The journalist Nipho’s statements will have major implications for Spanish historiography on the problem of modernisation/industrialisation. Jordi Nadal’s work on industrialisation in Spain has a precedent that has subsequently sown the seeds for all the historiographical debate that has enriched this issue in Spanish history. It seems that the idea of an industrialisation that contrasts between Catalonia and the rest of the country is not an original idea of Nadal’s, as we find it reflected in the writings of this journalist. Nadal’s thesis is that the process of industrialisation in Spain had been a failure due to many factors. Among them, the absence of a state to direct and facilitate efforts in this direction (such as the injection of liquidity, lack of organisation of the initiative, etc.). In Nadal’s analysis, the Catalans had managed to promote a small-scale industrialisation which, on the other hand, did not have the financial support of a state concerned with the industrialisation process, which decided its failure due to the fact that it was self-sustaining. Nadal’s analysis also contrasted the Catalan industrialisation trend with the stagnation of the Castilian cereal dynamic. This type of postulate, which also tended to evaluate the industrialisation process on a national scale, was later qualified in the collective work directed by Nicolás Sánchez Albornoz published in 1985 (La modernización económica de España 1830-1930). This proposed a change of perspective that tended to analyse the industrialisation process from an intersectoral and regional perspective. Indeed, not even 18th and 19th century England maintained the same levels of industrialisation as Liverpool and Manchester in other parts of the country, as there were also contrasts in which there were areas of rampant de-industrialisation.

Collection: Texts

Chronology: XVIII

Scope: Secondary Education, Baccalaureate, University

Link: https://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/28459/1/RHM_29.pdf

Resource type: Historical source

Source: F. Nipho [1770], cit. en Enciso R

Language: Spanish

Date: 1770

Owner: Djebril Bouzidi (Modernalia)

Identifier: F. Nipho [1770], cit. en Enciso R

Abstract: Statement by renowned journalist Francisco Mariano Nipho on the differences between industry in the Principality and the rest of the country

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