El papel del crédito rural en la agricultura del Antiguo Régimen: desarrollo y crisis de las modalidades crediticias (1600-1850)

This commentary sums up the communications presented to the session of the Vl" Spanish Agrarian History Seminar devoted to the rural credit during the Ancien Régime. It asks several questions on the moneylender's and borrower' s identities, the different types of loans, the common use of the consignative census (censos consignativos), the usury mechanisms related to the profit and interest rates, the role of the public granaries (pósitos), the crisis of this mortgage system, and the changes brought about by the liberal laws of the XIXth century.Este comentario resume las comunicaciones presentadas a la sesión del VI Seminario de Historia Agraria dedicada al crédito rural durante el Antiguo Régimen. Plantea varios interrogantes sobre la identidad de prestamistas y prestatarios, los diversos instrumentos de crédito hipotecario, al predominio de los censos consignativos, los mecanismos usurarios en relación a los tipos de beneficio e interés, el papel de los pósitos, la crisis de este sistema crediticio, y los cambios introducidos por la legislación liberal del siglo XIX

Renta señorial y renta de la tierra en la última etapa del Antiguo Régimen en Cataluña

In the eighteen century Catalonia, both manorial and land incomes developed in a fairly similar way. Feudal income suffered a remarkable decline during the previous century, and manorial deduction per tenant dismissed the first half of the seventeenth century. Yet, from 1760 to 1780, a feudal reaction which slaughtered agrarian growth took place. Peasantry responses brought on the system slump, opening up the cycle of liberal revolution

The grape phylloxera plague as a natural experiment: the upkeep of vineyards in Catalonia (Spain), 1858-1935

We present a comparative analysis of the impact and outcome in Catalonia of the wine rush and crash unleashed by the spread of the Grape Phylloxera plague in Europe (1865-1890). In order to explain why many rural districts in the provinces of Barcelona and Tarragona were able to resume winegrowing after the plague, while most in the provinces of Girona and Lleida were not, a statistical model is used to check the economic resilience of the Catalan districts to the external ecological and economic shock. The model combines the population densities as a proxy of the opportunity cost in labour allocation, the demand pull of commercial growth measured by the time-distances to the city of Barcelona, and the agroclimatic land's suitability for growing vines, as measured by the Hugling and Winkler indices or the mean slopes of land. After comparing the vineyard allocation in every district in 1860, 1889 and 1920, these variables are used to explain the differing capacities to endure the Phylloxera plague in Catalonia