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Using Microcredit and Restructuring Households: Two Complementary Survival Strategies in Late Eighteenth-Century Barcelona*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2010

Montserrat Carbonell-Esteller
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In the last third of the 1700s Barcelona was a city undergoing a major transformation. The regional specialization process that took place in Catalonia, and the intensification of exchange, generated spectacular economic growth and an unprecedented increase in population. The city of Barcelona tripled its population in just over seventy years; in 1787 it already had around 100,000 inhabitants. Immigration, both from the Pyrenean areas and from the proto-industrial areas of central Catalonia, the natural growth of the population, the intense process of urbanization, and the dynamism of the labour market explain the densification of the city and the rise in the price of rents.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 45 , supplement S8: Household strategies for survival 1600–2000: fission, factions and cooperation , December 2000 , pp. 71 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 2000

References

1. See Carbonell, Montserrat, Sobreviure a Barcelona. Danes, pobresa i asistència al segle XVIII (Barcelona, 1997).Google Scholar

2. The same Congregacid de Nostra Senyora de l'Espcranfa governed die Mont de Pietat de Barcelona and the Casa de Penedides. The profits of the Mont de Pietat were used to finance the Casa de Penedides.

3. Poor people not daring to beg openly.

4. At the end of the 1970s Louise Tilly raised the issue of the development of family strategies. See Tilly, Louise, “Individual Lives and Family Strategies in the French Proletariat”, Journal of Family History, 4 (1979), pp. 137–152CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Woolf, Stuart, The Poor in Western Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1986)Google Scholar ; and Hareven, Tamara K., Family Time and Industrial Time (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar . Richard Wall, in the mid-1980s, formulated a key concept for the study of family economies and strategies; see Wall, Richard, “Work, Welfare and the Family: An Illustration of the Adaptative Family Economy”, in Blonfield, Lloyd and Smith, Richard M., The World We Have Gained (Oxford, 1986), pp. 261–294Google Scholar.

5. Arxiu Historic de “la Caixa” (hereafter, AHC), Llibres de Comptaduria, 1770.

6. The registers preserved do not cover all the neighbourhoods of Barcelona. We have used the volume corresponding to “Libro de Matricula o Descripcion de las Iglesias, Familias e Individuos de ambos sexos con las casas que componen el B de San Francisco de Paula del Quartel 2 nombrado de San Pedro […]”, Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona (hereafter, AHCB), Cadastre I-J, 1770. For criticism of this source see López, Pilar, “Evolució demográfica”, in Sobrequés, Jaume (ed.), Història de Barcelona, vol. 5, El desplegamcnt de la ciutat manufacturera (1714 1833) (Barcelona, 1993), pp. 111–166Google Scholar.

7. The crosscheck is carried out starting from coinciding first name, surname, job and address.

8. See Rocha, Manuela, “Credito privado enm Lisboa; numa perspectiva comparada (seculos XVII-XIX)”, Andlise Social Revista do Institute de Ciencias Socials da Universidade de Lisboa, 33, No. 145 (1998), pp. 91–115Google Scholar , and Fontaine, Laurence, Postel-Vinay, Gilles, Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, and Servais, Paul (eds), Des personnes aux institutions. Reseaux et culture du credit du XVIe au XXe siècle en Europe (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1997)Google Scholar.

9. In 1767 a royal decree settled the controversy in the Mont de Pietat between the clergy and laymen concerning interest. The king intervened, suspending the acceptance of funds in exchange for interest and obliging the existing funds to be repaid with the interest due. In practice the deposits began to be returned in 1770; Llibre d'Acords, AHC.

10. Considering the figures offered by the Floridablanca census for 1786 and the estimates of the rate of growth of the population of Barcelona in the second half of the seventeen hundreds offered by P. Vilar. See Vilar, Pierre, Catalunya dins l'Espanya moderna, vol. 3 (Barcelona, 1966), andGoogle ScholarIglesias, Josep, El cens del comte Floridablanca, 1787 (Barcelona, 1970)Google Scholar.

11. Of the 159 women who appeared as borrowers the majority (78 per cent) were widows.

12. An initial approach can be found in Carbonell, Montserrat, “Crédito al consumo y economias familiares. Barcelona, 1750-1850”, in Carreras, Albert, Pascual, Pere, Reher, David, and Sudrià, Carles (eds), Doctor Jordi Nadal. La industrializatión y eldesarrollo económico de España (Barcelona, 1999), vol. I, pp. 304–320Google Scholar.

13. In Table 1 the workers subsector includes the categories of day labourer, wage earner, worker, labourer and journeyman. With these occupations, usually no specific trade was indicated. Cf. Arranz, Manel and Grau, Ramon, “Problemas de inmigración y asimilación en la Barcelona del siglo XVIII”, in Rtvista de Geografia, 4 (1970), pp. 71–80Google Scholar.

14. See Vilar, Pierre, “Transformaciones económicas, impulso urbano y movimiento de los salarios: l a Barcelona del siglo XVIII”, in Vilar, Pierre, Crecimiento y desarrollo (Barcelona, 1974), pp. 209–210.Google Scholar

15. See Montpalau, A. Capmany i, Discurso económico-politico en defensa del trabajo mecánico de menestrales (Madrid, 1788)Google Scholar.

16. From among the 1,015 pawns carried out between January and February 1770, a credit of 78.2 per cent of the valuation was obtained for jewellery, 81.2 per cent for clothes and 82.2 per cent for objects such as copper pots or others.

17. See Guallar, Pilar López, “Les transformacións de l'habitat: la casa i la vivenda a Barcelona entre 1693 i el 1859”, in Actes del Primer Congres d'Historia de Catalunya, vol. I (Barcelona, 1985), pp. 111–117Google Scholar ; and idem, “La densificacion barcelonesa: el territorio de la parroquia de Santa Maria del Pi, 1693-1859”, in El Pla de Barcelona y la seva historia. Actes del I Congres d'Història del Pla de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1984), pp. 275–298.

18. See Arranz, Manel and Grau, Ramon, “Problemas de inmigración”, pp. 71–80.Google Scholar

19. See Badosa, Elisa, “Els lloguers de cases a la ciutat de Barcelona (1780-1834)”, Recerques, 10 (1980), pp. 139–157.Google Scholar

20. Manufacturing (60 per cent), services (24 per cent), clergy, army and inactive (14 per cent), agriculture and fishing (2 per cent).

21. See Peter Laslett, “Introduction: the history of the family”, in Peter Laslett and Richard Wall (eds), Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge, reprinted 1978), pp. 1-90.

22. See the essential role of co-residence in relation to family budgets and the labour market for Catalonia in subsequent periods in Cura, Enriqueta Camps, “Transitions in Women's and Children's Work Patterns and Implications for the Study of Family Income and Household Structure: A Case Study from the Catalan Textile Sector (1850-1925)”, in The History of the Family: an International Quarterly, 3 (1998), pp. 137–153CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; and Reher, David S., Perspectives on the Family in Spain, Past and Present (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar.

23. AHCB. Cadastre, 1-5.

24. Regarding the role welfare institutions had in migration and in entering the labour market, see , Carbonell, Sobreviure, pp. 115–169Google Scholar . Regarding the role of the state, see Sarasúa, Carmen, “The Role of the State in Shaping Women's and Men's Entrance into the Labour Market: Spain in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”, Continuity and Change, 12 (1997), pp. 347–371CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. AHCB, Cadastre I-5.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Out of eighteen pawnings, three were done by women, one of whom had an absent husband. Two of the male pawners were widowers. Concerning the household heads' occupations, the most represented sector is manufacturing (twelve cases), especially textiles and clothing, followed by services (three cases). The articles most frequently pawned were clothes, and the value of the loans was extremely small. About half of the pawners recovered their pledge, as in the large sample. From January to December 1770, most clients (fifteen out of eighteen) used the Mont several (up to seven) times.

31. AHCB, Cadastre 1-5.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid.

34. See , Carbonell, Sobreviure a Barcelona, pp. 119–161.Google Scholar

35. See note 3 above.

36. Arxiu Parroquial de Santa Maria del Pi, Pobres Vergonyants, 1798.

37. Arxiu Històric de la Casa de Misericòrdia de Barcelona (AHCMB), Assistencial, Expedients d'ingrés d'acollides, any 1777.

38. AHCB, Cadastre 1-5. This household is one of those for which the documentary evidence is particularly rich.

39. AHCB. Assistencial, Expedients d'ingres d'acollides, any 1777.

40. AHCB, Cadastre, 1-5.

41. Ibid.