Louis wrote:
>You should read the article by Jaime Torras in the Fall 1980 Review of the
>Braudel Center. It is a reply to Brenner, who argued in Past and Present
>that Catalonia had the same class relations as England in the 15th through
>17th century and therefore enjoyed a kind of prosperity. Torras agrees that
>the class relations were similar but disagrees that Catalonia prospered.
I'm not researching that subject at this time (since I'm reading term
papers) but it's quite possible that Torras isn't disagreeing with
Brenner's basic point here.
It obviously matters what's meant by "prosperity." Both Brenner and Torras
could be saying that capitalist social relations (M-C-M') prospered, but
the proletarians in Catalonia may not have done well.
It is more likely, however, that Torras is arguing that even M-C-M' didn't
prosper in Catalonia. This brings us back to the old engine/fuel analogy
for the rise of capitalist social relations. Brenner argues that English
capitalism "took off" because of enclosures, which created the "engine,"
and because of colonialism, which provided the "fuel." It's possible that
Catalonia had the engine -- but not the fuel. That's because, as sort of a
feudal hangover, Catalonia and Barcelona were excluded from much of the
benefits of the looting of the New World, because it was part of
Ferdinand's domain and not part of Isabella's, where the latter monopolized
the colonial trade. I've read somewhere that Catalonia could have "made it"
(establishing full-scale capitalism) if it hadn't been so excluded.
BTW, we should start avoiding the "take off" metaphor unless we make it
clear that we are not talking about W.W. Rostow's concept, which is simply
an interpretation of the (first) Industrial Revolution (which hit England
between 1780 or so and 1840 or so).
>You should also check the very latest scholarship on Spain in this period,
>edited by I.A.A. Thompson and Bartolomé Yun Casalilla and titled "The
>Castilian Crisis of the Seventeenth Century."
what does it say?
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
