Distant Tyranny: Markets, Power, and Backwardness in Spain, 1650-1800

The Princeton Economic History of the Western World #38

by Regina Grafe

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.

Genres: History, Spain, Economics

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Winston B-S · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent work of economic history. Dispels common misconceptions about early modern Spain and its economy. Grafe's use of bacalao to clearly determine facts about the Spanish economy is really interesting a solves a number of typical problems with doing premodern or early modern price history. It integrates well with non-economic history as well. Grafe is careful not to overstate her thesis, which is sometimes a problem with work like this. It took a while for Grafe to get to the more central topics of her thesis and when she got there, she didn't spend quite enough time on them in my opinion. There could have been more specifics about local Spanish governance (maybe integrating some work done on guilds?) harming the economy than just going back to the cod data repeatedly.

[John Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read a free copy through project muse and the NYPL. Appreciated the rebuttal on the previous historiography and the focus on the bacalao trade.