The economic consequences of the Spanish Reconquest: the long-term effects of Medieval conquest and colonization

Abstract

This paper shows that a historical process that ended more than five centuries ago, the Reconquest, is very important to explain Spanish regional economic development down to the present day. An indicator measuring the rate of Reconquest reveals a heavily negative effect on current income differences across the Spanish provinces. A main intervening factor in the impact the Reconquest has had is the concentration of economic and political power in a few hands, excluding large segments of the population from access to economic opportunities when Spain entered the industrialization phase. The timing of the effect is consistent with this argument. A general implication of our analysis is that large frontier expansions may favor a political equilibrium among the colonizing agents that is biased toward the elite, creating the conditions for an inegalitarian society, with negative consequences for long-term economic development.

Persistent Effects of Colonial Institutions on Long‐Run Development: Local Evidence from Regression Discontinuity Design in Argentina

“…Since Argentinean law has been formally applied across the entire country since 1853, we believe the key transmission mechanism between the persistent effect of Real Audiencia and long‐run development is constituted by the persistence of unequal distribution of political power inherited from the Spanish colonial empire, which has been associated with higher land inequality, greater concentration of economic power, and patronage‐preserving institutional equilibria (Benton 2002; Oto‐Peralías & Romero‐Avila 2016, 2017).…”

Delegating Governmental Authority to Private Actors: Lordships, State Capacity and Development

“…Second, lordships may have generated economic inequality, which is (increasingly) considered detrimental for economic growth (Galor et al, 2009;Oto-Peralías and Romero-Ávila, 2016). Although being the holder of jurisdictional rights did not imply landownership, it was common that lords were important landowners in their own lordships, particularly those of 20 The resettlement of the end of the 16 th century also introduced in rural communities the Castilian council, an important local government institution with a democratic character.…”

From feudal colonization to agrarian capitalism in Mallorca: Peasant endurance under the rise and fall of large estates (1229–1900)

“…Colonization of the vast depopulated territories of southern Castile, Extremadura, and western Andalusia remained weak, but accelerated from 1212 until the rapid military conquest of the Al‐Andalus Nasrid Kingdom in 1492. The conquering of vast swathes of territory in a short period allowed an oligarchic class to create large latifundia (Oto‐Peralías & Romero‐Ávila, ), together with large urban settlements where smallholders and labourers provided the workforce needed for shepherding, cereal growing, and olive oil exports to the new Atlantic frontiers of the Spanish Empire (Bernal, ; Yun, ). It should be underlined that the high “urbanization” rate seen here was only an expression of peasant dispossession (Epstein, ; Sánchez‐León, ).…”