Description
This book, first published in 1992, is a study of the development of Barcelona's cotton industry from its origins in calico-printing in 1728 to its introduction of steampower in 1832. It thus describes the experiences of the leading industry of the city, and one which provides the only Mediterranean exception to the tendency of early industrialization to be concentrated in northern Europe. The book bridges the 'pre-industrial' and early 'industrial' periods, offering answers to such questions as: what caused 'merchant capital' to move into industrial investment? what were the links between 'pre-industrial' industrial activity and industrialization proper? is it apt to refer to the economic changes of these years as an 'industrial revolution'? should industrialization be studied on a regional or a national basis? A further purpose is to provide an interpretation of the characteristics of the Catalan economy and of its relationship to that of Spain as a whole thereby contributing to the understanding of the 'Catalan question'.
Chapter
2 Catalan industry in the ' long term'
The development of the Catalan cloth industry
The fourteenth-century expansion
The crisis of the fifteenth century
A recovery in the sixteenth century
The crisis of the seventeenth century
Some recovery in the late seventeenth century
A late seventeenth-century attempt at import-substitution
Particularities of the Catalan cloth industry
3 The establishment of calico-printing in Barcelona
The import trade in printed calicoes
Points of import and distribution networks
Legislation and its enforcement
The establishment of the first manufactures
Characteristics of the new industry
Three entrepreneurs: Josep Sala, Bernat Gloria and Esteve Canals
4 Why did merchant capital move into the industry in the 1740s?
Different interpretations
Pierre Vilar's explanation of the Catalan expansion
The views of Martinez Shaw and Sanchez
Testing the interpretations
The origins of the new manufactures
Government and the expansion
5 The development of the industry in the 1750s and 1760s: adaptation to the requirements of' merchant capital'
What was behind the expansion?
Description of the industry in 1767-8
The manufactures: distribution in the city, exteriors, interiors
The adoption of regulations
6 The industry at its height, 1768—86, with investment in it as common as in drapers' shops
The growth in the industry
The number of manufactures
' Unregulated' manufactures
The number of manufactures
Manufactures outside Barcelona
Concluding on the pattern of growth
The causes of the expansion
The industry in the 1780s
A regulated manufacture: Isidro Cathala & Cia
The industry and the city
The gradual spread of manual spinning until 1790
The introduction of spinning machinery in the 1790s
Accelerated diffusion of machinery after the 1802 prohibition on the import of spun yarn
8 The crisis of the fdbrica: the industry from 1787 to 1832
The 'conjuncture' from 1787 to 1832
Numbers and types of manufactures
The fate of the 1786 industry
New calico-printing manufactures founded up to 1806
The expansion in the number of independent weaving concerns
9 The Bonaplata mill and Catalan industrialization
When and why was there a movement from commercial to industrial capitalism ?
Proto-industrialization ?
Industrial Revolution in 1832 ?
The region and Spanish industrialization