Las áreas rurales de montaña en la España del siglo XVIII: el caso de las sierras del sur de La Rioja

Conceived as special types of preindustrial economies, the economies of the mountain areas had many distinctive features. Based on this assumption, three traditional ideas are discussed: that the rural economy in the Ancien Regime was limited to agrarian activities; that the pre-industrial economy functioned independently of, or outside the market and that die mountain areas were a marginal environment. For this reason, this work is based on die analysis of die sierras of La Rioja in the middle of die 18th Century, with special emphasis on multiple occupation (pluriactivity), die role of die market, approaches based on family economies and die importance of communal institutional frameworks.