Spain: history, culture, and geography

Spain

Mercantilist policies were the ruling economic trend in most European nations including Spain. This type of economy happens when a country exports more good than import goods to provide a prosperous economic standard of living to its citizens, high tax revenues and more funds to finance wars and armaments. Because of this, countries raced to find colonies and to make use of these countries resources and raw materials for the benefit of the motherland (Patria). Spain was one of the leading European countries that discovered most of Asian lands and Latin America, establishing colonies and making them profitable for Spain.

However, Spain experienced economic decline during the 16th century due to a lot of factors that included loss of the middle class, emerging number of privileged people who did not want to work, emigration that showed decline in the population and left no manpower in most of Spain's agricultural lands making them dependent on imported foodstuffs, exaggerated taxation and inflation, corruption in their government and the plagues that disturbed Europe. Political unrest also stemmed up from Spain's loss in the Thirty-Years War, religion overshadowing politics, and the Treaty of Pyranees that ended the reign of Spain as a great power. To add, that the biggest expenditure of Spain, which refers to maintenance of troops and maintenance of forces in different European countries, was also one of the major reasons why Spain acquired a lot of debts and inability to pay them.

Because of the decline in the condition of the motherland, the Bourbon kings of the 18th Century Spain made economic and political changes, not only in Spain, but also in their colonies as well. These Bourbon reforms started with Philip V, the first Bourbon king of Spain and reached its peak with Charles III. The band-aid solution of the Bourbon reforms aimed to address economic problems that will concentrate on agricultural reforms, building of infrastructures that would promote national and economic integration and development. But the reason behind this is to centralize the power of Spain and to finance the defense of the Spain in impending wars.

Spain opted for a more centralized economy, with the motherland benefiting from its colonies. Among the changes that were implemented in the its colonies in the Latin America included reviving of the mining industry and establishment of Royal Mining Tribunal, tobacco monopoly and this also included monopoly of other industries such as sulphur, saltpeter, and playing cards and comercio libre or free trade within the Spanish empire, which is the most important among all the Bourbon reforms.

It was a long and steady upward development of Spain because the reforms failed to address the real problems Spain was facing politically and socially. Its colonies in the Americas were also struggling for independence, which would erupt in the years to come as inspired by the French revolution. The initial reforms made by the Bourbon kings made these colonies to work for the motherland economically. These problems and piracy in some colonies impeded the fast development that these reforms were able to bring.