CONCLUSION
The history of the Mesta is not merely a chronicle illustrating the
perennial and universal struggle between agricultural and pas-
toral interests. The institution had a marked effect upon the
social and economic organization of the Spanish people, and even
upon the physical aspect of the peninsula. Its six centuries of
activity in the agrarian life of Castile aggravated the depressing
problems of deforestation, rural depopulation, and agricultural
stagnation. There is even reason to believe that the Mesta was
a party to such unfortunate economic blunders as the expulsions
of the Jews and the Moriscos. The fiscal and agricultural activi-
ties of these two classes had long been annoying and at times
injurious to the sheep owners. In fact, the connection between
the Mesta and the loss of valuable taxpayers was the first aspect
of the migratory sheep industry that attracted the attention of
Campomanes, the eighteenth-century reformer, who gave the
Mesta its death blow. That great mercantilist promptly pointed
to the depopulation of rural Castile as the most serious charge to
be brought against the devastating sheep migrations. Further-
more, the political history of Spain would have been very different
had there been no Mesta to yield large revenues and adminis-
trative power to ambitious kings. The social and economic de-
velopment of Castile would have been along other lines had the
class distinctions between migratory herdsmen and sedentary
husbandmen not been so sharply accentuated, and had the pas-
toral policy of such strong monarchs as Ferdinand and Isabella
not been so triumphantly successful.
With all due regard for the influence of the Mesta during the
first three centuries of its history, we must avoid the dangerous
pitfall into which many recent investigators have fallen, namely
the assumption that the earlier triumphs of the organization went
on in an ascending scale during the seventeenth century. It is
true that the disastrous effects of those triumphs — deforesta-
tion, depopulation, agrarian decay — were destined to continue
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