Guerra de la Independencia Española - History Lab

Mortality, birth rate and nuptiality in Hoyos (1795-1820)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:56 +0000

In the Extremaduran village of Hoyos, the Spanish War of Independence in 1808 brought about a structural change in marriages, birth rates and mortality, as a result of the demographic and economic crises that fully affected the previously observed patterns. When the conflict broke out, the population was still in the process of recovery from the subsistence crises of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The premature presence of the French army from 1807 and the long stays of French, British and Spanish armies meant a drain on food and money that these territories were barely able to cope with.
As is usual in other territories, the marriage rate adapted to the different stimuli experienced by each municipality over the years. Mortality, on the other hand, is more structural and shows the consequences of certain diseases such as smallpox or cholera, droughts or plagues that devastated the livelihoods of the inhabitants. A key factor at the end of the 18th century was the crisis caused by the price of wheat between 1797 and 1798, which had an impact on a staple product and led to terrible economic and social prospects that were reflected in the birth and marriage curves. In terms of mortality, the peak occurred between 1804 and 1805, due to the previous agrarian crisis and the appearance of new outbreaks of typhus and malaria.

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National Militia and Royalist Volunteers in Lleida (1820-1841)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:25 +0000

An analysis of the formation of the absolutist and liberal groups in Lleida at the end of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century reveals a series of clashes between the two groups. If we also compare the socio-professional groups of their members, we can see that the absolutist ranks were made up of families of greater social influence and the peasantry, while the liberals were made up of liberal professionals, artisans and intellectuals.
On the other hand, and despite these social characteristics, 54% of the municipal posts went to the liberals, following the trend of other Catalan town councils of this chronology. This situation led to the founding of the National Militia as a neighbourhood tool (already provided for in the 1812 Constitution) to defend liberalism and its governing institutions in each locality.
The National Militia allowed a large part of the population – most of them as volunteers – to participate in political life as protagonists, especially in the key years of the liberal revolution, between 1833 and 1843. The main problem they faced was the social groups that supported them, with more than 50% of the population of Lleida, dedicated to farming, remaining outside of them.
In this socio-political panorama, Ferdinand VII at the end of 1823 decided to copy the liberal model and created a group for the defence of absolutism, the Royalist Volunteers, thus attracting other sectors of the population that for convenience or ideology were not attracted by the liberal currents.

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Andalusian heritage privatised between 1750 and 1852

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:25 +0000

When analysing the process of appropriation and privatisation of Andalusian lands – centred in this case on Antequera, Archidona and Malaga – attention must be paid to the different ways in which public lands were alienated, such as the Carolinian distributions, usurpations, the fragmentation of boundaries and finally the liberal disentailments.
The documentation records the highest proportion of usurpations during the first half of the 19th century, especially during the War of Independence and the Liberal Triennium. The method followed by the usurpers was to extend private plots with some municipal lands -under an average of 3.7 hectares per plot-. Among the causes of this land-grabbing fever may have been the demographic increase and the deficit in cereal production, which made it impossible for the most disadvantaged social groups to have access to foodstuffs.
In addition to encroachment, the neighbours adjacent to each area caused the deforestation of many areas due to the felling of trees and the introduction of livestock in these hitherto forbidden places, leading to a drastic reduction in the communal area to the benefit of privatised agricultural uses. The resource shows the process of alienation of territorial patrimony through five distinct phases, with the one corresponding to 1835-1852 as the maximum exponent of the trends that had been observed almost a century earlier.

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Bicentenary of the War of Independence

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:27:59 +0000

Website of the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library where you can consult a wide selection of documents, bibliography and resources on the Spanish uprising against Napoleon (May 1808), which led to the War of Independence.

The post Bicentenary of the War of Independence first appeared on History Lab.