Political ostracism and frenchification. Joseph de Mazarredo, an enlightened navy officer minister of Joseph I

Abstract

José de Mazarredo will be one of the naval officers protagonists of the development of the Spanish Navy in the Age of Enlightenment in the second half of the XVIII century, as a perfect tool for managing colonial empire and its commercial and territorial defense. The overwhelming impulse of a nation in arms as France will lead Spain to a foreign policy subordinated to the interests of Napoleon, and a Spanish Navy abducted from his own benefit. His resistance to this policy and the constant denunciation of the deficiencies of the Spanish Navy made him suffer the subsequent banishment and ostracism at the hands of the most powerful politician Manuel Godoy. The personal interests of the minister and dynastic of a monarchy in decay hardly make tolerable the presence of those who, like our protagonist, calling for a modernization and adaptation to the reality of the instruments of the modern state. His return to public life with the dynastic change, as minister of the new French king, and his action will be the subject analysis of this work.