This article analyses the private management of the Spanish Tobacco Monopoly by the Compañía Arrendataria de Tabacos (CAT) from a Gender perspective. What difference did female labour make in the modernisation process carried out by the CAT? This company which in 1887 was the biggest single industrial employer of the country, slowly mechanised the workshops and reduced the workforce by a 70% during the period of its management (1887–1945). This article shows how a number of factors attributed to women's work, such as smaller labour costs, low degree of unionisation and high flexibility were essential in explaining the techno-labour system implemented by the CAT, and the economic and political profitability of its management.

During a large part of the XVIIth-century the Kingdom of Castile suffered the monetary reform of the Habsbourg Monarchy, characterized by sucessive periods of inflation and deflation, and an increase in the circulation of “vellon” in substitution of silver coins. Reforms introduced in 1680 by Carlos III ended the disorder of the previous phase. In this article we present a bimetallic model in orden to analyse the causes of the success obtained by the monetary reforms of Carlos III.

This article aims to discuss the social features of the landed nobility and the role of «rentier» landownership in the development of Valencian agriculture in the nineteenth-century. In the first part attention is paid to discuss the transformation of former feudal landlords into middle class landowners. The second part is devoted to the study of a family of the lower nobility and the simultaneous variety of economic roles of the family —who was at the same time mostly «rentier» and «entrepreneur»—, and tries to explain the logic of these criteria.

In this article we propose the construction of Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) from demographical and educative variables, applied to Spanish regions and provinces in the European context between 1860 and 1930. Our results show an unequal but extensive improvement of PQLI, which was superior to the one experimented in per capita product in this period. Morover, the evolution of PQLI spacial disparities suggests some parallels with Italian case and the necessity to be careful about the relationships between economic growth and well-being.

Unlike two big European tobacco monopolies —the French monopoly and the Italian one—, which almost always were managed by the State, the management of Spanish tobacco monopoly was leased out for over a century to two companies very related: the Compañía Arrendataria de Tabacos (1887–1945) and Tabacalera (1945–1998). This paper provides an explanation of this situation analising the kind of companies they were from the standpoint of State regulation, ownership structure and management control and also using some principles of the Agency's Theory and the Economic Regulation's Theory.

Para presentar una buena síntesis de la historia de la producción y del comercio de lana castellanos de los siglos medievales y modernos se precisan elevadas dosis de arrojo, tenacidad y maestría. En la obra objeto de esta nota, que comenzó a gestarse en la primera mitad de la década de los ochenta, Carla Rhan Phillips y William D. Phillips, Jr., demuestran poseer esas cualidades y haber superado brillantemente el difícil reto que ellos mismos se impusieron.

Spain's Golden Fleece está muy bien estructurado, utiliza una riquísima bibliografía y bastantes fuentes primarias, analiza los asuntos de la ganadería ovina y del comercio lanero en el contexto de los problemas generales de la economía española y no rehuye plantear y pronunciarse sobre cuestiones claves de la Historia Económica de nuestro país (como el papel de la trashumancia en el desarrollo económico castellano). Nos hallamos, pues, ante un excelente libro que merece un comentario más extenso que el de una simple reseña.

En torno al centenario de 1898 se han multiplicado las aportaciones sobre lo sucedido en España en el paso del siglo XIX al XX. En muchos sentidos, resultan decisivos los acontecimientos en los cuatro ámbitos de Cuba y Puerto Rico en el Caribe, y de Filipinas y de los archipiélagos del Pacífico —Marianas con Guam al Norte, y Carolinas y Palaos al Sur—, donde en 1898, por el Tratado de París, y en 1899, en virtud de un acuerdo con Alemania, se abandonaron todas estas posesiones.