Rural Change and Royal Finances in Spain at the End of the Old Regime

Richard Herr

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520324893
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520324909
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Rural Change and Royal Finances in Spain at the End of the Old Regime by Richard Herr offers a comprehensive examination of the social, economic, and political transformations that reshaped Spain's countryside in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through a meticulous study of the disentailment (desamortización) of ecclesiastical and communal properties under Carlos IV, Herr demonstrates how the monarchy's fiscal crisis intersected with agrarian reform, bringing long-entrenched property regimes into upheaval. Drawing on parish records, cadastral surveys, and local archives, the book reconstructs the lived realities of rural communities, showing how demographic pressures, rising grain prices, and state interventions shaped agricultural practice, land tenure, and peasant livelihoods. Herr situates Spain's experience within broader European debates on enlightened reform, tracing the intellectual legacy of figures such as Campomanes and Jovellanos while analyzing the political fragility of the Bourbon monarchy on the eve of Napoleonic invasion. The study balances close portraits of individual towns in provinces like Jaén and Salamanca with wide-ranging assessments of national policy, revealing both the promise and limits of agrarian modernization. At once a fiscal history, a study of rural society, and a meditation on the fate of enlightened absolutism, the book illuminates how conflicts over land, taxation, and subsistence foreshadowed Spain's nineteenth-century struggles with liberalism, conservatism, and uneven economic development. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.

Many titles in the Voices Revived program are also newly available as ebooks, offered at a discounted price to support wider access to scholarly work.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents 1
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• PART I The Monarchy
• CHAPTER I Agrarian Conditions and Agrarian Reform in Eighteenth-Century Spain
• CHAPTER II The Philosophy of Agrarian Reform
• CHAPTER III The Decision to Disentail
• CHAPTER IV The Struggle to Save the Royal Credit
• CHAPTER V The Extent of Disentail
• CHAPTER VI The Collapse of the Monarchy
• PART II Seven Towns
• CHAPTER VII La Mata
• CHAPTER VIII Villaverde
• CHAPTER IX Pedrollén
• CHAPTER X El Mirón
• CHAPTER XI Baños
• CHAPTER XII Lopera
• CHAPTER XIII Las Navas de Santisteban del Puerto
• CHAPTER XIV Ricardo, Malthus, and the Market
• PART III Two Provinces
• CHAPTER XV The Social and Economic Spectrum of Jaén and Salamanca
• CHAPTER XVI Jaén Province: The Determinants of Growth
• CHAPTER XVII Salamanca Province: Hardening the Patterns
• CHAPTER XVIII Salamanca Province: The Despoblados and Alquerías
• CHAPTER XIX The Big Buyers
• CHAPTER XX Between Two Ages
• APPENDIX A The Population of Spain in the Eighteenth Century
• APPENDIX B The Extent of Different Types of Property
• APPENDIX C Issues and Redemptions of Vales Reales
• APPENDIX D Monthly Quotations of the Vales Reales Against Hard Currency
• APPENDIX E Ratio of the Sale Price of Disentailed Properties to Cadastral Value
• APPENDIX F Annual Totals of Deeds of Deposit
• APPENDIX G The Casa Excusada
• APPENDIX H Relative Prices of Crops, 1753-99
• APPENDIX I The Distribution of Income from Agriculture Among Individual Farmers of La Mata
• APPENDIX J Modifications in Partible Tithes After 1796
• APPENDIX K Income from Raising Livestock
• APPENDIX L Relative Labor Needs for Grain Fields and Olive Groves
• APPENDIX M The Economic Significance of Censos in Las Navas
• APPENDIX N Comparative Statistics of Seven Towns
• APPENDIX O Use of the Appellation Don in the Deeds of Deposit
• APPENDIX P The Zones of Jaén Province
• APPENDIX Q The Zones of Salamanca Province
• APPENDIX R Types of Señorío Lego
• APPENDIX S Index of Landowning Concentration in Salamanca
• APPENDIX T Population of Small and Medium Places, Salamanca Plain, 1786
• APPENDIX U Population, Salamanca Zones, 1534—1857
• APPENDIX V Identified Level 4 Buyers in Salamanca Province HYPERLINK \l "noteFT_1_Pag1276" 1
• APPENDIX W Identified Level 4 Buyers in Jaén City HYPERLINK \l "noteFT_1_Pag1281" 1
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index