Agricultural History Review, Volume 55 Part 2 (2007), p. 328

According to Rosa Congost, we should all be suspicious of writings on landed property. Many scholars, she argues, assume an excessively linear view of history, whilst others are guilty of adopting a ‘statist’ or ‘legalistic’ notion of property, regarding as ‘property rights’ only those rights which a country’s legislators agreed to enshrine in laws. Her deliberately provocative new book starts with the proposition that property relations – being social relations – must be observed from a plurality of angles. In addition, their study has to be based on the hypothesis of their mutability, irrespective of legal principles and institutional frameworks. Before undertaking this type of analysis, historians must free themselves from nominal conceptions of property which are either too abstract or too rigid. Above all, they should examine, with as open a mind as possible, the real conditions determining, in each society, the conformation and materialization of property rights. Moreover, a comparative perspective is indispensable to such as approach. In Congost’s opinion, the expression ‘property rights’ is always preferable to the term ‘property’. The question ‘who has the property rights?’ offers a far wider perspective and allows us to convey much more complex realities than the simple question ‘who is the owner?’.

Rosa Congost’s book is divided into three parts. While part one tackles the subject of property rights from a theoretical viewpoint, in parts two and three she aims to back up her arguments by focusing on a number of concrete problems. In so doing, she is able to draw on a lifetime’s experience of archival research on the agrarian history of Girona in the north-eastern corner of Spain, which she describes as ‘a rich laboratory that allows us to go from case study to theory’ and vice-versa. One aspect of working on this Catalan province (in contrast to England or France) is that it does not fit neatly into models of historical development that have dominated historiography north of the Pyrenees. She is critical of the contribution of Douglass North and the New Institutional Economics school which turned England into a paradise of ‘secure property rights’. Nor does she display a high regard for interpretations based on the idea of property ‘engraved in the Napoleonic code’ or which assert that the key historical process was the French Revolution of 1789. On the one hand, Catalonia did not enjoy the same level of economic growth as England. On the other, unlike in France, Spain’s nineteenth-century liberal revolution did not suppress seigniorial rights. In a nutshell, Catalonia exemplifies ‘the slow agony of seigniorial rights both before and after the liberal revolution’.

Spanish historiography, Congost tells us, was inspired by ideal models of development constructed from the historical realities of France and England. France was seen as the perfect model, liberated from the burden of feudal dues. For its part, the English model embodied the triumph of ‘individual’ property and the economic superiority of large estates. In general, Spain’s liberal revolution was conceived of as a juridical-legal revolution, based more or less on the French model. M eanwhile, its success or failure has usually been measured in terms of the development of agrarian capitalism a la inglesa. Even so, Spanish liberal laws were very different to their French counterparts. Not least, they did not completely suppress seigniorial rights. In regions like Catalonia and Galicia, divided property existed in the eighteenth century, as did the predominance of peasant exploitation, while large estates were a feature of southern Spain since the Reconquest. Yet few scholars contend that Andalusia or Extremadura were model regions. In Congost’s opinion, the function of the liberal state – in both France and Spain – was essentially the same, viz. to ensure and protect property rights. The principal difference between the two countries was that the French revolution led to the suppression (without indemnity) of a class of rights which Spanish liberal governments dedicated themselves to defend. Indeed, the aim of Spain’s liberal revolution was to put an end to the revolutionary process a la francesa.

Rosa Congost’s mature reflections on property and property rights in contemporary Europe, especially in Spain and Catalonia, are the product of meticulous archival research, a fertile imagination, and a clear and concise writing style. A particular virtue of her path-breaking new book is how her detailed knowledge of the Spanish case is used to expose theoretical weaknesses in more general interpretations of the development of agrarian capitalism.