Agricultural History Review, Volume 61 Part 1 (2013), p. 179

Catalonia was one of the few regions of Europe’s periphery which experienced industrialization and transformation on a scale similar to the ‘core’ regions during the years covered by this excellent book. Marfany uses a wide variety of archival material (especially inventories post-mortem and church registers) to examine the household economies of the inhabitants of Igualada, a town which was not only at the centre of an important wine producing region, but Catalonia’s largest woollen cloth manufacturing centre by the 1760s, and the second for spinning and fourth for weaving cotton in 1820. Population increased from 1630 inhabitants in 1717, to 4925 in 1787, and 7731 by 1830. Only one chapter is concerned specifically with agriculture and, following Pierre Vilar, the author argues that important changes occurred through the extension, intensification and specialization of cultivation. The majority of farms were too small to provide families with a living, and a rural proletariat of ‘considerable size’ had appeared by the late eighteenth century. There was therefore a ready source of labour for proto-industry, first in the woollen and later in the cotton industries. Most households participated in two or three different activities, and very few tenants had more than one plot of vines, suggesting that it was not so much insufficient land that encouraged households to turn to part-time work in proto-industry, but rather the nature of viticulture, an occupation which carried significant risks given the highly volatile nature of harvests.

The author argues that the family unit was central to these ‘great transformations’. In Catalonia the use of impartible inheritance and extended families has traditionally been considered as one of the region’s strengths relative to other areas of Spain. Inheritance allowed property to be passed down undivided through generations, encouraging younger sons to take their portions and seek their fortunes elsewhere. In Igualada, by contrast, growing local employment opportunities appear to have limited migration, and allowed virtually all to marry, and at a very young age, although households worked increasingly long hours. However, unlike the model of industrious behaviour described by de Vries for north-western Europe, production failed to become more specialized and, with the exception of the elite, the local population did not increase or change substantially their consumption habits. As Allen and Weisdorf have argued for British farm workers at this time, longer work hours in Igualada appear to have been necessary for survival, rather than to increase consumer opportunities.

As with most centres of proto-industry, an important quantity of production was destined to be sold outside of the region, rather than locally. However the results here raise an important question because, if consumption habits were slow to change in a dynamic centre such as Igualada, were Spain’s colonial and urban elites sufficiently large to have absorbed the rapidly growing textile production?

Looking outside the immediate region of Igualada might have helped to reinforce or challenge some of the conclusions presented here. In the first instance Barcelona, which was just 60 kilometres from the town, is hardly mentioned although it must have had an important influence both directly and indirectly on living standards. The use of long-run price changes for crops such as wine or wheat, as well as real wages, would also have helped to understand better some of the shifts in living standards and income distribution. That said this is a thought-provoking book that expertly merges archival skills with knowledge of the debates on the early stages of industrialization. The book is also beautifully produced, and short enough not to deter the non-specialist reader. Author and publisher are to be congratulated.