Crown of Castile

The kingdom that ended up being Spain, largely because it had the population and the wool. Castile emerged as a county of Leon and became a kingdom in the eleventh century, expanding south through the Reconquista and absorbing Leon permanently in 1230 under Ferdinand III, who took Cordoba and Seville. Its economy rested on the Mesta, a sheepowners' guild with royal privileges to drive enormous flocks across the peninsula on protected routes, which produced merino wool for Flanders and gave the crown a reliable tax base - and discouraged arable farming for centuries. Castilian towns held representation in the Cortes early, and the language of the kingdom became the language now called Spanish. Isabella's marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469 joined the crowns dynastically without merging them, and the conquest of Granada in 1492 completed the Reconquista. Because Columbus sailed under Castilian authority, the American empire was legally Castile's rather than Spain's, and Aragonese subjects were formally excluded from it. The Comuneros revolt of 1520 against Charles V was crushed. Toledo and then Madrid served as its centres. The crown covered roughly two-thirds of the Iberian peninsula by the fifteenth century. Its Cortes included town representatives from the twelfth century. The Mesta's sheep drives followed protected routes called canadas, some still legally recognised. Castilian gave rise to the language spoken by around half a billion people. Seville held the monopoly on American trade for two centuries. Castilian sheep numbered in the millions at the Mesta's height, and exporting merino rams was a capital offence.

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