Italian Wars
Interpretations

As in the case of France, the Habsburg result is also variously interpreted. Many historians in the 20th century, including Garrett Mattingly, Eric Cochrane and Manuel F. Alvarez, identified the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis as the beginning of a Spanish hegemony in Italy. However, this view has been contested and abandoned in 21st-century historiography. Christine Shaw, Micheal J. Levin, and William Reger reject the concept of a Spanish hegemony on the ground that too many limits prevented Spain's dominance in the peninsula, and maintain that other powers also held major influence in Italy after 1559. Although Spain gained control of about half of the Italian states, the other half remained independent; among them, the Papacy in particular emerged strengthened by the conclusion of the Council of Trent according to the scholars Antelantonio Spagnoletti and Benedetto Croce. Furthermore, according to the historians Christine Shaw and Salvatore Puglisi, the Holy Roman Empire continued to play a role in Italian politics. Peter J. Wilson writes that three overlapping and competing feudal networks, Imperial, Spanish, and Papal, were affirmed in Italy as a result of the end of the wars.

In the long-term, Habsburg primacy in Italy continued to exist, but it varied significantly due to the change of dynasties in Austria and Spain. Following the War of the Spanish Succession and other wars of succession, the Habsburg-Lorraine of Austria largely replaced Spain and gained direct or indirect control of the fiefs of Imperial Italy, whereas the south eventually passed to an independent branch of the Spanish Bourbons. France would return in Italy to confront Habsburg power, first under Louis XIV, and later under Napoleon, but only the unification of Italy would permanently remove foreign powers from the peninsula.

Charles Tilly has characterized the Italian Wars as a key part in his theory of state formation, as the wars demonstrated the value of large armies and superior military technology. In Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992, Tilly argues that a "comprehensive European state system" can be reasonably dated to the Italian Wars.
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