Sons of something: Taxes, lawsuits, and local political control in sixteenth-century castile

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: University of British Columbia
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050707000253
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 608-642
• 关键词: growth

摘要

The widespread ennoblement of the Spanish bourgeoisie in the Early Modem period has been traditionally considered one of the main causes of the crisis of the seventeenth century. Using a new time series of nobility cases I provide the first quantitative assessment of Castilian ennoblement. Contrary to established scholarship, I find that the tax exemptions cannot alone explain the flight to privilege. My data show that the central motivation behind ennoblement was to gain control of local governments. Although ennoblement reflected a high level of redistributive activity, there is no evidence linking it to economic stagnation in Spain.