Spain, Europe, and the 'Spanish Miracle', 1700–1900

by David R. Ringrose

• ISBN13: 9780521646307
• ISBN10: 0521646308
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-11-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

David Ringrose here re-examines the history of Spain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He challenges the pessimism of prevailing assumptions about Spanish history, and its conventional separation into pre- and post-Napoleonic eras. Spain, Europe, and the 'Spanish Miracle', 1700-1900 also questions the importance of the empire for Spain's own economy, suggesting instead that Spain evolved as part of Europe; indeed, some of the recently documented modernisation of the nineteenth century was already well under way in the eighteenth. In addition, the emergence of a governing élite closely tied to provincial society is placed in the context of traditional networks of patronage based upon close-knit family ties. Such a perspective makes the transitions of the 1930s and 1970s easier to explain. This important and challenging book will change our understanding of the history of modern Spain.

Table of Contents

Part I. The Problems of Perception: 1. Perceptions and perspectives

2. Focusing the problem

3. Glimpses of the Spanish economy

Part II. Peninsular Spain and a Changing World: 4. The Indies trade and a peninsular economy to 1763

5. Indies trade and peninsular economy between 18th and 19th centuries: reform, crisis, adaptation

6. Trade, economic expansion, European context

7. From enlightenment to commodity: redefining resources

Part III. Alternative Responses to a Changing World: 8. The Mediterranean urban system: trade, hierarchy, trends

9. Cantabrian Spain: from Guí

puzcoa to Galicia

capital city, markets, and Castillian interior

10. Towns and cities in Andalusia

Part IV. Networks, Provincial Elites and Central Authority: 11. A narrative context

12. Basic institutions of political and economic life: family, town, office

13. Office, state, and local elites, seventeenth-nineteenth centuries

14. Conclusion: trends, events, perceptions.