Aristocratic Power in the Spanish Monarchy

Abstract Aristocratic Power in the Spanish Monarchy uses the Borromeo family from Milan as a lens through which to study the transformation of aristocratic power in the composite Spanish monarchy of the seventeenth century. It details the Borromeos’ growing entanglement with the Spanish monarchy in the seventeenth century and the ways in which this Milanese family negotiated that transition. In Italy, the Borromeos have long been held up as a rare example of paternalist aristocrats who withstood the temptations of self-enrichment so many of their peers fell for. This monograph challenges this myth and explains how it came about. Based on research in the previously inaccessible Borromeo private papers, the volume charts the family’s increasing involvement with, and dependence on, the patronage of the Spanish crown over the course of the seventeenth century. At the center of the analysis are the ways in which this representative family sought to rationalize and conceal this rapprochement in the face of popular opposition to their pay-to-play. As their self-seeking behavior came under scrutiny, the erstwhile clients of successive minister-favorites reinvented themselves as courtiers committed to delivering good governance for the subject populations who had contested their rule. The book offers new answers to old questions: through a case study of a representative noble family, it explains a major shift in aristocratic power in the seventeenth century, uncovering how dissimulation and subterfuge became central to the preservation of social privilege in an age of unprecedented threats to established power from below.