Between Empire and Globalization: An Economic History of Modern Spain PDF
Preview Between Empire and Globalization: An Economic History of Modern Spain
PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ECONOMIC HISTORY Between Empire and Globalization An Economic History of Modern Spain Albert Carreras Xavier Tafunell Palgrave Studies in Economic History Series Editor Kent Deng London School of Economics London, UK Palgrave Studies in Economic History is designed to illuminate and enrich our understanding of economies and economic phenomena of the past. The series covers a vast range of topics including financial history, labour history, development economics, commercialisation, urbanisation, indus- trialisation, modernisation, globalisation, and changes in world eco- nomic orders. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14632 Albert Carreras • Xavier Tafunell Between Empire and Globalization An Economic History of Modern Spain Albert Carreras Xavier Tafunell Department of Economics Department of Economics and Business and Business Pompeu Fabra University Pompeu Fabra University Barcelona, Spain Barcelona, Spain Based on a translation from the Spanish language edition: Entre el imperio y la globalización: Historia económica de la España contemporánea by Albert Carreras and Xavier Tafunell Copyright © Editorial Planeta S.A 2018 All Rights Reserved ISSN 2662-6497 ISSN 2662-6500 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Economic History ISBN 978-3-030-60503-2 ISBN 978-3-030-60504-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60504-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Panther Media GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland P reface Has Spain grown in the last two centuries? Yes, a lot. Has Spain converged on its neighbours, the countries of Western Europe? It depends. The time period under consideration is essential. Within the last sixty years conver- gence has been spectacular. If we go back two centuries or more, not at all. In this book we deal in detail with economic growth and convergence and the permanent tension between the two when assessing historical experience since the industrial revolution. The central issue of the Spanish economy from the late eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century is the convergence or divergence with respect to the Western European pattern. The basic problem is, of course, that of non-convergence. Despite all the growth, which allows Spain to be much more prosperous than in 1800—twenty times—Spaniards are as far away from their neighbours as they were more than two centuries ago. The torturing sense of “failure” or “backwardness” has dominated generations of Spaniards. From the romantics to the regenerationists, from the right to the left, from the capi- tals to the peripherals, and for many economic historians from all around, the question remains: why has Spain not come to homologate to Western Europe? Our judgement will be nuanced, as there have been periods of strong convergence. We aim to clarify which policies have not helped to converge, and which ones have. Our main characters are five: institutional change, capital formation (physical and human), structural change, inter- nationalization and State action. All these factors and trends force atten- tion to be drawn to the economic policies deployed throughout the v vi PREFACE modern age and force a chronological approach, because human action unfolds over time. We propose, indeed, a rigorously chronological journey through the economic history of modern Spain, always with an eye opened to what happens in the international economy. Chapter 1, “The Economic Growth of Spain: A Very Long-Term Perspective”, is dedicated to a long-term overview, and justifies our chronology. The rest is the temporary flow of the economy. The chapters on the first periods—Chap. 2, “From Empire to Peripheral Economy (1789–1840)”, during the crisis of the Old Regime and the Liberal Revolution; and Chap. 3, “The Impact of European Industrialization: the Double Failure of Agrarian and Industrial Strategies (1840–1890)”—are longer, in line with the chronological framework con- sidered—about fifty years each. From 1890, the next half century, until the outbreak of the Civil War, is covered with two other chapters of similar length and chronological spread: Chap. 4, “Spain in the First Economic Globalization (1890–1914)”; and Chap. 5, “The Spanish Economy During Great War and Interwar Years (1914–1936)”. The next five chap- ters study shorter periods, between eight and fifteen years long, from 1936 until 1998: Chap. 6, “The Isolation from the International Economy: Civil War and Autarky (1936–1951)”; Chap. 7, “Import Substitution Industrialization (1951–1959)”, Chap. 8, “Spain in the Golden Age: Reintegration into the International Economy (1960–1973)”; Chap. 9, “Economic Crisis and Political Transition (1973–1985)”; and Chap. 10, “Integration into the European Economy (1986–1998)”. The last piece of the chronological sequence is longer as it deals with the twenty years of the Spanish economy without monetary sovereignty, which is dealt with in Chap. 11, “Spain in the Euro Area (1999–2017)”. The final chapter, Chap. 12, “Balance of Two Centuries: Growth Engines and Economic Policies”, formulates a balance of long-term results in terms of growth factors and economic policies. It includes a reminder of our main inter- pretative lines: the importance of commercial policy—as the greater the opening the better the performance of the Spanish economy—and the importance of State’s action as a propellant or brake of growth, depending on its financial equilibrium. Monetary policy has a crucial role in address- ing the recurrence of twin deficits. A final consideration is made on the distributional impact of Spanish growth and policies and we close with a reminder of institutional changes along the whole time span considered, from Empire to globalization. PREFACE vii To give coherence to the temporal sequence, we have prepared a quan- titative appendix with twenty-four very significant macroeconomic series to which we repeatedly resort, such as GDP per capita, prices, investment quota and degree of openness, to name a few, that in some occasions are compared with most of Western Europe (those countries that for the years before 2004—the East enlargement—formed the European Union). In economic history this information is continually being reworked, but in the Spanish case it has acquired an enviable solidity that allows us to bet on the stability of the overall vision. The changes may come—and are coming—from the international coupling of the Spanish experience. Indeed, we underline that the economic history of modern Spain is forged in the collapse of the American empire, and that this starting point, of an intrinsically international nature, is essential to understand everything that happens later, as is the industrial revolution and the subsequent diffusion of industrialization, the first economic globalization, the great world wars of the first half of the twentieth century and the strong trend towards economic isolation, the impact of European economic growth and inte- gration or the strong economic globalization in which we are fully immersed and that completely conditions the future of the Spanish econ- omy. Between that great imperial space, completely protected, and this current world space in which distance barely counts, all parameters have changed, starting with the fundamental represented by the change of expectations about what the future can hold for us. All these great histori- cal phenomena require a better fitting of the Spanish economic history into the European and world economic history. It is worth mentioning that the comparison with the average world experience provides the more optimistic comparative assessment of long-term economic performance, even if this new-century developments are disappointing for Spain. Our text is focused on the presentation of the economic history of Spain in response to the challenges that have seemed central to us, namely economic growth and convergence or divergence. We have been inter- ested in the mechanisms that drive growth and the problems of economic stability that can derail growth policies such as the price level, the public finances, the foreign sector and the market for factors. This does not mean that we despise other themes, quite the contrary. In several cases we have left them aside because there were very satisfactory texts already available. This is the case, for instance, regarding the regional approach and the sectoral approach. For the regional we have a complete regional economic viii PREFACE history of Spain, in addition to other works on similar themes.1 We have consciously set aside this approach, mentioning it only briefly at some relevant moments and in some bibliographical notes. The studies on sec- tors, both agricultural and industrial, have been numerous and of high quality, as is the case, for example, of the Industrial Atlas of Spain and the huge literature on agrarian history.2 In our text we have focused our atten- tion on specific sectors only according on the intensity of the contribution of each sector—whether positive or negative—to growth and stability. Nor have we incorporated more than exceptionally business history, which enjoys excellent academic health reflected in texts such as a business his- tory of Spain using a regional approach.3 Inevitably, we concur with other texts that aspire to cover the same field and in the same language. Those of Joseph Harrison (1978), Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, ed. (1987), Pablo Martín Aceña and James Simpson, eds. (1995), David Ringrose (1996), Gabriel Tortella (2000) and Joseph Harrison and David Corkill (2004) are particularly significant.4 We offer our point of view and our content organization, but we have taken them fully into account in our more chronological argument. The reader will not find everything he or she would like to know about the economic his- tory of modern Spain. The bibliographical essays at the end of each chap- ter offer some indications of where you can continue studying and learning, 1 Luis Germán, Enrique Llopis, Jordi Maluquer de Motes & Santiago Zapata, eds., Historia económica regional de España. Siglos XIX y XX, Editorial Crítica, 2001, and Alfonso Díez- Minguela, Julio Martínez-Galarraga and Daniel A. Tirado-Fabregat, Regional inequality in Spain: 1860–2015, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 2 Jordi Nadal, Josep Maria Benaül & Carles Sudrià, dirs., Atlas de la industrialización de España, 1750–2000, Fundación BBVA y Editorial Crítica, 2003. Both industrial history and agrarian history have well established specialized academic journals: Revista de Historia Industrial and Historia Agraria. 3 José Luis García Ruiz & Carles Manera, dirs., Historia empresarial de España. Un enfoque regional en profundidad, Editorial LID, 2006. 4 Joseph Harrison, An economic history of modern Spain, Manchester University Press, 1978, Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, ed., Economic modernization of Spain, 1830–1930, New York University Press, 1987, Pablo Martín-Aceña and James Simpson, eds., The eco- nomic development of Spain since 1870, Edward Elgar, 1995, David R. Ringrose, Spain, Europe and the “Spanish Miracle”, 1700–1900, Cambridge University Press, 1996, Gabriel Tortella, The development of Modern Spain: an economic history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Harvard University Press, 2000 and Joseph Harrison and David Corkill, Spain: a modern european economy, Ashgate, 2004. PREFACE ix especially in those areas that are being subject of intense research such as territorial inequality or inequality in income distribution. In both cases we acknowledge the main contributions that are being published in major international journals of economic history, but we do not introduce them in our central argument. On the other hand, and from many points of view our book is complementary to that of Leandro Prados de la Escosura, Spanish Economic Growth, 1850–2015, 2017 in this same publisher and collection.5 The continuous production of new data, new series or updated series by Leandro Prados de la Escosura has challenged and inspired us and we have provided interpretative frameworks in which to fit, explain and make sense of his systematic historical quantification. Many other col- leagues have produced extremely valuable research or synthesis, and we refer to them in our bibliographical essays. The book is intended for a non-expert audience. We have shunned the erudition—the book is not annotated—and the debates, except in some sections that report and assess the different existing interpretations on particularly controversial aspects that have continued to be so despite the new research carried out. As there is a longer version of the original edi- tion in Spanish, we have shortened the contents on which we could not be as conclusive as in the basic convergence/divergence scheme and its causes, or that were less relevant to this object. We have also compacted the texts, tables and figures, lightening them whenever possible. The con- tents of first and last chapters have been reorganized. The authors have always been committed to propose to the readers new visions of the economic past of Spain based on the principle of quantitative and chronological continuity between the remote past and the more recent experience, even if they seem so distant to be incomparable. We are convinced of the possibility and the need for comparison over time, which is our basic task as historians of the economy. The problem of falling from imperial power to economic backwardness and the quest for moderniza- tion from the late eighteenth century to the early twenty-first is fascinating and a permanent issue for reflection for the Spanish society and for other societies. We hope that the interpretations we present, which we believe are widely shared, form the basis of educated opinion. Moreover, we aspire that certain interpretations that we think are not well founded, will be 5 Leandro Prados de la Escosura, Spanish economic growth, 1850–2015, Palgrave Macmillan, Palgrave Studies in Economic History, 2017.
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