The South Pays for the North: Financing the Thirty Years' War from Naples, 1622-1644

Abstract

This paper examines the severe fiscal offensive which the Spanish Monarchy unleashed in the Kingdom of Naples during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). Though the war was fought far from its borders, Naples was burdened with a whole range of new fiscal measures designed to aid the wareffort in Northern Europe and to protect the state of Milan from the contingencies of war. This paper provides a quantitative analysis of that burden. It uses archival fiscal documents to examine the various expedients Spain used to finance its designs and to plot their incidence from 1622 to1644.