navarra - History Lab

Navarrese lay lordships with jurisdiction in the second half of the 15th century

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:25 +0000

At the beginning of the Modern Age, the different Hispanic kings, in their search for support, gradually ceded part of their jurisdiction to the nobility, but during the second half of the 15th century, the towns tried to take advantage of the wars between the Agramonteses and the Beaumonteses to gain the support of the monarchs. The intention of the towns, which did not resign themselves to losing their royal status, was to free themselves from seignorial jurisdiction, a fact that was maintained throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.
Navarre also underwent this process of cession of royal patrimony, with the high nobility receiving noble titles accompanied by extensive lordships with their corresponding rents and jurisdiction. Moreover, they tried to usurp these rights when circumstances were favourable to them.
This situation continued in Navarre until the 17th century, with the recovery of territories by the Crown interceding with new alienations in the search for resources for a royal treasury in crisis.

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Map of the Kingdom of Navarre. “Regni Navarrae”

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:25 +0000

Map of the kingdom of Navarre in 1690 that includes towns, cities, municipalities, merindades (which he calls “MAIORINATU”), roads, rivers and orographic features. It has a different orientation with the west at the top of the map and the east at the bottom. It also includes the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Navarre at the top.

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Socio-professional representation in the Pamplona Regiment (18th c.)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:30:03 +0000

In their aim to hold the positions of local administration in Navarre, the nobility designed and established a process through which members of the aristocracy could gain access to a political career during Modernity. Education from early childhood became one more tool for overcoming the rest of the population, and government and administration posts were reserved for them when they reached sufficient age and ability.
As early as the Catholic Monarchs in Navarre, people of trust were placed in positions of local government, promoting institutional and social processes in which they had to be reviewed in their posts. But as the years went by, the council posts in Pamplona were occupied almost entirely by the urban aristocracy, reaching their peak in the 18th century.
As for the city’s aldermen, most of them were nobles, the rest falling to certain socio-professional groups that barely accounted for 1% of the total urban population, being lawyers, notaries, solicitors and merchants. On the other hand, a large proportion of Navarrese (35% of the total) were excluded from local public office for almost the whole of Modernity. As a result, the autonomy of power in the smaller towns was more lax, with the main Navarrese graduates focusing on occupying positions of higher political and social status, leaving the concern in these rural areas in the hands of the lower and middle nobility.

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Population trends in Northern Spain (1600-1857)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:13 +0000

The territory included in the conceptualisation of northern Spain is, for the author, Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, the Basque Country and Navarre; some 63,500 km2 which in the mid-19th century was home to almost 22% of the population of peninsular Spain. The resource deals with the demographic evolution of this territory between 1600 and 1857. Divided into maritime and inland areas, the population in the maritime north (Pontevedra, La Coruña, Asturias, Cantabria, Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa) was larger in 1600 than the inland territories (Orense, Lugo, Álava and Navarre), with a territory/population size ratio giving a similar density: 20.8 inhabitants per square kilometre in the coastal provinces, and 20.2 inhabitants per square kilometre in the inland provinces, exceeding the Spanish average of 15. The two and a half centuries of demographic evolution meant that the maritime north gained up to 225% more inhabitants, while the interior gained less: 85%. As a result, the coastal density increased to 62.9 inhabitants/km2, 3 times more than in 1600; a much lower figure than the growth of Orense, Lugo, Álava and Navarre, which reached 37.4. In short, the development of the maritime provinces, tripling their population, elevated them to the regions with the highest densities in Spain, while the interior grew slightly below the national average.

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Financing of the Napoleonic armies in Navarre between 1808 and 1813 (expressed in Navarrese reales de vellón)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:57 +0000

After the French invasion, the financial structure of the Ancien Régime was unable to cover the volume of expenditure demanded by the occupying authorities and by the guerrillas who were quick to oppose it. The war machine needed sufficient capital to feed and pay the troops and guarantee their movements in a strategic frontier territory. On the basis of the capital obtained from the Navarrese people by the French administration – through cash taxes – the 45 million reales de vellón were clearly insufficient to cover the supplies consumed between February 1808 and July 1813. If we add a part of the contributions levied in money to pay soldiers and maintain the government’s administration, the real estimate would be less than 42% of the expenditure on supplies.

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Evolution of the number of baptisms, adult deaths and marriages by five-year periods in Echalar, Lesaca, Vera and Yanci (Navarre) between 1701 and 1850

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:52 +0000

Located in the extreme north-west of Navarre, bordering France and Guipúzcoa, the Cinco Villas is a sub-region of the Cantabrian valleys made up of the following five localities: Aranaz, Echalar, Lesaca, Vera and Yanci. The demographic evolution of this region was characterised by similarities with the other Basque-Cantabrian areas with a low-pressure character, given that a late and restricted nuptiality had the effect of a relatively low birth rate together with an ordinary mortality rate of the same level. Nevertheless, the annual growth rate between 1734 and 1768 was 0.29%, while between 1768 and 1786 it was even lower, at 0.2%. From 1786 onwards, an irregular phase began in which the Convention War caused a sharp decline in the population, which went from 6,591 in 1786 to 6,124 in 1797, with Vera, Yanci and Lesaca being the towns with the greatest relative declines. However, 1860 marked the turning point of the period, where the 7,419 inhabitants of 1824 rose to 7,892 in 1860. A number of factors curtailed the demographic recovery, such as the War of Independence at the beginning of the 19th century. The mortality crises of 1793-1794 and 1813-1814 have a common denominator which in turn is related to that of 1719: war conflicts converged with a confluence of diseases and famines. In addition, the requisitioning of crops and livestock to support the armies caused food supply problems. It was at the end of the Liberal Triennium that the aforementioned villages entered a positive and pronounced dynamic that would last until after the Carlist conflict. The extraordinary increase coincided with decreases in the birth rate and the marriage rate, although in the former, the war against the Conventions and the typhus epidemic were the elements that aggravated the fall in births. During the first mortality crisis of 1793, the region was occupied by Spanish troops who practised a defensive strategy, while in July 1794 the French occupied the area and remained there until peace was signed in June 1795.

The post Evolution of the number of baptisms, adult deaths and marriages by five-year periods in Echalar, Lesaca, Vera and Yanci (Navarre) between 1701 and 1850 first appeared on History Lab.

Evolution of wheat prices in Early Modern Spain

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:46 +0000

During the Modern Age, the availability of food was, to a large extent, a determining factor in the standard of living of the population. One of the great economic efforts for most families was the acquisition of the food necessary for survival, with cereals, especially wheat, and bread, accounting for between 65 and 70% of current expenditure. Because of its importance, the demand for wheat tended to be inelastic. Consequently, changes in its price marked the rise and fall of living standards. At the regional level, the behaviour of the price of wheat showed divergences depending on whether one lived in the centre or on the coast of the peninsula. While the price fluctuation was greater in the Meseta, the coastal areas, with their international trade routes, showed less variation. Thus, throughout the modern period, Barcelona and Valencia had lower prices than in Castilla la Nueva, Segovia or León. Periods of crisis were also important. In Castilla la Nueva, price volatility conditioned the market every 9.8 years; in Andalusia every 10.6 years; in Segovia every 14.1 years; in Navarre every 36.8 years; in Valencia every 38.4 years and in Barcelona every 69 years. Climatic disturbances also affected markets with less international trade capacity. However, from the beginning of the 16th century until the end of the 18th century, the common price tended to fall in parallel with the process of integration of the peninsular markets, a process which, although timid during the first two centuries of modernity, increased with the actions of the Enlightenment reformers.

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The Franco-Spanish balance of trade in the mid-16th century

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:40 +0000

The trade balance is a record that measures the relationship between imports and exports in a particular area and period. The contrast between the two determines the balance, that is, the positive or negative difference in the balance of trade. The author’s resource is based on Franco-Spanish trade through the port of Bilbao between 1544 and 1550. In general terms, the balance of trade showed a clear trade deficit with Spain, with more materials and goods being bought from France than were sold to it. Depending on the nature of the trading company (own account, in company, or on behalf of others), the results, although they follow the same deficit trend, have different impacts. On behalf of others, products were exported for a total value of 1,430,522 maravedís, and 237,911,576 maravedís were imported; a negative balance of 236,481,054. All this shows the nature of the port of Bilbao based on transit trade, where the goods received were hardly retained and from where they were distributed to the rest of the Peninsula. A small amount of the large volume of imports was destined for the local Bilbao trade, while the bulk went to Navarre, La Rioja and Castile, and even to America via Seville.

The post The Franco-Spanish balance of trade in the mid-16th century first appeared on History Lab.

Infant mortality in Spain (per thousand children born), 18th century

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:33 +0000

In general terms, infant mortality in Ancien Régime Spain obeyed high-pressure demographic dynamics. However, there was a regional variability that can be traced well into the contemporary period. These trends favoured the Spanish periphery to the detriment of the interior: Catalonia, Valencia, Aragon, Galicia, Cantabria, the Balearic Islands, the Basque Country and Navarre were found to have between 209 and 251 deceased children per 1,000 born in the first half of the 18th century, a range of 42, while by the second half of the century this range had decreased to 17. Inland Spain, on the other hand, infant mortality went from 303 to 320, an increase of 17 between the first and second half of the century. The data on the evolution of the Spanish territories also show a contrast between them; while the average for peripheral Spain is 203, the average for inland Spain is 320. What were the possible causes of regional variability? In addition to family trends and socio-economic structure, there were health (epidemics), climatic (bad harvests) and environmental aspects.

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The post Infant mortality in Spain (per thousand children born), 18th century first appeared on History Lab.

The monarchy of the Catholic Monarchs. Memory of Spain

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

Episode 10 of the documentary series “Memories of Spain”. The descriptor that appears on the rtve a la carte website includes the following summary: Los Reyes Católicos (The Catholic Monarchs). With the arrival of the Catholic Monarchs, a new historical era appears, characterised by order, social peace, respect for the laws and the greatness of the monarchy as opposed to the chaos of previous reigns. They also advocated religious uniformity, and art and culture made great progress. America was discovered. Ferdinand the Catholic continues to expand into the Mediterranean. Interspersed throughout the chapter are images from the TVE series Requiem por Granada directed by Vicente Escrivà and the film La Celestina by director Gerardo Vera. It is advised by Ricardo García Cárcel and lasts 50:30 minutes

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