This chapter aims at placing the history of Spain and Portugal in a global context to revise many of the commonplaces that have been present for centuries about the history of both countries. It also explains this history in a comparative perspective with reference to other European countries as well as other imperial formations. Special attention is given to the different institutional systems and the political fragmentation of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as to the evolution of the different models of regional development. This also makes it possible to break with nationalizing visions of its economic performance, while the different regional trajectories and their connections are interpreted as part of a peninsular system that does not differ qualitatively from that of other regions of Europe, particularly Mediterranean Europe.The result is a more nuanced, less pessimistic – far from exceptionalism – and more realistic picture of peninsular history and a reflection on how that history has been influenced by imperial systems and globalization.

This chapter maps the effects of war on economies and on women’s work. First, it surveys the role of women both as an official and unofficial part of armies and other military support operations. Second, it looks at the way that military conscription of young men affected the work of women who stayed home, especially given that many of these men would never return or would return unfit for work. Third, it examines the strain that armies, whether engaged in hostilities or simply passing through a region, placed on the local resource base and the way this affected the structure of work, including, at times, amplifying its coercive character. Fourth, war encouraged women in garrison and port towns to engage in new forms of commercialized service work, while giving rise to a large body of people, including many women, to which the state owed wages or pensions. Finally, war generally went along with rising taxes, most often upon commodities and often on staples, such as salt. One result was a sharp increase in smuggling, which, in turn, altered both women’s and men’s relationship to consumption and to the State.