This final chapter therefore attempts to answer two questions that are crucial to explaining why so many people had become disillusioned with parliamentary democracy. First, it shows why apparently modest reforms, such as the introduction of collective bargaining or the providing of emergency assistance to workers through temporary land settlements, become so contentious and, in particular, why employers and labour organizations were so intransigent. Second, it explains why conflicts became widespread across Spain, appearing not just in areas of latifundios, but also in villages where land was not heavily concentrated. After briefly examining the theoretical literature on rural conflicts and the scale and scope of contentious behavior in the Spanish countryside between 1931 and 1936, it looks at case studies of conflicts involving casual harvest labourers in Southern Spain, and tenant farmers or yunteros in Extremadura.

Chapter 3 examines the early nineteenth-century return of the idea of limited resources and the decline of the notion that market-based luxury consumption could have a positive effect on the economy. It is at this time that population growth, together with the rural–coastal gap, appeared to require curbing of luxury consumption of resources and a return to state intervention. By this time trade and manufacturing had been widely accepted as an important component of the economy. Chinese intellectuals and reformers, however, believed that the stimulating power of consumption should be channeled away from luxury goods and deployed in support of the production of daily-need goods as a means of solving the poverty crisis. This chapter also discusses the early impact of Western ideas of economic liberalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and how these ideas were received by Chinese intellectuals and reformers. Western imperialism led to a shift in the main conceptual parameters of the economic discourse from dynastic stability to defensive nation-building. Pro-frugality policies acquired a new popularity in the context of confrontation with Western models of evolutionary modernity, the rise of defensive economic nationalism, and the return of the idea of economic scarcity (poverty).

Although Europe between 1870 and 1939 enjoyed a period of long-run economic growth and unprecedented improvements in living standards, it also suffered from major social conflicts, rising nationalism, and witnessed experiments at new forms of political organization. This chapter looks at the connections between changes in political representation, economic development, and state capacity. It begins by discussing the difficulties of switching from a society run by the landed elites to one under universal suffrage and competitive party politics. This is followed by looking at the impact of the First World War on the development of state capacity. Then we consider the rapid economic growth that took place, and how a combination of rising industrial demand for unskilled labour, emigration, and international trade threatened a major switch in income distribution away from the landed elites to urban workers. The chapter concludes by examining how the economic and social problems caused by the First World War and the collapse of the international economy in the 1930s led to the strengthening of liberal democracy in some countries, but the appearance of social democracy and fascism in others.

The half century prior to the First World War saw unprecedented social changes in the countryside across Europe. In particular, the economic position of the landed elites was endangered by the import of cheap food, and their political authority and social influence threatened by urban demands to extend the suffrage and the appearance of more efficient factor and commodity markets that eroded the benefits from traditional patron–client networks. Industrialization and the greater integration of the Atlantic economy after 1870 produced a downward pressure on European land prices and rents, but increased real wages. As the landed elite become less influential, the family farm grew in importance, although by the interwar years significant differences existed between the self-sufficient ‘independent’ family farmers found in Northern Europe and the poor ‘peasant’ farmers of Eastern and Southern Europe. Government attitudes towards the sector also changed, especially with the First World War, which had important consequences for both demands for state intervention and governments’ capacity to respond during the Great Depression.

The popular enthusiasm that greeted the Second Republic in 1931 proved short-lived, and the military uprising of July 1936 led to a civil war that lasted three years, with the rebels finding themselves too weak to quickly finish the task they had initiated, but too strong to be defeated by the government. While the army was the ‘ultimate cause of the breakdown’ of the brief democratic experiment, it was the deep political crisis and the regime’s loss of legitimacy that provided it with the opportunity to act. The experience of a ‘democratic breakthrough’ quickly collapsing and the country turning to authoritarian rule has been all too frequent over the past century, with the ‘Arab Spring’ being the most recent example.

The decision to adopt a longue durée (1500s–1930s) approach to the history of thought on market and consumption in modern China inevitably implies a close focus on the historical development of just two notions: a narrow focus which did not sufficiently reflect the complexity of the Chinese discourse on the economy at large and the variety of problems it addressed (not least those of taxation, land tenure, and currency). This approach, however, served its intended purpose of tracing long-term transformations in the complex interrelations between historical circumstances, intellectual interpretations, and political objectives. In the case of Qing China, the political objective was embodied in the mandate of minsheng, as not just a rhetorical commitment to the welfare of the population of the empire but also a prerequisite for economic and political stability. From its establishment, the Qing state embraced this classical Confucian mandate with particular enthusiasm and pragmatism, as illustrated by its reformulation of minsheng into the guoji minsheng (state finances and people’s livelihood) formula, which firmly linked the strategic importance of the prosperity of the societal economy to the financial stability of the state.

Economic development saw Spanish per capita income double between the 1870s and 1930s, and the 1876 Constitution provided half a century of political stability. However, despite universal male suffrage being granted in 1890, there were no mass political parties and voters could not change governments, while labour organizations were often banned and poverty widespread, especially among the landless workers of the south. In fact, political stability came at a high cost, as local elites were able to use central government funds to build and consolidate their clientelistic networks. Spain’s neutrality during the First World War also resulted in limited demands to increase state capacity. Indeed, the combination of weak party development and weak state capacity in 1931 goes a long way to explaining why the democratic experiment of the Second Republic would fail. Unfulfilled expectations of government land and labour market reforms disillusioned many, leading to a growing rejection of liberal democracy.

As the sun rose over the Río de la Plata on 3 April 1660, Albert Jansen could look out over the river and see two of his ships at anchor. The Goude Leeuw, just arrived from Amsterdam, was carrying merchandise destined not only for Buenos Aires, but also inland as far as Potosí. His other ship, the Vergulde Valk, had been in Buenos Aires for several months and would shortly depart the city for the return journey to Amsterdam. At age thirty, Jansen had already made a small fortune importing textiles, hardware, and other merchandise from Amsterdam to Buenos Aires and exporting hides and, especially, silver. Silver was the primary reason Jansen, and other Dutch merchants like him, were in the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires itself was not a very large market. However, Potosí, with its thriving population, commercial economy, and silver mines, was just two months overland by pack mule and cart. The Spanish trading route to Potosí went the other way, via Lima to the west coast of South America and from there north to the Caribbean and beyond to Seville or Cádiz. Buenos Aires offered merchants a much more direct route, but there was the problem of accessing it as the port was officially closed to unauthorized shipping.

On the morning of 29 July 1599, the Silveren Werelt (Silver World) slowly sailed up the Río de la Plata and anchored off the port of Buenos Aires. The Dutch ship, captained by Cornelis van Heemskerck, was making the first attempt at establishing direct trade between the Dutch Republic and Buenos Aires. The voyage of the ambitiously named Silveren Werelt had begun the previous September, accompanied by the Gouden Werelt (Golden World), captained by Laurens Bicker. The two ships had left Texel (the seaport of Amsterdam) on a journey that took them to the Guinea coast via the Cape Verde Islands. Near São Tomé, the Portuguese attacked them, and van Heemskerck was captured. After a prisoner exchange, the voyage continued, though the two ships were separated by a storm. The Silveren Werelt continued on to the agreed rendezvous point at Maldonado, at the mouth of the Río de la Plata. When the Gouden Werelt failed to arrive, the Silveren Werelt continued up the estuary to within sight of Buenos Aires.2