Századok – 2018
2018 / 5. szám - HADÜGYI FORRADALOM – FISKÁLIS ÁLLAM – FISKÁLIS-KATONAI ÁLLAM EURÓPÁBAN A 16–18. SZÁZADBAN - Korpás Zoltán: A fiskális-katonai állam és a Katolikus Monarchia a 16–17. században
A FISKÁLIS-KATONAI ÁLLAM ÉS A KATOLIKUS MONARCHIA A 16–17. SZÁZADBAN 1012 THE FISCAL-MILITARY STATE AND THE CATHOLIC MONARCHY IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES by Zoltán Korpás SUMMARY The study aims to present the effects of debates around the military revolution and the fiscalmilitary state on Spanish historiography. As regards the problem of military revolution, it stresses that while Spanish military changes were among the most influential in the period, these received limited attention from a mostly Anglo-Saxon historiography. Alongside an examination of the emergence of standing land armies, the study also deals with the appearance of the first oceanic and Mediterranean war fleets, and of the first standing units of sea forces. Under the rule of the Habsburgs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Catholic Monarchy can be regarded as the first global power in world history and one which, from the perspective of its organisation, was a composite, multi-centred dynastic state. Due to its fragmentation, heterogeneity and geographical reach, the empire constituted, within and outside Europe, a peculiar mixture, the maintenance of which required immense economic efforts. The paper, consequently, analyses the income and expenses of the Catholic Monarchy, the credit system that made the financing of war possible, and also the long-term detrimental effects of loose and consolidated state debt and of the heavy burden of interest attached to them. Since the Catholic Monarchy went through a series of fiscal crises referred to as state bankruptcy between 1556 and 1700, the paper examines in detail the background to the individual suspensions of payment.
