This article explores possible ways in which economic history may evolve in the foreseeable future. The author starts with a review of the evolution of the discipline in past decades, with especial attention to the influx of the cliometric revolution, and contends that the economic history is presently passing through a critical situation. To overcome it, the author makes a plea for increasing attention towards economic and institutional change, seen as topics distinctive of the long run, and for a rapprochement to development economics, growth economics, neo-institutional economics, firm theory and economics of technical change.

La muerte del Profesor Lluch a manos de terroristas vascos ha segado en su plenitud una vida de la que aún cabía esperar abundantes frutos. Político socialista, escritor polémico, activo aficionado al fútbol y a la ópera, destacó sobre todo como universitario centrado en el estudio de la historia de la cultura y del pensamiento económico. Su obra científica se distingue por la erudición y la originalidad. Como maestro ha dejado una profunda huella en la Universidad española, cual lo demuestra el nutrido grupo de discípulos que supo formar a su alrededor.

This article analyses the private management of the Spanish Tobacco Monopoly by the Compañía Arrendataria de Tabacos (CAT) from a Gender perspective. What difference did female labour make in the modernisation process carried out by the CAT? This company which in 1887 was the biggest single industrial employer of the country, slowly mechanised the workshops and reduced the workforce by a 70% during the period of its management (1887–1945). This article shows how a number of factors attributed to women's work, such as smaller labour costs, low degree of unionisation and high flexibility were essential in explaining the techno-labour system implemented by the CAT, and the economic and political profitability of its management.

This paper is aimed at analysing the origins of the factory system in the Catalan cotton industry. It concludes that the Catalan industrialisation process can be considered to have been founded during the crisis of the Spanish Ancien Régime. In order to show that, two different pieces of information are presented. Firstly, the appearance of the first mechanical spinning mills by the end of the 18th century, as well as the conditions that allowed it, are studied. Secondly, the subsequent modernisation of the sector after the Spanish War of Independence is analysed. We try to show that, after the crisis brought about by the loss of the Empire and the bankruptcy of the Treasury, the response of the sector mainly consisted of intensifying technical and organisational change and defending commercial prohibicionism.

During a large part of the XVIIth-century the Kingdom of Castile suffered the monetary reform of the Habsbourg Monarchy, characterized by sucessive periods of inflation and deflation, and an increase in the circulation of “vellon” in substitution of silver coins. Reforms introduced in 1680 by Carlos III ended the disorder of the previous phase. In this article we present a bimetallic model in orden to analyse the causes of the success obtained by the monetary reforms of Carlos III.

Small landownership had an outstanding role in determining the process of viticultural specialization that some well-defined territories known as “comarcas” experienced in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Catalonia. The net product these small landholdings yielded was not enough to safeguard the reproduction of the peasant family units closely linked to those small areas devoted to vineyards. It is for this reason that this article analyzes the different strategies these families developed in order to guarantee their reproduction, either as consumption or production units.

This article aims to discuss the social features of the landed nobility and the role of «rentier» landownership in the development of Valencian agriculture in the nineteenth-century. In the first part attention is paid to discuss the transformation of former feudal landlords into middle class landowners. The second part is devoted to the study of a family of the lower nobility and the simultaneous variety of economic roles of the family —who was at the same time mostly «rentier» and «entrepreneur»—, and tries to explain the logic of these criteria.

This article aims to analyze the territorial taxes in the province of Alicante during the Década Moderada (1844–1854). Besides a structural analysis of the territorial taxes —quota and its charges—, the sharing out of taxes among the villages of the province, as well as the individual share of taxpayers in the town of Alicante and its province will be studied. Reference to the objections from villages and individuals to the sharing out effected by the provincial and local oligarchy is therefore necessary in order to understand the political and social implications of the new tax. Such objections show the extent to which the sharing out was unfair and the resistance offered towards the taxes, which resulted in high levels of tax evasion.

In this article we propose the construction of Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) from demographical and educative variables, applied to Spanish regions and provinces in the European context between 1860 and 1930. Our results show an unequal but extensive improvement of PQLI, which was superior to the one experimented in per capita product in this period. Morover, the evolution of PQLI spacial disparities suggests some parallels with Italian case and the necessity to be careful about the relationships between economic growth and well-being.

In spite of the limitations of the data, the estimation of a Cuban price index for 1872–1897 offers an acceptable result, is an important contribution to its economic history and offers some replies for the controversial issue of its independence. These prices suffered a deflation process similar to the other countries and which took place much at the same time as in the US (economy to which the island was already very linked to). However, after the 1883 crisis, prices started to decrease at a much lower rate than those of sugar, causing economic losses that, given the importante of this product, can be a good approach to what indicators such as the income rate —there are not income estimations— could show. Opposite to other studies, our research has got a complementary character. It points out die necessity of enlarging the spectre of analysis of issues such as the tariff policy or the protection of Cuban market for Spanish goods, since evidence proves that the international economic system development in the 1880's and 1890's was the main economic reason for die Island's independence.

This article connects the financial capacity of the public finance of the city of Alicante in order to provide street lighteing, between 1815 and 1874, with its repercussions on the process of industrialization. The work deals with the rules that regulate this service, forms of management and the technological impact of the industrialization. It comes to the conclusion that the insufficient financial level of this institutional consumer, caused a high debt. It was responsible, to a large extent, for the loss of capital of the individuals and the enterprises offering that service, especially the gas producing factories and therefore, could have an influence in the delay of the industrialization process.

The article presents an aggregate and regional analysis of the evolution of agriculture in the Peruvian space between 1681 and 1800, using deflated tithe series. It concludes that after an initial collapse, agricultural production expanded in the XVIII century, an expansion that accelerated in the second half of the century. This increase in production was not homogeneous across regions.

This work tackles the creative process and the development of the savings banks and trust companies throughout the 19th century, coinciding with the changes that implied the introduction of the regulations and the institutions of economic liberalism in Spain. We study the double charitable financial functions which was fulfilled by gaining control over the savings deposits. Those deposits come mainly from the low income urban groups, and later transferred in the turn of loans to small borrowers in industry and commerce.

Unlike two big European tobacco monopolies —the French monopoly and the Italian one—, which almost always were managed by the State, the management of Spanish tobacco monopoly was leased out for over a century to two companies very related: the Compañía Arrendataria de Tabacos (1887–1945) and Tabacalera (1945–1998). This paper provides an explanation of this situation analising the kind of companies they were from the standpoint of State regulation, ownership structure and management control and also using some principles of the Agency's Theory and the Economic Regulation's Theory.

The aim of his work is to discuss the traditional view of the Acapulco-Manila business, which so far has been exclusively centered on the silver trade. The significant merchandise trade has been neglected. In the paper we examine de volume and value of ships arriving and departing fron Acapulco, which allows us to have a better knowledge of the «galleon cargo».

Para presentar una buena síntesis de la historia de la producción y del comercio de lana castellanos de los siglos medievales y modernos se precisan elevadas dosis de arrojo, tenacidad y maestría. En la obra objeto de esta nota, que comenzó a gestarse en la primera mitad de la década de los ochenta, Carla Rhan Phillips y William D. Phillips, Jr., demuestran poseer esas cualidades y haber superado brillantemente el difícil reto que ellos mismos se impusieron.

Spain's Golden Fleece está muy bien estructurado, utiliza una riquísima bibliografía y bastantes fuentes primarias, analiza los asuntos de la ganadería ovina y del comercio lanero en el contexto de los problemas generales de la economía española y no rehuye plantear y pronunciarse sobre cuestiones claves de la Historia Económica de nuestro país (como el papel de la trashumancia en el desarrollo económico castellano). Nos hallamos, pues, ante un excelente libro que merece un comentario más extenso que el de una simple reseña.

Patrick O'Brien and Leandro Prados de la Escosura say they are discussing «the economic consequences of empire», but in fact they are discussing «the costs and benefits of European imperialism». This is clearer and more specific, but I fear less useful. It is clearer, since «costs and benefits» are easier to quantify, and less useful in that I do not agree that «economic consequences» are the same as, or can be reduced to, an assessment of «costs and benefits». Furthermore, as they themselves note, «counterfactual assumptions are… implicit in any attempt… to measure costs and benefits of macro economic strategies» (O'Brien & Prados, 1998, p. 31), and I shall want to argue that what we need to do is make «factual assumptions».

En torno al centenario de 1898 se han multiplicado las aportaciones sobre lo sucedido en España en el paso del siglo XIX al XX. En muchos sentidos, resultan decisivos los acontecimientos en los cuatro ámbitos de Cuba y Puerto Rico en el Caribe, y de Filipinas y de los archipiélagos del Pacífico —Marianas con Guam al Norte, y Carolinas y Palaos al Sur—, donde en 1898, por el Tratado de París, y en 1899, en virtud de un acuerdo con Alemania, se abandonaron todas estas posesiones.

Durante el período de entreguerras, en el que la inestabilidad económica constituyó una de las principales preocupaciones de las sociedades occidentales, se llevaron a cabo importantes investigaciones sobre la historia de los precios. Gracias a los trabajos de Hamilton (1934 y 1947), el caso español no quedó al margen de ese impulso historiográfico. Posteriormente, los precios serían objeto de una atención preferente en Las crisis agrarias en la España moderna de Gonzalo Anes (1970). Este libro tuvo una gran influencia en las numerosas investigaciones de los setenta y ochenta sobre el sector agrario en la España del Antiguo Régimen. Sin embargo, en casi todos estos trabajos primó el interés por desvelar la evolución económica en el largo plazo, lo que indujo a fijarse primordialmente en la población, la producción agraria y la renta de la tierra, relegando a los precios a un papel secundario.