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Abstract

This article provides a reappraisal of the political and intellectual uses of the memory of the rump Habsburg Monarchy in eighteenth-century Spain. Drawing on newly discovered archival material, this article recovers the impact of Habsburg Spain on the political imaginary of early eighteenth-century Spanish reformers and political economists, and unearths the legal debates of the 1741 Imperial Diet Election concerning Philip V’s claim to the Austrian Habsburg throne. This reconsideration sheds light on the origins of the early Spanish Enlightenment, and emphasises the centrality of the debates of those political economists, jurists, ministers, who propelled Enlightenment reforms in early eighteenth-century Spain.