xploitation of America was the exclusive domain of Castile. The Valencians, like the Catalans, Aragonese and Majorcans, were prohibited participation in the cross-Atlantic commerce. Faced with this loss of business, Valencia suffered a severe economic crisis, which manifested itself early in 1519–1523 when theartisan guilds known as the Germanies revolted against the government of theHabsburg king Charles I in Valencia, now part of the Crown of Aragon, with most of the fighting done in 1521. The revolt was an anti-monarchist, anti-feudal autonomist movement inspired by the Italian republics, and a social revolt against the nobility who had fled the city before an epidemic of plague in 1519. It also bore a strong anti-Islamic aspect, as rebels rioted against Aragon's population of mudéjars and imposed forced conversions to Christianity. The uprising and its leaders were brutally repressed by the vicereine Germaine of Foix, an action which accelerated the authoritarian centralization of the government of Charles I. Queen Germaine favored harsh treatment of the agermanats; she is thought to have signed the death warrants of 100 former rebels personally, and sources indicate that as many as 800 executions may have occurred in total. The agermanats are comparable to the comuneros of neighboring Castile, who fought a similar revolt against Charles from 1520–1522.
The crisis deepened during the 17th century with the expulsion in 1609 of the Jews and the Moriscos, descendants of the Muslim population that converted to Christianity under threat of exile from Ferdinand and Isabella in 1502. From 1609 through 1614, the Spanish government systematically forced Moriscos to leave the kingdom for Muslim North Africa. They were concentrated in the formerKingdom of Aragon, where they constituted a fifth of the population, and the Valencia area specifically, where they were roughly a third of the total population. The expulsion caused the financial ruin of some of the
