Vassberg has written an outstanding book which is essential reading for anyone interested in the imperial enterprise of the Spanish Hapsburgs. A vigorous agricultural sector in Castile was the basis of the empire, and the kingdom’s rural decadence in the late sixteenth century was an important component of the system’s crisis. Moreover, Castilians attempted to impose the agropastoral conditions and traditions of property ownership of their kingdoms whenever they went elsewhere as conquerors.
Since the author has been a farmer himself, he quickly became aware, when he began his historical studies, of how deficient existing works on rural Spam were. His goal in writing this book was to present a clear introduction both to property ownership and to conditions of agriculture and stockraising in Castile in the sixteenth century. To do so, he sought to break with the current emphasis on local or regional studies so as to provide scholars with a vision of the whole complex pattern of Castilian rural life. The first two-thirds of the book deals with types of landowning and land use, while the latter third provides a stimulating discussion of changes during the century and seeks to explain the troubles of the agricultural sector after about 1575. Vassberg has certainly done what he wished in a clear, readable manner, and we are all very much in his debt.
The book is firmly based on the author’s work in Castile’s central archives and on the existing local studies of others. Where he has had to use fragmentary evidence, his warnings to the reader are very clear, and he makes many valuable suggestions for future research. Vassberg’s own views on some subjects do not seem sufficiently developed or well documented (e.g., the failure to switch to the three-field system of crop rotation; the effects of deep plowing), and will stimulate productive controversy.
Besides providing us with the best available introduction to Castilian agriculture, Vassberg also accomplishes some other important things with this book. For the first time, public landownership gets its due. Also, the author argues persuasively that the kingdom’s agricultural problems were not primarily environmental, as is often stated, but rather institutional. He clarifies how factors like expanding markets, increased demands for taxes in coin, and the sale of communal lands to finance imperial commitments all contributed to the quickened substitution of communalism and subsistence agriculture by individualized landholding and commercialization.
The book is generally clear and free of jargon, but Vassberg drifts occasionally into the use of such terms as “bourgeoisie” and “aristocracy,” which the conflicts during the last 25 years over the work of Georges Lefebvre on agriculture in Old Regime France have indicated do more to obscure than illuminate the types of individuals involved in rural life. However, despite such problems and its high price, the book is so well done that it is obligatory reading for anyone interested in the material bases of the Spanish Hapsburg imperial system.
