Among the smaller manuals can be recommended: Cunningham and McArthur, chap. 4; Warner, chap. 9. Thomas Mun, England’s treasure by forraign trade, N. Y., Macmillan, 1895, $.75, presents mercantilist views in their typical form, and is an excellent source for somewhat advanced students; chapters may be assigned for discussion and criticism.
CHAPTER XIX
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
197. Extent and power of the Spanish monarchy.—Pursuing now the history of modern commerce by studying its development in different countries, we turn first to the states of the Iberian peninsula, whose great possessions outside of Europe seemed to assure their commercial supremacy.
Shortly before the close of the last century of the Middle Ages three events of great significance occurred in Spanish history. One was the union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon, which brought the greater part of the Iberian peninsula under one ruler. The second was the completion of the centuries old war against the Moors, by the conquest of their last stronghold in Granada. The third was the discovery of America by Columbus. The great Spanish king of the sixteenth century, Charles V, was the most powerful sovereign in the world. He governed at home with undisputed absolutism; he was ruler by one title or another of some of the richest European countries outside of Spain (especially the Netherlands); and he enjoyed in his own right the sovereignty not only over the greater part of America, but over Asiatic and African possessions as well.
198. Rapid development of Spanish industry and commerce.—The rise to greatness of the Spanish kings was paralleled by the development of the Spanish industrial organization. Spain had throughout the Middle Ages been rich only in her raw materials; she had exported wool, iron, and wine, and had imported all her manufactures, largely in foreign ships. The long wars against the Moors had turned people from the industrial arts, so that manufactures were primitive except in a few cities like Barcelona. The most advanced classes in manufactures and trade were not the native Christians but Moors or Jews. A decided advance can be noted under Ferdinand and Isabella, but the movement did not gain full headway till the sixteenth century. Then, it is said, the laborers employed in the textile industries of Toledo rose from 10,000 to 50,000 in about twenty-five years, and still merchants could not supply the demand and had orders for five or even ten years ahead. The industries based on wool, it is said, grew till they supported nearly a third of the population; Spain began to import raw silk and export the finished product, a reversal of previous conditions; great factories were established to make soap and other wares; and the amount of business transacted in Spain made the fairs of Medina del Campo one of the important clearing houses of Europe. Over 100 ships measuring from 300 to 500 tons left Spain yearly for the colonies, and at least as many cleared for European ports; 50 ships or more, it is said, often left the harbor of Santa Maria together, carrying away the salt that was manufactured there.
The map shows approximately the extent of the Spanish possessions under Philip II, (1556-1598).
199. Economic decline in the following period.—Astonishing as is this rapid economic development, it is less striking than the economic decline that followed. Lack of space forbids the discussion in detail of the complex causes which brought about, first, an actual decline of productive power, and then a condition so nearly stationary that Spain was passed by nearly all the other states of western Europe. One important factor, the colonial system of the Spanish kings, will be reserved for discussion later as a separate topic. In this place we shall take up some of the significant facts showing the decline, and suggest some influences that make it intelligible.
The most serious symptom of decadence was an actual decrease of population. In 1723 the total population of Spain was under six million, three million less than the figures show for 1594, when the decline had probably already begun. This decrease is the more significant in that it affected largely the urban groups whose numbers reflect the prosperity or reverses of industry and trade; large cities lost half or even three quarters of their population in half a century. Before the middle of the seventeenth century the wool manufacture consisted only of a few unimportant factories of coarse materials; the silk tax of Granada brought in less than a quarter of what it had yielded under Charles V; and Spain had to rely on other countries to furnish the manufactured wares for export to her colonies. The decline affected not only the quantity of the population, but, to all appearances, its quality as well; beggary and vagrancy became a national curse.
200. Causes of decline; faulty political organization.—The decline in population cannot be explained by emigrations to America, for the drain from that source was small, as will be shown later. Executions by the Inquisition, numerous as they were, could not alone have checked the population. More serious was the expulsion, under ecclesiastical influences, of the Moriscoes of the South, numbering perhaps a million. These people of Moorish blood, the leaders in the agriculture and industry of Spain, in 1609 followed into exile the Jews who had been the leaders in trade; the native Spanish were unfit to fill the gaps thus made in the industrial ranks.