Agricultura - History Lab

Weekly of agriculture and arts addressed to parish priests (1797-1808)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:34:35 +0000

The Royal Botanic Gardens Digital Library is an online resource providing free and open access to more than 7,500 publications from the early modern period to the present day. It contains an excellent digital collection based mainly on materials in the form of books, magazines, pamphlets and leaflets which have been previously digitised and which are mostly from the collection of the Library of the Royal Botanic Gardens. In this case, the Semanario de Agricultura y Artes addressed to the parish priests, created in 1797, aimed to inform in an updated way and through a newspaper-like format, of the advances and new techniques in the arts of Agriculture and Industry, both in Spain and internationally. Its target audience tended to be the peasantry and artisans.

The post Weekly of agriculture and arts addressed to parish priests (1797-1808) first appeared on History Lab.

Anonymous manuscript

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:33:46 +0000

Professor David Bernabé Gil analysed an anonymous document among the papers of the University of Orihuela, which he dated approximately 1780. This text is a charge against the liberalising measures that were being put in place in the time of Carlos III. In the fragment of the text cited, three aspects were pointed out which needed to be rectified in Spain and which free trade was aggravating. The first concerns the situation of agriculture, which the author states should be promoted as a pillar of the state. This is the most tangible example of the persistence of a certain type of thinking linked to physiocracy, which pointed to agriculture as the main wealth of kingdoms and states. At the same time, the situation of the peasants was pointed out, whose life was one of misery and indebtedness, a situation that had favoured the merchants who had used free trade to exploit them and leave them in a situation of prostration. The second maxim was to strengthen local arts and crafts. To this end, he proposed raising prices so that they could find a place in the market (local and foreign) without having to resort to imports. In this way, the author understands that imports, apart from weakening local industry, serve foreign interests, normally associated with states that are enemies of the monarchy and that would benefit from Spanish money. As for the last problem, he pointed out the need to cut back on the huge profits of the clergy and the nobility. These privileged groups benefited from free trade by being able to sell grain at a good price, so their wealth had to be curtailed by cutting their rents or imposing taxes on their land.

The post Anonymous manuscript first appeared on History Lab.

AHN: Councils. 22.243/4, fí° 73 v°-74 r

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:33:35 +0000

The repopulation that took place after the expulsion of the Moors posed many problems that were difficult to solve. The situation of this marginalised population before the expulsion was that of an overpopulation on which enormous taxes were levied. In such a way that, in order to pay them, they were forced to do strenuous work that still did not allow them to improve their standard of living, entering into a dynamic of proletarianisation as Fernand Braudel put it. The saying attributed to this population that said they lived as Christians, but paid as Moors, was therefore true. The truth is that, in order to survive, the Moors had to cultivate different types of cereals and rice was one of them. Their expulsion was not met with the same volume of population. But to this we had to add that with the Moors had disappeared the great experience in different types of cultivation that the repopulators did not know. Crops such as rice, apart from having a bad reputation due to the diseases it caused (malaria), demanded an effort that the repopulators were not prepared to make.

The post AHN: Councils. 22.243/4, fí° 73 v°-74 r first appeared on History Lab.