The 18th century saw a gradual recovery

The 18th century saw a gradual recovery and an increase in prosperity through much of the empire. The new Bourbon monarchy drew on the French s

ystem of modernising the administration and the economy. Enlightenment ideas began to gain ground among some of the kingdom’s elite and monarchy. Bourbon reformers created formal disciplined militias across the Atlantic. Spain needed every hand it could take duri

ng the seemingly endless wars of the eighteenth century—the Spanish War of Succession or Queen Anne’s War (1702–13), the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1

739–42) which became the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) and the Anglo-Spanish War (1779–83)—and its new disciplined militias served around the Atlantic as needed.