Challenge: Spain as the dominant superpower

The reasons are both economical and political. Pobably keeping the Hapsburg out of the throne of Spain would be the first condition. Probably a Trastamara-Avis Spain (including Portugal), more centered in overseas enterprises and less in European wars could survive as a Superpower. XVI century Spain had great economists and jursits (The School of Salamanca) that could have led to a more liberal system. They settled the basis of modern economy and internacional Rights (the laws of Indias were the first legislation to limitate children labour three centuries before any legislation did in Britain or France!) and their banking system was quite modern (until it was destroyed by the Hapsburgs).
France, England or the Holy Roman Emperor could look at an isolationist Spain as an sleeping giant nobody wanted to wake and everybody courted.
 
Spain was a dominant power for a long time, but a good early point of diversion can easily be during Moorish rule, rather than losing rights with time and incentives encouraging conversion to Islam, the groundwork can be laid with continued tolerance from early years, allowing future tolerance of all religions as reconquismo is achieved based on other factors such as freedom and reduced taxation without the same religious dimension. Also a Spain could then be more lenient towards interest and welcome regions with more tolerance.

The school of salamanca could have been a good start towards a solution of inflation and what would later be called Dutch disease, as natural resources are not an adequate basis for sustained wealth without advanced resource management techniques, such as sovereign wealth funds.

Besides the end of its economic reign without leading in a merchant and entrepeneurial industrialist middle class, Spain also faced a military decline stemming in part from its failure to keep up technologically and financially.

For fun, a what if: what if France and Spain had indeed united?

Similar solutions including financial acumen and heeding solutions to problems laid out by its educational institutions. Education, investment, technology, and financial management remain key.
 
The simple solution is the removal of the Catholic church, I'm sure there are a few PODs that could be worked.

EDIT: Also, as Grey Wolf had mentioned, the influx of magnanimous amounts of unregulated bullion totally inflated the Spanish economy, and by Philip III there was really to hope for Spain. Another bad thing for Spain because of this is that they bought basically all of their commodities and equipment from other countries since they had the excess wealth to do so, thereby strengthening competing economies while failing to support a home-grown middle/merchant class and industrial base, which was already strangled by the Catholic Church.

How exactly was the Catholic Church strangling the country's middle-class and industrial base?

EDIT: Ah, #3 on your list.
 

elkarlo

Banned
Have a more federal system. Let people from Milan, Barcelona, and even Portugal rise up in the govt.

This could open up the new world to more colonists, who may colonize on a more British style. Which is much more sustainable in the long run.

I think walking away from the Netherlands would be great. Less wars with France, and no war with England. Plus this would put Belgium as something for those 3 powers to fight over, instead of fighting Spain over/about.
 
I think we can agree that having an industrial revolution before England and using what they had better would have been a key condition for maintaining their earlier dominance (militarily, economically, territorially). I think financial management and investment in technologies are at the center of it all. Why invest in huge slow ships in the armada versus slight naval increase and naval techs and methods such as the convoy?
 
Another solution would be that Emperor Maximilian and King Ferdinand require Charles V to keep the Hapsburg and the Trastamara inheritances completely separate. In other words, Philip just gets Spain while Ferdinand gets the Valos lands in addition to the holdings inherited from Maximilian. This arrangement would help to keep Spain out of its costly European wars encouraging the new world gold to be spent in Spain.
 
How would we solve the problem that the Trastamara where inbreeding themselves to death, they had had so many marriages between cousins that it was near miraculous that they managed to produce two sane and healthy children to then marry to each other they where of course first cousins. That kind of inbreeding is going to cause problems in the long run if its not fixed.
 
How would we solve the problem that the Trastamara where inbreeding themselves to death, they had had so many marriages between cousins that it was near miraculous that they managed to produce two sane and healthy children to then marry to each other they where of course first cousins. That kind of inbreeding is going to cause problems in the long run if its not fixed.

Have their personal confessor stress the sin of incest to a couple of kings so that the Trastamara or Hapsburg king decides that letting a small portion of the family inheritance leave the main line is better than risking their eternal damnation.
 
Many here are not taking into account the massive exodus of men to the new world. I could see an Empire of New Spain, if the crown moved to the new world, then this could happen. Think of Dom Pedro's Brazilian empire, bigger.
 
Many here are not taking into account the massive exodus of men to the new world. I could see an Empire of New Spain, if the crown moved to the new world, then this could happen. Think of Dom Pedro's Brazilian empire, bigger.

Populations can be helpful, but werent there also returning migrants and immigrants and didn't England also handle without significant issue the fact that there was emigration to its colonies in America and otherwise. A real issue to consider though, like a "brain drain." I look forward to hearing about what more issues involved, also about differences from the British example. I believe along with such an issue as population there was still the dominant factor of the industrial revolution occurring first in Britain.
 
Populations can be helpful, but werent there also returning migrants and immigrants and didn't England also handle without significant issue the fact that there was emigration to its colonies in America and otherwise. A real issue to consider though, like a "brain drain." I look forward to hearing about what more issues involved, also about differences from the British example. I believe along with such an issue as population there was still the dominant factor of the industrial revolution occurring first in Britain.


Well, capital on its own means nothing without the labor power to actually work at it (with it, through it, whatevz). A victory for the invinsible armada seems like the obvious POV, but what if the only way for Spain to really take over everything was for it to even more monumentally crushed. This sounds stupid, and maybe it is, but what if Spanish commanders kept making huge blunders, or maybe just one big stinker, that opened up an opportunity for the rest of Europe to invade Spain? Then maybe the court would run to the Americas. Or better yet, they don't make it or decide to stay and negotiate, but this opens up an earlier opportunity for American colonial landowners and middle class to form an independent kingdom. Maybe the original bolivarian trans-colonial ideal takes place and most of south America is united under one Kingdom of New Spain.
To aid things, let's say that for some reason the Alhambra decree ordered jews and Muslims to go to the new world.
 
Actually, inflation was only part of Spain's problem. When the whole of the Hapsburg money making machine is looked at, Spain was one of the most profitable parts of it. The problem for Spain was that its tax money, rather then being spent on its own improvement, went on fighting expensive and largely futile wars elsewhere in Europe, like the Netherlands. Perhaps if that money had been spent differently, Spain could have gotten much more reward for it.

Nevertheless, to get it as a superpower, its going to need to bind those American colonies much more closely too it. Maybe some more expansion in Asia would be a good idea, which could be facilitated by a more successful Spanish-Portuguese union, but I don't know what the chances for that is.

Actually, successful suppression of Elizabethean England would probably have gone hand in hand with contemporary victory in reconquering the whole of the Netherlands. The most plausible scenario I've seen for Spanish victory in England was put forth by Garret Mattingly in his book The Armada, from the letters of Duke Parma, who was running the war in the Netherlands. He wanted King Philip to give him the funds he was about to "invest" in the Armada; Parma argued that with that additional level of support, he could make short work of the rest of the Netherlands, then from there move across the Channel to Britain. We can never know if he was right but he was canny and with the resources he had, quite successful. Certainly the Dutch were England's allies, and their seapower along with England's was a huge factor in Spain's defeat. (It wasn't that the Dutch actually engaged the Armada, but everyone on both sides knew they were there, very strong and competent in the Channel waters; had that not been the case because their ports were under Hapsburg control, and still more if a certain amount of Dutch seapower were serving the new restored regime on the other side from OTL, things would clearly have been quite different and much grimmer for Elizabeth).

OTL one reason Philip wanted to attack England in the first place was that the English were aiding the Dutch rebellion and conventional wisdom was that no amount of Hapsburg power on land could quash it without eliminating English help; Parma begged to differ but was overruled.

The Armada was a problematic enterprise in many ways; the sheer distance and hence long time cycles of mustering the fleet and sending it out worked against them because the crews, supplies, and ships were all somewhat deteriorated. (An earlier raid by Drake on Spanish ports contributed to their problems, by depriving the fleet of good wood for making water casks with). Had it been launched from much closer ports, with the Dutch allied navy eliminated as a factor (and most likely, drawn in on the Spanish side to some extent) its chances would be better. OTL the purpose of the Armada was in fact to shield and open a path for an amphibious invasion by Parma from the Lowlands; in the event, Parma had neither suitable ships nor a decent port to embark from, even if he could have afforded to turn his back on the unsettled situation on the Continent. So even had it prevailed at sea, the result would have been abortive--English power would be cracked, its pride badly bruised, but the island would not have fallen, unless a popular pro-Catholic rebellion were thus triggered and successful. With a strong force under the command of someone like Parma landed safely on English shores, the latter might have been plausible enough; without it, or with that force much weaker than Parma would have liked, it's much more dubious though evidently Philip and his supporters hoped for it anyway.

A weak part of Parma's version of the plan was that even with a relatively short passage and at the very least, the elimination of the Dutch as enemies at sea, even a pretty big invasion fleet would have, as eventual OTL events proved, suffered from the technical superiority of English cannon, which had longer range. This was no accident, it was a considered policy of Elizabeth's naval men to develop it. As a policy, word of it surely leaked to Spanish espionage and they knew it was a problem they were going to face. I'm not at home right now and I can't repeat a fine passage Mattingly quoted, of a Spanish naval officer explaining to a papal nuncio that they sailed in "devout hope of a miracle." Because he understood in advance the advantages English firepower would bring them, you see.

Well then, it is possible that with the Dutch subdued and some of them coming over to the Hapsburg service, they too could have mastered longer-range guns, or that Parma would see to it that someone on his side developed the things and supplied them. Or that, accepting they could not match the English in this respect, they devised tactics, possibly very costly ones, to bull through and land the troops anyway. If Parma could get a strong force on English soil without being distracted by unsettled accounts in the Netherlands, it is quite plausible he could indeed raise the anti-Elizabethian rebellion he and various exiled English allies of Philip hoped for, and drive the "English Jezebel" out of London and possibly catch and kill her.

Such a Hapsburg victory, if its long-range results were at very least the neutralization of England as a rival (even if England later slipped out of the dynasty's grasp) and the retention of the whole Netherlands as integral Hapsburg territory, might well lay the groundwork for a Spain that simply remains on top.

I am dubious, thinking that if history teaches us anything, it is that "the times, they are a-changing" and "the slow one now will later be fast;" that victory tends to lead to complacency, that the opportunism of the up-and-coming second or third rate powers of one generation leads to them being the triumphal leaders two or three down the line while the old powers inevitably decline. This could be seen in moralistic terms as suggested above, or simply in terms of blind Darwinian opportunity--strategies that work in some circumstances might not be optimal in others and there is a certain amount of blind luck involved.

Certainly being currently on top gives certain inherent advantages; of inertia at the very least, and a sheer mass of resources, including established connections. It would seem, from the revolving door of Great Powers we observe, that these advantages are never sufficient and the rising new powers eat the lunch of the old order consistently.

So any sort of Spain as first-rate power in 1900 scenario means either bucking this trend with the Hapsburgs or some orderly successor dynasty/regime improbably having some combination of better wisdom or better luck than is the usual lot of an established power, or a new Spain rising like a phoenix from the ashes of old Spain. The latter I think is very improbable, as Spain shorn of its vast colonial empire and connections to the larger Hapsburg continental one doesn't have a lot of inherent advantages to let it pull ahead from a low place past likely successors to its first empire.

So unlikely as I judge it, a Hapsburg-wank, one where the sprawling dynastic realm sees itself as still centered on Spain and not some other department such as Austria or a Hapsburgized Lowlands, seems less of a long shot than a New Spain.

So now, if we take the "Parma gets his way and wins" scenario as the POD, there are still many dangerous waters ahead. Spain might wind up circa 1900 being the prevailing power in a Europe culturally and socially and technologically stunted compared to OTL, an arch-reactionary scenario. Frankly I doubt that; it seems that if the Hapsburgs based in Madrid cannot learn to tame and master the horse of rising European capitalism, it will throw them, as OTL. Therefore we have to figure that somehow, the regime is enlightened enough to foster and guide capitalist development rather than suppress or passively frustrate it. If they are wise enough to let this kind of thing happen in the Netherlands and what parts of Germany and Italy they hold sway over, they probably will see the wisdom of furthering it in Spain itself as well, and in their colonial empire overseas.

If they can do that, I don't see what stops them from eventually gaining full hegemony over all of Europe and all its colonies, and from that basis, by 1900, the world, as a universal Catholic Empire.

One which might well, to be sure, tolerate a certain amount of religious diversity. For Parma to succeed in holding down the Netherlands, he'd have to come to some understanding with the Protestant establishment there. Building on that experience, some sort of accommodation of dissent in Britain might also persist and become traditional; from there, a policy of working with non-Christian establishments in American "pagan" territory and facing Muslim, Hindu, Chinese, and other Asian holdings would serve them well.

But I'd expect that it would be in name and principle at least as Roman Catholic as the British Empire was Anglican; eventually people of very different belief, even atheists, could find an honored and safe prestigious place, but the key to complete success would be to pay at least lip service to the Papacy. Which the regime would have a lot of control over to be sure!
 
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