[366] The index figures illustrated in the figures of Chapter 11 and the revenue and index figures in the tables of Chapters 10 and 12, as well as the market indicators for Chapter 2, are based on annual yields to municipal authorities from various taxes on commercial activities or on the projected return from rental contracts signed with tax farmers. No coherent series of this kind actually existed in the archives, so it was necessary to compile them year by year, tax by tax, from hundreds of rental contracts and municipal account books. The raw tax data and estimates for wheat, wine, and meat consumed in Madrid have been published elsewhere. ⁽¹⁾ Some gaps in those early series have been filled, thanks to additional research, and those findings are incorporated into the indicators used in the text. These sources are listed in Appendix D.

Tax data present problems for long-term analysis because of the possibilities of distortion due to fraud, evasion, inflation, and increases in tax rates. For the centrally important series from Madrid, the possibility of tax increases is controlled by information on the nature of the taxes and two versions of a detailed history of their evolution. ⁽²⁾ Beyond that, the assumption of stable rates is based on extensive experience with data from 15 municipal archives in Spain.

Individual taxes were created to service particular royal or municipal loans or obligations, and were rarely changed in isolation. If tax rates were altered, it was in the context of a more sweeping municipal reform, and the structure of the municipal accounts themselves changed enough to be apparent when [367] constructing the serial data. As the list of taxes in Table E. 1 indicates, enough such changes turned up to suggest that hidden modifications were few. The fee schedules of some taxes were partially or entirely expressed as ad valorem duties, creating the risk of an inflationary effect in the trends for the volume of commerce. The three food series from Madrid are immune to inflation effects, since the wheat figures are direct volume totals, and taxes on wine and meat were a fixed nominal sum per unit sold. Where the effects of inflation presented an interpretive risk, a version of the series adjusted by the most appropriate price series has been provided in the text.

In general, the serial data appear to be much superior to similar material from other countries. Rental contracts were generally annual or biennial until about 1650 and during much of the eighteenth century, reflecting cyclical trends much better than the octroi of Toulouse analyzed by Gebhardt and Mercadier. ⁽³⁾ For the most part, the absolute value of each annual figure is far less important than the assumption of reasonable consistency in the medium run and the analysis of relative changes. ⁽⁴⁾

Table E.1 lists the taxes and commercially linked revenues for which serial data of some sort was developed. Not all of these were actually used in the text, since some were redundant. With the exception of the figures given in Appendix A, the raw figures will not be presented here, as they are quite extensive. ⁽⁵⁾
 
 

Sources: Municipal Archives of Málaga, legajos: 

7	36	67F	98F	125F
18	37	72F	99F	127F
21	42	75F	102F-105F	131F
23	44	78F	I07F-109F	135F
24	45	92F	I12F	206F
27	50	95F	115F-122F	212F
29-34	65F	96F	124F

 

Palencia

Peso Real, 1662-1777

Corredurías del Pueblo, 1672-1778

Renta del Poyo, 1653-1776

Renta de la Greda, 1661-1779

Source: Municipal Archives of Palencia. (Account bundles were located by direct search with the aid of original inventories.)
 

Sevilla

Corredurías de Cargas de Mercancías que Salieron de la Ciudad, 1768-1806

Source: Municipal Archives of Sevilla, sec. 2 (Contaduría), carpetas 285-295, 326, 327. Toledo [371] 

Almotacenia, 1540-1769

Peso del Mercado, 1540-1769

Renta de Paños, 1540-1769

Renta de Lienzos, 1540-1769

Renta de la Seda, 1625-83, 1715-69

Portazgo de Visagra, 1540-1769

Source: Municipal Archives of Toledo. (Bound account books labeled by date were stored in the back room of the archives. Michael Weisser tells me that the materials have been given a degree of organization since 1965.)
 

Zafra

Portazgo, 1536-1605 (scattered years), 1621-1726

Source: Medinaceli Archives, Casa de Piloto, Sevilla.
 
 

1. Ringrose, "Madrid y Castilla, 1560-1850."

2. AHN, Consejos, leg. 511-5; Alcaldes, libro for 1623, fol. 545; AVM, Secretaría, sigs. 2-307-9,2-487-28, 3-19-4,3-11-1. Further indication of the nature of some of these municipal taxes in general is found in Antonia Heredia Herrera, "Los corredores de lonja en Sevilla y Cádiz" (1970), pp. 183-198.

3. Monique Gebhart and Claude Mercadier, L'octroi de Toulouse á la veille de la Revolution.

4. For a comment on developing and using such series, see Fernand Braudel, "Pour une histoire serielle: Seville et I'Atlantique, 1504-1650" (1963).

5. Some of the data for the period after 1650 has been published elsewhere; see Ringrose, "Perspectives on the Economy of Eighteenth-Century Spain" (1973).