I don't understand the fascination with reviving Aragon post-1700. Any ideas as to its plausibility or lack thereof?
Reviving the crown of Aragon would have been a possibility for Catalonia should it ever have gained its independence at the inception of the age of nationalism. I think it would have to have occurred closer to 1700 - before the idea of the nation-state became firmly established in European politics.
Generally, this POD requires a weaker Castile/Spain - and to an extent a weak France as well.
Of course, but Catalonia is not Aragon and vice versa.![]()
I don't understand the fascination with reviving Aragon post-1700. Any ideas as to its plausibility or lack thereof?
I don't understand the fascination with reviving Aragon post-1700. Any ideas as to its plausibility or lack thereof?
Being a self-proclaimed expert on Aragon because I love it so much (I'm even trying to start a uchronie with centred on Aragon), I'd say that Aragon doesn't have a chance to resurrect itself after the Nueva Planta Decrees and it would need a far back PoD to become Iberia's dominant power.
Aragon, not including its Italian possessions, I reckon, was always at a population disadvantage. By I believe 1400, Aragon had 1 million people in its lands, Castile had four million (the year might be wrong, but the population-statistics are not). Aragon looked to expand beyond Iberia, and it did, but the Bishops o' Rome absolutely hated that the Aragonese had claims to Sicily and Naples; they really had a lot of disadvantages as you can see. Anyway, that's off-topic, back to the topic in-question...
The Castilians loved to impose their language on Aragon and slowly assimilate Aragon into greater-Castile. The Nueva Planta Decrees were the death-knell that summoned Aragon to Heaven or Hell; they now made it mandatory for all governmental decrees and the like to be published in Castilian and Castilian only. Now, should the rebels who fought for Archduke Charles succeed, then maybe the Jewel of Iberia has a chance to survive.
I would like to add, however, that it'd be easy to keep Aragon and Castile apart. Isabella's father wanted her to marry either Alfonso V of Portugal or the King of France to unite Castile with either of the two very powerful countries. When Isabella expressed her desire to wed Ferdinand of Aragon, her father was horrified and shipped off to a monastery to have a shotgun-wedding with Alfonso V of Portugal, about 19 years her senior. She was a feisty one and when she made it clear there wasn't a chance in Hell that she'd marry the King of Portugal, her father gave up and let her marry Ferdinand. Just have Isabella be forced into marrying Alfonso or perhaps to Charles, Duke of Berry, and you can continue the Crown of Aragon like I plan to do in my uchronie.
And then there's Endymion's TL, where Aragon stays separate because Ferdinand II had a son with Germaine of Foix...
If you're talking about my TL or Decades of Darkness, really it's just a convenient way to carve up Spain if it loses a war badly or ends up in some other awkward situation. The plausibility isn't really that important, it's like saying East Germany isn't a viable nation state. No, it isn't, but that didn't stop it existing at gunpoint.