Distant tyranny : markets, power, and backwardness in Spain, 1650-1800 / Regina Grafe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grafe, Regina.

Series:

Princeton economic history of the Western world.

The Princeton economic history of the Western world

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Spain--Commerce--History--17th century.

Spain--Commerce--History--18th century.

Spain--Economic conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (315 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Spain's development from a premodern society into a modern unified nation-state with an integrated economy was painfully slow and varied widely by region. Economic historians have long argued that high internal transportation costs limited domestic market integration, while at the same time the Castilian capital city of Madrid drew resources from surrounding Spanish regions as it pursued its quest for centralization. According to this view, powerful Madrid thwarted trade over large geographic distances by destroying an integrated network of manufacturing towns in the Spanish interior. Challenging this long-held view, Regina Grafe argues that decentralization, not a strong and powerful Madrid, is to blame for Spain's slow march to modernity. Through a groundbreaking analysis of the market for bacalao--dried and salted codfish that was a transatlantic commodity and staple food during this period--Grafe shows how peripheral historic territories and powerful interior towns obstructed Spain's economic development through jurisdictional obstacles to trade, which exacerbated already high transport costs. She reveals how the early phases of globalization made these regions much more externally focused, and how coastal elites that were engaged in trade outside Spain sought to sustain their positions of power in relation to Madrid. Distant Tyranny offers a needed reassessment of the haphazard and regionally diverse process of state formation and market integration in early modern Spain, showing how local and regional agency paradoxically led to legitimate governance but economic backwardness.

Contents:

Markets and states

Tracing the market : the empirical challenge

Bacalao : a new consumer good takes on the peninsula

The tyranny of distance : transport and markets in Spain

Distant tyranny : the historic territories

Distant tyranny : the power of urban republics

Market growth and governance in early modern Spain

Center and peripheries.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9786613379634

9781283379632

1283379635

9781400840533

1400840538

OCLC:

769343154