Kingdom of Majorca James II of Majorca. After 1279, Peter III of Aragon established that the king of Majorca was a vassal to the king of Aragon. The title continued to be employed by the Aragonese and Spanish monarchs until its dissolution by the 1715 Nueva Planta decrees. The kingdom included the Balearic Islands: Majorca, Menorca (which was still under the rule of Muslims until 1231 when its sovereignty was surrendered to James I), Ibiza and Formentera. The king was also lord of the mainland counties of Roussillon and Cerdanya, and the territories James I kept in Occitania: the signory of Montpellier, the
Conquest of Majorca a combination of economic and strategic factors. Valencia was a rich land that could be used to provide new territory for the population of the Kingdom of Aragon, and Catalonia offered new fiefdoms for the nobility. The king of Castile, Ferdinand III, had tried to take parts of Valencia that were, in principle, reserved for the king of Aragon. Meanwhile, a conquest of the Balearic Islands enabled Catalan and Provence merchants to eliminate competition from Majorcan merchants and also dismantle the Barbary pirates who used Majorca as a safe haven. The taking of the Balearic Islands represented not only a