Awarded the Jaume Vicens Vives Prize by the Spanish Association of Economic History, this study analyses the development of the Spanish domestic market from 1650 to 1800, which transformed the country from a pseudocolonial territory, politically and economically dependent on its European neighbours, to a significant European power. The Emergence of a National Market in Spain, 1650-1800 places Spain firmly in a European context, arguing that the origins of a sophisticated economy must be understood through the complex diplomacy of the period, namely the competition between Britain and France for dominance in the Iberian peninsula. It was in response to this rivalry that the Spanish state actively promoted the conditions for economic development in the 18th century, aided by autonomous commercial networks of Catalan merchants, Navarrese tradesmen and migrant French businessmen. This original interpretation by one of Spain's leading economic historians, available in English for the first time, is indispensable reading for students and scholars of Spanish history.

Spain's development from a premodern society into a modern unified nation-state with an integrated economy was painfully slow and varied widely by region. Economic historians have long argued that high internal transportation costs limited domestic market integration, while at the same time the Castilian capital city of Madrid drew resources from surrounding Spanish regions as it pursued its quest for centralization. According to this view, powerful Madrid thwarted trade over large geographic distances by destroying an integrated network of manufacturing towns in the Spanish interior. Challenging this long-held view, Regina Grafe argues that decentralization, not a strong and powerful Madrid, is to blame for Spain's slow march to modernity. Through a groundbreaking analysis of the market for bacalao--dried and salted codfish that was a transatlantic commodity and staple food during this period--Grafe shows how peripheral historic territories and powerful interior towns obstructed Spain's economic development through jurisdictional obstacles to trade, which exacerbated already high transport costs. She reveals how the early phases of globalization made these regions much more externally focused, and how coastal elites that were engaged in trade outside Spain sought to sustain their positions of power in relation to Madrid. Distant Tyranny offers a needed reassessment of the haphazard and regionally diverse process of state formation and market integration in early modern Spain, showing how local and regional agency paradoxically led to legitimate governance but economic backwardness.

This handbook offers comprehensive coverage of the history of Spain, exploring key themes and events in four broad but not necessarily rigid temporal categories: medieval, early modern, nineteenth century and twentieth century. The volume situates Spanish history firmly within the broader patterns unfolding across the European continent, emphasizing Spain’s active participation in the processes that determined the development of modern European society. With chapters from leading scholars from both Spanish and international universities, the book helps fill long-standing gaps in European history. This handbook provides original contributions on broad themes in Spanish history which are also accessible syntheses of the most recent scholarship. Making the latest research in Spanish history more widely accessible to an international audience, The Routledge Handbook of Spanish History is an essential reference point for students and scholars of Spain, as well as those working in comparative European history.

Revised, updated and expanded, this second edition analyzes the structures and practices of European economies within a global context.

Without economic history, economics runs the risk of being too abstract or parochial, of failing to notice precedents, trends and cycles, of overlooking the long-run and thus misunderstanding ‘how we got here’. Recent financial and economic crises illustrate spectacularly how the economics profession has not learnt from its past. This important and unique book addresses this problem by demonstrating the power of historical thinking in economic research. Concise chapters guide economics lecturers and their students through the field of economic history, demonstrating the use of historical thinking in economic research, and advising them on how they can actively engage with economic history in their teaching and learning. Blum and Colvin bring together important voices in the field to show readers how they can use their existing economics training to explore different facets of economic history. Each chapter introduces a question or topic, historical context or research method and explores how they can be used in economics scholarship and pedagogy. In a century characterised to date by economic uncertainty, bubbles and crashes, An Economist’s Guide to Economic History is essential reading. For further information visit http://www.blumandcolvin.org

Despite being relatively brief, this very readable history covers environmental, political, social, economic, cultural and artistic elements, and is very open to regional variations and to the extent that the history of the peninsula and of its political groupings was far from inevitable. Its tone is accessible, supported by boxes providing supplemental information, and is perfect for travellers to Spain.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Spain underwent one of the most rapid processes of economic development the world had ever seen. Most existing analyses of this process explain the “Spanish Miracle” as a product of the unleashing of market forces and of changes in economic policy made by the Franco regime in the 1950s. Political Economy of the Spanish Miracle provides an alternative explanation of Spanish economic development, analyzing the Miracle from an interdisciplinary political economy perspective that treats capitalist growth as a complex and dynamic interaction between capitalists, workers and the state. The Spanish Miracle is linked to changes in Spanish society produced by the Spanish Civil War, to the class structure of the regime brought to power by that Civil War and to the interaction between domestic social struggles under the Franco regime and Spain’s insertion into the international political economy of the Cold War capitalist world. Ambitious in scope, Political Economy of the Spanish Miracle both revises conventional understandings of Spanish economic growth and situates Spain within comparative discussions of development in the twentieth century. This book will be of great interest to readers in political economy, economic sociology, historical sociology and Spanish and European history more broadly.