Copyright 1920 by Harvard University Press
PREFACE
Of the many economic problems brought forth by the war, two
have stimulated especial interest and have already been made the
subject of considerable research. One of these is the national
control of raw materials, and the other the economic foundations
of newly organized states. It may not be altogether inopportune,
therefore, at a time when so much thought is being given to these
fundamental matters, to invite attention to the same questions
as they appeared in another age and under far different cir-
cumstances.
Spanish merino wool was for generations one of the great
staples of commerce during the period when modern Europe was
in the making. The history of ‘ the Honorable Assembly of the
Mesta,’ the Castilian sheep raisers’ gild, presents a vivid picture
of some six hundred years of laborious effort on the part of one
of the great European powers to dominate the production and
marketing of that essential raw material. This policy, though
primarily concerned with the agrarian affairs of the realm, had,
nevertheless, a far wider significance because of its part in the
mercantilistic ambitions of the greatest of the Castilian mon-
archs. The high unit value of wool, its compact, exportable form,
and the universal demand for it made it one of the most valued
means for determining the relative status of rival monarchies.
As a factor in the laying of the foundations of the Castilian
state which rose from the ruins of the Reconquest, the Mesta
played an inconspicuous but important part. It was used by
each of the stronger sovereigns in turn to carry on a prolonged
struggle against the ancient traditions of Spanish separatism —
Political, racial, and economic provincialism — and to work
toward a united peninsula. Its rise synchronized with the suc-
cessful efforts of the warrior monarchs of the Reconquest to weld
their newly won dominions into a nation. Its decline began with
the collapse of the monarchy and the triumph of separatist in-
fluences under the seventeenth-century Hapsburgs.
VU