¿Descendió el producto agrario por habitante en la Europa moderna? El caso castellano

Abstract

This work quantifies the growth of agricultural product and per capita agricultural product in four provinces of Castile between the late sixteenth century and the third quarter of the eighteenth century. For this purpose we have resourced to tithe documentation generated by the dioceses of Avila, Burgos, Salamanca and Segovia for the distribution of the subsidio and the excusado. Our most noticeable conclusion is that the negative image shown by some of the recent literature on the evolution of the primary sector in Castile in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries is at odds with the evidence. Between 1588-1592 and 1771-1775, both the agricultural product and per capita agricultural product, far from declining, grew in the aforementioned region.