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This distinctive new history of the origins of the Spanish Civil War tackles the highly-debated issue of why it was that Spain's democratic Second Republic failed. James Simpson and Juan Carmona explore the interconnections between economic growth, state capacity, rural social mobility and the creation of mass competitive political parties.
List of contents
Introduction; Part I. The European Experience: Economic and Political Development, 1870-1939: 1. The modernization of European societies; 2. European agriculture in an age of economic instability; Part II. Spanish Agriculture, Economic Development and Democracy: 3. The limits to Spanish modernization, 1850-1936; 4. Agricultural growth, regional diversity, and regional land-tenure regimes; Part III. Explaining the Weakness of the Family Farm: 5. The family farm and the limits to village - level cooperation; 6. The persistence of the landed elites and the nature of farm lobbies; Part IV. Rural Elites, Poverty, and the Attempts at Land Reform: 7. Land ownership, economic development and poverty in Andalusia and southern Spain; 8. The limits to land reform; Part V. Rural Conflicts and the Polarization of Village Society: 9. Creating parties, political alliances, and interest groups: rural politics in the 1930s; 10. The growing polarization of rural society during the Second Republic; Conclusion; Appendix 1. Agricultural statistics in Spain, France and Italy in the early 1930s; Appendix 2. Dry-farming and the economics of the family farm.
About the author
James Simpson is Professor at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. Among his many publications are Spanish Agriculture: The Long Siesta, 1765–1965 (1995) and Creating Wine: The Emergence of a World Industry, 1840–1914 (2011).Juan Carmona is Associate Professor at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. He has published widely on rural institutions, organizations and conflicts, including, with James Simpson, the book, El laberinto de la agricultura Española (2003).
Summary
This distinctive new history of the origins of the Spanish Civil War tackles the highly-debated issue of why it was that Spain's democratic Second Republic failed. James Simpson and Juan Carmona explore the interconnections between economic growth, state capacity, rural social mobility and the creation of mass competitive political parties.
Additional text
'These two experts in agrarian history advance new and nuanced interpretations of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Spanish political and economic developments. They make important contributions to the literature on the origins of the Spanish Civil War and place the Spanish situation in a European and global comparative context.' Michael Seidman, author of Transatlantic Antifascism: From the Spanish Civil War to the End of World War II
