This article examines the factors that enabled French merchants to enter the Spanish Indies markets during the 1620s, particularly in the period betwen the Peace of Monzón (1627) and the outbreak of the Franco-Spanish War (1635). It highlights how the French nation of Seville received unprecedented support from the Crown to develop their marginal enterprises in the Carrera de Indias. Royal patronage played a significant role in integrating—or exluding—wealthy merchant communities from the Spanish Atlantic trading system, therby expanding their networks for direct exchanges with the Americas. The study reconstructs French commercial connections within the Spanish Atlantic trade, contextualized alongside Flemish and Italian networks already operating in New Spain. These three nations dominated much of the cargo legally shipped to and from the viceroyalty in the 1620s and 1630s. The analysis details French business interactions with “native” and “foreign” merchants, their resilience following the economic reprisal of 1635, and observations on the reconfiguration of foreign trading networks alongthe New Spain axis during the Spanish Empire’s economic and political crises of the 1640s.

The literature suggests that several factors, including trade costs, influence price formation. However, testing this hypothesis requires rich data, usually unavailable from historical sources. We use a large cadastre from 1749 to analyze wheat price formation in the Crown of Castile in the mid-18th century. We follow the logic of Von Thünen’s isolated markets, which closely resemble historical Spanish grain markets. We show and measure how trade costs heavily determine wheat prices. Accounting for spatial autocorrelation, we observe important spatial effects around the capital. We divide the sample between the interior and the periphery, showing that determinants of price formation do not work well around Madrid, suggesting that the political intervention of grain markets around the capital acted as a potential significant disruptor.

This article examines the reasons for the widespread use of sea loans in financing Spain’s transatlantic commerce before the 1780s, and for their subsequent decline. Although never in the hands of a company with monopoly rights, Spain’s colonial trade was heavily regulated before 1778. The system reduced market risk and unpredictability by operating through a single Spanish port, keeping the colonies undersupplied, and lowering the frequency of the exchanges to allow for silver accumulation in Spanish America. This afforded significant, though volatile, profit margins. Such conditions fostered the use of the sea loan because the instrument enabled the lender to reap greater returns by charging higher-than-standard interest rates while avoiding usury laws. In contrast, the 1778 free-trade regulations increased competition and unpredictability, narrowing profit margins. Trade expanded, and “marine interest” rates dropped, precipitating the end of the sea loan as the hallmark credit instrument of the Spanish colonial trade.

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, mutual associations predominated in insuring the large fleet of ships that carried coal from Britain's northeast to London and other ports. The number of associations grew rapidly from the late 1770s, initially on the Tyne, then spreading to other ports on the east coast. They largely saw off the challenge from joint-stock companies created after the liberalisation of the marine insurance market in 1824. Low administrative and legal costs and the ability to mobilise local knowledge to minimise risks allowed the associations to offset the disadvantage of insuring vessels in the same trade facing similar adversities. This article discusses how mutual associations were organised and operated, traces their development on the Tyne and the competition they encountered there from Lloyd's of London and joint-stock insurance companies, and examines the incidence of mutual associations elsewhere in Britain.

This article examines the fiscal transformation of Spain's trade with Spanish America during the 17th century. It analyses the taxation of trade combined with the evolution of the Hispanic Monarchy's long-term domestic debt. To this end, the author looks at the almojarifazgo de Indias (main customs duty), its juro (annuity) obligations and the evolution of the transatlantic trade. He argues that the fall in customs revenue and the increasing non-payment of the juros issued against the almojarifazgo were neither a consequence of the alleged crisis of the Carrera de Indias nor of the higher incidence of fraud. The Crown was not interested in exerting greater fiscal pressure on the trade or fighting fraud at the customs houses of Seville and Cadiz as the increased tax revenue would have gone entirely to service the unpaid juros. Instead, the fiscal burden shifted towards extraordinary contributions that were free of juro obligations.

El trabajo analiza la innovación en la industria militar en España entre 1878 y 1939 a partir de las patentes y los contratos de defensa. El alto porcentaje de contratos de productos patentados (63%) es indicio de una notable relación entre patentes y contratos. Esto se ve confirmado por la coincidencia en el orden de los principales países en ambas variables. El test econométrico confirma la estadística descriptiva y, además, evidencia que las patentes a priori más valiosas (de invención, puestas en práctica, más longevas y empresariales) tienen una correlación más fuerte con los contratos. Desde la óptica sectorial también se observa una correlación positiva y significativa, aunque menos intensa que desde el espacial. El análisis micro confirma la estrecha relación de las patentes con la actividad del sector de armamento militar, explicita los protagonistas y las vías de esa relación (importación, producción local y licencias) y explica las disparidades observadas en el análisis agregado.

The aim of our paper is to study some aspects of the textile industry of the city of Segovia and its land in the second half of the 16th century, interpreting them through spatial economy theories and specifically the industrial district approach. It is about seeing the competitive advantages of the integration and diffusion of the business organization in its geographical framework. The district's competitive advantages are linked to both transaction and production costs. One of them is to maximize the benefits of labor market segmentation with the emergence of a primary market for skilled labor. Another is the ease of diffusion of both technology and organizational and commercial techniques.

Foundling hospitals spread across Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, taking in hundreds of thousands of children each year. In Spain, the hospitals of major cities had staffs of more than 1,000 external wet nurses, who worked mainly in rural localities. Their cash wages were key for the household economies of the poor rural and urban populations. This article presents a methodology to interpret wet-nurse wages and explains their utility with respect to other occupations for men and women. Our results include a series of nominal and real wages for wet nurses and a calculation of their contributions to family income. The level of wages these institutions could offer was a major determinant in the supply of wet-nurse labour.

El artículo se enmarca en las líneas de investigación actual sobre la mujer en la economía marítima preindustrial. Se trata de un estudio de caso centrado en las capitanas y las patronas durante el auge del corso en Mallorca entre 1635–80. En él se destaca la labor de las mujeres de mar como procuradoras de sus maridos mientras permanecían ausentes, especialmente cuando la situación les exigió demostrar iniciativa e ir más allá de lo estipulado en la procura. Asimismo, se constata un mayor protagonismo en cuatro áreas de la empresa corsaria, mientras ésta se rigió por un modelo de corte familiar.

This scoping paper addresses the role of financial institutions in empowering the British Industrial Revolution. Prominent economic historians have argued that investment was largely funded out of savings or profits, or by borrowing from family or friends: hence financial institutions played a minor role. But this claim sits uneasily with later evidence from other countries that effective financial institutions have mattered a great deal for economic development. How can this mismatch be explained? Despite numerous technological innovations, from 1760 to 1820 industrial growth was surprisingly low. Could the underdevelopment of financial institutions have held back growth? There is relatively little data to help evaluate this hypothesis. More research is required on the historical development of institutions that enabled finance to be raised. This would include the use of property as collateral. This paper sketches the evolution of British financial institutions before 1820 and makes suggestions for further empirical research. Research in this direction should enhance our understanding of the British Industrial Revolution and of the preconditions of economic development in other countries.

The construction of the rail network in Spain was supported by public aid. A part of them were “subvenciones adicionales”, which came from the exemption of the payment of customs duties on the imports of railway equipment. The exact amount of these grants is only known after 1870 when they were rather small. In this paper, we quantified them for the period 1857-1886 in the company MZA, by then the largest in the country. Moreover, we estimate the costs of the construction of the railway lines of that company until 1869 and how much did each of the sources of funding, public and private contributed. The main conclusion is that in MZA the State’s grants were higher than the shareholders’ investment.

This paper deals with Anglo-Spanish trade and finances for the period c. 1810-1850. It concentrates on the business activities of a London merchant bank (Huth & Co. or Huth) with Spain during this period by paying special attention to the support given by Huth to the many bilateral trades between Spain and Britain in which the company participated. It also focuses on the support given by Huth to much trade in and out of Spanish ports but which did not go through British ports. This overall support included the provision of credit facilities, exchange rate brokerage, insurance services and commercial intelligence. In addition, the article covers the links between Huth and the Spanish crown, thanks to which the bank became an important conduit of Spanish investments in American securities before 1850. Huth was also the paymaster abroad for the Spanish state. In view of Huth's close connections to the Spanish economy during this period, it is perhaps surprising that this is the first study of this «Spanish» house in London.

The aim of this paper is to measure the influence of the railroad in the urbanization of Spain between 1860 and 1910. Our sources are from quantitative information –censuses of population– and qualitative one –coastal condition, existence of mining industry or industry, administrative capital and date of the railway connection–. We have estimated a first model of data panel in differences. Based on this model we have employed different estimation techniques in order to address omitted variables and/or endogeneity of the train variable. Results from all estimations give us clear evidence of the positive influence of the railroad on the urban growth. In addition a quasi-experiment design reinforces this conclusion. In short, although moderate, our paper shows strong evidence of the influence of the railroad on Spanish urbanization. This conclusion is coherent with other research.

This paper focuses on the analysis of weak states in the international trading system during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic crises, especially on Portugal's trade relations with the United States. We argue that the previous studies of the trade flows during these conflicts have not paid enough attention on smaller actors. Even though the Peninsular War caused severe disruption of agricultural production in Portugal, the United States, despite its strained relations with an ally of Portugal, Great Britain, became a key supplier for the Portuguese market. Clearly, the threatened position of the peninsula, and the need to supply the troops, awarded the Portuguese some room to manoeuvre in the international markets. Total war was not a constraint for all states — economic necessities trumped political and diplomatic concerns during the era of the first real-world wars. This situation was a temporary one, only to change after the conflict.

This paper studies the role played by different trade barriers (transport costs, customs and currency) in the evolution of Spanish imports during the First Globalization (1870-1913). Through the estimation of several gravity equations with panel data analysis, we obtain the elasticities of imports to each barrier, which allows us to combine them into a single ad valorem measure of barriers to trade (which we call the trade costs tariff equivalent). More interestingly, the contribution of the barriers to the profile of the tariff equivalent, as well as the assignment of an active role to the peseta exchange rate as a barrier, illustrates the existence of a protectionist backlash against the sustained decline in transport costs in the period 1870-1913.

Spain’s financial position during the late 19th and early 20th centuries has usually been presented as one of persistent deficit on current account, which resulted from her integration into international commodity and factor markets and this, in turn, slowed down the growth of the economy. In this essay a preliminary reconstruction of the balance of payments on current account allows us to reject this view. In fact, a net capital inflow made possible to meet the demand for investment-boosting economic performance. Current account reversals in a context of macroeconomic domestic imperfections help to explain the economic slowdown at the turn of the century.

Miguel de Cervantes placed some passages of his masterpiece in Catalonia. Nevertheless, the features he uses to approach the Catalan reality -halfwaybetween 16th and 17th centuries- are obviously influenced by Don Quixote's personality. At that time, the Catalan economy was making its way in every sphere of activity which could operate at a profit. Far away from that magnificent Middle Ages, agriculture had to be rearranged and it was necessary to promote the most competitive products and to try to find markets for them. New generations devoted themselves to this purpose, people who were equally distant from the old patrician oligarchies and from the fickleness of the marginal nobility. They were laying, perhaps without knowing it, the path to modernity.

The constant state of war which dominated the reign of Philip II and part of Philip III'S exerted a growing fiscal demand both on Castile and the American Colonies. The American treasure which opened the doors to credit to finance these campaigns increased substantially over the 17th century. Never the less, the merchants, which controlled the extraction of precious metals and their shipments to the metropolis, established a highly lucrative trade with the Peru and the Philippines which created a constant drain of silver to the Far East. Based on the complaints filed by the Consulado de Sevilla about the competition of Chinese goods and the loss of American silver, the Monarch imposed heavy restrictions on the triangular trade in the Pacific. These restrictions created conflicts with the American viceroys who were interested in this trade and resulted in the generalization of smuggling.

Silver coins were an excellent instrument of payment in the seventeenth century, but given its high weight and value, its use and transport involved high risks and costs. Is it possible to estimate those costs? So far, we know how much the Spanish Crown paid to its bankers for money transport, but how much did the bankers themselves pay? And how much did other economic agents pay? What was cheaper: the use of bills of exchange or that of coins? How did the export of precious metals work in Spain?

This article deals with the consumption and marketing of textiles in some Castilian areas during the first decades of the 17th century. The study uses a new documentary source: the 1618 inquiry. Part one describes the main characteristics of this documentary source. The second part analyzes textiles sales according to the fibre the different fabrics were made of. The third part presents some notes on the typology of the textiles sold in the country. This allows us to describe the marketing areas of two highly representative products of the Castilian woollen industry: the Segovian and Andalusian cloth. Finally, in the fourth and last part we have estimated the consumption of textile fabrics by household. This analysis has also been completed with a study of the terms of trade between grain and some textile fabrics between 1614 and 1616. The results support the hypothesis of a higher consumption of textile products in Andalusia than in Old Castile at the beginning of the 17th century.