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

by David R. Ringrose

In his important new study, David Ringrose reexamines the history of Spain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He challenges the conventional ways of framing that history, questions the importance of the empire for peninsular Spain, and suggests that some of the seemingly dramatic modernization of the nineteenth century was already under way in the eighteenth. In addition, the emergence of a governing elite is placed in the context of family and patronage networks. This challenging book will change our understanding of the history of modern Spain.

Paperback

First published March 29, 1996

Reviews

[Charles Nicholas Saenz · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Ringrose's "Spain, Europe, and the 'Spanish Miracle,' 1700-1900," builds an engaging reevaluation of Spanish historiography out of recent work on the historical period encompassing the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His primary argument challenges the convention that Spain floundered economically at the close of the early modern period, as the rest of Western Europe entered a phase of heavy industialization, and failed to recover lost ground in later centuries. Though his conclusions are drawn from an incomplete analysis of the period, there does appear to be strong support for the view that Spain actually exhibited a previously unrecognized degree of economic resiliency.

This resiliency is based off a view of the later colonial period that sees the loss of Spanish America as an unremarkable moment in Spain's economic relationship with the Americas. Ringrose argues trade between Spain and its colonies had become by the early eighteenth century similar to that with other independant states. The only territories of real colonial value - Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines - remained tied to the Spanish Crown. This developement, in turn, relied on a series of liberalizing reforms launched in the late eighteenth century that broke down the existing monopolistic trade system in favor of increasing commodification. This change favored ports along the North Atlantic coastline and Mediterranean especially.

Ringrose's analysis divides the country into four geographic region. The first, composed of the Mediterranean littoral, streching from Genoa to Gibraltar and centered at Barcelona, proved especially strong economically. In the North, the second region, extending along the Atlantic coastline centered around Bilbao and later Santander, grew especially strong from mining. Of all regions, the third region or Castilian interior, suffered some stagnation. However, it was by far the Andulsia of the Guadalquivir basin that suffered most draatically from the loss of monopoistic protections on trade with Spanish possessions in the Western Hemisphere.

In closing, Ringrose argues that despite his accout of the economic "successes" of modern Spain, the political and social state of the country eveloved very little during this period, maintaining its reliance on powerful families and local privileges. Though, perhaps here too there remains much work to be done.