Jean Orry

Jean Orry
Born(1652-09-04)September 4, 1652.
DiedSeptember 29, 1719(1719-09-29) (aged 67)

Jean Louis Orry (Paris, 4 September 1652 – Paris, 29 September 1719) was a French economist whose broad financial and governmental reforms in early 18th-century Bourbon Spain helped to further the implementation of centralized and uniform administration in that country.[1]

Life

Early career

Jean Orry was born in Paris on 4 September 1652 to Charles Orry, a merchant, and Madelaine le Cosquyno.[2]

Orry studied law and entered Royal service as a lawyer, becoming a munitioneer for the army of Italy between 1690 and 1698, where he was able to demonstrate his skill at planning and organisation.[3] In 1701, at the start of the Spanish War of Succession, Orry purchased his nobility and became an adviser to Louis XIV of France.[3]

Work in Spain

In 1701, Orry was sent to Spain by King Louis, whose grandson had just succeeded to the Spanish throne as Philip V. Orry was tasked to report on the finances of Spain at the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession. He drew up detailed memoranda advising the centralization of financial administration and a thorough reform of the basic governmental system on the French model. In Orry's proposals, political power would be transferred from the royal councils, dominated by nobles with strong vested interests, to a number of ministers who would be loyal to the crown, from which all their authority would originate.[4]

Under pressure because of the war, Philip first put Orry in charge of Spain's military finance. Orry reorganized and increased tax collection and devised methods to pay for troops and provisions for the war.[4] He also instituted proceedings to recover stolen or alienated royal property. Shortly after May 1705 a position of secretary of war and finance was created, an initial step in Orry's reform program.[5]

Except for an interval between summer 1706, when Orry was recalled to France, and April 1713, Orry remained in Spain and joined the self-styled Princesse des Ursins as the de facto rulers of Spain.[5] Orry continued his efforts to bring financial administration more fully under the control of the central government. He also packed the royal councils with his candidates, who would support his policies with their votes; he created four new secretaries of state who reported to him. Towards the end, by a royal decree composed by Orry on 23 December 1713, traditional local governments (the Cortes) were centralized by the division of Spain into twenty-one provinces. The Consejos Territoriales were superseded by an intendant directly responsible to Orry. Some of the local councils, such as the Council of Castile retained influence through less direct channels.

Dismissal from Spain

Before his reforms could be fully implemented, however, Orry was dismissed through pressures brought to bear by the Parmesan contingent round the new queen, Elisabetta Farnese, and Giulio Alberoni.[6] Orry was ordered from Spain on 7 February 1715. The King signed the Decreto de Nueva Planta later that year, revoking most of the historical rights and privileges of the different kingdoms that conformed the Spanish Crown, unifying them under the laws of Castile, where the Cortes regained some of its power.[5]

Legacy

Though certain of Orry's reforms did not survive his departure, Giulio Alberoni, the cardinal who succeeded him in power, continued the main lines of his financial reorganization and his repression of the power of the royal councils in favour of a bureaucracy wholly dependent upon the central power. Orry's creation of secretaries of state and intendants continued as a significant element in Spanish governmental administration.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ Mawdsley (1979), p. 17.
  2. ^ "Jean Orry Family Tree". Geneanet. Retrieved 9 July 2019.
  3. ^ a b Ozanam (1989).
  4. ^ a b Crowley (2002), p. 58.
  5. ^ a b c Kuethe (2014), p. 41.
  6. ^ Freys (1995), p. 153.
  7. ^ Sanchez (2016), p. 32.

Further reading

  • Anne Dubet, 2006. Jean Orry et la réforme du gouvernement de l'Espagne (1701-1706) (Clermont-Ferrand)

Bibliography

  • Crowley, Patrick (2002). Before and beyond EMU historical lessons and future prospects. Routledge. ISBN 1134458053.
  • Frey, Linda; Frey, Marsha (1995). The treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession : an historical and critical dictionary. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313278849.
  • Kuethe, Allan; Andrien, Kenneth (2014). The Spanish Atlantic world in the eighteenth century : war and the Bourbon reforms, 1713-1796. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 1107043573.
  • Hargreaves-Mawdsley, W.N. (1979). Eighteenth-Century Spain 1700–1788: A Political, Diplomatic and Institutional History. Springer Publishing. ISBN 1349018031.
  • Ozanam, Denise (1989). Jean Orry, munitionnaire du roi, 1690-1698. Imprimerie Nationale.
  • Sanchez, Rafael (2016). Military entrepreneurs and the Spanish contractor state in the eighteenth century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198784112.

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