Agricultural History Review, Volume 51 Part 1 (2003), p. 130

Jesús Izquierdo Martín’s well researched monograph on the history of rural Castile from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries focuses on the peasant community of Spain’s northern meseta. In particular, he is concerned with the question of peasant identity and for this purpose uses the tools of sociology and social anthropology. What started off as a study of the monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial was later widened to incorporate ninety-two small communities in the provinces of Madrid, Avila, Segovia, Guadalajara and Toledo. Most of these communities, though far from stagnant, maintained a population of less than 250 inhabitants throughout the three-century period, while their economic stability was closely linked to the preservation of communal lands. What should be of most interest to readers of the Review history review are the more empirical sections of the book. Not least, Izquierdo stresses the low esteem which the peasant community of rural Castile continually attached to technological innovation. This negative attitude was mostly based on the survival of traditional values that placed an enormous emphasis on the practices of one’s ancestors in a world where time immemorial seemed vastly more important than an uncertain future. In the social sphere, he argues, the peasantry’s strong sense of belonging to a local community took clear precedence over such matters as class. Competition was rife between neighbouring towns and villages. Yet, within the same community different classes or factions generally co-operated with one another, even if most people could be classified as peasants (campesinos). Among the consequences of this localism was that outsiders were often denied access to markets of which they were not considered to be members, thereby severely limiting the possibilities of social change in early-modern Castile. At the same time, the evidence reveals a constant struggle for recognition within particular groups – an indication that these small peasant communities were by no means static or selfstabilizing. During the nineteenth century, the triumph of liberal individualism placed these communities on the defensive. Many local communities began to fragment after the 1850s. Even so, not until after the Spanish Civil War – and the imposition of urban values by the Francoist New Order – did real change occur in rural Castile, as resources finally became available for the ‘systematic conversion of peasants into citizens’. Once converted into citizens, in the 1950s and 1960s, these men and women whose ancestors had once proudly proclaimed the sovereignty of their villages in the face of urban civilization set off on a one-way journey to the big cities. With its detailed archival research and extensive bibliography, this pioneering volume enhances our understanding of rural life under the Old Order in early-modern Castile.