268 Murgia
to firmly establish themselves as the new ruling class. In fact, this was largely
the same class, constantly restoring its traditional position within the current
political hierarchy, without discussing—even after placing itself beyond such
legitimization—dynastic loyalty, in order to shirk the obligations and implica-
tions of direct confrontation, while passively putting up with its consequences.
After over four centuries of Hispano-Aragonese rule, the war of succession
to the Spanish throne, which was left vacant after the death of the heirless
Charles II on 1 November 1700, put an end to an experience of highs and lows.28
Despite various initiatives on the cultural, economic, and institutional level,
Sardinia remained anchored in a feudal system that had stagnated production
by compressing the dynamic forces that emerged from the very bosom of the
rural world and that could have stimulated important processes of develop-
ment and social growth. Following a brief interval of Austrian rule, the 1718
Treaty of London, signed in Aix in 1720, brought the island definitively under
the House of Savoy, which inherited a land in which the language, culture, tra-
ditions, practices and customs, religious institutions, and rituals recalled its
secular bonds with the Spanish royalty.
Translated by Irina Oryshkevich
28 Giovanni Murgia, “La Guerra de Sucesión española en Italia,” in La Guerra de Sucesión en
España y la batalla de Almansa. Europa en la encruijada, ed. Francisco García Gonzáles
(Madrid, 2007), pp. 187–229.