La sericicultura murciana presenta una serie de rasgos específicos que permiten considerarla como un caso particular de este tipo de aprovechamiento.

Primero, su evolución sigue una cronología distinta a la de otras regiones vecinas como Andalucía o Valencia, donde la producción sedera fue más precoz, tanto en el despegue como en la desaparición. En ambas, el cultivo de la morera aparece antes del xvi y se hunde en la segunda mitad del xix, mientras que en Murcia surge en las primeras décadas del quinientos y sobrevive hasta después de la guerra civil.

Uno de los aspectos menos conocidos de la economía dieciochesca sigue siendo, aún hoy día, el de las compañías por acciones, que durante ese período tuvieron un auge espectacular. De poco han servido las palabras de Carmelo Viñas Mey, que ya en 1922 subrayó la importancia que tendría el conocimiento de la trayectoria de estas instituciones, porque a la historia de las creadas en España iba unida la incesante actuación, durante los siglos xvii y xviii, por recuperar nuestra hegemonía económica, y porque en ellas se creyó hallar el instrumento seguro para lograr ese objetivo, sin olvidar su papel nada despreciable en nuestro resurgimiento industrial, sobre todo en el sector textil.

Sobre la base documental de los inventarios post mortem se estudia la evolución del consumo de textiles —ajuar doméstico y vestuario— en una comarca rural de la actual Comunidad Autó;noma de Cantabria. Se constata un aumento continuado en el stock de textiles entre 1750 y 1860, y muy especialmente a lo largo de las cuatro primeras décadas del siglo XIX. Se endende el consumo de textiles, también, como una forma de relacionarse, de comunicarse, de tal manera que las posibilidades de cambios en las pautas de consumo se fundamentan, a la vez que en factores económicos, en la existencia de transfbrmaciones políticas, sociales y culturales.

This article is a novel study on previously unedited data regarding employment in the Spanish Railway sector between the years 1893–1935. The Annual data published by the well know Annals of the Spanish Railways have been closely scrutinised and checked against document referring to the two major companies: Norte y MZA. The resulting findings show the dynamic nature of this labour market! Between 1893 and 1935 employment figures tripled. The documents examined further reveal the existence of a labour market which was quite diverse and consisted of numerous different segments.

La historiografía económica portuguesa ha experimentado un gran cambio en los últimos quince años, a pesar de las dificultades no ya políticas, pero sí materiales; por ejemplo, la situación de los Archivos. Como escribiera Albert Silbert en 1979, la historia económica portuguesa «sufre de un atraso del que los historiadores no tienen toda la culpa». Además, y de ahí el posible interés de este informe, las cosas han cambiado mucho desde abril de 1974, aunque casi siempre enlazando con lo realizado en las últimas décadas del salazarismo, bien en el exilio, bien dentro, a pesar de las dificultades de la dictadura. En aquella época fue manifiesta la influencia desde París de Fernand Braudel, Pierre Vilar, Albert Silbert, Jean Bouvier, etc.; en torno a ellos se han formado muchos de los principales especialistas en Historia Económica de Portugal, artífices de una renovación ejemplar.

The assessment of the economic consequences of empires from the fifteenth century to the present raises a set of problems which should not be concealed, if we are to provide any meaningful answers to the questions implied in such a survey. First, it is useful to remember that these questions, as so many addressed by social scientists, are immersed in the interminable ideological debate about the development of nations. For example, it is not easy to avoid the judgement of empires as inherendy good or bad, and to evade the prevailing notion that they are evil structures resting on some kind of violence, on which consequently it is not decent for any nation to have built its wealth. Anyway, even if we could easily do away with ideological controversies, and we cannot, we would still lack the appropriate statistical data, at least for most of the period under examination, which could support an accurate evaluation of the true economic consequences of empire. In fact, since we may never construct a plausible cost-benefit matrix or an acceptable estimate of the relative significance of imperial ventures1, controversy will always continue, not only about the interpretation of the effects of imperialism, but about the facts and figures themselves.

In the 16th and 17th centuries die fiscal system of the Spanish monarchy had been sustained by the resources provided by Castile. In die 18th century the Bourbons undertook a series of reforms to integrate diose territories which did not contribute. So far much research has been done on die new fiscal systems established in the realms of die crown of Aragon, but die impact on die Basque Country and Navarre is less known. The statutory finances of these territories were modified, although they continued to enjoy tax exemption. This paper aims at analysing how such changes materialized in die Kingdom of Navarre.

The continuity of big mercantile houses established in Western Andalusia during die eighteenth century was jeopardized not only due to die political and economic crisis of the end of the century, but also due to another source of instability that has received little attention in economic history: the equalitarian principles of the Castilian hereditary system, whose aim was to safeguard the transmission of family wealth between generations. Castilian hereditary law and customs promoted family well-being, but die equalitarian division of patrimonies also had the result of forcing die dispersion of fortunes, dierefore hindering the continuity of numerous mercantile family firms. This article studies the effects of die Castilian hereditary system in Cádiz during the eighteen century, when die Andalusien city held the legal monopoly of trade between Spain and its American possessions. The study also analyzes some of the mechanisms that die Cádiz mercantile elites used in order to bequeath more concentrated patrimonies.

This paper analyses the role played by the National Commission for Industrial Productivity (CNPI) in the development of the Spanish footwear industry. First the nature of the Commission is reviewed highlighting its links with the «americanisation» campaign that took place in post-war Europe. Then, it is shown that footwear was one of the priority sectors for the CNPI, and the main initiatives developed by the organism in this industry in the years prior to the take off of exports are expounded. In third place, it is shown that the sector had already undergone a profound «americanisation» in Spain and in Europe in general during the first third of the 20th century. Lastly, the paper attempts to assess the effective repercussion of the CNPI's actions.

Historical literacy in Spain is characterised by enormous regional disparities and important differences by sex. This paper addresses these issues, focusing initially on the 1887 census returns and also making use of local empirical data and of in-depth interviews of elderly informants. The goal is to propose an interpretation of historical patterns of literacy based, to a large extent, on the existence of important differences in the perceived value of literacy and education, very high in some regions and very low in others. The author argues that these cleavages go beyond the importance of economic structures, have deep historical roots and continue to be present in contemporary Spain despite the substantial growth in educational attainment taking place during this past century.

Trends in human welfare in Brazil have remained shrouded by a dearth of historical evidence. Although quantitative scholars have revealed the efficacy of the First Republic (1889–1930) in fomenting economic progress, the extent to which Brazil's early economic growth fostered improvements in health remains unclear. This paper fills this void in scholarship by relying on hitherto untapped archival sources with data on human stature—a reliable metric for health and nutritional status. My analysis centres heavily on a large (n ≈ 16,000), geographically-comprehensive series compiled from military inscription files, supplemented by an ancillary dataset drawn from passport records (n ≈ 6,000). I document inferior heights in the North and Northeast that predated the advent of industrialisation. At the national level, my findings reveal an increase in stature of over 2.5 cm between soldiers born in the 1880s and those born in the 1910s. In the South and Southeast, I argue that increased real income and public-health interventions explain the earlier upward trend in heights, while rural sanitary reforms were most important in the North and Northeast, where heights remained stagnant until the 1910 decade and diseases such as hookworm and malaria were most rampant.

Interpretations of the role of the state in economic change in colonial (1858-1947) and post-colonial India (1947-) tend to presume that the colonial was an exploitative and the post-colonial a developmental state. This article shows that the opposition does not work well as a framework for economic history. The differences between the two states lay elsewhere than in the drive to exploit Indian resources by a foreign power. The difference was that British colonial policy was framed with reference to global market integration, whereas post-colonial policy was framed with reference to nationalism. The article applies this lesson to reread the economic effects of the two types of state, and reflects on ongoing debates in the global history of European expansion.

In this paper we show that Portugal benefitted from comparatively low-interest rates from the 13th century onwards, well before the generalised drop in interest rates in Europe. Contrary to the thesis that frontier economies struggle with high-interest rates and scarcity of capital, we find that the country's low and stable interest rates can be explained by its wide availability of land, combined with monetary stability and a favourable institutional network. These conclusions are built upon an entirely new dataset of interest rates and returns on capital for Portugal in the period 1230–1500.

This essay examines the opportunity of erecting a national electricity network before 1936. Regional markets were created by coordinating electricity networks in France, Switzerland and Great Britain during the twenties. In Spain, a review of technical journals indicates that this issue had become significant in the nationalistic economic policy environment of the inter-war period. The Spanish Government made several attempts at setting up a national electricity grid through public tenders. However, none of the projects succeeded and the development of an electricity-grid was left to private firms' initiative and the network did not achieve a national coverage until the 1980s. Seen from the standpoint of the 1930s, the high investment costs the interconnection required rendered this project unfeasible. As a matter of fact, a national-grid may not have represented an alternative to dam-building in order to improve the efficiency of the Spanish electrical system.

This article presents a comparative analysis of the productive performance of the modern Spanish iron and steel industry from its origins up to the Spanish Civil War. Three aspects are examined: the extent to which the industry had the potential to compete in world markets, whether or not Spanish mills applied new technologies to re-establish or maintain their competitivity and which elements limited or increased the advantage of their products. The analysis shows a revealed advantage in products intensive in iron ore. Part of this advantage can be traced back to preferential ore supply contracts. The limits to these preferential contracts introduced incentives for maintaining the reduced scale of Spanish installations. The attempt to gain control over home markets on behalf of Altos Hornos de Vizcaya may be related to these contractual limitations. The high profits reaped through the cartelisation of the industry and the wide margin of benefit obtained by producing within the scale of the preferential ore supply contracts provide an alternative explanation for the industry's performance in the period.

La construcción de edificios es, con toda seguridad, la más importante de las actividades industriales aún no estudiadas por los historiadores de la economía española decimonónica. Hay razones que explican ese olvido, si no lo justifican. En ningún caso histórico, el crecimiento económico ha dependido del desarrollo de este sector, calificado con acierto por algún autor como el «furgón de cola» de la revolución industrial. Admitido que en el análisis del pasado económico resulta prioritario esclarecer los aspectos cruciales del proceso de modernización, era lógico postergar el estudio de la construcción residencial. Pero una vez se ha alcanzado un conocimiento suficientemente sólido acerca de cómo se desenvolvieron en España las ramas estratégicas en la industrialización (textil, siderurgia, química, metalmecánica, etc.) y cuando disponemos incluso de una visión panorámica sobre las transformaciones acaecidas en la principal parte de la estructura industrial —la «fabril»—, además de contar con un buen índice de la producción industrial, es conveniente estudiar tal industria.

Para centrar la polémica empezaré con una metáfora. Nadie puede dudar de que el teléfono era una herramienta corriente en la vida española de 1970. Sin embargo, cuando en aquel año me fui a vivir a los EE. UU. pude entender vívidamente que la penetración de las comunicaciones telefónicas en España resultaba enormemente superficial, si se la comparaba con su papel en la vida americana y, sobre todo, en las actividades comerciales. Y todo esto no era idiosincrático, no se debía a que a los americanos les gustase más hablar por teléfono que a nosotros, sino que era resultado de la calidad y del precio del servicio en uno y otro país. Incluso sin hablar de precios, en España costaba años obtener nuevas líneas, y en los EE.UU. costaba un solo día.

En el resurgir contemporáneo del interés por la esclavitud y las sociedades esclavistas en América, el uso de datos de precios ha sido una de las fuentes fundamentales que han utilizado los historiadores y los economistas para analizar la naturaleza de la economía esclavista. Después del trabajo de Conrad y Meyer, los estudiosos han intentado interpretar la conducta de los hacendados, así como sus expectativas y creencias, mediante un detallado análisis de la pauta de cambios de los precios de los esclavos a lo largo del tiempo. A pesar de su importancia, se han recogido sorprendentemente pocos datos sistemáticos de precios, aparte de las series cruciales elaboradas para los mercados de esclavos de Estados Unidos. Sólo recientemente se han generado series de una forma sistemática para las demás sociedades esclavistas importantes, como Brasil y las Indias occidentales británicas. Varias economías esclavistas importantes y secundarias del resto del Nuevo Mundo todavía carecen de esa información. En este contexto, la principal área que menos

This paper analyses the system of transportation and discusses the effect of geography and transport infrastructure on transport costs and economic growth in Peru during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Using primary and secondary sources, I find that geography imposed difficult transport challenges on Peruvians during this period. There were no navigable rivers in coastal and highland regions, railroads were scarce and most roads were inadequate for wagons, sometimes even for horses and mules. As a result, transport costs were extremely high, which constituted a barrier to trade, reduced gains from specialisation and retarded economic growth. Therefore, high transport costs seem to be one important factor in explaining the low income levels of Peru in the early 20th century in spite of the country's large endowments of natural resources.