~ El estado del reino ~
Part II: Desarrollo del interior
Iberian Peninsula c. 1500-1515
- De flamencos, italianos y lana -
The imminence of Miguel’s coming of age and the reality of an Iberian union must have given Isabel of Castile a second wind, as she spent the last 14 years of her life in a flurry of activity - much of it quite ambitious in scope. Of all Spain’s natural industries, perhaps its most consistently lucrative was its tradition of pasturage. Since the 12th century, Castilians had secured a monopoly on wool in Western Europe, owing to the high quality yield of the native Merino sheep. This monopoly was protected by a powerful association of sheep ranchers known as the Mesta (El Honrado Concejo de la Mesta). In Castile, the Mesta had been formally authorized since 1347, during the reign of Alfonso XI, and it had been steadily growing in wealth and influence ever since, becoming a virtual ‘fourth estate’ by the late 15th century. The laws of Castile had made the major cañadas (traditional north-south right-of-ways for transhumance) virtually untouchable, protecting them from any form of development besides clearage. This withheld significant swaths of arable land from traditional agriculture, putting Castile consistently at risk of a subsistence crisis. Where traditional agriculture did have its space, the harm of the Mesta’s privileges was still felt, with wayward herds of sheep and cattle frequently trampling crops, destroying barriers, and overgrazing already sparse areas of the Meseta Central.
For most of her reign, Isabel of Castile was a strong supporter of the Mesta, but by the beginning of the 16th century it was becoming more and more obvious that the Mesta, as it stood, was doing more harm than benefit. Wool-farming - especially as it was done under the supervision of the Mesta - was only an agricultural pursuit by technicality: while they brought in a steady stream of revenue, sheep were only to be eaten at the end of their productive lives - hardly often enough to qualify as a reliable food source and certainly not often enough to replace the loss in much needed staple crops caused by the irregularities of pastoralism. Isabel did not want to break the Mesta, but rather rein it in. As long as the vast majority of Castile’s space and natural resources were being used for this lone, non-manufacturing, export-based enterprise, the middle classes of Spain could not grow at the same pace as they were in, say, England or France.
The “reyes de lana” were content to grow rich off their trade with the Low Countries while they paid their laborers incredibly meager wages, but for the Crown this was not a satisfactory arrangement. In May of 1502, as part of the Leyes de Oviedo (penned and compiled by the royal jurist Juan López de Palacios Rubios), Isabel decreed that Castilian herdsman were required to be paid a minimum wage of 20 reales a day. In 1503, Isabel later added a corollary to the Leyes de Oviedo that intended to regulate and reduce the overly expansive cañadas. These developments earned the ire of the Mesta’s elite, and many violent skirmishes occurred between the Mesta’s herdsmen and the Santa Hermandad (the royal peacekeeping militia) throughout Andalucía, Extremadura, and Murcia. It was not until October of 1511 that the representatives of the Mesta and of the Crown met in La Hinojosa (near Cuenca), where reparations were paid to the members of the Mesta and the stipulations of the Leyes de Oviedo were fully ratified.
Lands reserved for the wintering of sheep, c. 1500 and c. 1511
In order to more directly grow Castile’s deficient middle class, Isabel set about importing middle class individuals. Beginning in 1504, thousands of skilled Flemish and English textile workers were hired directly by the Crown to set up shop in Castile with housing prepared and a royal stipend to aid them in their enterprise, provided they 1) remain in Castile 8 months out of the year for the first ten years, 2) hire at least one native-born Castilian apprentice for the duration of those 10 years, 3) raise their children in Castile and educate them in exclusively Castilian institutions, and 4) did not neglect their trade or sink into vagrancy - all of which would be inspected yearly by the local alcalde de barrio, who would receive a bonus in pay for this service, as raised by the locality that volunteered to “adopt” a Fleming artisan and his family. Furthermore, these artisans would receive a monetary boon of 2,000 reales for every legitimate child they conceived in Castile. From 1504 to 1515, nearly 13,000 textile workers - primarily from the Low Countries - were settled in Castile, with most being concentrated in Asturias, Cantabria, and Galicia (more than a thousand each were also present in León and Castilla la Vieja). This policy would succeed in its goal, with anywhere from 16,000 to 24,000 adult males being employed in some capacity in wool-working ventures started by these Flemings by the year 1530. Isabel would eventually realize that cutting out the middleman in such a manner was less beneficial in the North - where the Low Countries already controlled shipping - than it would be in the South. This prompted her to redirect the program further south, and from 1510-1530, around 9,000 non-Castilian textile workers were transplanted or migrated to the cities and towns south of the Sistema Central.
But encouraging artisanship was not sufficient to fully develop a well rounded, native Spanish middle class. The problem was that the merchant class in Southern and Eastern Iberia - the centers of the peninsula’s trade - was almost exclusively Genoese in origin or was in their employ. Genoese merchants had been present in the peninsula for centuries, but only truly began to cement their presence in the 13th century when the Reconquista began to accelerate. The vacuum left by the expulsion of the Moorish and Jewish merchant classes was also filled by these Genoese, who cornered the unexploited markets rather quickly. In Valencia, there was a sizeable Genoese quarter that was sold and thereafter considered a sovereign colony of the city-state. While these newcomers assimilated into Castilian and Aragonese society - settling permanently, adopting the language, and paying the taxes - the exclusivity of their profession made them a class somewhat foreign to all other facets of the society which they entered, thus retaining their bond with Genoa and all the prejudices that came with it.
This arrangement kept “los genoveses” rich and filled the coffers of their ancient mother city, but ultimately benefited the common Spaniard very little. The preference for trade exclusively with Genoa left Spanish markets undiversified, and tied their fortunes directly to those of the city-state, which, truth be told, were facing a long decline. The problem did not entirely lie with the entrenched, Hispanicized Genoese (who considered themselves Castilian or Aragonese), but rather with the constant stream of transient merchants who had no vested interest in Spain beyond speeding up its transfer of wealth. As Genoa was a merchant republic, virtually all of its private enterprise was centered around trade - usually maritime. Consequently, the Genoese could flood the markets of localities with more varied workforces in numbers that said localities simply could not compete with. The Catholic Monarchs were conscious of this dilemma and how it might affect the future of Spain’s economy - as Isabel remarked in 1501, “Even as the immense and fortuitous wealth of the Indies is unveiled by the sons of Castile, the Genoan remains one step behind him while the realm and its inhabitants still remain athwart the entire Ocean Sea.”
Areas of Genoese market infiltration (Yellow: complete control, Cream: preeminence, Orange: the Republic of Genoa)
While the introduction of Flemish wool-workers into Castile heightened the competition with the Genoese, a more severe readjustment of fortunes was necessary in order to tip the balance in favor of the native Spaniard. Both Isabel and Fernando implemented similar residency requirements for merchants involved in overseas trade in the cities of Sevilla and Valencia, but such was fruitless, as the majority of Genoese merchants within their respective realms were already permanent inhabitants. Isabel also introduced several initiatives to convince Castilian noblemen and retired bureaucrats to buy property in Andalucía (especially in its principal cities, and especially in Sevilla) or to try their hand at playing the southern markets, but there was little room for newcomers. Finally, in March of 1500, Isabel formally proclaimed an embargo against the city-state of Genoa due to France’s enforced protectorate over it, prohibiting any and all trade and declaring all goods involved to be subject to confiscation. When the war with France ended, Isabel refused to lift the embargo, despite vehement protests. The Crown of Aragon followed suit in 1503, declaring that the embargo would hold until French troops departed Liguria. Likewise, all colonies of the city-state within the borders of Aragon and Castile were revested to both crowns.
These were all borderline reckless moves - impoverishing hundreds, racking up royal dept, substantially knocking Spain’s international credit, and causing an explosive growth of the black market - but it would pay dividends in the long run. While the overall influx of wealth into Spain dropped slightly, the distribution of what wealth there was improved significantly. In 1500, the average day’s wages for a common Castilian laborer was about 16 reales [1], yet by 1520, that number had increased to 40 reales [2]. Even more so did the income of the artisan class improve, with the average craftsman receiving roughly 90 reales [3] a day by 1525. However, even better things were to come in the reign of Miguel.
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[1]
2 USD
[2]
5 USD
[3]
11.25 USD