James D. Tracy, ed., The Political Economy of Merchant Empires. (Studies in Comparative Early Modern History.) Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. vii, 504; black-and-white frontispiece, tables. $49.50.

Speculum ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 69 (01) ◽  
pp. 302-303
Author(s):  
Regina Grafe

This concluding chapter shows how it is impossible to ignore that the political, economic, social, linguistic, and cultural relations between center and periphery are to this day the single most important issue in Spain while they hardly appear in the political debates. The real issue is that important parts of the political economy and historical sociology that are used to trace the emergence of early modern European nation-states and nationally integrated markets becomes questionable in light of Spanish early modern history. The first casualty is the lopsided focus of political economy on the predatory state. The unfinished construction site of the creation of the Spanish early modern nation and market was that the state never became autonomous enough.


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