The subject of this special issue is the relationship between the material demands of warfare and the political and administrative development of the Spanish imperial system during the long eighteenth century. Its purpose is to provide a transnational and comparative perspective on the methods employed by the Spanish monarchy to mobilise resources for war, emphasising the international, imperial and inter-regional connections that underpinned Spain’s military and naval efforts. These methods implied specific types of involvement between the crown and the regional productive elites and were directly related to the capacity of the latter to mobilise resources and administer production processes. They were varied, ranging from total state administration of capital, labour and productive processes to an almost complete and relatively independent involvement of the empire’s entrepreneurial elites, in Europe, America and Asia. The introduction by the guest editors positions the four contributions to this special issue within the wider context of the historiography on the mobilisation of resources for war. In recent years, scholars in this field have started to shift their attention from a primary focus on the development of ‘fiscal-military’ and ‘fiscal-naval’ arrangements that provided the financial backbone of states’ warring activities, to the wider economic and social networks involved in supplying, recruiting, building and maintaining armies and navies. As the introduction argues, these networks, underpinning the emergence of European national states, were always inherently transnational.

本期专刊的主题是战争的物质需求与18世纪漫长的西班牙帝国体系的政治和行政发展之间的关系。其目的是为西班牙君主制调动战争资源所采用的方法提供跨国和比较性的观点，强调强调西班牙军事和海军努力的国际，帝国和区域间联系。这些方法隐含着官方与区域生产精英之间特定的参与类型，并直接与后者调动资源和管理生产过程的能力有关。它们的范围很广，从国家资本管理总局，劳力和生产过程，使欧洲，美洲和亚洲的帝国企业家精英几乎完全独立地参与其中。客座编辑的引言将这一特殊问题的四项贡献放在有关动员战争资源的史学的广泛背景下。近年来，该领域的学者开始将注意力从最初的重点转移到发展“财政—军事”和“财政—海军”安排上，这些安排为国家交战活动提供了金融支柱，而转移到更广泛的经济和社会领域。涉及供应，招募，建设和维护军队和海军的社交网络。正如导言所言，这些支持欧洲民族国家崛起的网络始终固有地是跨国的。