A01=Regina Grafe
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Agriculture
Alcabala
Arbitrage
Author_Regina Grafe
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Bacalao
Backwardness
Basques
Bilbao
Castile (historical region)
Catalans
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=KCG
Category=KCZ
Commodity
Composite monarchy
Consumption tax
Coordination failure (economics)
COP=United States
Corporation
Corporatism
Crown of Aragon
Currency
Debt
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Early modern Europe
Early modern period
Economic development
Economic growth
Economic history
Economics
Economist
Economy
Economy of Spain
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eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
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Expense
Extremadura
Fiscal-military state
Free trade
Fuero
Galicia (Spain)
Globalization
Governance
Historiography
Ideology
Income
Inflation
Institution
Interest rate
Investor
Laborer
Language_English
Market integration
Market rate
Mercantilism
Monarchy of Spain
Moral economy
Nation state
Nobility
North America
Obstacle
Old Castile
Opportunity cost
PA=Available
Path dependence
Patrimonialism
Political economy
Price ceiling
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
Shortage
softlaunch
Spaniards
State-building
Supply (economics)
Tariff
Tax
Technology
Thomas J. Sargent
Transaction cost
Urbanization
World economy
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691144849
- Weight: 567g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 08 Jan 2012
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Spain's development from a premodern society into a modern unified nation-state with an integrated economy was painfully slow and varied widely by region. Economic historians have long argued that high internal transportation costs limited domestic market integration, while at the same time the Castilian capital city of Madrid drew resources from surrounding Spanish regions as it pursued its quest for centralization. According to this view, powerful Madrid thwarted trade over large geographic distances by destroying an integrated network of manufacturing towns in the Spanish interior. Challenging this long-held view, Regina Grafe argues that decentralization, not a strong and powerful Madrid, is to blame for Spain's slow march to modernity. Through a groundbreaking analysis of the market for bacalao--dried and salted codfish that was a transatlantic commodity and staple food during this period--Grafe shows how peripheral historic territories and powerful interior towns obstructed Spain's economic development through jurisdictional obstacles to trade, which exacerbated already high transport costs.
She reveals how the early phases of globalization made these regions much more externally focused, and how coastal elites that were engaged in trade outside Spain sought to sustain their positions of power in relation to Madrid. Distant Tyranny offers a needed reassessment of the haphazard and regionally diverse process of state formation and market integration in early modern Spain, showing how local and regional agency paradoxically led to legitimate governance but economic backwardness.
Regina Grafe is associate professor of history at Northwestern University.
