the peoples of both the Iberian Peninsula and the Low Countries. Apart from goods, thoughts and practices, Habsburg subjects also exchanged marriage vows across the different territories of the empire. This study examines the role of these transregional marriages in the relationship between the Spanish Habsburg crown and the elites in the Southern Netherlands in the late seventeenth century. This dissertation questions scale and agency by shifting the point of view from the Crown in Madrid over to that of the governor-general in Brussels and finally to the Hispano-Flemish families themselves. It shows that the Spanish Habsburgs never formed an active policy on the creation, stimulation or dissuasion of transregional marriages but rather that they were the result of an individual or dynastic family strategy and depended on timing and circumstances. While the strength of transregional marriages did not lie in their numbers, they reveal how part of the relationship between the Crown and local elites operated outside of traditional structures of patronage. The polycentricity of the monarchy itself both facilitated and was strengthened by transregional marriages between subjects.
Publication year:2021
Accessibility:Open