Sociedad, naturaleza y mercado: un análisis regional de los condicionantes de la producción agraria española (1800-1936)

This paper seeks to bring together and compare the contributions made to Spanish regional agrarian history in the 1980s and 1990s. In order to integrate the different research and compare its results, we have used information, broken down by province, on a number of variables: the percentage of wage earners on the agrarian holdings, forms of land tenure, levels of industrialization, migratory processes, environmental conditions, principle land uses, and rates of technical change. The paper begins with the characterization of the different Spanish rural societies in the mid-1950s. We then reflect on the possible paths that led to this situation since the crisis during the Ancien Régime. We move on from society to the environmental conditions and the degree to which these conditioned the main land uses and the rates of technical change. The conclusions join together the social, environmental and production aspects to present the general lines of evolution of the main agrarian systems of the country.