Crown of Aragon
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The Crown of Aragon controlled a large portion of present-day Spain in the later Middle Ages, as well as possessions stretching across the Mediterranean as far as Greece.
The regime began in 1137, when the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona merged by dynastic union into what was to be known as the "Crown of Aragon". It lasted through 1479, when a new dynastic union merged the Crown of Aragón with the Crown of Castile, thus marking the dawn of the Spanish state.
The Crown of Aragon eventually included the Land of Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Sicily and Sardinia, and for a brief period, Provence, the Kingdom of Naples and the Duchy of Neopatria.
The leading economic centres of this empire were Barcelona and Valencia, both ports. Another political centre was Zaragoza, where kings were crowned in the Seo Cathedral. Palma de Mallorca was an additional important city and seaport.
The Crown of Aragon has been called a Mediterranean empire, ruling the Mediterranean Sea and setting rules for the entire sea (for instance, in the Llibre del Consolat del Mar or Consulate of the Sea, a compilation of maritime law in the Catalan language). At its height it was a major powers in Europe and especially the Mediterranean. However, its territories were only loosely connected, in a manner that does not match well with the traditional idea of empire. A contemporary, the Marqués de Lozoya [1] described the Crown of Aragón more like a confederacy than a centralized Kingdom, let alone an empire. Nor did official documents ever refer to it as an empire (Imperium or any cognate word): instead, it was considered a dynastic union of separate kingdoms.
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[edit] Context
The countries that we now know as Spain and Portugal spent the Middle Ages after 722 in an intermittent struggle called the Reconquista. This struggle pitted the northern Christian kingdoms against the Islamic kingdoms of the South and against each other.
In the Late Middle Ages, the Aragonese expansion southwards met with the Castilian advance eastward in the region of Murcia. Afterward, the Aragonese empire focused on the Mediterranean, acting as far as Greece and Barbary, whereas Portugal, which completed its Reconquista in 1272, focused on the Atlantic Ocean. Aragonese mercenaries known as almogàvers participated in the creation of this Mediterranean "empire", and later found employment in countries all across southern Europe.
[edit] History
The union of the territories of the County of Barcelona and the Kingdom of Aragon was brought by the 1137 marriage of Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona and Petronila of Aragon. The resulting new kingdom came to be known as the Crown of Aragón. The son of Ramón Berenguer IV and Petronila, Alfonso II, inherited both the titles of Count of Barcelona and King of Aragón, in a style that would be maintained by all its successors to the crown. Thus, this union was made while respecting the existing institutions and parliaments of both territories.
King James I (13th century) started the era of expansion, by conquering and incorporating Majorca and a good part of the Land of Valencia to the Crown. Valencia was made a new kingdom with its own institutions, and so was the third member of the crown. Majorca, together with the counties of Cerdanya and Roussillon and the city of Montpellier, were given to his son James and were named Kingdom of Majorca, but these territories were reincorporated later, in 1349.
The fact that the King was keen on settling new kingdoms instead of merely expanding the existing kingdoms was a part of a power struggle that pitted the interests of the king against those of the existing nobility. This process was also in under way in most of the European states that successfully transitioned from the medieval era to what was to be called the modern state (see modern era). Thus, the new territories gained from the Moors (namely Valencia and Majorca) were usually given fueros (in Catalan furs) as an instrument of self-government in order to limit the power of nobility in these new acquisitions and, at the same time, increase their allegiance to the monarchy proper. The trend in the neighbouring kingdom of Castile was similar, both kingdoms giving impetus to the Reconquista by granting self-government either to cities or territories, instead of placing the new territories under the rule of nobility.
Expansion through the Mediterranean also continued (Sicily, Minorca, Sardinia). In 1443, the Kingdom of Naples was conquered. Outside of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands, the kingdoms were ruled by proxy through local elites as petty kingdoms, rather than subjected directly to a centralized government. They were more an economic part of the Crown of Aragón than a political one.
In 1410, King Martin I died without surviving descendants. As a result, by the Pact of Caspe, Ferdinand of Antequera from the Castilian dynasty of Trastamara, received the Crown of Aragon as Ferdinand I of Aragon.
Later, his grandson King Ferdinand II of Aragón recovered the northern Catalan counties (Roussillon) which had been lost to France and also the kingdom of Navarre, which had recently joined the Crown of Aragón but had been lost after internal dynastic disputes.
Ferdinand married Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1479; restrospecively, this is seen as the dawn of the Spanish kingdom. However, at that point both the Castile and the Crown of Aragon remained distinct territories, each keeping its own traditional institutions, Parliaments and laws.
The Crown of Aragon and its institutions were abolished only after the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713) by the Nueva Planta decrees, under which all its lands were incorporated, as provinces, into a united Spanish administration, as Spain moved towards a centralized government under the new Bourbon dynasty.
[edit] See also
- Black Legend
- Catalan Company
- Union of Aragon
- Catalan Countries
- House of Barcelona
- Compromise of Caspe
- Kings of Spain family tree
- List of Aragonese monarchs
- List of Counts of Barcelona
- Naples
- Palermo
- Sicilian Vespers
- Sicily
- Spanish Empire
[edit] References
- ^ Marqués de Lozoya, Tomo Segundo de Historia de España, Salvat, ed. of 1952, page 60: "El Reino de Aragón, el Principado de Cataluña, el Reino de Valencia y el Reino de Mallorca, constituyen una confederación de Estados".
