{"title":"Inequality and conflict as drivers of cooperation: the location of wine cooperatives in pre-1936 Spain","authors":"Samuel Garrido","doi":"10.1007/s11698-020-00210-5","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>As it is usually believed that cooperatives made a great contribution to the modernisation of agriculture and when they began to spread agriculture still had a great weight in European economies, it is of interest to know why agricultural cooperatives had uneven success, both from one crop to another and between and within countries. In this article, I focus on the intriguing case of wine, a product of great importance to Mediterranean Europe. After defending that, in actual fact, wine cooperatives were generally unable to offer members important economic advantages; I argue that they only flourished where some ‘local’ factor increased the attraction of belonging to them and, in addition, it was possible to finance their construction. I use what happened in France as a reference and show that in Spain both circumstances only converged in (a part of) Catalonia, as a paradoxical result of inequality and the social conflicts caused by a sharecropping contract called <i>rabassa morta</i>.</p>","PeriodicalId":44951,"journal":{"name":"Cliometrica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cliometrica","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-020-00210-5","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
As it is usually believed that cooperatives made a great contribution to the modernisation of agriculture and when they began to spread agriculture still had a great weight in European economies, it is of interest to know why agricultural cooperatives had uneven success, both from one crop to another and between and within countries. In this article, I focus on the intriguing case of wine, a product of great importance to Mediterranean Europe. After defending that, in actual fact, wine cooperatives were generally unable to offer members important economic advantages; I argue that they only flourished where some ‘local’ factor increased the attraction of belonging to them and, in addition, it was possible to finance their construction. I use what happened in France as a reference and show that in Spain both circumstances only converged in (a part of) Catalonia, as a paradoxical result of inequality and the social conflicts caused by a sharecropping contract called rabassa morta.
期刊介绍:
Cliometrica provides a leading forum for exchange of ideas and research in all facets, in all historical periods and in all geographical locations of historical economics. The journal encourages the methodological debate, the use of economic theory in general and model building in particular, the reliance upon quantification to buttress the models with historical data, the use of the more standard historical knowledge to broaden the understanding and suggesting new avenues of research, and the use of statistical theory and econometrics to combine models with data in a single consistent explanation. The highest standards of quality are promoted. All articles will be subject to Cliometrica''s peer review process. On occasion, specialised topics may be presented in a special issue.
Officially cited as: Cliometrica