Familiar Groups and Social Networks in the Military Career. The Basque and Navarre Army and Navy Officers, 1700-1808

Abstract

During the 18th century, some Basque and Navarre families had a remarkable position within the prestigious officers of the Spanish army and navy. Those military posts were important since they combined not only a military, but also a political status, holding transcendent government events in all over the Spanish empire. A “social genealogy” analysis is developed in the following paper in order to explain how those Basque and Navarre families managed such a social promotion, which rooted in trade activities and in the collective nobility of their homeland. Their “relational capital” is shown in different strategies such as children sponsorship, recommendations or practical formation carried out inside their family networks. The social relations such as decisive friendships formed through the future officers’ training, will be also analysed as part of that social capital that seems particularly intriguing to explain the continuity of different generations of those families in the most prestigious posts of the Monarchy.