Toledo's population expanded briefly after the plague and subsistence crisis of 1598-99. This may reflect the temporary departure of the Court from Madrid (1602-06), but it also suggests displacement of the rural population. In the twenty years after the subsistence crisis of 1606-07 and the expulsion of the Moriscos (1609), the city's population declined 60%. (5) The urban decline was proportionately far more severe than that of the rural areas near the city. The timing of Madrid's growth provides an instructive counterfit point. The city grew slowly before 1563, then doubled in the next thirty years. From 1600 to 1630, the city's growth not only ran counter to the trend in its hinterland, but the population nearly trebled.
Pre-industrial European cities
depended not only on the ability to extract supplies from their hinterlands,
but on a flow of immigrants to maintain the population.
(6) If we assume that
Toledo and Madrid were at the middle of the scale of observed baptism/death
ratios and had death rates of 45 per 1,000, [257] they needed 9
immigrants per 1,000 inhabitants to maintain a given population.
(7) As we saw in Chapter
3, Madrid always depended heavily on immigration. In the late eighteenth
century, the capital had a relatively favorable baptism/death ratio, but
in the early seventeenth century it probably did not.
(8) In Toledo, the
evolution of population changed as the sixteenth-century economy became
unstable. The volume of births declined between 1560 and 1580; but then,
reflecting the fact that the new Morisco districts had much higher
birth rates, births increased until 1595. Given the slow growth of the
city late in the century, this implies a decline of dependence on immigrants.
Even so, once immigration was diverted to Madrid, population decline was
inevitable. (9)
Between 1571 and 1597, Toledo
expanded by no more than 700 inhabitants per year and required up to 600
more to maintain its base population. Meanwhile, Madrid was growing at
the rate of 1,000 inhabitants per year and, with an internal deficit of
about 430, accounted for an average of 1,430 immigrants. Together the two
cities probably absorbed 2,800 immigrants yearly. Between 1597 and 1630,
Madrid grew at the rate of 3,667 inhabitants per year. With an estimated
natural deficit of 1,000, the total reaches 4,667 immigrants per year.
(10) Possibly 600
came from Toledo, which lost an average of 1,100 inhabitants per year in
the same period. Madrid had replaced Toledo as the center of attraction
for internal migration.
This was a demographic phenomenon
as significant as the current of emigration to America. The size and direction
of the flow illustrates the attractiveness of Madrid relative to Toledo
and the rural world. In particular, it reflects the rising real wages and
building boom in Madrid from 1608 to 1625. The deterioration of the regional
economy contributed to the contrast, as did the redirection of supplies
to Madrid. The doubling of the migration to the cities between 1600 and
1630 as regional population declined, its reorientation to Madrid, and
Toledo's change from recipient to source of migrants all point to a major
change in the regional economy.
Population trends suggest
continued economic growth in the region before [258] 1600, but with
the rate of growth slowing in the 1580's, disappearing in the 1590's, and
turning negative in the seventeenth century. Throughout the sixteenth century,
Madrid and Toledo included a steady 6% of regional population. They continued
to grow into the first years of the new century as the rural economy began
to decline, implying that urban migration had become the result of conditions
in the countryside. After 1608, Toledo collapsed and Madrid's growth accelerated,
as rural crisis was paralleled by circumstances that made the capital attractive
to the people of economically troubled Toledo and New Castile.
To supply both Toledo and
an expanding Madrid, the hinterland had to meet the needs of an urban population
of around 100,000 in 1570 and 130,000 by 1597. Despite the decline of Toledo,
by 1630 the total was approaching 200,000. Without the decline of Toledo,
the region would have had to support an urban complex of over 250,000 people--roughly
the population of London or Paris at the time. This would have required
a market-oriented agriculture beyond the capacity of existing transport,
agricultural resources, capital, technology, and labor supply. What follows,
therefore, is an attempt to document the impact of the supply controls
outlined in Chapter 7 and 8 upon the urban network of Castile, as Madrid
expanded its economic hinterland.
There is clear evidence of
the competition between the two cities for wheat, the most important staple.
The upper panel of Figure 11.1 shows the indices of the yield to Toledo
from its calahorra (wheat brokerage) duties and of the annual consumption
figures available for Madrid. (12)
The indices of general prices and the price of wheat in New Castile appear
in the lower panel as five-year moving averages. Toledo's consumption rose
rapidly until about 1560, declined to 1570, rose considerably in the next
decade, stabilized in the 1580's, and climbed to a much higher level for
most of 1590-1605. (13)
Madrid, meanwhile, doubled both size and wheat consumption between 1570
and 1600. This growth, and a 20% increase in the requirements of Toledo
in the same period, imply a 50-55% increase in the demand of the two cities.
(14) In 1598-1608,
Toledo's consumption rose but slightly while that of Madrid jumped by 63%,
producing another 15% increase in combined requirements and a noticeable
acceleration of the rate of growth of urban demand.
Predictably, there was a
sharp increase in the price of wheat in Toledo. The average annual wheat
price in 1576-80 represented a 12% increase in a decade, and the average
of 1586-90 was only a 9.6% increase in ten years. But the index for 1596-1600
was 37% higher than that for 1586-90, and the average annual wheat price
in 1606-10 was fully 40.5% above 1596-1600. In the decade preceding 1608,
Madrid and Toledo came to represent a demand [260] approaching 500,000
fanegas (750,000 bushels) of wheat, a 25% increase in ten years.
The inelasticity of the supply is amply documented by the escalating price
of wheat, which rose much faster than prices in general. The role of urbanization
in intensifying price instability is demonstrated by [261] the situation
in Old Castile. (15)
When harvests were good, wheat prices in Old and New Castile were similar,
but in years of shortage the price of wheat in the great cities of New
Castile was often double the price in Old Castile.
(16) At the same time, the situation in rural New Castile was
deteriorating, as population remained high while production began to decline.
(17) During the decade
1601-10, urban demand and rural hardship culminated in the most spectacular
fluctuation of New Castilian wheat prices of the century from 1550 to 1650.
The five-year index, which masks yearly extremes, soared from 52 in 1601
to 163 in 1608, before falling back to 54.
In the twenty years before
1610, therefore, urban demand became an increasingly important factor in
the behavior of wheat prices. After 1610, the collapse of both rural and
urban Toledo was rapid, as the revenue of the calahorra shows, and
brought in its train the deterioration of the rural markets dependent upon
Toledo. From that date, wheat prices in the interior stabilized for nearly
15 years, reflecting the end of intercity competition for supplies. By
1630, however, Madrid alone was straining the regional supply base and
was reaching far beyond New Castile for its supplies. Only after 1635,
when Madrid's demand began to slacken, is it necessary to look to monetary
inflation and declining production as the principal causes of higher wheat
prices.
[263] The implications
of this go beyond the matter of competition between the two urban economies.
While wheat was generally extracted from self-sufficient local economies
by nonmarket means, wine production involved specialization and orientation
to the market. Many communities were heavily dependent on viticulture and
therefore relied on the market for many necessities. The Relaciones
topográficas of the 1570's indicate surprisingly large wine
sales by many New Castilian towns. (20)
Yet between 1590 and 1610, wine prices fell as wheat prices soared; and
while the volume of wine sold in Madrid rose 77% between 1601 and 1632,
the real price per unit was virtually unchanged. As a consequence, the
wine industry's share of the Madrid commodities market fell from 43% to
29%, while that of wheat rose from 37% to 46% (see Chapter 6). Thus the
wine-producing towns of the hinterland faced declining incomes and rising
prices precipitated by the development of Madrid.
The crisis in the wine districts
contributed to the crisis in Toledo. One of the functions performed by
the merchants of Toledo was the distribution of imported and regional goods
throughout the regional economy. Thus the distress of the New Castilian
wine towns undermined the commercial sector of Toledo's economy. By 1610-20
the wine districts were in full decline, reinforcing that of Toledo itself.
(21) The expansion of the area from which Madrid drew its wine
(sec Chapter 9), even when urban consumption fell, verifies the disintegration
of the regional market organized by Toledo.
Clearly, the supply of mutton
was much more elastic than that of wheat. The link between wool and mutton
is illustrated by the figures for 1601-03, when a revival of textile production
in Toledo paralleled a jump in mutton prices, despite the decline of consumption
in Madrid due to the absence of the Court. This suggests that sheep were
being held off the meat market in order to build up the wool crop.
In a supply crisis, poor
urban populations revert to bread as the cheapest staple, and demand for
relatively expensive meat drops. Unless the meat supply also contracts
sharply, this tends to depress meat prices. At the same time, diversion
of buying power to foodstuffs reduces demand for textiles, and hence for
wool. By the end of the 1620's, collapse of the domestic woolens industry,
crisis in the international wool trade, and continuously bad weather in
1626-31 produced a decline in the Castilian flocks. By 1635, this contributed
to a rapid rise in mutton prices that coincided with falling consumption
in Madrid. (26)
As with wheat and wine, if for different reasons, the early seventeenth-century
disintegration of the Castilian economy contributed to a [266] brief
"golden age" in Madrid that lasted until the collapse of production and
the effects of inflation reached the capital itself.
Toledo's almotacenía
revenue, levied on manufactures and trade goods, changed little in the
1540's and '50's, rose in the 1560's, but suffered a mild setback in the
1570's. This coincided with the recession of the Indies trade and a crisis
in government finance, leaving little doubt about the importance of connections
between Sevilla and the Castilian interior. The episode helps account for
the pause in the rise of Toledo's consumption of regionally produced commodities.
(See Fig. 11.4.)
It is generally assumed that
this crisis was the beginning of Toledo's decline, as it was for Medina
del Campo and Burgos, but subsequent renewal of commercial growth contradicts
that assumption. (30)Almotacenía
revenues leveled off after 1590, as depression hit the wine districts that
were an important part of Toledo's distribution network. Market activity
became more clearly sensitive to regional conditions, falling during each
subsistence crisis. Revenues from the ferry often did the reverse, indicating
that while Toledo depended on its region, Madrid depended on more distant
resources. As a result, each successive crisis allowed the capital, with
more consistent demand, to attract more commercial activity.
The shifting balance between
local and long-distance commerce is seen in the contrasting behavior of
Toledo's almotacenía and peso mayor revenues. The
latter was a brokerage and measuring fee on fruits, vegetables, fish, pork
products, olive oil, fuel, and other commodities, and was more sensitive
to changes in urban income. (31)
Demand for such commodities was thus less elastic than the demand for manufactures
and luxuries reflected in the almotacenía, although low income
levels rendered demand for these consumables more elastic than demand for
essential foodstuffs. (32)
(See Fig. 11.5.)
The significance of the relative
elasticities in the Toledo series emerges when we compare trends in the
two cities. The revenue of the almotacenía in Toledo began
to drift downward in the mid-1590's, while the peso and the wheat
brokerage fees continued upward until 1608. This suggests that the volume
of long-distance trade was declining, even though Toledo's population was
still growing. The city was becoming poorer and shifting purchasing power
to the basic, regionally produced commodities that flowed through the peso.
This coincides with evidence that the poorer Morisco part of the
population was growing faster than the rest of the city.
(34)
In Madrid, the trend of the
Arganda toll indicates continued growth of the new political and social
functions of the capital, but the extreme polarization of wealth that we
have described elsewhere was developing steadily. Revenues from the peso
mayor stopped rising in the second decade, despite a rapidly growing
population. This implies that most immigrants were from the poorest strata
of rural society and were pushed off the land by disintegration of the
rural economy. They were attracted to the city by high wages, stable food
prices, and the construction boom of 1608-25.
When Toledo's collapse came,
it was spectacular. By the 1620's, income from the almotacenía
was 55% below the level of 1601-10, and only leveled off during the 1630's
and '40's. The decline of the peso mayor was initially slower, since
it reflected population rather than commercial trends, but in the longer
run it was equally emphatic. From an index of 132 in 1601-10, it dropped
to 100 in the '20's and to 56 in the 1640's--a 58% decline. The sequence
indicates that first Toledo's long-range commerce (reflected in the almotacenía)
was drawn away or undermined by Madrid. Consequently, the population became
smaller and poorer (reflected in the more gradual decline of the peso
mayor), and by 1631 the population of Toledo had fallen to 20,000.
(35)
It is simplistic to assert
that Madrid "caused" the decline of Toledo, but it is important to show
how Madrid fit into the pattern of change that was involved. Monetary inflation
and the state of the international market were clearly central to the process.
(36) The almotacenía
of Toledo was sensitive to such factors, as witnessed by its sharp reaction
to the difficulties of the Crown and the stagnation of traffic at Sevilla
in the 1560's and '70's. By the 1590's, however, Toledo's commerce was
becoming more sensitive to regional conditions [271] than to the
Sevilla trade. Indeed, the decline in Toledo's commercial activity led
the decline of commerce in Sevilla. (37)
While in the mid-sixteenth century Toledo was well connected with external
trade, by the end of the century local conditions were much more important.
These were the conditions shaped by Madrid's growing control of the supplies,
trade, and mercantile services that had maintained Toledo.
(38)
Thus Toledo's collapse was
precipitated by a combination of factors that preempted or destroyed the
city's functions and fields of influence. The process involved the disruption
of foreign trade, heavy taxation, inflation, and regional overpopulation.
Within that context, however, the growth of Madrid triggered a rapid and
erratic increase in wheat prices, and thereby encouraged a recession in
commercialized agriculture, especially viticulture. Consequently, Toledo's
economy became increasingly sensitive to regional subsistence conditions.
The growing strength of Madrid is apparent in the contrasting behavior
of the two peso series. Before 1600 they reacted simultaneously
to regional supply conditions, but thereafter they show opposite reactions
to crises, suggesting that Toledo could attract commodities only when the
population of Madrid was forced to divert its outlays to more essential
goods.
Toledo's position as an urban
center depended ultimately on the ability to provide quality manufactures
for long-distance trade. Without such goods, the link between regional
economy, regional entrepôt, and maritime commerce could not be maintained.
This was the reality for the entire urban network of sixteenth-century
Castile, and thus the collapse of Toledo's textile industry was an important
aspect of the reorientation of Castilian urban life. Given the problems
of the European textile industry in the early seventeenth century, therefore,
it is an oversimplification to attribute Toledo's decline to Madrid alone.
(39)
In contrast, Toledo's linen
trade was hardly affected by the fiscal and commercial difficulties of
the 1570's, thus linking it to regional as opposed to international markets.
Prior to 1595, when the index for woolens reached its second peak, the
growth in linens was modest. Then, as woolens declined, linen output increased
rapidly and remained high through 1601-07. As much as a century and a half
later, linen was the most widely used fabric in Madrid, and it was a mainstay
of the Castilian handicraft industry. Clearly, market conditions were favoring
local rather than distant sales.
After 1610, linen tax revenues
declined with other Toledo indicators, but much more slowly than those
for woolens. Following the subsistence crisis of the late 1620's, linens
retained a domestic market and escaped the total collapse of the woolens
industry. The industrial base that was crucial to Toledo's ability to maintain
its position as mediator between the interior and the periphery was clearly
eroding, however. Confronted with rising local prices and wages, Toledo
woolens export and production declined, while linen output that could be
exchanged for regional agricultural commodities represented a futile attempt
to offset the growing difficulties of urban supply.
The growth of the regional
population in the sixteenth century brought an intensification of subsistence
agriculture within the local economies of the area,
(42) but faster growth
near the two cities reflects market-oriented specialization, [274]
and documents intimate urban-rural connections. They imply an agriculture
directed at regional and urban markets, rural dependence on the market
for essential supplies, and cottage industry tied to the exchange network
that supported Toledo. (43)
This orientation of rural society to the urban market represents both a
degree of economic growth and an effort to compensate for declining agricultural
productivity. The stability of the rural economy thus depended on a functioning
regional market system, since the more specialized agriculture becomes,
the more its population depends on exchanges for vital supplies. In Castile,
the cost of bringing supplies from long distances encouraged the Crown
to disrupt that market system in order to supply its growing capital city.
Officials in Toledo had no
doubt that Madrid was the cause of their difficulties.
(44) As Toledo had
expanded, it became dependent upon wine supplied by brokers whose predecessors
once produced the city's wine within the jurisdiction of the city council.
Toledo had outgrown those sources, and the local vintners had become middlemen
who purchased wine in more distant towns. This was part of the commerce
that supported the city, but Toledo had no jurisdiction over the towns
involved. By 1600, these towns were being drawn into Madrid's supply system,
as the Crown increased Madrid's radius of control. Thus, while once Madrid
had had to protect itself from Toledo's preemption of supplies,
(45) by 1598 Toledo
was vehemently protesting Madrid's tactics. Earlier the government had
diverted to Madrid all wine within 12 leagues (36 miles), but in 1598 it
broke all precedent and extended the radius to 15 leagues (45 miles).
(46) Since the two
cities are only 50 miles apart, the embargo reached into the neighborhood
of Toledo, and wine destined for Toledo was being diverted to Madrid.
In better harvest years,
supply remained adequate, but crises like that of 1598 increasingly put
Toledo at a disadvantage. In that year the diversion of wine produced a
price of 42 maravedises per azumbre in Toledo, while it was
28 in Madrid. The price differential is corroborated by the vintners of
Yepes, who complained that they were forced to sell to Madrid at 3.5 reales
per [275] arroba, even though brokers from Toledo were offering
5.5. (47)
Similarly, in 1625 wine was available in Madrid for 38 maravedises,
while the price was 46 in Toledo and 48 in Illescas.
(48) Given that Toledo
was nearer to the supplying towns, higher prices there clearly reflect
the diversion of supplies to Madrid.
Toledo was also affected
by the southward expansion of the system of pan de registro. By
1609 the capital was exacting quotas from as far as 18 leagues, a zone
that enveloped Toledo and excluded only towns under its señorial
authority. This produced numerous disputes, illustrated by orders that
Toledo cease interfering with the shipment of bread to Madrid (1609) and
stop removing bakers from towns now under Madrid's jurisdiction (1614).
(49) By 1610, discriminatory
bread prices (see Chapter 7) were in force, and beyond 12 leagues from
Madrid the price was set at 18% below the price in the city.
(50) Regulation, and
the consequent erosion of Toledo's economy, help explain migration from
Toledo to Madrid, the attractiveness of the latter, and the rapid change
in their relative size. After 1607, emigration from Toledo became a flood,
and is confirmed by edicts dated 1607, 1615, 1621, 1632, and 1641 ordering
Toledans in Madrid to return to Toledo. (51)
The economic distress of
New Castile in the 1580's and 1590's and the collapse in the early seventeenth
century have been attributed to inflation, high taxes, subsistence crises,
disease, diversion of capital from productive activities, and loss of manpower
to army and empire. Any of several combinations of these variables provides
an explanation, but it is not always clear just how they operated. A favored
interpretation holds that the price revolution forced Spanish manufactures
out of world and Spanish markets. (52)
Yet 1601-20 was not an especially inflationary time in Spain, since the
composite price index actually fell 7.5% between 1601 and 1610, and rose
only 1.44% from 1611 to 1620. (53)
Unquestionably, an important
part of the commercial life of the sixteenth-century interior depended
on external markets. Nevertheless, isolation and primitive transport rendered
the economy of New Castile largely autonomous. Alongside the activities
of Toledo based on distant markets was the exchange of lesser-quality rural
manufactures and agricultural products--a [276] market insulated
from the rest of the world. Through the sixteenth century, Toledo functioned
successfully as an interior entrepot, keeping external and regional markets
linked together. In that regional context, growing domestic demand and
inelastic supply were more damaging to exchange patterns than the money
supply, and aggravated the impact of international price differentials
on competition abroad.
Another explanation is that
increasing government demands undermined the fragile peasant economy. This
explanation gives attention to rising taxes and price regulation, but the
immediate realities suggest that regional as well as international aspects
of the interior economy were undermined by conditions occasioned by the
rise of Madrid. Unquestionably, increased taxation at the end of the sixteenth
century came at the worst possible time for Castile's peasant economies,
caught as they were between high population and declining yields. But the
insertion of Madrid into this situation was not an autonomous event--it
was another aspect of the growing societal cost of the state. The operative
aspects involved supplies and regulation, rather than revenue--but conceptually,
it was part of the price of empire.
The evolution of the regional
economy was distorted by contradictory government policies and shifting
urban consumption. This was a consequence of the relative elasticities
of demand for commodities under inelastic supply conditions and of the
emerging structure of income in the new capital city. This structure, with
extremes of income distribution, precluded the urban-rural interactions
characteristic of sixteenth-century Toledo. The crucial turning points
were the selection of Madrid as the capital in 1560 and the expansion of
the capital into a major urban center after 1595. The effect was to increase
urban demand sharply, at a time when the rural economy was heavily populated.
In the sixteenth century,
development of the urban hinterland concentrated around the two cities
and featured specialization. The most striking of these was the shift to
viticulture between 1560 and 1590, as wine prices rose appreciably faster
than cereal prices. This left many districts dependent on city-based exchanges
for vital supplies. The intensification of demand for wheat after 1590
prompted a rapid rise in its price which, as five-year averages, rose 90%
in twenty years, while wine prices fell 20%. It is small wonder that many
communities experienced falling incomes and soaring bread prices, rising
mortality, declining fertility, and emigration.
First Toledo's export sector,
pressed by competition and high costs, lost its foreign markets, then the
city's mercantile function ceased to be profitable, and ultimately much
of its commercial community moved to Madrid. Between 1595 and 1630, the
growth of Madrid aggravated recurrent regional subsistence crises, depriving
Toledo and the region of respite from negative economic pressures and forestalling
stabilization. Only in the 1630's and [277] '40's, when defeat and
revolt diverted resources from Madrid, did the capital cease to grow. Toledo
was then able to stabilize at 20,000 inhabitants, with vestiges of its
entrepot function, remnants of its textile industry, and its role as site
of Spain's metropolitan see.
In the process, interior
agriculture was left with a single urban market--a market destined to expand
and contract in response to conditions unrelated to the economic realities
of the interior. The political crisis of the Spanish empire after 1635
diverted resources to warfare, and the capital itself declined. The reduction
in Madrid's requirements came too late to aid Toledo or to prevent demographic
calamity in Castile much worse than the stagnation experienced in the rest
of Western Europe during the seventeenth century.
With the collapse of Toledo,
Madrid was the only city of significance in the entire zone affected by
the capital's supply network. An urban hierarchy based on specialized agriculture,
craft industries, and a range of local, regional, and international exchanges
had been dismantled. It was replaced with an urban hierarchy in which the
provision of political and social services precipitated the redistribution
of resources, demand, and urban functions so as to create a network of
minor regional centers dominated by a disproportionately large primate
city. The accompanying widespread reversion of rural society into subsistence
production was an inevitable consequence of this change. This reorientation
of the rest of the Castilian urban system to Madrid is the subject of Chapter
12.
1. Valladolid was the largest central place of Old
Castile, but Toledo included a range of industrial, political, and ecclesiastical
functions that placed it above Valladolid in the urban hierarchy. See Josiah
Cox Russell, Medieval Cities and Their Regions (1972); and Michael
Weisser, "The Decline of Castile Revisited: The Case of Toledo," pp. 616,
620-621.
III. Madrid Captures
the Regional Supply Market
It is not easy to assign
relative weights to the factors affecting Madrid, Toledo, and Castile,
but analysis of long-term trends within the two cities clarifies the economic
interaction of the three. (11)
The displacement of Toledo as center of the Castilian urban hierarchy can
be documented, and aspects of Madrid's dominance over Castile's long-distance
commerce can be set alongside its domination of commodity trades in the
landlocked interior. The tensions in the Castilian economy are suggested
by the contrast between the declining rural population and the growth of
Madrid's demand for agricultural staples. They are also reflected in the
rate of growth of consumption in Madrid (see Table 11.2) and by the fact
that additional demand far exceeded the supplies released by Toledo's decline.
Source: Chapter
6.
Commodity
Consumption in 1590s
Consumption in 1630s
Increase
Olive oil
126,480 gal.
239,088 gal.
189%
Wine
2,968,000 gal.
4,820,000 gal.
211
Meat
2,543,000 lb.
8,210,000 lb.
223
Wheat
270,000 bu.
775,000 bu.
287
a. Actual
base periods are: olive oil, 1584, '87, '88, and 1639-43; wine, 1584, '85,
'87, '88, and 1624-30; meat, 1601 and 1632; wheat, 1599 and 1630-31. Olive
oil and wine are converted at the rate of 16 quarts per arroba,
meat figures are taken directly from Chapter 6; and wheat is converted
at the rate of 1.5 bushels per fanega.
A. Wheat
B. Wine
As we saw in Chapter 6,
individual demand for wine was elastic and varied greatly with the real
income of the poor. High bread prices sometimes reduced the demand for
wine even when wine prices themselves did not increase.
(18) Thus the market
for wine behaved very differently when caught in the three-way relationship
between Madrid, Toledo, and the countryside. As Figure 11.2 illustrates,
between the early 1590's and 1610 wine consumption in Madrid rose only
25%, compared with a 60% growth in both wheat consumption and population.
(19) If the population
of Toledo reacted to high wheat prices in the same way, the demand for
wine in the two cities was static between 1595 and 1610 and may even have
declined.
[262] This stagnation
of urban demand is reflected in wine prices, which fell 9.6% between 1586-90
and 1596-1600, and another 16.4% by 1605-1610. As with wheat, the situation
in the wine market changed sharply after 1610. By the 1620's, urban consumption
was 25-30% greater than in 1600. This happened despite wine prices which
had risen 60% in thirty years.
C. Mutton
If wheat was linked to self-sufficiency,
and wine was part of a regional market economy, mutton was associated with
both regional supply and the long-distance wool trade. Consequently, the
level of mutton consumption reflected factors external to the tension between
the two cities. As a result, the market for meat was not one of the mechanisms
through which Madrid affected Toledo. The Castilian grazing industry responded
to two markets, the supply and demand for meat in the city and the export
market for wool. (22)
Wool exports declined in
the later sixteenth century, as war disrupted [265] Atlantic trade
and Europe developed other sources of wool. (23)
By the end of the century, there was intense competition in Europe's markets
for woolens, and this contributed to deterioration of the smaller cloth
towns in Castile. (24)
Woolens production around Toledo, however, remained stable until 1607 and
seems to have been the principal Castilian exception to incipient decline.
Trade disruption and slack domestic demand for wool help explain the stability
of mutton prices in the face of a substantial jump in urban demand. Between
1586 and 1610, mutton consumption in Madrid rose 75%,
(25) a rate of increase
only slightly below that for wheat consumption. Aside from 1602-03, however,
mutton prices remained stable, and the five-year average of 1606-10 was
only 6.5% above that of 1586-90. (See Fig. 11.3.)
Competition between Madrid
and Toledo for supplies was most direct in the case of wheat. The market
for mutton depended on the price of wheat and on the demand for wool, and
did not contribute directly to the urban crisis. Both the price and the
demand for wine were depressed in the twenty years after 1590, weakening
the market nexus between the wine districts and Toledo. Here we face a
central problem that Madrid posed for Toledo. Nevertheless, the wheat market
was the focal point of the situation, and in the twenty years from 1588
to 1608 the price of wheat (five-year averages) rose 92.5%, while the general
price index rose only 13.9%. Purchasing power in the towns served by Toledo's
regional market was badly hurt, undermining Toledo's entrepot function
in the interior. (27)
Shortages of foodstuffs aggravated by Madrid depressed real wages to the
subsistence level, linking labor costs in the textile industry to the volatile
price of bread. Thus the growth of the capital undermined both the regional
economy and Toledo's ability to compete in the international market. It
can be argued that this was due to monetary inflation, and the situation
clearly reflects rural supply problems, but this analysis shows that some
of the pressure came from shortages generated by the rise of Madrid.
IV. The Reorientation
of Commerce and the Collapse of Industry in Toledo
As the supply trades were
reorganized, Madrid became the focal point of long-distance communication
and Toledo declined as a mercantile center. Sixteenth-century Toledo was
heavily involved in Spain's economic response to the American empire, a
fact demonstrated by the flows of American bullion into the regional economy
in return for exports of woolens, leather goods, and weapons.
(28) This was reinforced
by the city's role as an entrepot for merchandise brought from outside
of the interior and distributed to regional markets.
(29) These economic functions were enhanced by Toledo's role
as the site of the wealthy Archbishopric of Toledo.
Evidence that Madrid rapidly
diverted commerce as well as supplies from Toledo is provided by the revenue
series from the barca de Arganda. This ferry was near Madrid on
the main road from the Mediterranean, but north of the route to Toledo
(see Map 12.1). Its toll schedule, location, and apparent [267]
insulation from regional subsistence crises suggest that much of the traffic
on the ferry consisted of Madrid's long-distance trade, travel, and communications.
The spectacular growth in ferry revenues, interrupted only by the temporary
move of the government to Valladolid in 1602-06, reflects the [268]
attraction of social and political life to Madrid. As the regional economy
stagnated, this growth inevitably included commerce diverted from Toledo.
Peso revenues in
Toledo rose rapidly in the middle decades of the sixteenth century, followed
by a plateau in the 1570's and '80's. This corresponds with regional economic
expansion and subsequent pressure on agricultural resources by the 1580's.
(33) Both of these
Toledo series recovered in the early 1590's and, after the plague and crop
failures of 1598-99, remained high [269] until 1608. The peak for
both coincides with the Court's absence from Madrid. Given that Toledo
was the center of the regional market system, the nigh level of economic
activity indicates that regional exchange mechanisms were functioning in
Castile until after the beginning of the new century. [270] Disintegration
of the system organized by Toledo came later than has been assumed, and
coincides with the collapse of that city.
Toledo's high-quality woolens
sold all over Europe, Spain, and Spanish America. By the end of the sixteenth
century, however, international competition and differing rates of inflation
had made it difficult for Spanish woolens to remain competitive. This has
been attributed to the uneven impact of American bullion, but the inability
of Castilian agriculture to meet urban demand, and the consequent rise
of food prices, added labor costs to the [273] difficulties. After
reaching very high levels at mid-sixteenth century,
(40) woolen production
fell sharply in the 1560's, corresponding with a drop in the almotacenía
and the disruption of governmental and mercantile credit. Revenues then
climbed steadily to 1591-95, after which they began a slow decline that
accelerated in 1610. (See Fig. 11.6.)
V. General Considerations
Thus Toledo's economy was
still expanding as late as the 1590's. The first sectors to decline were
the export industries and long-distance trade, as international competition
displaced Spanish textiles. This inability to compete reflects the tension
between Madrid, Toledo, and New Castile, as the new capital city used the
political and economic power of an imperial state to control resources
within the Castiles. Tension was apparent in escalating supply crises,
rapidly rising wheat prices, depression in the wine industry, and migration
of the upper levels of Toledo's society to Madrid.
(41) Thus, while economic
conditions created hardship in other European textile centers after 1610,
in Spain they precipitated the collapse of Toledo.