Introduction

Modern Spain was originally composed of a number of independent kingdoms and it was not united until 1479 when both Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand ascended to their thrones. Their marriage in 1469 joined together the royal houses of the Kingdom of Castile and the Kingdom of Aragon. Although Isabella was crowned queen of Castile in 1474 she had to fight a civil war to secure her throne. The entire kingdom finally came under her control in 1479. That same year, 1479, Ferdinand's father King John II of Aragon died and the couple became the joint sovereigns of Aragon and Castile. Imperial Spain was born from this "Union of the Crowns." This union was regarded as a union of equals although each kingdom preserved its own social, political, and economic realities according to its own unique history. Aragon was an empire in decline while Castile's star was just beginning to rise under its energetic young queen. Isabella was a devout Christian and this religious conviction motivated her fanatic campaign to expel the Moors and Jews from Iberian and spread Christianity to the rest of the world. Ferdinand, on the other hand, focused on Aragon's Italian possessions and a series of royal marriages with the other royal houses of Europe. Through Isabella and Ferdinand these two kingdoms would share the same foreign policy and become partners instead of rivals.

Castile

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Unlike the other Iberian kingdoms, Castile was the most landlocked and insulated from foreign influence. As a result, Castilian society had kept the legacy of the proceeding centuries more alive than their neighbours in Aragon or Portugal. This inheritance included a Castilian militancy that firmly believed that expansion meant conquest. This idea had evolved over the 700-year Reconquista struggle with the Moors.

At the top of the Castilian social hierarchy were a few great families, the grandees, who had gained control over the majority of the land taken from the Moors. These great families combined with the magnates of the lesser nobility to represent the 3 per cent of the population that owned 48 per cent of the land in Castile, leaving the remaining land divided between the Crown and the Church. This pattern of land distribution created a immensely wealthy class of Castilian aristocracy who exercised a great deal of political power, so much so that during the opening years of the fifteenth century the Castilian kings had become pawns in their hands. Politically the kingdom was in turmoil until Queen Isabella's victory in the civil war of 1474-1479.

Once Isabella had firmly pacified the country, she and Ferdinand began curbing the power of the aristocracy by centralising their government and expanding their judicial system. These actions placed the Crown in the position of being able to tap into Castile's invigorated economic growth created by its expanding wool trade. Under Isabella and Ferdinand's leadership Castile could now devote more of its resources towards overseas expansion.

House of Castile's Genealogy

Aragon

Aragon was a federation of highly independent provinces that were each administered by a Cortes in the absence of the king who could not directly administer such a diverse empire. Aragon's great magnates, the nobility of the Crown of Aragon could not compare in territorial wealth with its Castilian counterpart. The real masters of the land were the bourgeoisie who dominated the kingdom's economic life. Unlike Castile, Aragon was primarily a commercial empire whose prosperity was founded on the success of its active port cites. Cities like Barcelona who played a pivotal role in the Mediterranean economy by producing the famous Mediterranean maritime code, the "Libre del Consolat de Mar".

Aragon had a rich and energetic urban patriciate with extensive overseas commercial interests who believed in a contractual relationship between the king and his subjects. So powerful was this group that as early as 1283 their Cortes had won legislative powers where laws could only be made or repealed by mutual consent of the king and the Cortes. This system functioned successfully until the civil war of 1462-1472. This was the first instance of struggle between the king and the urban patriciate. It was precipitated by a number of grave social and economic problems. Foremost of these was Aragon's failure to meet the mercantile challenge of the Italians over the southern European shipping trade. Combined with the marauding French armies on its northern border, the kingdom was an empire in decline both internally and externally. Castile took advantage of this weakness and dominated the union of kingdoms but Aragon would bring its wealth in administrative experience and its skill in the techniques of diplomacy and government that would prove to be invaluable once the Spanish Empire began to expand.

House of Aragon's Genealogy

Isabella & Ferdinand: Consolidating their power

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Isabella and Ferdinand decided that the "Union of Crowns" would be one of equals in theory if not in actual fact. Castile was the larger and stronger of the two nations and would dominate the foreign policy of both but Ferdinand was very much a full partner with his queen. Each of the kingdoms' political, social, and economic institutions remained autonomous from one another opting for a loose confederation between the two. The monarchy was reformed to favour a strong centralised government aided by a single judicial system firmly under the Crown's control.

This stabilised the monarchy's authority enough that it could focus on the completion of the reconquista. Ferdinand led the united forces of Aragon and Castile to triumph thanks to his military and diplomatic prowess. He and Isabella walked together in victory through the gates of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Iberian 1492. To Isabella this was a very important demonstration of her very strict Catholic faith and inspired the beginning of the Spanish Inquistion. The results included the expulsion of Muslims from the peninsula and the expulsion of Jews from her kingdoms in order to created a homogeneous population of Christians. That same year, 1492, Isabella sponsored an expedition by Christopher Columbus that located America and signalled the beginning of a new era for Imperial Spain.

Biography of Isabella I 

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