Wednesday, March 23, 2016

before a 'United' Imperial Spain: notes from JH Elliot

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Castile had 600% the population of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, the opposite of what it's been since the seventeenth century. This density in population was near 22/km² for Castile and 14/km² for the coast plus Aragon around 1600. p.25

Catalan and Aragon became known as a commercial empire for its expansion of wool and textile production thru the 13-1400's. They were ventures that continued to look outward to the seas, rivaling Genoa, Venice. p.27, 34
Castile later on would become the wool and textile power house as opportunities on the Catalonian coast declined.

the state as it was in Castile and Aragon were different from each other. A broad history of latter and its forms of gov. pp. 25-30

Developments to such forms from the Reconquista: p. 31-3

Differences summarized: Castile was denser in population but its nobility more disparate, disunited and less represented. Aragon and Catalonia had strong bodies of different forms of representation, but its royalty were relatively weak. Both these conditions caused continual problems within both areas. pp 34-5

Conditions of both economic and political life on the coast in the 1400's were a result of the economic depression in Catala-Aragon from 1350-1450. In the centuries before then the older commercial interests of Catalonia had reshaped economics and politics. After the plague and the following great purge of capital investment there, things dramatically slowed down. When things were generally stable but uncertain in Aragon, Catalonia suffered a series of disasters.
Catalan-Aragon was now becoming a western Mediterranean concern, with eventual footholds in Italy and its King moving to Naples after 1443.[p.36]
Populations of Catalonia dropped from a high in 1365 of 430,000 to a low in 1497 of 278,000. [p.37]

"... in essentially monarchical societies royal absenteeism created grave problems of adjustment. ... the glittering imperialism of Alfonso V, dynastic in inspiration and militaristic in character, differed sharply from the commercial imperialism of an earlier age, and, by encouraging lawlessness in the western Mediterranean, directly conflicted with the mercantile interests of the Barcelona oligarchy. The policies of dynasty and merchant no longer coincided, and this itself represented a tragic deviation from the traditions of the past." [p.36]

These policies were alligned thru the 13th and 14th centuries. But the end of the Catalan economic expansion caused 'political repercussions'. The cause of the depression was plague and famine that came in waves 1333, 1347-51, 1362-3, 1371, 1396-7, and so on. Huge losses of population resulted.
"Manpower was scarce, farmsteads were abandoned, and ... 1380, the pesantry began to clash violently with landlords who... were determined to exploit to the full their rights over their vassals at a time when fuedal dues were diminishing in value and the cost of labour was rising fast." [p.37]
Peasants tied to the land would gain the support of Alfonso and his son John II against the merchant and oligarch classes.

'Spectacular bank failures in  Barcelona' led to Italian financiers working capital, gving loans to nobles and royalty instead of Barcelona. Genoa would finance Valencia with their form of investment and spread from there to manage markets in Castile as the wool trade fantastically expanded there through the 1400's. [p.38-9]

From about 1350 the great Catalan investors, bankers & merchants began pulling capital out of trade and commercial enterprises and put it into annuities and land to become pensioners and rentiers. The agrarian populace began to rise up. Catalan merchants demanded to the king that their contracts with him be maintained. The King, far away in Naples began siding with the peasants or remença. The Biga (the merchants and rentiers) and Busca (the artisans and guilders) in Barcelona struggled for local power. In 1453 the Busca took over the city and made laws of protectionism and coin devaluation. [p.40] War between the oligarchy in Catalonia and Valencia and the King broke out in 1462 and lasted for ten years.
Louis XI would gain  Cerdagne and Roussillon in 1463 from this turmoil.
Wars began again until the negotiated surrender of Granada in 1492.
Wars began again between Christian nobles and the Royal Houses of Castile and Aragon after that.
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J.H. Elliott: Imperial Spain 1469-1716 : Penguin, NY, 2002

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