'Report on the Agrarian Law' (1795) and Other Writings

Gaspar Melchor De Jovellanos

Description

The first modern English translation of perhaps the greatest work of the Spanish Enlightenment – Gaspar Melchor sobre Jovellanos’s 1795 'Informe sobre la Ley Agraria' (Report on the Agrarian Law).

"Report on the Agrarian Law" (1795) and Other Writings' is the first modern English translation of perhaps the greatest work of the Spanish Enlightenment, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos’s 'Informe sobre la Ley Agraria' (1795). A major work of political economy and a beautifully crafted philosophical history of Spain’s political development until the eighteenth century, 'Informe sobre la Ley Agraria' is a classic work of the Spanish Enlightenment. Displaying the richness of Spanish Enlightenment writing on political economy emerging from a fecund conjugation of foreign writers (Smith, Ferguson, Condillac, Mirabeau, Genovesi) with Spanish writers (Ulloa, Olavide, Uztáriz, Campomanes), this masterpiece explores the lessons learned from the shortcomings of the Spanish Crown's economic policies in the eighteenth century.

Preliminaries; Introduction; Report on the Agrarian Law (1795); On the need to combine the study of history and antiquities with the study of law (1780); Eulogy in Praise of Charles III (1788); Inaugural Address to the Royal Asturian Institute (1794); On the Need to Combine the Study of Literature with the Study of the Sciences (1797); Index.

Sujets

• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Political economy
• Economic history
• History of Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783086313
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Report on the Agrarian Law (1795) and Other Writings
ECONOMIC IDEAS THAT BUILT EUROPE
Economic Ideas That Built Europe reconstructs the development of European political economy as seen through the eyes of its principal architects and interpreters, working to overcome the ideological nature of recent historiography. The volumes in the series – contextualized through analytical introductions and enriched with explanatory footnotes, bibliographies and indices – offer a wide selection of texts inspired by very different economic visions, and stress their complex consequences and interactions in the rich but often simplified history of European economic thought.

Series Editor
Sophus A. Reinert – Harvard Business School, USA

Editorial Board
David Armitage – Harvard University, USA
Steven L. Kaplan – Cornell University, USA
Emma Rothschild – Harvard University, USA
Jacob Soll – Rutgers University, USA
Report on the Agrarian Law (1795) and Other Writings
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos
Edited with an Introduction by Gabriel Paquette and
Álvaro Caso Bello
Translated by Yesenia Pumarada Cruz
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2016
by ANTHEM PRESS
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or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
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© 2016 Gabriel Paquette and Álvaro Caso Bello editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters © individual contributors

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested.

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-629-0 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-629-7 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Editors’ Biographies
Note on the Text
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Liberty ( Libertad ), Knowledge ( Luces ) and Reform ( Auxilios ) in the Economic and Political Thought of Jovellanos
Report on the Agrarian Law (1795)
On the Need to Combine the Study of History and Antiquities with the Study of Law (1780)
Eulogy in Praise of Charles III (1788)
Inaugural Address to the Royal Asturian Institute (1794)
On the Need to Combine the Study of Literature with the Study of the Sciences (1797)
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
0.1 Title page of the original 1795 edition of the Report on the Agrarian Law. Reproduced with the permission of Wesleyan University Library.
0.2 Title page of Informe de D. Gaspar de Jovellanos en el Expediente de la Ley Agraria (Bordeaux: Lawalle, 1820)
0.3 Title page of Alexandre de Laborde, A View of Spain; Comprising a Descriptive Itinerary of Each Province, and a General Statistical Account of the Country , vol. 4 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809)
0.4 First page of [Jovellanos,] “Memoir on the Advancement of Agriculture and on Agrarian Laws,” published in Laborde, A View of Spain , vol. 4
EDITORS’ BIOGRAPHIES
Gabriel Paquette is a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Enlightenment, Governance and Reform in Spain and Its Empire, 1759–1808 (2008) and numerous articles on aspects of eighteenth-century intellectual history published in European History Quarterly , History of European Ideas , Bulletin of Spanish Studies , Modern Intellectual History and Journal of Latin American Studies , among other academic journals.
Álvaro Caso Bello is a PhD candidate in history at Johns Hopkins University, where he also obtained his MA in history. He has published articles in academic journals in Spain and Latin America, such as Ariadna Histórica and HIb-Historia Iberoamericana , as well as book chapters in volumes such as El Sur en Revolución (2015) and La Subversión del Orden por la Palabra (2015).
NOTE ON THE TEXT
The translation of the Report on the Agrarian Law was made on the basis of the 1795 original, Informe de la Sociedad Económica de esta Corte al Real y Supremo Consejo de Castilla en el Expediente de la Ley Agraria extendido por su Individuo de Número, El Sr. D. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos a nombre de la Junta Encargada de su Formación y Arreglo a sus Opiniones (Madrid: En la Imprenta de Sancha, 1795).
The translations of the four additional texts were made on the basis of those published in nineteenth-century editions of Jovellanos’s collected works : Sobre la necesidad de unir al estudio de nuestra legislación el de nuestra historia y antigüedades (1780), the Oración sobre la necesidad de unir el estudio de la literatura al de las ciencias (1797) and the Elogio de Carlos III were taken from Obras del Excelentísimo Señor D. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (Barcelona: Imprenta de Francisco Oliva, 1839–1840), vols. 2 and 3. The Oración Inaugural a la apertura del Real Instituto Asturiano was taken from Colección de varias obras en prosa y verso del Exmo: Señor D. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (Madrid: Imprenta de León Amarita, 1830), vol. 2.
Some terms without an English language equivalent have been left in the original Spanish, and several of the most important of these are accompanied by a footnote with an “Editors’ Note” or “E. N.” Jovellanos’s footnotes in Spanish have been translated into English, but his Latin footnotes have been left in the original language. The style and format of Jovellanos’s footnotes are the same as those in the original texts.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The editors wish to thank Sophus Reinert and Francesca Viano for their generosity in using the grant they received from the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) to underwrite the translation of Jovellanos’s Report on the Agrarian Law . Yesenia Pumarada Cruz undertook and completed the translation with impressive skill, which greatly facilitated the editors’ task of revising the translation and preparing the present volume for publication. The editors would have been unable to complete their work without the unfailing support of the History Department of Johns Hopkins University.


Illustration 0.1 Title page of the original 1795 edition of the Report on the Agrarian Law. Reproduced with the permission of Wesleyan University Library.
INTRODUCTION: LIBERTY ( LIBERTAD ), KNOWLEDGE ( LUCES ) AND REFORM ( AUXILIOS ) IN THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL THOUGHT OF JOVELLANOS
Jovellanos, the Bourbon Reforms and the Spanish Enlightenment
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (1744–1811) was a leading figure of the late eighteenth-century Spanish Enlightenment. His life and career coincided with what is known to historians as the period of the Bourbon Reforms, called “Bourbon” for the dynasty that ruled Spain and its Atlantic empire from the first decades of the eighteenth century. The reforms the Crown undertook, which touched all aspects of Spanish political, economic and social life, reached their apogee in the final third of the century. 1 Many historians, though not all, have understood these reforms to have been influenced by the new currents of thought often associated with the Enlightenment, and thus classify the quickening of the pace of government action to reshape society as “enlightened reform.” 2 Bourbon reformers rejected the notion of Spain as an eclipsed power. They endeavored to assert the Crown’s rejuvenated sovereignty over its far-flung empire against the relentless encroachments by competitor imperial states, like Britain. Bourbon reformers attempted to turn away from the stable, resilient “composite” monarchy structure and, in its place, erect a unified nation-state, subservient to the monarchy and capable of inculcating a new patriotic spirit. 3 They took practical steps—though sometimes tentatively, erratically and with few tangible results—in both the Old World and the New to further this aim. 4
The strenuous reform effort expended in Spain and Spanish America was formidable, even if it was seldom matched by the permanent results attained. Contemporaries witnessed fresh incursions into Amerindian-controlled lands, the spasmodic settlement of rustic peripheries from Patagonia to modern British Columbia and the military repossession of Florida, Louisiana and the Mosquito Coast. There were Crown-led attempts to overhaul the navy, improve and expand the army and colonial militias, revamp coastal fortifications and ports, modify university education, enact a less-regulated trade regime, boost mineral yields, encourage export-led agricultural production and wrest control of church property and patronage.
Whether caused by these attempts or merely coterminous with them, Spain’s empire experienced remarkable urban, mercantile and demographic growth in the eighteenth century. This surge was sparked by export-led production and galvanized by the dramatic influx of African slaves, particularly explosive in Caracas, Havana, Buenos Aires and their hinterlands. The average value of exports from Spain to America was 400 percent higher in 1796 than it had bee