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The Habsburg dynasty in Spain came to an end with the death of Charles II in 1700 and his replacement by Philip V, the teenage grandson of Louis XIV of France and founder of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain. The transition was complicated by the continent-spanning War of Spanish Succession (1702-1714), which provided an opportunity for the transformation and renewal of the Spanish state. Forging Faithful Subjects traces the Habsburg precedents for these reforms, the dynamic transition in the crucible of war, and the governing strategies through which Philip established remarkably durable nondemocratic politics in the changing world of the Age of Enlightenment.

In this innovative study of dynastic change, Phillip D. Fox challenges conventional accounts of Spanish political history and European state formation. Philip V's experience of the war and sense of betrayal by the Catalans and others drove him to cultivate loyalty in his subjects, while the monarch's sensitivity to his subjects' interests led him to balance royal control with local privilege, sometimes choosing to preserve administrative complexity rather than impose simpler centralizing reforms. These decisions paradoxically enabled Philip to secure his family's rule, increase royal resources, and recover some of the territory lost in the War of Spanish Succession.

By showing how dynastic concerns inspired such flexible strategies of governing and patronage, Forging Faithful Subjects reveals new approaches to the study of early modern state formation and the administration of empires. Fox's accessible narrative account of an often-neglected period draws on political, social, and economic history to make a groundbreaking argument demonstrating the logic behind European and Atlantic state formation during the long eighteenth century.