The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1081: The Spanish Empire 1492-1659 - Pt. 2 - Background w/ Paul Fahrenheidt

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

69 MinutesPG-13Paul Fahrenheidt is a husband, father, podcaster, writer, and founding member of the Old Glory Club.Paul joins Pete to continue a series on Spain's Golden Age. In this episode Paul gives a broad overview of Europe and Spain during the years of the Spanish Empire.A Country Squire's NotebookOld Glory Club YouTube ChannelOld Glory Club SubstackPaul's SubstackPaul on TwitterPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Antelope Hill - Promo code "peteq" for 5% off - https://antelopehillpublishing.com/FoxnSons Coffee - Promo code "peter" for 18% off - https://www.foxnsons.com/VIP Summit 3-Truth To Freedom - Autonomy w/ Richard GroveSupport Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Paul Fahrenheit's back. How you don't, Paul? I'm doing great, Pete. I am a kid in a candy store right now. I am so excited for this series. I've been waiting very long to do it. I've done a lot of work. I've done a lot of research.

A lot of work and research is ongoing because, quite frankly, I don't want to understate this, but I think that this era that we are studying is not only one of the most important eras in Western history, but I also believe that it is the single most pertinent historical era to the present day. It is the closest related to the current times we are living through, and I hope to prove that to the view. Now, it's not a, obviously it's not a one-to-one, but that's what I'm hoping to prove to the viewers with. Understood. Understood. So we're going to pick up from the episode we did a couple weeks ago, the disputation in Tortosa, which was really like a prequel to all of this.

But from judging from everything that we've talked about, it looks like you want to do an overview of what we're we plan to cover in these next several episodes. So jump in anywhere. Absolutely. So just to just so the the audience, and I'm sure there's going to be a title on this, that they already know what it's about, but just to tell the audience kind of what we're doing here, we are going to be making a study of Europe in general, the Spanish Empire very specifically. The scope is between the years 1400 and 1700. The focus is going to be between the years 1492 and 1659. very specifically. Why do I pick those two years? That is because 1492 is the end of the Requinquista and the year of Columbus's expedition. And 1659 is the Treaty of the Pyrnais, which ends Spain as a

world power, as the dominant world power. It's a period of a little bit over 150 years, and it is an exceptionally packed period. This is generally what's called the early modern era. by modern scholarship. This is my one of my specialties in history. And I have developed a whole, I've developed basically, basically just for the audience to understand for these first two episodes that we're going to do this episode and the next episode. This episode I'm going to, you know, we're giving you kind of a background and I'm going to read out a thesis statement that I had prepared for this entire series. But for this episode and the next episode, we are going to do a sprint through, you know, as much, now we're going to, we're not going to go backward,

you know, when we did the Disputation of Tortosa episode, that left us off about 15 years after 1400. I'm only going to briefly touch on like a couple of things that happened before that, but what we're going to try to do is for this episode and for the next episode, I am going to try to get the viewers to the reign of Charles the 5th. That is what I'm going to try to do. We are going to speed through the last century of Reconquista, Isabella and Ferdinand and the conflicts between Castile and Aragon. We're not going, much as I would like to, we are not going to go into super depth and detail with Portugal's expeditions.

But we are trying to get us to the beginning of Hapsburg, Spain, which begins with Carlos de Primera. Shoot, Carlos de Primera. My Spanish is not very good. But Charles I first of Spain and Charles the fifth of the Holy Roman Empire. It will not just be about Spain. In reality, Spain is kind of the centerpiece of Europe at this time. And so you cannot study Spain without studying what literally happened in the rest of Europe

without like not touching like the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and other things like that. But that's generally what this entire series is going to be about. it will be kind of chronological, but not really. Because what Pete and I are going to do over the next however many episodes that this is going to be is we are going to make laps around a race track. We are going to talk about generally the same era, but just from a variety of different angles. We're going to talk about the economics and the financial aspect of the Spanish Empire and of the Habsburg Empire generally. And I'm going to probably use Spain and Habsburg Empire kind of interchangeably because while Spain existed as sort of an independent concept at the same time, it's best understood when they're considered as one sort of entity. And I'll get into that. But I'm going to be approaching this primarily from a historical angle called world systems theory. All right. This comes from the Annals School in France.

But before I get too much into that, before I actually start getting into into like what all that is and what that means, for those of you who know, we can already get into it. But I have a sort of a little thing written up where I can kind of go through the entire point of the series, what we're studying, why we're studying it, and why it matters to you. I'm looking at it with you. So let's do this. All right, so this is titled the Y background and thesis statement. The reason for this series is the same as all other content creation to create a map for the current era and age we live in. As historians, we do this through historical comparison. The particular age we will study is the early modern era, which denotes the period of time beginning in 1400 and ending in 1700.

More specifically, we will study Christendom as a world system, particularly the period from 1516. I wrote 1516 here because that's about when Charles the 5th's reign begins to 1659 when it was dominated by Habsburgs, Habsburg, Spain very specifically. The thesis of this series is the following. The historical era, which most closely resembles our own, is the era of Christendom, led by the Spanish under the Habsburgs from 1516 through 1659, and an in-depth study of this era will produce, a better map for our own era as compared to the study of any different era. Why does this era most closely match our own? Our own era is marked by a declining world system that is still powerful enough to crush anyone who

opposes it directly, while simultaneously being unable to provide even basic services at the fringes. Like our era, the early modern era also had a world system, Christendom. It was centered around the papacy and the Catholic Church whose secular authority rested upon the Holy Roman Emperor. This world system had more or less complete purchase during the medieval period from about, I put 476 here, but I'd say it's closer to about the 9th century where Otto the Great takes power to 1400 AD when a sort of crisis of legitimate legitimacy kind of comes to a head or at least the cracks start to show. And arose as the successor to the Roman world system, which began after the Punic Wars in 146 BC and ended with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 470s. Bessantium kept going, but the world system was more or less over. The Catholic Church, under which Christendom was founded, began a period of expansion throughout

Western Europe with the conversion of the Franks around 500 AD, and ended with the Battle of Grunwald in 1410. That's when the expansion of the Catholic Church ended, which brought a close to the Northern Crusades, which was the last major expansion of the Catholic Church in any direction. Not counting, of course, the New World conversions, but I count that as a sort of separate thing. This world system was centered upon the twin poles of Pope and Emperor as the centers of spiritual and political authority respectively. This was the world system that was in place until the Treaty of Vestphalia in 1648, after which I argue there was no world system until 1919 in part,

1946 in earnest, and 1991 in Hegemony. In the 15th century, the Christendom world system began its long decline, though cracks were beginning to show in the preceding centuries. Of A particular note is the Gelfgiboline conflict in the Italian city-states, which pitted the two great polls of Christendom's authority, Pope and Emperor, against each other. This combined with the normalization of creating any popes as a political weapon, as well as the Investiture, controversy, what is it, the concilia movement. There's a lot of things that we're going to talk about when we get to our specific episode about the Christendom world system itself, where I'm going to talk about the crises of authority within the Catholic Church politically. before and which led up to what occurred at this time period. Culminating in the Western schism,

which further reduced the legitimacy of the world system. By the way, before I read the second half of this, I just want to say that this is not like, look, Pete, you're a Catholic, I'm a Protestant. This is not like some sectarian, you know, some sectarian treatment of, you know, rah-rah Catholic Church or rah-rah Protestant Reformation.

This is a, I don't want to say unemotional, but rather a sort of detached analysis of this period, of the political actors, of the spiritual arguments of all of these things. And I don't, I don't want to take a side. I don't want to like morally support one side or another for its own sake. I want to present the best and worst possible arguments that were made on both sides against each other. because, you know, we don't learn anything by coming into this, like trying to, you know, oh, rah, ra, we're going to own the prots or rah, we're going to own the papists or whatever. Because I don't think that's helpful. I really don't. I want to, we're historians here and we're attempting to get as clear of a picture of this era as possible.

Understood. Yeah. So we're going to, we're, the, the reformation and the counter-reformation are both going to be discussed and they're going to both be taken seriously. But from these cracks came the Protestant Reformation. I'm continuing now. From these cracks came the Protestant Reformation, and with it, the waning legitimacy of Pope and Emperor entered a crisis point, which lasted for more than a century. This crisis coincided almost entirely with the period of the Hapsburg dynasty's dominance of the Christendom World System, primarily through their possession of the Iberian Peninsula and its American colonies. This crisis culminated with a 30-year-war from 1618 to 1648, which ended the Christendom World System, as well,

well as the dominance of the Habsburgs, the papacy, the empire, and Spain. In the 21st century west, we face a similar period. Politically, our world system is held together by the military and economic might of the United States. Spiritually, it is held together by the myth of progress towards a secular humanist inclusive utopia. Legally, it is held together by the United Nations, its various regulatory bodies, and the system of international law which it purports to enforce. Our globalist world system finds its origins in the Enlightenment ideas of the 18th century, which were first put into practice in 1789. These ideas matured into what we call liberal nationalism today, of which socialism of both

the Marxist and Fabian varieties and fascism of both the Italian fascist and German national socialist varieties were outgrowths. From nationalism came the seed of internationalism, but it was not until the First World War in the Treaty of Versailles that it was implemented. The end of the First World War in 1990 ended the era of Great Power. which began in 1701 with the War of Spanish Succession. Over the rest of the 20th century, our current world system was progressively implemented

in the United States, which would become its centerpiece, and the two counter-proposals in National Socialist Germany and Communist Russia were defeated in 1945 and 1991, respectively. The globalist world system was created and expanded far faster than the Christendom world system. It encompasses a far larger area. It can mobilize infinitely more resources. It is also declining much faster.

Like Christendom, our current world system is failing. It is increasingly incapable of providing basic services such as law enforcement and defense and is undergoing a crisis of moral legitimacy similar to the period from 1517 to 1648. 1517 was when the Protestant Reformation began. Spain and the United States play similar roles as political enforcers. While no one-to-one corollary to the papacy exists today, as the civic faith differs, there is no shortage of moral authorities. If history can be applied to the present, then the,

and the destination of these two systems is the same. Decline into crisis, crisis into collapse. If the destination of these two systems is the same, then the study of the previous turn of the wheel will be profitable to those of us who wish to maneuver through the coming trials with our families, fortunes, and faith intact. Do you have anything on that, Mr. Pete?

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Lidl, more to value. No, I mean, this is, I think that's all straightforward. you you laid out the outline you laid out what the narrative is going to be and now it's just the point of going in and going in what uh you know we've given the bird's eye view now i guess it's time to start the worm's eye view absolutely um so i want to kind of real quick now that we've read sort of the thesis and the introduction i want to give the audience an idea what world systems theory is like I said, this comes from the Annals school.

Fernand Browell was one of the most famous historians from there. He wrote this massive work called the Mediterranean, the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip the second, which he actually doesn't at all talk about Philip the second in it. But he talks about like, you know, how there's multiple Mediterranean seas. You know, there's the one that fishers use and the one that traders use and the one that, you know,

it's very interesting. Um, but a world system, hold on, I have a definition of it right here. I want to, uh, the definition I have for it here is it's a consensus of national and international institutions, be they political, moral, legal, spiritual, financial at Kedra to operate under a similar set of rules and hierarchies in order to avoid significant conflict between the component parts with the most powerful component part, usually acting as enforcer. All right. So, so, you know, a world system is, is, is, is higher than a nation state or what we would consider a sort of a political polity,

a country. All right. There's all, you know, a world system doesn't always exist. The period I just pointed out within, uh, what is it,

within, um, was after, after, uh, the end of this whole series in 1701 with a war of Spanish succession. That began, you know,

you could call it the era of world wars almost, but I call it. the great powers era because from that time onward you have there is no one dominant world system it is it is various nation states of comparable power and economic mobilization competing with each other um for you know i don't want to say world domination but you know for for implementing their vision upon the world um the war of spanish succession is the first like war in which like it's the first one where you can kind of look at it in a very conventional sense where there aren't like massive mercenaries being used and it's mostly sort of professional

uh profession it's mostly professional army's state funded armies versus other professional state funded armies um prior to that in the era we will be looking at it is a lot it's a lot more of a friggin you know like hodgepodge of mercenaries professional armies militias feudal levies knights, all of these sort of things. But what am I trying to say? What was I talking? I was talking about the Great Powers era and then- You said world system.

I think you were probably getting to the point where you might want to give examples of world systems. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. But yes, a world system, right, is, you know, there's a couple of examples. There's a concept within it, there's like core regions, and then semi-periphery regions, and then periphery regions. Um, you know, the core very obviously is the most important particular geographical areas in terms of,

in terms of institutions, in terms of, um, you know, tax bases, in terms of agricultural bases, etc. Semi periphery is, you know, kind of in between. It's important, but it's not necessarily like the core. Um, and then there's the periphery, which is, you know, doesn't really matter. It kind of, it kind of serves as a very limited purpose within the world's system. And like to give an example, you know, there's been several examples of world systems, but like let's use the one we currently live in, the sort of globalist or the United Nations world system. The core of that world system is what we call the Western world. It's the United States and Canada, although not Mexico. It's Western Europe.

All of the NATO countries are core to the world system. And Australia, New Zealand are also core to that world system. A semi-periphery would be somewhere like Russia and China and other various allied countries. I'd say Japan and Korea would be in the core too. But the semi-periphery is countries that play a large role within it but aren't necessarily, you know, within it in that respect. And then the periphery would be quite literally everywhere else. You know, everywhere that isn't important is the periphery.

You know, there would be places like Peru, Ecuador, places like that. But there have been several examples of world systems in the past. Bronze Age Egypt is one of my favorite examples. I'm not going to talk about the Bronze Age collapse because that's a whole series in and of itself. But Egypt's circa 1200 BC when the Bronze Age collapse occurs had a very similar complex globalized world system based around Egyptian grain exports and bronze production, which required very very similar complex globalized world system based around Egyptian grain exports and copper in a bronze production, which required very, very complicated supply chains of tin and copper being, you know, basically making it to the, to the fertile crescent where it was alloyed into bronze, which was this like super space age technology at the time compared to what they had available to them. And that, of course,

collapsed for a variety of reasons I will not get into. You can look into it themselves. Then, of course, you have the Roman World System. The Roman World System is the most, is one of the most iconic. It's one of the easiest to imagine. But Rome also, Rome's world system, it wasn't just a Roman empire. Rome ruled large parts of its empire, largely through client kingdoms, through sort of like auxiliary states, states that were kind of Roman, but also kind of not. And there were absolutely core regions of it. And there were regions that didn't matter as much. But, but you know, Rome's world system.

of course had its own crisis of legitimacy and you know and and collapsed on its own accord. Christendom is the world system, however, that we will primarily be observing with always keeping us sort of out of the corner of our eye on our current world system because we're the whole purpose of this series is we're attempting to understand our current world system through the lens of this previous one. That's the closest to us. Christendom is the world system that is immediately preceding hours. Our world system is the sort of United Nations globalist world system that was really, that was implemented in part with the League of Nations. That was really implemented with the United Nations after World War II. And that achieved world global hegemony in 1991, which it still has to this day, although it's starting to decline.

And so, you know, what is it? Now that I've kind of, what was it? Yeah. Now, it's notable to mention that the apotheosis of a world system, like the theoretical completion of it usually occurs at the, it's at its terminal crisis point. The Catholic Church was more or less perfected with the Council of Trent. and that's that's what that's why the Catholic Church today looks the way it does is because it is because of what was decided at the Council of Trent and the culmination of the counter reformation and the Holy Roman Empire achieved its apotheosis really with the with the

Habsburgs with Charles the 5th particularly as a person and so and so from that point we're kind of you know I had I had a similar theory today that the sort of the UN globalist world system, it's kind of theoretical apotheosis was Francis Fukuyama's the end of history. I think that was that was sort of the perfection of the idea that they were trying to pursue in implementing the United Nations globalist world system. Yeah, it would have to be in the 90s, wouldn't it? That's where the people who really don't understand history want to go back to. Absolutely. Yeah, in the 90s, you know, I thank God, every single day. I'm not going to speak to recent events because I want this show to be rather timeless.

But I thank God every every single day almost that he gives us stupid enemies because if you wanted to go back to the 90s, if you wanted to go back to the 90s and fight that world, you know, the people who were rising up against that world system, you know, as we say in the army, the first guy through the door gets killed the hardest. You know, like everyone wants to talk about Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc. It's like that's what happens when you oppose a world system at its height is you get crushed. You get you get absolutely crushed and then everyone sides with the people crushing you. That's what happens. And there's going to be, we're going to talk about examples of that, dissident examples of that from both both the Protestant and actually within the,

within the Catholic side because Christenom as a world system is not the Catholic Church, is not the Catholic faith because there were dissidents with there were dissidents to it both within the Catholic faith France is the number one example and and outside of the Catholic faith which was the the Protestants generally so but yeah that's what we're going to be talking about but for the rest of this episode now that we've kind of we've more or less familiarized our audience with with what a world system kind of generally is giving them some examples the rest of this episode is I'm I am going to outline to them the components that built the Spanish empire because the Spanish empire the good the Spanish empire was the consequence was the result like the

the even the fact that a nation called Spain exists that we conceive existing because that that didn't always exist either that that occurred simultaneous to this Spain almost as a as a as a political fiction was created from various components and there was a lot of people who were who were not who did not like that simultaneous to it obtaining an empire prior to that it was castile aragon navarre leon and delusia galicia various other you know autonomies as we've talked about before um but but but but but hold on let me let me pull back up the thing um but yes i have a there are five components that i'm going to speak about broadly which all kind of are subsidiary to the sort of Christendom world system.

But before I start outlining these components, I want the audience to understand. Hapsburg, Spain, specifically in the person of Charles V and the symbol of Charles V, was the perfection of the Christendom world system in sort of in a polity. The Holy Roman Empire and the Spanish Empire and the Netherlands and all these other, you know, polities like like were the most politically powerful that this world system ever got it had the most resources the strongest army the you know the the the the most the strongest navy uh some of the the highest culture all of it all of it occurred at about this time period um spengler talks a lot about the the medieval gothic idea of emperor and pope kind of as like you know as um

two sides of the same coin as two different different kinds of authority. And the Habsburgs under, you know, the Spanish hapsburgs really are the culmination of that. And I'm going to outline all those various components that, and trust me, you don't, listeners, I'm not going to go so much into detail as much detail as I could, but we are going to hit all of this almost, almost certain. we're going to hit every topic I hit here again at some other point in which I'll be freer to do a lot more detail. But the first component that I would like to talk about is the Catholic Church. That is the indisputable, what is it? It is the indisputable sort of center of which of which all of this came from. Right. Now, the Catholic Church is an necessarily the Catholic Church that we imagine of today. It was a lot different back then because

the Catholic Church existed kind of simultaneously as a political entity as well as a spiritual entity. It crossed all borders. The papacy, the Pope himself was supposedly the spiritual mediator between all the nations of Christendom, much like how the United Nations is today, where Christian princes could bring their grievances before him in order to avoid war with each other so that he could kind of be this sort of higher authority figure that can pass down this judgment that prevents war between two Christian princes. Now, this is great in theory,

but what if the Pope passes down a judgment that you don't necessarily like? Well, that is the entire history of the medieval Catholic Church. you know, various, you know, anti-Popes started becoming popular to the point where sometimes sitting popes were deposed by military force and were replaced by anti-popes. You also had various, various disputes within the clergy. And, you know, but largely it was between the role that clergy had to play and the, and the, what is it? various secular princes such as the investiture controversy as to whether secular rulers could appoint the successors of bishops or if they were done by the pope. But the Catholic Church centers primarily around the papacy. The papacy, the pope is the bishop of Rome.

He is the sort of hierarchical center of the Catholic Church. Beneath him are archbishops and bishops who kind of, you know, over. oversee certain diocese or regional areas of authority within the Catholic Church. The college of cardinals beneath him is just a whole bunch of bishops that just functionally just got selected to be a special bishop. And whenever the Pope dies, the or chooses to resign, which is almost ever happens. The cardinals get together and they decide in conclave as to who, amongst them because the pope can only be selected. Oh,

they, he doesn't have to be selected from amongst the cardinals. It's just, it tends to work out that way. Whomever the, whomever the cardinals select to be the next pope, you know, is,

is, is, is crowned pope and he is the ruler of Christendom until he dies. So Spain, to kind of, you know, the Spanish Empire, to kind of give us some background,

has been, is on the borderlands of Christendom. there's a reason why the spaniards didn't have so many disputes between secular princes and and uh catholic clergy and that is primarily because they had a reconquista they were fighting you know they were on the walls with the foreigner with the with the berbers with um with the uh the arabs with the muslims and spain could not because you know and as any culture on a borderland they cannot afford dissidents. They cannot afford to be divided on certain issues, even if it's at the expense of certain ideas or principles or practical considerations that maybe ought to be thought out.

Those things, unfortunately, must be sacrificed because we're in a state of more or less perpetual war, which the Iberian Peninsula kind of was in from the Battle of Toledo until, or yeah, from the Battle of Toledo up until 1492. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design. They move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon, and Teramar.

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from Volkswagen Financial Services, Ireland Limited, subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Compare this to France, who did not have a pressing existential enemy

on any of its borders. It had various other European polities. It kind of scrapped with here and there. France is almost the textbook definition of disputes between secular princes, as well as the Holy Roman Empire, but that's for other reasons. But France kind of, you know,

we'll talk about this more, but it adopted this sort of, this theological standpoint of Gallicanism of the French Catholic Church, very specifically being this quasi-nationalistic sort of, you know, it's, yeah, they pay lip service to the Pope, but in reality, they tend to serve the kings of France. And this is exemplified by figures such as Cardinal Richelieu, who is served as, like, functionally this prime minister to Louis the 13th and then later Louis the 14th. but the papacy, it's not just the sort of the ecclesiastical clergy structure. There are also, sorry, I forgot to mention there are priests underneath the bishops of various parishes of various subdivisions beneath diocese. And bishops can be selected from amongst priests. But there are also various other institutions, entities beneath the Catholic Church.

and you can split these into monastic orders and knightly orders, although technically they're both monastic orders. But monastic orders included the Dominicans, the Benedictines, the Franciscans, later the Jesuits, but they were founded as much more of an internationalist monastic order in the colonies. But the Dominicans were sort of like, you know, the Dominicans were the ones who ran the church inquisition. they were sort of the enforcers of the popes will the benedictines were a lot more of your traditional what you think of you know ora etlabora um you know just just monks who kind of secluded themselves from the rest of the world made wine etc and then the franciscans were a lot more of like a public outreach organization um you know the you know assisting the communities that they were in um

Now, I'm not a Catholic scholar. All right. I just, I just know a little bit about these. These are important. There were other, there were other major monastic orders. Obviously in France,

you had the Capuchins. You had, you know, I can think of a half dozen other ones, or at least symbols of a half dozen other ones, because I don't remember their names. And they existed all over the place, but these are the sort of the three major ones.

The Dominicans, the Benedictines, the Franciscans. And this and, you know, as well, you also had the knightly orders. All right. So one of the key early flexes of power that the Christendom world system demonstrated was, or at least the nascent Christian world system at that time was the Crusades. The ability to mass mobilize people across Europe towards a foreign goal, towards a sort of, you know,

you know, attempt to reconquer perceived lost territory from the Muslims. Excuse me, I'm just taking a sip. This is also a large part of what gave the Spanish reconquista its biggest windfalls. Because the Crusade, though it did largely happen in the Middle East, and the first one was almost ludicrously successful, the Reconquista, what was going on in Spain was also simultaneously a part of those crusades, particularly the second crusade. The second crusade attempted to take Damascus and Syria and other places. It was a failure in the Middle East,

but it was a massive success in Spain because Lisbon, the now capital of Portugal, was liberated from the Moors and a large swath of more southern Spain. No pun intended. But I just realized I did that. But it isn't really until the battle of Las Navas de Toledo, or not not not that Los Angeles, sorry, in, in 1212 where really the the moors as a power are broken in, in the Iberian Peninsula, but I'm kind of getting ahead of myself. But the nightly orders that were created for the purposes of patrolling and taking and protecting the Holy Land and kind of had mission creep and started taking over other

places. You know, everyone knows about the Templars and the Knights Hospitlers, which later become the Knights of Malta. The Teutonic Knights, the Livonian brothers of the Sword, the Knights of Santiago, the Knights of Cantabria, the latter two being crusading knightly orders limited specifically to the Iberian Peninsula. But basically all of these, you know, Templars, Hispilars, the Teflinites, everyone else, these monastic orders, And then the church itself, right? This kind of constituted this almost invisible empire within all of these secular political states in Europe. The church was an extremely large and wealthy landowner

throughout many, many, many Western European countries. And if you look at the lands that were held by the various knightly orders and by the various monastic orders, it's a not insignificant amount. And a lot of it was very rich, well-producing land. And many of the, particularly as feudalism became a more widespread thing. There was, I once again, not speaking about recent events, but there was someone who was saying on Twitter a few weeks ago that feudalism never

happened. And it was this 19th century invention. I'm like, I'm like, sorry. This is kind of like, kind of like, you know, I'm not going to go into it. Futalism absolutely happened. It absolutely was a thing. it was just not the exact same everywhere it was implemented. But the church was a very large and wealthy landowner.

It was very powerful. And almost every single prince secular ruler in Western Europe needed the, and it did have a lot of spiritual authority. I'm not just, I don't mean to just talk about it as this like political entity with wealth and land and things like that. There was a lot of spiritual authority too, you know, specifically with the medieval scholastics, St. Thomas Aquinas being the most famous one, William of Hockham, other individuals kind of developing a sort of thought of the Catholic Church as well. These, you know, various universities started getting founded after the Crusades. I think there were more universities per capita in the 14th century than there are in Europe than there are today, I think. There were a lot of universities founded. And, you know, this is, you kind of start to have this sort of, um, the fertile ground from which the sort of the, the renaissance would spring in the high medieval ages.

Um, but yes, the, the Catholic church, particularly within the context of Spain was vital because, um, because functionally it was the, it was the sole unifying force of these various different kingdoms and polities and counties and things like that. when it came to fighting the Moors, that it was a war of faith, it was a war of belief, it was a crusade from beginning to end. It didn't really become a political thing. It wasn't the kingdom of Castile attempting to reconquer Spain. It wasn't, you know, the kingdom of Navarra,

or the king, later the kingdom of Aragon or the kingdom of Portugal attempting to reconquer Spain. It was, you know, we are the Christian faith trying to reconquer Spain. and the Catholic Church played a very vital part of that. And nowhere in Spain could really buck questioning of that because of this external threat. You know, and, you know, France calls herself the eldest daughter of the church,

and it is true the Franks were the first to convert. But the Spaniards were always the most loyal, the most unquestioning, the most unwavering in terms of the, even more so than the Italians, in terms of championing the Catholic. faith and their history kind of kind of goes to prove that but I've talked about the church for a little while I'm going to transition to the second component that made the Holy Roman Empire which is or the whole that made the Spanish Empire which is the Holy Roman Empire all right so the Holy Roman Empire

a lot of people say sorry before I go on you have anything Pete nope keep going all right so the Holy Roman Empire a lot of people say it starts with Charlemagne, which isn't precisely true, although Charlemagne is the symbol everyone kind of points to. And Charlemagne was who Otto the Great was attempting to his legacy. And I think Otto the Great was descended from him. I could be wrong. But Charlemagne was the one who Otto the Great was kind of attempting to reestablish the empire in the image of. but when Charlemagne dies, his massive empire, the Frankish Empire splits into three parts.

Vest Francia, Lotharingia, and East Francia. All right. West Francia over time becomes France. Lotharingia is this unfortunate place in the middle, which will become relevant. So keep it in the back of your mind, but it included the Rhineland, eastern France, western Germany. the Netherlands Ready for huge savings We'll mark your calendars

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like the Duchy of Savoy and the kingdom of the old kingdom of Burgundy, not to be confused with the Grand Duchy of Burgundy, which we will also speak about. But unfortunately, because it was so poorly placed, it was kind of gobbled up by its two neighbors. And then East Francia, which would later become the kingdom of Germany

and then the Holy Roman Empire. But what was it? The Holy Roman Empire, as I said, founded by Otto the Great. Otto the Great in the 10th century, called the Iron Century, the 10th century. This is kind of like the sort of the, the 10th century is about where you see the early middle ages start coming to an end. The dark ages start coming to an end.

It's not quite at the high medieval age, the high middle ages yet, but you really do see this sort of, you know, people are starting to, like political organizations are starting to recover from this dark age. of less than sophisticated states left by the collapse of the Roman Empire. More complex, more sophisticated polities are forming. And Otto the Great founds the Holy Roman Empire as the legal thing that we understand it to be. You know, everyone looks at the map of like the 5,000 territories. It didn't start off that way.

But that was started by Otto the Great. But the greatest dynasty or the most famous medieval dynasty was the Holenstalfans, particularly Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick 2nd. Now, what Frederick Barbarossa did was, I'm pretty sure he went down and deposed a pope and put an anti-pop on the throne. He also led the most famous, or the largest crusade, although he famously died on the way to it. But what he also did, right? What he also did was bring northern Italy into the Holy Roman Empire. Barbarossa is an Italian nickname, meaning red beard. He brings Italy into the into the Holy Roman Empire.

And Italy and very specifically, northern Italy, will play a vital part in our story, particularly early on. because that before you know like like like the call to give you an idea of why it would be so important the colonies were settled to give Spain an edge over conquering Italy over France. Like they didn't really care about the new world. The new world was just like an edge for them to win this like tiny, you know, to our American minds, pissant conflict in Europe in Italy. But I digress.

Then you have Frederick the second, which kind of represent, he ruled primarily from, from was it um from sicily uh and and he had this you know he he represents this apotheosis of the medieval holy roman empire and that's you know the frederick the second's kind of height of the empire is what everyone is was trying to get back to um and then he dies and the hoenched dolphins die out and all this other stuff um you have this period from you know uh and you know these people reigned in the in the 11th and i think 12th centuries um and then you have this period in the uh skipping ahead quite a bit the black death comes through um in the in response to the black death in the uh the holy roman empire kind of enters this period of crisis um internal disputes

the the sort of feudal method isn't working um and so charles the fourth uh the house of luxembourg king of Bohemia, etc. declares the Golden Bull, which creates the sort of modern legal structure, not the modern, but the legal structure that the Holy Roman Empire would have until its dissolution, which was the structure. And Charles IV is this great monarch, you know, rules without ever declaring a war, brings order to the Holy Roman Empire, builds the city of Prague as this great center of culture, etc., etc.

um but um but his golden bull creates the the sort of sp very specifically is the electorates the electorates of the holy roman empire right so the holy roman the holy roman emperor prior to this time had been kind of a dynastic sort of would pass position but after the golden bull charles the fourth devolves a lot of power in order to kind of keep the empire coherent to the the various constituent states into the most powerful ones and the most influential ones, he gives these various kind of symbolic court roles like you know, you play Crusader Kings too, you've got your steward and your marshal and things like that. He gives these symbolic, you know, court titles to these various,

to the holders of various political legal entities that you would call duchies or bishoprics or things like that. I do have to speed up a little bit, but I do want to kind of get into this. There were four secular electors, meaning political, and there were three ecclesiastical electors. But a lot of the time, the bishop ricks and the bishops within the Holy Roman Empire were appointed by secular princes. And the Pope had a big issue with this, and he would appoint people who were in their areas. And this was the conciliar movement, which we'll get into. But lots of conflicts were happening in terms of influence.

But the Count Platonid of the Rhine, the Margravid of Brandenburg, the Duchy of Saxony, the Kingdom of Bohemia were all the secular electors. And then the Archbishoprics of Mines, Cologne, and Trier were the three ecclesiastical electors. And between these seven people, they would vote. It could be one of them, at least a ruler, not the bishops. It could be one of the rulers of the electors, or it could be an external. an external polity, which in the late medieval ages starting, ended up being the Arch, the Archduke of Austria, which was held in possession by the House of Hapsburg. The Archduke of Austria, the Archduke of Austria kind of begins the sort of the Hapsburg

rule after the House of Luxembourg. Yes, it's named after that Luxembourg. Charles VIII and then Ziggismund. after they die out, the Habsburgs begin this almost unbroken 400-year period with various interruptions where they are in charge of the Holy Roman Empire. And that took a lot of money to do. That took a lot of, and a lot of things went well for them in order for them to keep that streak going. But that's more or less the Holy Roman Empire. I haven't even told everyone what it encompasses.

It encompassed pretty much all of, I'm just assuming everyone kind of knows this. It encompassed most all of Germany, the low countries, parts of what are now in France and Belgium, northern Italy, parts of what are now in Poland, and yeah, other, other, that's pretty much, Switzerland was part of it, Austria was part of it, parts of southern France were in it. This is the Holy Roman Empire. It was this massive, the largest political entity in Europe. But I, you know, I could start getting into like the Italian states and like, and the importance that they had as primarily the first area of competition between the,

the kingdom of France and the sort of Habsburg dynasty. But I don't think we have time for that. So suffice it to say, we'll return to that in a later episode. I've kind of talked about the French So the third component was kind of the rivalry With the Kingdom of France But I've already kind of talked about You know, the rivalry

That existed there So I'm going to kind of step over France And go into something that I do want to talk about For a little bit And trust me, you know, we're going to finish this up with Spain But all of this other stuff needs to be understood The Grand Duchy of Burgundy All right, the Grand Duchy of Burgundy

you you cannot understand like like p this this symbol that you have behind us right um is you know i understand it's a salt here uh but but this is the the the sort of the symbol of the grand duchy of burgundy um you don't have a spit like like everyone like you know will point to the flag of the spanish empire it's two like crossing branches of red that's not the symbol of the spanish empire you That's the symbol of the Grand Duchy of Burgundy. All right. Where is Burgundy, you might ask? Great question.

It's in two places. There's Burgundy proper, which is in France. The most famous city there is Dijon. It's in Western France on the border with the Rhineland. But the rest of it, the rest of what was called the Grand Duchy of Burgundy, included almost all, except for Frisia, of Holland, of, of the Netherlands, of Belgium, and of northern France. All right.

Why is this particular area so important? Well, it was the richest part of Western Europe. It was the center of early medieval industrialization of early medieval commerce. The hands, it was basically, it was this crossroads of this North Sea market, particularly the English wool market, the English exported will, wool that they produced into the low countries, which the various industries in the low countries used, uh, you know, basically that that domestic commodity, that raw material that was being exported from England was being turned into into a manufactured commodity in the low countries.

And, um, you had Hanseatic trade. Um, also out of the fact that there's a ton of rivers in this area. There's a, so there's a like almost everywhere could be a coastal city, including places like Brussels and Ghent. But almost all of this area through a variety of strokes of good fortune started falling under this cadet branch of the House of Valois, which ruled the French at the time, which was itself a cadet branch of the Capetian, the House of Capei, the Capetian dynasty, which ruled France from the deposition of the last Carolingian monarch by Hugh Capet all the way until Louis the 16th and even afterwards. But the house of Burgundy was a subset, was a branch of the House of Valois, which ruled over this kind of geographically split region. Right. Now, why is Burgundy important? When you think of medieval chivalric Europe, of tournaments, of knights, of courtly love, of ladies, of all this, you're thinking of the Grand Duchy of Burgundy.

They were the aesthetic center of Europe, mostly because they had a lot of money, which they could spend on artists and things like that. But they were the aesthetic center of Europe. Almost every European court followed the fashions of the Grand Duchy of Burgundy. Very famously, one of their Grand Dukes, I don't know if it was Charles the Bull. It might have been Charles. I think it was Charles the Bold. He's important. But Charles the Bold founds the Order of the Golden Fleece, which was.

was which basically the Hapsburgs will take as their order, right? The order of the golden fleece is the most prestigious knightly or like a, like a night. It wasn't like a knightly order in the sense that the Catholic Church had monastic. Nightly orders is more of like one of these various, you know, national. They started becoming national orders, these medals that people that high ranking nobles would get or people who had done amazing services would get. but the order of the golden fleece was what all of them were based upon and it was it was the the sort of the epitome of that whenever you look at the hapsburg monarchs or you know you'll always see this like golden chain around their neck and that's because they were they

were members of the order of the golden fleece um but yeah um pretty much like and this is why kind of later on what was it why spain would fight so hard for the low countries during the 80 years war, the Dutch revolt that we will speak about extensively, was because of how much revenue the Spanish crown got from the low countries. The low countries of all of their, more than any region in Iberia made more money for the Austrian and then laid the Spanish crown than any other region. And I kind of spoiled the plot here, but yes, the dynasty of Burgundy, Charles the Bull dies at the Battle of Nancy without a male heir. His daughter, Mary of Burgundy, which was the last

of the House of Burgundy Valois, was kind of left in an unfortunate position. She was the most eligible bachelorette in Europe, and everyone wanted her because everyone knew what was under her. But she ended up choosing to marry Emperor Maximilian I, which passes this sort of Burgundian inheritance after she dies without producing an air with him. The Habsburgs just inherit, you know, personally, because the Grand Duchy of Burgundy kind of fulfilled this weird joint role in which as Duke of Burgundy,

or Grand Duke of Burgundy, he was subject to the King of France, but as like count, he had all, he was, the Dukes of Burgundy held all these regions through what was called personal union in which one monarch is in charge of two different polities, but those are not governed by the same people.

It's like Spain has a monarchy today, England as a monarchy today. It's like if King Charles was king of them both, but Spain functioned as a different country and England functioned as a different country with different bureaucracies. However, they just both acknowledged Charles as being in charge of them.

All right. Isn't that just Great Britain and Canada? right now? Not exactly because Canada is a dominion. Canada is counted different for legal purposes. And it's not exactly the same for even, it would have been, it would have been the case for Great Britain under the Stewart's in which Scotland and England was held in personal union by the, the Stewart Kings, but after the act of union, they were kind of made one country. So not exactly the same because Canada as a nation is still technically legally, Well, it's not a dominion anyway.

No, it's an independent country. Yeah, but, but, but, um, oh, theoretically, but, but it's still, it's still, it's still, it's still, it's just kind of changed its flag and it's still kind of, it's counted differently for different reasons. Um, but, um, well, I, there's no real pertinent example today, um, because it doesn't really, monarchy doesn't really exist anymore in the way it did. Um, but, but, you know, as count of, or Duke of all of the, of the, um, um, um, but, you know, as count of, or duke of all of these polities in the low country, the Grand Dukes of Burgundy were subjects of the Holy Roman Empire. And they were two different polities. And so what the reality was is that they ended up being subjects to no one. They acted as kind of their own sovereign political entity. And if Charles the Bold hadn't have died at the Battle of Nancy without leaving an heir, then it's very

likely that the Grand Duchy of Burgundy would have become its own country in between France and Germany. It would have revived that sort of, and Lotharingia, that region that Charlemagne left earlier was kind of their sort of justification, their ideology for it is, hey, we are trying to reestablish this third missing part of the, of the sort of the legacy of Charlemagne. But basically, what is it? Basically, the whole. point is the Grand Duchy of Burgundy, extremely economically productive, extremely valuable monetarily, passes to the to the Habsburgs through some random circumstance. And with Charles the 5th, after Charles the 5th, now Charles the 5th, for example, we'll get, we'll get to him,

but Charles the 5th grew up, he was born in Flanders and he grew up speaking Flemish. All right, he was neither, he wasn't really German and he wasn't really, you know, Spanish in any particular sense, but his first language was Flemish, but he ended up speaking five by the end of his life. But yeah, this is the Grand Duchy of Burgundy kind of is this key piece for a variety of reasons. And that's why I wanted to kind of spend some time talking about it. And then finally, the last component, which of all of these various things, which went into making the Spanish empire, was the Iberian Peninsula. All right. We're going to finally get to the the Iberian Peninsula to Spain itself.

The reason I kind of talk about Spain is separate from the rest of these polities is because it was separate from all of these policies. Spain was kind of its own self-contained world. It's a borderland and it's, you know, it doesn't really have, it didn't, for a large portion of its history, have much interference from the rest of Europe because it was just kind of the place where people went to go fight Moors. but in the coming into the sort of the 1400s I know you said we weren't going to go backward I'll go backward a little bit

I've already talked about Las Navista Talesa but in the mid-1300s about a century prior to this the black death just sweeps through Castile sweeps through Spain you know kills a lot of people like it does everywhere else and you know and and and but it's and so the Reconquista has halted a little bit, but it kicks off again in, in, in, in 1400 or so. But really, all that's really left to do is to kind of claim this rump emirate of Granada in the south of Spain. It had like a very small area of territory. And, and so conflict started arising between various component parts of the sort of, of the Iberian Peninsula. Castile and Aragon very specifically both come under the rule of the House of Trastamara,

of which Isabella and Ferdinand both resulted from. It was a cadet branch of an Italian royal house that very ironically ruled over the county of Burgundy for a time, but it's not the same as the House of Burgundy. Who was, who did come from the House of Burgundy was the House of Avis, which was the ruling House of Portugal, which is another important part of this. But Basically, Castile and Aragon are the two biggest polities on the Iberian Peninsula, and they're competing for sort of this dominance. Aragon is more Mediterranean-looking. It has territories in Italy and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

It kind of attempts to establish this system of international maritime law on the Mediterranean doesn't really work. But then it kind of compete. It starts competing with these conflicts with. Castile. A particular note was the War of Castilian Succession, in which, in which, you know, one of the monarchs died without an heir. And there were two different female heirs that both had claim, one of which was Isabella the first. And Portugal, and then the other one was, I think, Joanna of Castile, not the later one, but the earlier one. And so it kind of turned into this, into this war within Castile

of different noble factions as to who would succeed. And Portugal supported the side of Joanna and Aragon had their candidate in Isabella I. And Isabella the first came out victorious in that war and

she married Ferdinand of Aragon, which created the Iberian Union, which meant that as husband and wife, Isabella and Ferdinand unified the two largest polities on the Iberian Peninsula. They were also later declared the most Catholic monarchs by the Pope. This frees them up to finally get around to conquering Granada in 1492, which results in the

expulsion of the Moors, which we have talked about in a previous episode, no need to sort of go on that. But basically, converter leave was the policy Spain took. That was kind of their final sort of victory in the Reconquista. Spain is going to be a completely Christian nation, and we're going to make sure that it is. I'm going to talk about Portugal a little bit, just because they're important for the following things. Everyone knows about Henry the Navigator and the various nautical sort of innovations that he has. Portugal revolutionizes the ability of seafaring travel, and they start going on these various expeditions down into Africa and in other places.

And they start colonizing a bunch of various islands. And they start establishing these things called Faytorias, or in English factories, literally, which are these little trading posts at the mouths of various rivers in Africa and in other places, which they kind of use as like this sort of trade network where they can trade with local African tribes, at first for gold and ivory, later for slaves.

and this is what's beginning these sort of global international trade networks, which already kind of exist within the Mediterranean Sea, and in northern Europe and in other places. But what the Iberian Peninsula starts doing is becoming this sort of seafaring area where the sort of more north-seed trading, the more North Sea trading sphere and the Mediterranean sphere kind of have a cross. there. And with that, I think that's everything I wanted to go over today. Once again, I know it was, it was super brief, large sort of, you know, we covered a lot, a lot of ground. But this is necessary because in the next episode, we're going to go on to how all of these various components, all of these various things, all kind of fell together, all fell together and became sort of what we now understand as this Spanish Empire. That is pretty much everything I have. Anything you have, Pete? No, I mean,

that's a great overview. I think that's, I think it's simple enough that everybody can follow it. I mean, obviously, nobody's going to remember all those names and everything. At least it's there. And I guess when you do something like this, you're not expecting people to memorize all the players and the places and everything, what you're hoping is, is that the grand message is what the grand narrative is what sticks with people. And then, you know, if they want to listen to it a couple times, they can take notes and everything like that. Or maybe one of these days, you'll be okay with releasing your notes

and your outlines and everything for it, too, if people want. Yeah, probably. Yeah, I'm probably going to do that by the end of the series. Once we have it as complete, you know, I'll probably have, hey, if you want to follow along, these are the various, or do you just want to kind of blast through the notes? A lot of these people are people that you might be familiar with from history class. A lot of them, of course, are not. But yeah, like I said, you know, if you kind of felt lost during this episode, that's fine.

Because this is just like I have to like basically spit out all of this information to get us, to get us to the place where we can finally stop and take a much slower, more deliberate, analysis of very particular areas. But yeah, like, you know, you are not at all required to memorize these people. It's just like history is extremely complicated, particularly this period of dynastic struggles of politics where frigging everyone is important. So, so yeah, just keep the kind of the places and the sort of trends in mind. The only people you really need to remember are the Hapsburgs and maybe the House of Valois.

but that's you know and then and the the papacy but that's not a dynastic position um so yeah that's that's pretty much all you need to understand um this will trust us next episode this will next episode we will focus a lot more on spain itself and how all the kind of the pieces sort of came together all at once um for the creation of what we now understand is the spanish empire um but yeah i mean that's pretty much it. Awesome. Let's, let's end it right there. What do you have to plug?

The old glory club. That's it. The old glory club. I was going to, I was going to take down my account and retire my account and this is going to be the last thing I ever did.

I hope this is like my sort of my master work of content is this series. I'm going to put the most effort in this series of anything I've ever really done content-wise. But honestly, like, With the way things are going now, I'm going to stick around. So you don't need to worry about me.

Just support the old glory club. All right. I appreciate it. Until the next episode, thank you very much. Take care, Pete.