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Sardinia: Difference between revisions
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The history of Sardinia in the Modern era was characterized by three centuries of Spanish rule, until March 1701, when the Spanish territories of Milan and Sardinia were handed to the Kingdom of France, after Spanish holdings in Italy were partitioned following the [[History of Europe#Spanish Succession Crisis (1701)|Spanish Succession Crisis (1701)]].
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Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Sardinia was the poorest of the French dominions in Italy. In the many years of French rule, it did not progress economically and technologically, still relying on the three-field system for almost all the organized fields. The French did not fix other problems of the island either. Feudalism, first introduced by the Kingdom of Aragon in the 1300s. The French government did not fix the issue, only switching the Spanish Barons with French Nobles, indirectly causing the few Sardo-Spaniards in Sardinia to leave. But the last straw was the Great Silesian War. Despite comprising only a tiny part of the French army, most Sardinian soldiers who fought in continental Europe lost their lives, with a death rate of roughly 72 percent. Historians generally attribute this high death rate to the location where the Sardinian soldiers were recruited and trained, Aristanis, which had a severe malaria outbreak that could have heavily affected the soldiers' health.
=== Civil unrest and the Independence War (1755-1758) ===
{{Main|Sardinian Independence War}}
After losing the [[History of Europe#Great Silesian War (1750-1755)|Great Silesian War]] in 1755, the Kingdom of France decided to raise the taxes on most of their dominions in order to recover from the huge losses after the war. In Sardinia, taxes were raised both for the poorer classes of the population and for the various noblemen on the island. This, combined with the Protest of March 14th, 1756 (which erupted due to the poor management of Sardinian soldiers in the French army), planted the seeds for the successive revolts that would lead to the Independence War.
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