La conflictividad rural en la España moderna

Since the end of the middle-ages till the beginning of the nineteenth century, rural conflict, often shown by litigations solved in Court, presents a complexity which is difficult to deal with. Taking into account the VII Agrarian History Congress organized by SEHA in Baeza, in June 1995, the author analyses the social content of these litigations, together with the territory where they occurred. The author also emphasised the effectivity of obscures and common ways of resistance, particularly in policultivation countries, as well as the important part of high juries when dealing with conflicts between rural communities and the old aristocracy, relating to manor obligatory services, which reveals the importance of law in Ancient Regime societies. Finally, he analyses the factors that caused such conflictivity, which particular attention to those of political order (e. g. reliance on Real Courts), the unbalanced strength of peasant community, the characteristics of feudal regime and the transformations of rural society, which generated the formation of more heterogeneous “anti-feudal blocks” than it could have ever been thought.