Institutionalizing distrust: the role of personality and measures to control the governors general in the early modern (Southern) Netherlands

This paper focuses on how the personality of the representatives of the early modern monarchs in Brussels determined their sphere of action, and on the measures taken to counteract too independently acting representatives. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the (Southern) Netherlands formed part of the Spanish composite Monarchy. After the Peace of Utrecht (1713), they were allocated to the Austrian state. Thus, these provinces were consecutively reigned from Madrid and Vienna. The monarchs only very rarely visited the remote Netherlands. They were permanently represented in Brussels by a governor or governess general. These royal alter egos were equipped with instructions so as not to deviate from higher lines of policy. However, because of the long distance from the centre of the monarchy to Brussels and the difficulties with passing on information on time, their actual sphere of action heavily depended on their personality. Independently acting governors proved difficult to control from Madrid, which resulted in what can be called structural distrust. Gradually, methods were introduced to supervise headstrong governors, such as the introduction of the Secretary of War and State in 1598. The focus of this paper is on the start of the Austrian regime. Vienna only gradually learned the lessons Madrid had mastered decades earlier. Bad experiences with the uncontrollable Marquis of Prié and Maria Elisabeth, representatives of Emperor Charles VI in 1716-1724 and 1725-1741, progressively led to the adoption of former Spanish control measures, the introduction of new means to exert control over royal representatives, and eventually to the complete erosion of the political power of the governors general. The introduction of these institutional measures was much less the result of a premeditated scheme, than a series of ad-hoc reactions to the behaviour of specific governors, thus indicating that a considerable part of the institutional development of the monarchical representation in the Netherlands was due to personal factors