XIX - History Lab

Mayorazgo. Feudal Property in Castile (1369-1836)

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

Clavero’s words are framed between the second half of the 18th century and the 19th century. At this time, the enlightened and reformers proposed changes aimed at modernising the country, a claim that was not always in line with the interests of other social groups, in this case the nobility. The struggle against these institutions, which according to the Enlightenment had hindered economic progress, took place as these reforms found some support in political power. Little by little, legislation would attempt to intervene in this type of feudal regimes in order to obtain greater tax revenues as well as greater political intervention. The bourgeoisie sought with this type of reform to consolidate political power on a territorial level, for which the power of the lords was an obstacle. At the same time, they wanted to establish a capitalist economy, which required the abolition of this feudal institution. For the monarchy, the interest lay in meeting the increase in state expenditure, which, according to Francisco Javier Guillamon Alvarez, had become burdensome since the end of the 18th century.

The post Mayorazgo. Feudal Property in Castile (1369-1836) first appeared on History Lab.

Diary of the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:33:40 +0000

The expulsion from Spain and the loss of their income was not the only misfortune the Jesuits had to face. The political upheavals in Spain led to the appointment of Joseph Bonaparte as the new king after the Napoleonic invasion. The new document of Bayonne (Charter of Bayonne) was intended to be endorsed not only by the one hundred Spanish representatives who went to the city of Bayonne, but it was intended that everyone who received money from the public purse should support the new king’s accession to the throne, under threat that their income would be suspended if they did not do so. Spanish Jesuits who had been exiled in Italy were also called upon to endorse the document. Some accepted, but others refused on the grounds that the new monarch was a usurper, and since then faced no small amount of trouble. Those who refused to sign the document were arrested, imprisoned and relocated to convents under guard. With this, the normality that the Jesuits had managed to achieve in their new destinations was again undermined, and as Inmaculada Fernñandez de Arrillaga points out, they carried out different jobs such as confessors, teachers, etc. Such was the case of Father Manuel Luengo arrested in Rome.

The post Diary of the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain first appeared on History Lab.

Directorate of parents of orphans and superintendents of schools of the Kingdom of Navarre

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:33:29 +0000

The 18th century saw the consolidation of the Enlightenment as the hegemonic paradigm of knowledge. The strength of this ideology, together with the consolidation of the European monarchies, led to a pact between the enlightened and the monarchs. This gave rise to what was known as enlightened despotism, which, as the motto went, consisted of doing “everything for the people, but without the people”. The education of the population was one of the points most insisted on by the Enlightenment reformers, who wanted to give the population a utilitarian education. They thus promoted projects to establish primary schools with the aim of making the population literate, under the maxim that an educated and trained people would favour progress and the formation of a political society of a “republican” character. In this fragment, Tomás Virto de Vera denounces the obstacles to the establishment of compulsory schooling, something that was attempted in much of Europe, which does not deny the resistance and complications that these initiatives encountered. In this case, the main social and economic impediments to the introduction of schooling are depicted, as minors were employed to help support the precarious family economies of the working classes. In other cases, schooling was simply not considered to be of value in the children’s future.

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