Razón de Estado y cultura política en la monarquía de los Austrias

A very relevant part of the treatises on politics published in the Hispanic kingdoms during the time of the Habsburgs was devoted to the education of the princes. The main contributions of Spanish political theory of the 16th and 17th centuries were poured into them, without having to wait for Machiavellian, Bodinian or Boterian formulations. They shaped the Hispanic political culture of Modernity by combining theory and pragmatics of power, providentialism, political virtue and realism. Through powerful rhetorical topics, together with historiographical works, visual arts and theater, they formed a dynastic story and a discourse on the moralized exercise of government that served for the expansive phases under the rubric of conservation and increase of the monarchy, and for decline in the form of restoration of Spain. They found in the reason of State a better mechanism than the subterfuge of dissimulation to explain the exorbitant prerogatives required by the government of kingdoms with a colossal geographic extension and notable institutional complexity in a composite monarchy with a polysynodal system. And they did, on many occasions from the pen of extraordinary thinkers, to offer clearly their own solutions to problems of an unstable world in constant competition for continental hegemony.