The first Bourbons

Los primeros Borbones

1700–1808. Philip V, grandson of Louis XIV, kept the Spanish throne after the War of Succession but lost Spain's European possessions and Gibraltar at Utrecht in 1713,…

What happened

Philip V, grandson of Louis XIV, kept the Spanish throne after the War of Succession but lost Spain's European possessions and Gibraltar at Utrecht in 1713, and abolished the separate institutions of the Crown of Aragon. The Bourbon kings, above all Charles III (1759–88), tried to govern the empire more tightly: visitas, new viceroyalties in New Granada and the Río de la Plata, intendants, the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 and 'free trade' within the empire in 1778. The reforms raised revenue but also resentment among American-born Spaniards, and the British capture of Havana in 1762 showed how exposed the empire was. The period ends with Napoleon's invasion in 1808.

Its events

1. 1767: Charles III expels the Jesuits

Sources

1. War of the Spanish Succession — World History Encyclopedia
2. Las reformas borbónicas en la Nueva España I (ficha de clase) — Secretaría de Educación Pública (México), Nueva Escuela Mexicana
3. About the Gálvez Visita — LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin
4. El virreinato del Río de la Plata (Cuadernos Monográficos del Instituto de Historia y Cultura Naval, 40) — Armada Española, Ministerio de Defensa