In the mid-16th century, the bankers of Seville were facing a difficult situation, aggravated by the introduction of a “pragmática” that limited monetary circulation in Castile. At that time, Seville's bankers operated, in a kind of oligopoly, managing the enormous treasures—public and private—received, under the mediation of the Casa de la Contratación, for the minting of gold and silver coins. The concentration of this wealth significantly increased business and the risk of insolvency of the bankers. This article analyzes the crisis of the banker Domingo de Lizarraras, who was declared bankrupt by the city authorities on March 11, 1553. Through the study of judicial and notarial sources, numerous aspects previously unknown to historiography regarding the origins of this major banking crisis are revealed, distinguishing between endogenous and exogenous causes.

This is a study of the financial system that sustained the sixteenth-century empire of Philip II of Spain. Detailing the links between royal revenue sources, trade fairs, credit market, long-term debt, and contracts with Genoese bankers, it reveals how Philip's financial and military strategy complemented each other. Central to the narrative is Philip's struggle with the Cortes, which, under Castile's implicit constitution, imposed limits on public debt, forcing repeated renegotiations as military expenses and debt escalated. In this first analytical study of Philip's financial policies, Carlos Álvarez-Nogal and Christophe Chamley draw on extensive archival research and secondary sources to show that Philip's main challenge was not the bankers but the Cortes. He used temporary payment suspensions and financial crises as tools to pressure the Cortes for additional taxation. The book highlights the interplay between debt, political power, and state formation in early modern Europe.

This article examines a contract signed in August 1594 by the Genoese banker Nicolao Doria for the provision of funds both within and beyond Spain. The study of this contract makes it possible to quantify the cost of remitting cash to Italy and to compare it with that of bills of exchange issued from Spain. Consistent with previous estimates for the seventeenth century, this case shows that the use of silver was approximately 7 per cent cheaper than bills of exchange. This finding helps to explain the strong interest of Genoese bankers in controlling the transfer of precious metals from the Spanish Monarchy through Madrid. Such operations could prove as profitable as lending money itself. For this reason, the Crown also sought, whenever possible, to arrange its own cash remittances.

The economic decline of Early Modern Spain offers an opportunity to explore how it affected perceptions of welfare and inequality. We provide an answer based on the Bull of the Crusade, an inexpensive alms collected by the Hispanic Monarchy and massively purchased by a highly religious population that believed in its spiritual benefits. The purchase of the bull represented a public practice of religion that captured people’s religiosity and belief in the afterlife and had a positive impact on their spiritual well-being. We find that our measure of spiritual well-being—the ratio of (normalized) bulls sold to their recipients (the population aged 12 and above)—deteriorated in the late 1570s and 1580s and the 1640s but improved during the 1670s, while subjective inequality—the ratio between the number of bulls sold to those who deemed themselves affluent and those sold to common individuals—increased from 1600–1640 and fell in the 1580s and early 1590s and the 1670s. Hence, improving (deteriorating) subjective well-being was accompanied by declining (improving) subjective inequality through the seventeenth century.

This work quantifies the revenues of the Spanish monarchy in Castile and America during the reign of Philip II. After studying the results of an early increase in fiscal pressure, it analyses the efforts made to speed up its use by solving the problems posed by the geographical distance imposed by the Atlantic. The king's bankers played an essential role in improving the circulation of money and integrating the different parts of the empire.

Research in economic history has challenged a strict Malthusian depiction of preindustrial European economies, highlighting ‘efflorescences’, ‘Smithian’ and ‘growth recurring’ episodes. Do these defining concepts apply to preindustrial Spain? In this paper, we carry out new yearly estimates of output and population for over half-a millennium. We find that our estimates of agricultural output on the basis of tithes largely confirm those obtained using a demand function approach supporting its use in the absence of direct information. We show that, although levels of output per head in the early nineteenth century were not much different from those in the eve of the Black Death, preindustrial Spain was far from stagnant. Phases of simultaneous per capita output and population expansion and shrinkage alternated, lending support to the recurring growth and frontier economy hypotheses. A long phase of sustained growth and lower inequality collapsed in the 1570s and gave way to another one of sluggish growth and higher inequality. As an alternative to a Malthusian interpretation, we hypothesise that, in preindustrial Spain, growth and decline are largely explained by individual and collective economic decisions.

The full analysis of the text of a contract, asiento, between Philip II of Spain and a Genoese merchant–banker details how in this pre-modern composite state, merchant–bankers acted as agents of the Crown who gathered many scattered sources of income to the Crown and transformed them into large and regular cash flows, mesadas, for the army. Because of the uncertain availability of these sources, the contract provided flexibility to both parties and legal assistance to the banker who reported to accountants for audit and, if necessary, the charge of an interest at about 1 percent per month.

The Black Death was the most devastating demographic shock in recorded human history. However, the effects in the European population were highly asymmetrical as were its economic consequences. This paper surveys the short and long run economic effects of the plague in Spain in European perspective. While the demographic impact in Spain was moderate compared to the European average, the economic effects were more severe and incomes per head fell sharply. This was a consequence of the existence of a frontier economy in Spain characterised by a relative scarcity of labour and a fragile equilibrium between factors of production. Unlike most of Europe, in Spain the Black Death increased inequality as the remuneration of labour decreased more rapidly than proprietors' gains. In the long term the Plague reinforced the frontier economy status. (c) 2020 Asociacion Espanola de Historia Economica

El derecho a imponer tributos y el de acunar o emitir moneda han sido tradicionalmente dos de las principales prerrogativas de la soberania politica que la autoridad siempre ha tratado de ejercer en regimen de monopolio, de acuerdo con los principios constitucionales que regulan en cada epoca la obligacion a contribuir y la forma de acunacion o emision de la moneda. Fisco y moneda aparecen estrechamente unidos a lo largo de la Historia y a menudo la politica monetaria ha sido puesta al servicio de la politica fiscal. Este libro recoge los resultados de recientes investigaciones sobre las relaciones entre la fiscalidad, la moneda y el uso del dinero en Espana desde el siglo XIII hasta mediados del XVIII, y en el se estudian como las dificultades financieras en epocas y circunstancias historicas diferentes influyeron en la politica monetaria y las repercusiones que todo ello tuvo en diversos aspectos de la economia de los reinos hispanicos.

resultan esenciales para comprender la intensidad de la crisis económica y los efectos de las posteriores reformas borbónicas.

Research in economic history has lately challenged the Malthusian depiction of preindustrial European economies, highlighting ‘efflorescences’, ‘Smithian’ and ‘growth recurring’ episodes. Do these defining concepts apply to preindustrial Spain? On the basis of new yearly estimates of output and population for nearly 600 years we show that preindustrial Spain was far from stagnant and phases of per capita growth and shrinkage alternated. Population and output per head evolved along supporting the hypothesis of a frontier economy. After a long phase of sustained and egalitarian growth, a collapse in the 1570s opened a new era of sluggish growth and high inequality. The unintended consequences of imperial ambitions in Europe on economic activity, rather than Malthusian forces, help to explain it.

In the fragmented geographical, fiscal, and financial state inherited by Philip II of Spain, while the public debt reached an unprecedented level (50–60 per cent of GDP), the critical refinancing of unfunded asientos into funded juros was operated by merchant‐bankers who signed the asientos. This process is illustrated, using abundant archival documentation, by an asiento with the Maluenda brothers in 1595, which provided the Crown with steady monthly cash payments for a year with options to sell juros for two‐thirds of the credit, and a monthly rate of 1 per cent on the interim balance. Other examples are provided.