Treaty of Utrecht
The Peace of Utrecht ended the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713 and established the balance of power as a principle of European treaty law. The war had been fought for thirteen years to prevent France and Spain uniting under one Bourbon king. Charles II of Spain had died childless in 1700 leaving everything to Louis XIV's grandson, and Louis had accepted for him and then compounded it by asserting the boy's continuing rights to the French throne. The settlement let Philip V keep Spain and its American empire on condition that he renounce the French succession for himself and his descendants — the crowns to be separate in perpetuity, which is the provision the whole war was about. The Spanish possessions in Europe were distributed: the Netherlands, Milan, Naples and Sardinia to Austria, Sicily to Savoy. Britain took Gibraltar and Minorca, Newfoundland, Acadia and Hudson Bay from France, and the asiento — the contract to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish America — for thirty years. The Dutch got a barrier of fortresses and, having borne enormous costs, very little else; they ceased to be a first-rank power. The treaties are the first to state the balance of power as their object in terms, and the phrase entered the vocabulary of diplomacy from here. Spain has disputed the Gibraltar cession ever since, and the article is still cited in the argument. Louis XIV died two years later leaving France exhausted and two billion livres in debt. The Bourbons still reign in Spain, and never in France.
- Year: 1713 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
