This edited volume marks the culmination of a long-term collaboration between
many of its contributors over the course of over fifteen years. Two previous
volumes contain papers that represent earlier phases of this collective,
interdisciplinary effort aimed at exploring various interactions between social
organisation and physical landscapes in earlier medieval western Europe (Davies, Halsall & Reynolds, 2006; Escalona & Reynolds, 2011). The project, or projects, have involved a changing cast of
historians and archaeologists whose regional specialisms have been varied but
the preponderance of them have worked on the Iberian peninsula and England
between 400 and 1100. This volume includes contributions on northern and
western Iberia, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway and Iceland, the last of which
takes the chronological scope of the volume into the thirteenth century. In
total it contains three contributions by the editors (a short introduction [pp.
1-9]; a dense but valuable discussion of “Polities, Neighbourhoods and things in-between” [pp. 11-38]; and a conclusion [pp. 407-14]), and thirteen articles. The fact
that the volume includes seventy-five figures is a testament to the volume’s focus on archaeology and geography. A glance at the contents page of the book
suggests there are no sub-sections and this reflects the editors’ view that the papers do not warrant separation into distinct strands. At the
same time the editors’ introduction explains the logic of the order (pp. 5-8); it reflects connections
between the contributions, and that there are three rough sections.
The title of the editors’ co-written essay includes a nice play on words, managing to allude to different levels of socio-political organisation, and þing (thing), the Old Norse-Icelandic word for an assembly or parliament which might often categorise the temporal and geographical level at which localities and leaders interacted. Here they outline what they see as the purpose of the book: as a collection of discussions of the nature of political organisation for places and levels of organisation that do not receive enough attention, that is, secondary states, or peripheries of the Frankish core (p. 12), in an era after and before states are more readily observable. The discussion is wide-ranging and thought-provoking but might have benefited from more discussion of the Carolingian polity/polities which, as is noted, was seen or used as a model by contemporaries (p. 15), but is itself the subject of debate. In the light of this, it is interesting to see that a very recent article actually proposes that a Carolingian king might have partly justified the need for men to perform fortification duties with reference to English precedent rather than the other way round (MacLean, 2020: 38-39).
The book’s first main section includes four papers on social complexity as viewed from the localities. Grenville Astill’s paper, “Understanding the Identities and Workings of Local Societies in Early Medieval England, AD 800-1100”, sensibly comes first because it reviews the arguments for the impact of the state for England. Astill notes the diversity of local experiences of settlement and field reorganisation in the light of significant recorded political changes, including viking raids (and subsequent Scandinavian immigrations), political centralisation and the Norman conquest. England has often been seen as an archetype of political centralisation and therefore the kind of place where there was royal intervention at the level of the individual estate. Astill is sceptical of some claims that changes in field systems and settlement patterns were the result of, first, Mercian and then English kings seeking to micromanage production. Instead, to borrow his terms, royal lordship was more likely to be extensive rather than intensive, and shaped by local socio-economic networks. Astill’s paper reminds anyone unfamiliar with the historical scholarship, including, as he notes, many archaeologists, that the strength of the Anglo-Saxon state, even in the eleventh century, should not be assumed. Different localities experienced different forms of settlement reorganisation, sometimes quite frequently.
Margarita Fernández Mier’s contribution foregrounds the potential contribution of archaeological work focussed on settlement patterns for understanding wider socio-political changes in Asturias (Spain). The two case study settlements discussed, one in an upland setting (Vigaña), one in a wider valley (Villanueva), though both still inland, show some settlements being abandoned and others growing in the period 700 to 1200, but in different ways. Fernández Mier is cautious as to the causes of these changes, but speculates that they were not simply impositions by new, monastic landlords. The arguments presented here felt like they needed more space to do them justice, particularly as the results presented are part of a much wider project.
Alexandra Chavarría Arnau’s “The Topography of Early Medieval Burials: Some Reflections on the Archaeological Evidence from Northern Italy (Fifth-Eighth Centuries)”, is quite distinct from the previous two. It shows just how much new archaeological data there is for northern Italy, both for urban and rural sites. It makes a good case for the incredible diversity of burial forms in northern Italy in this period being a symptom of political upheaval and weakened political control. Written and archaeological evidence suggest greater stability before and after this period in Italy as, after c. 800, it too underwent some of the same processes of settlement change seen in England and the Iberian peninsula. The author is, in my view, too eager to associate the appearance of certain new kinds of furnished burial with the intruding elites of the Ostrogoths and, especially, the Lombards. The full range of archaeological evidence could be interpreted without such ready recourse to ethnic explanations, as the article otherwise demonstrates.
By contrast, ethnicity or religion are barely mentioned in the next paper, Iñaki Martín Viso’s study of rock-cut graves in central-western regions of the Iberian peninsula. It centres on a region potentially contested by Arab/Berber rulers and Christian ones, just south of the Duero river. Rock-cut graves are difficult to date accurately but many in this region date to the period c. 700-c.1100 and occur either as isolated graves or in cemeteries comprising only rock-cut graves or also including cist burials, and sometimes laid out in what might have been family groupings, as segmented rural cemeteries. Rock-cut graves rarely, if ever, include the remains of the buried individuals or grave goods –acidic soil conditions probably causing the human remains to decompose completely– making archaeological dating difficult. Martín Viso neatly sets out the varied nature of the evidence for the burial material, both in terms of cemetery sites and situations and cemetery layouts, which suggests these kinds of graves and the cemeteries of which many were a part served communities at different scales. Here, as in some of other case studies, the twelfth century is witness to new documentation recording what might be a new level of control by elites, in this case ecclesiastical control of cemeteries in what had become the Astur-Leonese political network (p. 141).
The next section begins with Frode Iversen’s “The Thing and the King: The Formation of the Norwegian Medieval Kingdom” which examines the role of assemblies in a region of south-west Norway, the Gulathing. Using later legal texts he suggests that assemblies were gradually sidelined by increasingly powerful Norwegian kings because of the declining numbers of representatives notionally required to attend them. The archaeological evidence of local assemblies, in the form of abandoned so-called courtyard sites (small clusters of regularly-arranged booths) would seem to match that progressive disenfranchising of the (male) population.
Alfonso Vigil-Escalera Guirado’s paper on “Meeting Places, Markets, and Churches in the Countryside between Madrid and Toledo, Central Spain (c. AD 500-900)” makes simple but effective arguments for the exchange of goods (rotary hand querns, iron, tile and pottery), and, through the isotopic analysis of human skeletal material, women. It is speculated that churches that seem to have been isolated were in fact established at places that were already meeting places for multiple village communities.
Orri Vésteinsson‘s paper is of a different character to most of the others because it considers the mindset of medieval Icelanders in relation to Norway, a geographically remote polity of which Iceland was arguably a part. He contends that Icelandic politics cannot be understood without appreciating just how much leading Icelanders were involved in politics in Norway and how much Norway involved itself in Icelandic society, even if the king posed no real physical threat to Iceland. In his view Icelanders actually readily acquiesced in the idea of Norwegian royal authority and, notwithstanding the issue that the written evidence for this is twelfth-century at the earliest, that this was the situation in the tenth century, relatively soon after the start of the settlement of Iceland in the late ninth.
Letty Ten Harkel considers the roles of three circular fortifications (ringwalburgen) on the island of Walcheren in Frisia, mostly for the ninth and tenth centuries. She argues that the superficial similarity in the physical appearance of these forts masks differences in the local circumstances under which they were built and the ways in which they may have been perceived in the context of the fluctuating political and military situation involving Scandinavian raiders and lords, local people, more distant Carolingian rulers, and the Church. The forts did not form part of a defensive system, as has been argued. It is hard to do justice to the detailed arguments set out here but, as Ten Harkel puts it, the forts’ significance linked to different identities existing at different scales, and varied across time (p. 257).
Stuart Brookes’ and Andrew Reynolds’ “Territoriality and Social Stratification: the Relationship between Neighbourhood and Polity in Anglo-Saxon England” takes a long-term view of the roles and significance of boundaries and how they were marked, successively, by sentinel burials, execution cemeteries, and what are known as minster churches. Boundaries had different roles at different scales of political centralisation, some of which might have a relevance for understanding weak polities in pre-industrial societies more generally, while others are specific to the trajectory of early medieval English history. The paper is underpinned by an evolutionary model of political development, suggesting three phases of scaling-up of political organisation. Such a view develops one of the major lines of thinking about the development of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
Wendy Davies’ “Regions and Micro-Regions of Scribal Practice” uses an altogether different way of getting at regional distinctions, specifically by using the c. 2750 surviving charters –records of property sales or ownership– of mostly tenth-century date from the whole of northern Iberia, excluding Cataluña (p. 305). Careful analysis of charters has been a hallmark of Davies’ significant contribution to early medieval history. Here she uses variations in the use of certain formulaic phrases to identify regional scribal practices. The analysis is nuanced, showing an appreciation for date, provenance, location of the property being exchanged, and the secular or ecclesiastical beneficiary. Davies suggests that until the mid-tenth century some regions saw local scribal practice outside of monasteries which was conservative, deriving from late antique practices. [H]ereditary learned persons were likely vectors. This practice was eventually replaced in the tenth century as monastic influence rose at the expense of practices inherited from the Roman state.
Álvaro Carvajal Castro examines charters from León of the ninth to eleventh centuries to try to address the difficult question of what the word villa, or as it is spelled here, uilla. The word clearly had diverse meanings and cannot be easily defined. The paper‘s conclusion is that it meant a unit of rent and tributary management, in other words it was a convenient label for remote landlords to use to conceptualise a property. It had none of the neat spatial, economic or legal sense we might like to see.
Given how often Julio Escalona‘s notion of Dense Local Knowledge (DLK) is referred to in earlier papers, it was good to finally get to read it. In “Dense Local Knowledge: Grounding Local to Supralocal Relationships in Tenth-Century Castile” Escalona argues for the importance of DLK, this being the sort of local, collective memory of the landscape and its tenurial history needed for a local community to explain in writing where a plot of land was. It could be drawn on by non-locals making property transactions. Ironically the existence of this knowledge, Escalona suggests, is best demonstrated when a charter is vague about boundaries; this knowledge was in people‘s heads and only rarely written down.
The volume returns to England with Alexander James Langlands‘ “Local Places and Local People: Peasant Agency and the Formatio of the Anglo-Saxon State”. Langlands gives a useful overview of the evolution of charters as a document type in England but his main contribution is the idea of what he calls simply a locus. He finds examples of loci which were names of rivers or valleys which he argues are how local people referred to the landscape rather than those imposed on the landscape by the needs of charter writers.
All-in-all this volume is a significant contribution to debates about the way local societies functioned and the way they connected with the larger polities of which they were a part. It provides routes into the many separate, regional historigraphies to which individual papers contribute. The authors are keen to stress the known unknowns provided by their material, not least with the eternal problem of archaeological dating. Not everyone will agree with all of it but it demonstrates the vitality of interdisciplinary approaches to early medieval western European history and the benefits of sustained, comparative approaches which overcome the limitations of national historiographical traditions.
Chris Callow
University of Birmingham, UK
REFERENCES
Davies, W., Halsall, G. & Reynolds, A. (Eds.) (2006). People and Space in the Middle Ages, 300-1300. Turnhout: Brepols.
Escalona, J. & Reynolds, A. (Eds.) (2011). Scale and Scale Change in the Early Middle Ages: Exploring Landscape, Local Society, and the World Beyond. Turnhout: Brepols.
MacLean, S. (2020). The Edict of Pîtres, Carolingian Defence against the Vikings, and the Origins of the Medieval Castle. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, (30), 29-54.
Rebecca J. H. Woods
The Herds Shot Round the World: Native Breeds and the British Empire, 1800-1900
Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2017, xiii + 233 pp.
In The Herds Shot Round the World, Rebecca J. H. Woods sets out to trace the rise and fall of British breeds of
sheep and cattle in the long nineteenth century, to explore the concept of native types of these animals as it changed over time, to understand their roles in
imperial ecologies and economies and to reveal the new meanings bestowed on
what were viewed as heritage breeds from the 1970s. This approach is
innovative. As Woods points out, most studies of animals and imperialism
operate only at the level of species, examining aspects of the lives and deaths
of generic cattle, sheep, pigs, or chickens. By drilling down to sub-species or
breed, Woods is able to draw out the influence of culture on how animals were
redesigned to serve imperial interests, in this cleverly written account. Her
explorations of native breeds take her from the isolated St Kilda Islands in
the North Atlantic, to the verdant fields of the English and New Zealand
midlands to the rangelands of northern Australia and the American West,
following the pathways created by and for British breeds.
The book is structured around close studies of sheep and cattle, in Part 1, within Great Britain, and in Part 2, in the Americas and Australasia. The first three chapters trace how breeds which developed in particular localities in Great Britain, often being given county names such as Cornish sheep or Devon cattle and considered to be native to those places, were “improved” through the eighteenth century. The aim was to meet the demands of new markets as Britain became more urban and industrial, in particular for more and better quality mutton and beef. Improved breeds like the New Leicester Longwool, developed in the eighteenth century by leading agriculturalist Robert Bakewell (1725-95), are followed as they were taken up across the country, breaking the traditional connection between place and type. The final two chapters examine these animals as they were exported to Australasia and the Americas, demonstrating how they were managed in novel climates and topographies to ensure that they would continue to meet the expectations of British consumers for wool and meat. Sustained attention to Merino and Corriedale sheep and Hereford cattle provide family histories of the breeds which offer fascinating insights into how opportunities and constraints made these particular breeds dominant in specific colonies and former colonies, even though they did not enjoy the same level of esteem in Britain.
Breed was a relatively new term at the beginning of the nineteenth century, used to denote a group of animals with particular characteristics and containing the connotation that those shared features were transmitted in the blood from parent to offspring. Woods teases out the complexity of beliefs and practices around the respective roles of environment (including factors such as soil, climate, temperature, terrain, predation and competition) and heredity in making a breed, along with the anxieties of contemporaries about the new “artificial” breeds they created. Desirable characteristics like early maturity or fine wool could be developed through cross breeding followed by in-breeding, but could they be fixed through the generations or would the breed need constantly to be topped up with inputs from the originating types in order to avoid degeneration? If the highly valued features of local breeds emanated from their experience of place, expressed in the maxim that every soil has its stock (p. 30), would they be lost if these animals were reared in new locations? Woods does not attempt to provide definitive answers to these questions, but reports on contemporary discussions, in which equally adamant proponents of contrary views gave their opinions, based on their practical experience.
Woods shows that these debates reveal the tension at the heart of the idea of breeding as a practice: that the very variability which enables the creation, or improvement, of a breed through artificial selection also means that that breed will continue to change, despite the best efforts of those with an interest in keeping it static. This was important because the stability of a breed was central to its desirability and the economic value of its members. The example of Hereford cattle, in which white faces and red sides were successfully entrenched by the 1840s, demonstrated the value of a clear visual signal of breed, even if other characteristics continued to shift. In contrast with this careful delineation of change in British breeds in the nineteenth century, in the text almost all of the images are taken from David Low’s Breeds of the Domestic Animals of the British Islands and show the animals as they were portrayed in a single year, 1842 (this date must be sought in the bibliography), rather than capturing change over time.
Demonstrating the book’s wider significance, Woods suggests that the attention to breed in sheep and cattle can be read in parallel with emerging ideas of race in the English speaking world of the nineteenth century. She emphasises that the term native when applied to particular breeds was not done innocently but always had a political dimension. What it meant to be native varied over time and place, and according to who stood to gain from a beast being considered native or non-native. Early in the period, the concept of nativeness was deployed in Britain to refer to the livestock of a place which were understood to have been created there by nature and were more or less ripe for human intervention to improve them. In contrast, in the new worlds, native was applied to carefully designed new breeds. Woods takes up the example of the Corriedale sheep developed in New Zealand from the 1870s, considered a native although their forebears had arrived just decades earlier, and included the Merino, which was suspect in Britain because of its Spanish ancestry. Hereford cattle were so changed while living in northern Australia and western North America as to be referred to as native. Significantly, these “native” animals (as well as other introduced breeds) played a key role in displacing the true natives, the original human and non-human inhabitants of the Americas and Australasia.
While in some settings, the term native was reserved for First Nations peoples, in others, including Australia, it was appropriated by settler colonists, as in the 1870 Australian Natives Association. Woods demonstrates how attitudes to nativeness in animals were entangled with similar ideas about humans. Just as some believed that changes in exported British breeds in new locations inevitably meant deterioration, there was also a concern that adaptations to place led to a loss of esteemed British qualities in human emigrants and their descendants, even a “creolisation” paralleling the mongrelisation feared by animal breeders, if mixing with other peoples occurred. Jumping ahead to the late twentieth century, Woods suggests that in a context of a perceived threat to the British cultural identity posed by waves of immigration from the former Empire, the protection of heritage breeds formalised in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (est. 1973) allowed for an open discussion of the sense of loss and nostalgia for earlier forms of Britishness which were not permitted with regard to humans. That the Trust was established in the same year as Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community opens the possibility that it could also be a reaction to concerns raised by the increasing dominance of continental breeds such as Holsteins and Limousins which Woods shows were favoured from the mid twentieth century for their suitability to intensive, high yield production of milk and meat.
Reading this book from the position of an animal-human historian, while animals were mentioned on each page, I found it to be primarily a cultural history. Woods did not aim to convey the animal experience of being part of a breed chosen to feed or clothe an empire, but she did show how revealing dealings with animals can be of the nature of society. Class was a factor in the development and adoption of particular breeds, with endorsement from the landed gentry providing higher standing to breeds such as the Merino sheep, but not being sufficient to ensure its widespread adoption in Britain or the acceptability of its meat. Technology is also granted its role, with perhaps my favourite section being on how steamships with onboard refrigeration created temporal proximity, which enabled distant producers to bring their animals’ meat to the British market, with particular attention to New Zealand lamb and mutton. Even simple innovations, such as the use of barbed wire for fencing in the American west in the late 1880s, are shown to have their impact in permitting greater control of the contact between cows and bulls, allowing for more strategic breeding.
There are some assertions made in the book which needed tempering or additional support. Woods opens by saying that British breeds had conquered the world by the end of the nineteenth century, then refines this to include only the now developed world (p. 4). The claim is then further limited to indicate that she treats only the Anglo neo-Europes where British breeds could thrive (p. 15), rendering their dominance a foregone conclusion. There were many parts of the British world where British breeds were unviable because of climate, disease and pests and others beyond it where they were not given a warm welcome because of the same ties of tradition and familiarity Woods traces for the British world, as readers of this journal would be well aware.
Another underpinning assumption of the book is that the British were particularly large and discerning consumers of meat, and that this was an essential aspect of the national identity. This sets up such an unwavering focus on meat that Woods states that when refrigeration enabled the export of meat, the British Empire was recast as a vast apparatus for feeding Britain (p. 6), overlooking the key role of imperial foodstuffs from fish to grain to sugar in feeding Britain over previous centuries. While Woods was able to provide many contemporary claims to support her position with regard to the centrality of meat, they do not reflect the national diet in the nineteenth century, studies of which have shown that the regular consumption of meat remained out of reach of much of the working class. Woods attributes enormous power to these British meat consumers, arguing that their tastes shaped sheep and cattle breeds elsewhere. This seems likely for New Zealand, still a colony with all of the British investment this implied and where, as Woods states, there was only a small local market. But even there, although Woods prefers to emphasise taste and culture rather than economics, she credits the New Zealand and Australian Land Company with developing the Corriedale sheep. Based in Edinburgh and with Scottish principals, their decisions were more likely based on profit than any other motive. That British tastes informed decision making by the American beef industry is a greater stretch, with their home market of 76 million by 1900, compared with under 40 million in the United Kingdom. Britain was an important market for the United States –Specht (2019: 130) reports that 50 million pounds of beef was exported to Britain in the late 1870s– but as with the overall level and distribution of meat consumption, some statistics on the trade and analyses of them were needed rather than just scattered individual assertions. While agricultural gazettes, memoires and handbooks have been thoroughly harvested to capture the ideas in circulation, secondary sources which would provide context for these particulars could have been better used.
Overall, The Herds Shot Round the World is a valuable addition to the small but growing body of historical writing on the emergence of the global meat industry in the nineteenth century. Its particular contributions are to recognising the importance of breed in this process, and to unpacking the politics around the use of the term native, as it was deployed to denigrate animal types as archaic, to use them to make claims on new territory and finally to assert an organic connection to place tinged with nostalgia. Woods’ work constitutes a significant advance in the field and will be a very useful reference for others seeking to explore the hoof-soldiers in the great agropastoral expansion of the British Empire (p. 3).
Nancy Cushing
University of Newcastle, Australia
REFERENCES
Specht, J. (2019). Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Eve E. Buckley
Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil
Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2017, 280 pp.
The acclaimed book Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century
Brazil, from the specialist in the history of science, medicine, and health, with
emphasis on Brazil, Eve Buckley, seeks to discuss how the state bureaucracy has
instrumentalized scientific discourse in response to the social problems of
northeastern Brazil, and to what extent science can be a solution for the
miseries of this impoverished region.
The starting point of her work is the Great Drought (1877-79), which, due to its severity, brought the topic of drought into the national debate for the first time. It addresses the Brazilian northeastern climatic instability and the social problems resulting from it, passing through the creation of a government agency specifically to mitigate its effects, the Inspetoria de Obras Contra as Secas (Federal Inspectorate for Works to Combat Droughts, IOCS) in 1909, and concludes with the 1960s and the civil-military coup, a moment of political-social rupture that brought other challenges to Brazilian society. The narrative of changes in this organization is the thread that leads to the investigation of how positivist and scientific agendas passed through the state’s sieve, which coordinated the actions of the men of science, the technocrats, in this modernization process. Therefore the northeastern area, the so-called sertão, was a frontier and a target for the nascent republic’s projects.
In the first chapter, “Climate and Culture: Constructing Sertanejo Marginality in Modern Brazil”, the author analyzes the intersections between the climate of the sertão and its culture, investigating how the discourse of marginality and poverty concerning its populations, the sertanejos, was built. Her work brings together information about the great droughts, specific climatic and ethnic data, and local culture; offering the reader information about novels, popular music, and poetry, placing the figure of the northeastern man and his attachment to the land even in situations of scarcity and hunger at the center of attention. The paradox between coastal elites and the impoverished sertanejos takes shape in the discussions of racial whitening and modernization of the country at the turn of the twentieth century, together with the beginning of the republic. This adds a new layer to the stereotypical view of the sertão peoples as obstacles to modernity and the antitheses of the project for the future envisioned by the dominant strata of society. The sertão was conceived as culturally and climatically doomed.
Buckley’s analysis then moves on to the literature and impressions that Euclides da Cunha’s book Os Sertões printed on Canudos and the sertanejos episode to again take up social-political analyses of the coronelismo phenomenon and how this system perpetuated inequalities in northeastern society. Coronelismo is a system perpetuated by the elites; the powerful men were then named coronéis, reminiscent of the Guarda Nacional Imperial (Imperial National Guard) that awarded local oligarchs military status as if they were noble titles. At the center of this characterization is the question about the nature of drought: was it a natural or social phenomenon? The answer to this question given by the Brazilian state was that it was a natural phenomenon. Consequently, it could be solved through science without any change in social stratification, and that is where the root of the problem addressed by Buckley lies. However, if drought can be solved with modernizing initiatives, why has the cycle of poverty been perpetuated? The key is her analysis of the federal organ, the IOCS, and professionals involved in attempts to mitigate the effects of droughts in the sertão, in a narrative that brings together sanitarians, engineers, agronomists and economists, the intersection of natural and social factors that conspired to marginalize the sertão’s landless poor in negotiations for state and environmental resources (p. 44).
In the second chapter, the author investigates the speeches of the sanitary doctors about the sertão, with emphasis on Belisário Penna and Wickliffe Rose, of the Rockefeller Foundation. These researchers disagreed about the degree to which race was a determining factor in the region’s underdevelopment. Penna argued in favor of a public health project to reduce the gulf between levels of society and the redistribution of land encamped by the state, claiming that disease was not purely a biological fact but rather a reflection of social evils that made the impoverished sertanejos more vulnerable. Rose, conversely, pointed to racial explanations for regional differences in the country. For him, poverty and backwardness were directly related to color, so the state should favor immigration of Europeans for whitening, instead of promoting a project aimed at the mixed-race populations of the sertão.
Chapter three brings up the proposals of engineers to deal with the problem of drought. Buckley argues that the main initiative of these professionals was linked to the construction of dams to accumulate rainwater that would be used in episodes of drought. However, instead of improving the lives of the sertanejo, the author points out that these projects concentrated even more power in the hands of local oligarchies, which had even more land and water resources. The response of engineers to the sertanejo region’s problems did not touch the power structure of society; they did not confront the current order and thus contributed to strengthening it. In order to maintain political elites’ support for the drought agency, the power game did not allow engineers to propose initiatives that would inconvenience the local coronéis. There is also the profession’s intrinsic question, with reservoirs and roads at the center of the discussion. This framing makes engineers the professionals, par excellence, best suited to solving these problems. Still, if social injustices were placed at the fore, their activities would consequently be of secondary importance.
In the early 1940s, engineers lost their hegemony in the organ, and agronomists took their place; that is the theme of chapters four and five. The author analyzes initiatives such as the creation of irrigated colonies and attempts to implement changes in sertanejos’s working regime. The sertão population was then perceived by the organ and its professionals as partisans of the law of minimum work and unwilling to change during the rainy season. However, funds for irrigation initiatives were not as large as they should have been, as the independence of the sertanejos and the distribution of small properties threatened the domination of the coronéis and large landowners; they were also members of the political elite and therefore blocked these enterprises. In the end, there was a double resistance to change, both from the sertanejos who opposed attempts to implement irrigated farming and intensive cultivation, and from the elites who barred attempts to redistribute land, so the responses of agronomists to the problems of the sertão did not have the success or the expected acceptance. The hegemony of the agronomists was not uncontested, there was still a dispute between engineers and agronomists. Nevertheless, the result of the battle was already given beforehand by the leading engineers, advancing in the engineering works as the first response to the drought problems.
Chapter six deals with economists’ interpretation of the issue, thus Celso Furtado and his proposals for reparation of historical social injustices that relegated poverty and helplessness to the sertanejo. The focus then shifted from building dams or establishing irrigated settlements to industrialization. For the economist, the most viable way to correct regional asymmetries was industrialization in the Northeast, which would offer new employment opportunities and regional balance in the country. However, the project was not carried out; Furtado’s plans were mowed down before they were realized, interrupted by the civil-military coup of 1964.
It is interesting to point out that, besides presenting an analysis of technocrats and policies concerning the drought, the author demonstrates how the sertão and the sertanejo were portrayed in novels, songs, and anecdotes. The research on the sertanejo culture blends closely with the political discourse and initiatives of professionals dealing with the mitigation of the drought effects. Thus, even the reader not versed in the culture of this region has a complete idea of how national interpretations of the sertão affected public policy and vice versa.
When reading the book, the popular saying the road to hell is paved with good intentions always springs to mind. Sanitarians, engineers, agronomists, and economists generally had a genuine desire to improve the living conditions of the sertanejos. However, they were barred by the bond between social stratification, politics and land ownership, the profound social inequalities, and interests linked to their social class and profession. After all, these men of science were distant from the impoverished population of the sertão. Science could undoubtedly have beneficial effects for the improvement of life, but removing its political character also emptied its potential. Buckley’s analysis ends up highlighting that drought, more than a climatic or natural fact, was a political project to maintain the power of local oligarchies, which profited from the vulnerability of the sertanejos. Unfortunately, the situation has not changed in recent decades. Brazil’s political class has declaredly concentrated between two and four million hectares of land in the country (Castilho, 2012). Power and land have an intimate relationship that has been perpetuated for centuries in Brazil.
Patricia Aranha
Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland
REFERENCES
Castilho, A. L. (2012). Partido da Terra: como os políticos conquistam o território brasileiro. São Paulo: Contexto.
Cunha, E. da (1902). Os Sertões. Rio de Janeiro: Laemmert.
Kristy Leissle
Cocoa
Medford, Polity Press, 2018, 228 pp.
This book offers a comprehensive overview of the cocoa and chocolate trade. By
combining fifteen years of personal research and fieldwork, with a wide
sampling of multidisciplinary scholarship and critical insight into the
industry itself, Leissle has crafted a masterful narrative that explores the
history, socio-politics, economics and science behind one of the world’s most beloved, and at times controversial, commodities. Leissle’s central purpose is to take a close look at power relationships […] across the supply chain to show that neither “global” nor “cocoa”, nor “trade” has a sole definition or meaning (p. 2). Building on this theme, the book’s eight chapters collectively argue that commodity markets are not simply
value-neutral economic channels through which raw materials pass; but also
socially constructed entities that reflect and shape hierarchies, norms, and identities on issues like gender, race, age, class,
nationality and ethnicity (p. 3). The book is largely successfully in
accomplishing these ambitious goals due to Leissle’s thought-provoking questions on several micro and macro level topics including
the crop’s Mesoamerican origins, imperial legacies, child labor, farmer poverty, grinding
monopolies, genetics, market liberalization, environmental sustainably and
Fairtrade, organic, and flavor certifications.
Chapter two (which follows the introduction) examines cocoa’s historical journey from an isolated Mesoamerican crop to one of the globe’s most heavily traded commodities. The first section discusses cocoa’s early history and relies on the writings of previous studies like Clarence-Smith (2000), and Coe and Coe (2013). Building of these scholars, Leissle describes how cocoa’s taste, preparation, consumption, and religious, economic and social meanings were forever altered once the beans entered European society. The chapter also provides detail about the rise of bulk industrial processing, and how the creation of chocolate candy in the nineteenth century led to the further alienation of cocoa from its geographic and social origins. Finally, Leissle explains how Europe’s increasing demand for cocoa and desire for cheap market prices fostered rapid cultivation in West Africa during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Here Leissle’s personal connections, and professional knowledge, regarding Ghana and the Ivory Coast, allow her to daftly unpack the ways that cocoa altered nearly every aspect of these societies (patterns of land distribution, labor practices, gender relationships, business transactions, etc). In sum, this chapter shows how historical events shifted and solidified cocoa’s status from a culturally significant object in its own rite to a raw material primarily associated with industrial chocolate production.
Chapters three examines both historical and contemporary factors that help us understand why […] cocoa exporting countries –and the farmers within them– have been alienated from the processes that turns cocoa […] into chocolate (p. 47). Here Leissle unpacks the expensive, complex and multistage process needed to prepare cocoa for chocolate manufacture; and how inconsistences can create anomalies in color, flavor, and texture that reduce market value or consumer appeal. The chapter also discusses the colonial origins of tariffs and taxes and how they continue to impact the geography of value addition and industrial manufacturing. Indeed, Leissle suggests that much of the contemporary spatial configuration of cocoa processing is the consequence of lingering imperial power dynamics, which initially sought to keep raw material production in the colonies and value-adding industrial processes within the metropole.
Chapter four continues to examine the intricate systems that enable so few companies to control most of the industry by pointing out that no force operates in a vacuum (p. 72). To contextualize this point, Leissle discusses the branding techniques of Mars, Mondelez, Ferrero, Nestle and Hershey. She argues that over time these companies have used creative and distinct packaging, shapes, colors and flavors to create ubiquity between their products and chocolate itself in the minds of consumers. Moreover, the chapter exposes the near monopolization of cocoa grinding by three major companies (Barry Callebaut, Cargill and Olam). Leissle writes that grinding, which produces the cocoa liquors, powders, and butters used to make finished chocolate goods, is a vital process in the supply chain, but that the companies involved are relatively unknown outside of the industry. She then proceeds to build a convincing argument that the invisible status of these grinders is part of a deliberate strategy to avoid public criticisms over controversies like child labor or farmer poverty, while also remaining true power players in the trade (p. 76). This chapter also shows how weather patterns, military conflicts, futures trading, and even unexpected events like Brexit, influence yearly cocoa supply and demand, and by proxy market prices. Finally, Leissle turns to her own research in West Africa and the outcome of market liberalization on prices and trading patterns. In particular, she compares the neighboring countries of Cote d’Ivoire (a fully liberalized market with naked global prices), and Ghana (a partially liberalized market with Government subsidized fixed prices). Through this comparative discussion of two of the world’s largest cocoa producing nations, Leissle reveals several emergent consequences. One of the more fascinating results is the way that smuggling patterns change from year to year depending on the prices available in each country.
In chapter five the book shifts its focus to examine the impact that trading practices have on farmers’ everyday lives, or what Leissle calls economics on the ground (p. 102). The exploration in this chapter is one of the book’s most important and interesting contributions to the field. The key idea is that generalizations about average cocoa farmers simply do not reflect or exist in reality (p. 102). Instead, Leissle argues for a vision of producer communities that take into account unique socio-spatial locations and conditions. These factors include everything from cultural values and practices, to the use of familial labor, seasonal weather conditions at the time of harvest, the quality of drying and fermentation, the level of national liberalization, and the manipulation of regional prices by powerful industry players. Given these complex and varied situations, Leissle suggests, that cocoa’s market price should move away from western-centric reductionist calculations toward a system that accounts for multiple non-monetary inputs as well. To further prove her point, Leissle once again includes her personal experiences with West African farmers, including interviews she conducted with Ghanaians. In particular, her discussion on the ways that gendered patterns of labor disproportionately disadvantage women in the industry, is a sobering but important subject.
Chapter six continues to focus on farming communities through an analysis of four specific terms surrounding trade justice: unfree labor, free trade, Fairtrade, and direct trade. In keeping with the theme of the book, Leissle not only defines these terms, but also historizes and complicates their perceived benefits for producers. A particular bright spot in this thought-provoking chapter, is the discussion on Western Media portrayals of child labor in Africa. Leissle argues that such coverage is often too simplistic, which creates dichotomous images of powerful chocolate manufactures profiting off of slave children, while ignoring other market forces and players that are often equally to blame. Instead, Leissle seeks long-term, holistic reforms, that consider how a wide range of issues, from colonial legacies, to the complexity of farming communities, to consumer demands for cheaper and more abundant access to chocolate, all contribute to the conditions that breed unfree child labor in the first place. Moreover, by using anthropologist Amanda Berlan’s extensive interviews with children in West African cocoa production (Berlan, 2013), Leissle is able to show that the actual number of unfree child laborers is frequently exaggerated by journalists seeking to write sensationalized accounts. Here again, Leissle warns that there are no simple answers to this complex dilemma, but that if any real progress is to be made, we must first learn to differentiate between children working of their own accord, or within their extended family structures, and those actually being illegally trafficked. The remainder of this chapter explores the different ways that free-trade, Fairtrade, and direct trade either contribute or lessen our ability to fight trade injustices. The discussion of each of these terms, which address the complicated impact they have on farming communities, should be mandatory reading for anyone studying cocoa, or other globally traded commodities for that matter.
Chapter seven focuses on the history of cocoa classifications and genetics, as well as the modern politics of single origin, flavor and fermentation certifications. The chapter begins with a section on cocoa’s initial division by the Spanish into three categories (Carrillo, Forastero, and Trinitario); and, how they eventually led to separate bulk/flavor bean trades. After this insightful lesson, Leissle discusses the largely symbolic status of these categories today, and how more nuanced classifications are being developed. For example, one genetic study examined 1,000 cocoa trees and determined ten distinct genetic clusters and thirty-six sub-clusters with five or more specimens (p. 165). This chapter also highlights the recent popularity of single origin cocoa, flavor certification, and the growing craft chocolate industry. On the positive side, Leissle suggests that these initiatives invite shoppers to consider the socio-geography of cocoa politics and economics; while also, providing significantly higher premiums to farmers who are able to qualify for origin and flavor certification. Yet, Leissle is also quick to note the limited scope of these initiatives, due to the small size of most craft companies, and various political and corporate manipulations that keep many farming communities from meeting origin or flavor standards, regardless of the quality of their beans. In particular she argues that Ghanaian farmers, despite producing high quality and uniquely flavored beans for over a century, have been largely excluded as a result of pushback from bulk buyers, who want African cocoa prices to remain inexpensive. Leissle’s contributions in this chapter are highly relevant and particularly valuable given the newness, and growing impact, of single-origin and craft chocolate on the overall industry.
The final chapter addresses the future of cocoa sustainability. This short chapter doubles as a conclusion that ties the books themes of complexity, accountability, and connectivity with a call for continued reform moving forward. Overall, Leissle argues that true sustainability in the cocoa trade will require every actor in the industry [to] convey [...] that all types of labor deserve attention and appropriate compensation [...] [and] the highest possible value on cocoa at every step, from seed to taste bud (p. 188).
The only real weakness I found in the book is, in fact, tied very closely to its strength –unpacking how each step of cocoa’s massive commodity chain impacts a broad spectrum of societal elements, across multivariant cultural, economic, sociopolitical and geographic spaces. While this massive undertaking makes for a compelling read, at times the book can also move rather quickly from topic to topic as a result. This is not to suggest that the text feels incomplete; but rather, that there were moments where I wanted to know more about the content in a certain chapter. Fortunately, Leissle has pre-emptied my desire for more depth, by including a ten-page “selected readings” section. Beyond simply listing influential titles, Leissle also describes their importance to her own work and place within the larger field. As a scholar with research connections to cocoa and chocolate myself, I was impressed with the comprehensive and multidisciplinary nature of this list, which acts as the perfect companion for the fast-paced nature of the chapters themselves. I will definitely be using this resource for years to come in my own work.
In sum, Cocoa is an informative and engaging study that is both complex and deeply reflective of the ways that cocoa and chocolate impact everyone connected with the trade, from farmers, to major manufactures, to consumers, to the author herself. Moreover, given Leissle’s expert, yet equally inviting tone, the book has appeal for a wide range of audiences (specialists, scholars, students, industry professionals, and the general public). Finally, given its multi-disciplinary approach, comprehensive content matter, and surprisingly concise format (just over 200 pages in length), this book is ideal for graduate and undergraduate courses, across the social science and humanities, that seek a text to unpack the relationship between markets, politics, social dynamics and commodity trading.
Ryan Minor
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
REFERENCES
Berlan, A. (2013). Social Sustainability in Agriculture: An Anthropological Perspective on Child Labour in Cocoa Production in Ghana, Journal of Development Studies, 49 (8), 1088-1100.
Clarence-Smith, W. G. (2000). Cocoa and Chocolate, 1765-1914. London: Routledge.
Coe, S. D. & Coe, M. D (2013). The True History of Chocolate. 3rd ed. London: Thames & Hudson.
Juri Auderset and Peter Moser
Die Agrarfrage in der Industriegesellschaft: Wissenskulturen, Machtverhältnisse und natürliche Ressourcen in der agrarisch-industriellen Wissensgesellschaft (1850-1950)
Köln, Böhlau, 2018, 341 pp.
The agrarian question, debated so intensely ever since the late nineteenth century, continues to
engage scholars trying to explain how one of the most dramatic societal
transformations –the shift from an agricultural to an industrial society– took place across Europe without major political and social unrest. Juri
Auderset and Peter Moser’s examination of the production of agricultural-industrial knowledge from
1850-1950 fills a gap in our understanding of said process, exemplified by the
transformation of peasants into farmers. The authors identify agents,
institutions and concepts in the debates over agriculture, and argue that the
production of knowledge –not technology or economic emergencies– lay at the root of the revolution in agriculture.
In this densely written and carefully researched study, Moser and Auderset examine the transformation of agrarian societies into industrial states in regard to the production and transfer of knowledge. The study focuses on Switzerland, but the process can be applied with some variation to other European countries as they developed their industrial economies. The book covers the period from roughly 1850-1950. In the 1850s, discussions first emerged about the backwardness of agrarian society and the need for industrialization and modernization. Around the turn of the century, actors and discussants agreed that agriculture followed its own laws and required special protection. By the 1950s, however, the discussion took yet another turn. Spurred by a dramatic increase in productivity, the era of industrialized agriculture posed new environmental and social problems that needed to be addressed. For the history of agricultural-industrial knowledge the late 1950s thus represent a turning point. The authors’ periodization is convincing and goes beyond the more familiar markers such as the agrarian crisis in the late 1870s, the accelerated economic transformation after Second World War or the beginning of a new European unified approach to agricultural policy in the late 1950s. With an eye on Switzerland, the study looks at the actors of transformation, at institutions and practices over time. The establishment of schools, rural associations and interest groups in addition to the work of scientists and the agency of local and state players shaped the larger economic transformation, a change that would not have happened without the advances of a knowledge society.
Audersen and Moser divide the history of agrarian-industrial knowledge into four chapters each tracing one major aspect of the transformation: the beginning of book keeping and farm management, the motorization and mechanization of farm labor, advances in plant-breeding and the introduction of new reproductive technologies as it relates to animal breeding. The book’s structure follows a chronological understanding of the transformation, since one change led to the other: improved book keeping enabled the modernization of farm labor, which in turn allowed for increased profits and the investment in farm machinery. Discoveries and debates in the field of genetics around the turn of the century led to experimentation in plant research and breakthroughs in animal breeding.
Chapter one focuses on farm management as the introduction of book keeping required and produced statistical data on farm work and production. Accounting provided a new mathematical language to describe agriculture and allowed others to measure, understand and compare farm work in an increasingly urban and industrial society. Numbers (not narratives) now told the story of agricultural production and, as its actors quickly realized, also constructed agrarian realities, forcing actors to adopt a calculative mentality. Profit margins instead of the sustenance of the family unit started to define agricultural work, even though both concepts continued to coexist in the rural world throughout the nineteenth century. Moser and Auderset argue briefly yet convincingly that because of the new separation of the home economy from the farm economy, of consumption and production, the role of farm women and their contributions to the family economy became increasingly marginalized in industrial society, a major change in the traditionally more interwoven and interdependent aspects of rural life and work.
Chapter two focuses on the mechanization and motorization of agricultural production, and the ambivalence that existed between the fascination with the new machinery and challenges of its adaptation to rural and regional realities. Initial optimism about the advantages that would come with improved machinery and human labor replaced by machines made way quickly to the understanding that farm animals were better suited than machines to motorize farm labor in stables and fields. Draft horses became indispensable for farm labor and the number of animals used in agriculture continued to increase, their prominence not to be replaced until the mid-twentieth century. The skepticism toward technology and motorized machines is poignantly summarized in a cartoon first published in 1910, where a little mole stands next to a pile of soil with a shovel in its hand lecturing farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs who listen attentively (p. 125). The tractor, another symbol of the technological transformation in agriculture, was not suited for the Swiss fields and did not replace horses and other draft animals until the latter half of the twentieth century.
Chapter three looks at plant breeding and scientific discourses about nutrition, selective breeding and genetics. Here, too, just like with the animals discussed in chapter two, the goal was to transform local varieties of plants according to their industrial functionality. This chapter dives deeply into the work conducted by Swiss geneticists in the late nineteenth century. Supported by state agencies, they worked in their laboratories to develop new, more resistant and more productive varieties of wheat and other plants. In the context of widespread hunger and scarcity during First World War, plant breeding and the increase in agricultural production became a public affair. International networks of scientific communities in France, Germany, Scandinavia and the United States exchanged knowledge and conducted research. Less clear remains the question of how the advances in plant breeding affected farmers across Switzerland. The frequent use of French quotes makes the reading of this chapter for non-trilingual speakers somewhat slow.
The keeping, feeding and breeding of animals in the context of new scientific research and reproductive technology is the topic of chapter four. Moser and Auderset describe how the new understanding of animal use can be traced in the language about farm animals and their productive power. By the end of the nineteenth century, the cow had become associated with milk factory, whose body could be manipulated and improved. For the rural actor, however, other functions of the cow remained equally important until the middle of the twentieth century that could also be improved through breeding: the cow as a source of meat and as muscle for draft labor. The authors describe how by the end of the 1930s, advances made in artificial insemination were ready to be applied on a large scale. By the 1950s, these new technologies had dramatically changed the structure of animal husbandry and farming.
Chapter five deals with the crisis, the fragmentation and the marginalization of the agricultural-industrial knowledge regime. By the 1950s, the fundamental transformation of agriculture coupled with a dramatic increase in productivity had cast doubt on the concept of agriculture as distinct from the industrial economy. Agricultural-industrial knowledge had become industrial-agricultural knowledge. At the same time, the change from a multifunctional labor and consumption unit to a scientific and industrial unit left agrarian actors on the margins, and the belief in limitless growth was accompanied by new concerns. In the midst of the third agricultural revolution, industrial and rural actors began to ask themselves what agriculture had become, and what role it would play in the future. Was agriculture a way of life that needed to be protected? Was it a form of production that required state support? Agricultural knowledge in the 1960s took on a new life of its own, paired with the fear that the ongoing industrialization of agriculture was not sustainable. Questions surfaced about alternative ways to farm and produce. Intervention in agricultural politics by the state was recognized as important because of the cyclical nature, regional variations, and the inner dynamics as well as the devastating environmental and economic effects. Finally, 150 years after the emergence of the agrarian question, Auderset and Moser’s valuable study has made it clear that the question has been answered, but remains as open and subject to debate as ever.
Gesine Gerhard
Drake University, Des Moines, USA
Manoela Pedroza
Por trás dos senhorios: Senhores e camponeses em disputa por terras, corpos e almas na América portuguesa (1500-1759)
Jundiaí, Paco e Littera, 2020, 312 pp.
Manoela Pedroza se propõe a analisar os senhores e camponeses em disputas por terras, corpos e almas na
América portuguesa de 1500 a 1759, e realiza este exercício com maestria, adentrando a colônia na busca de vestígios dos senhores e foreiros. Visa tecer uma história social dos direitos de propriedade ou uma história social do aforamento de terras (p. 18). E, neste intento, debate as ações dos padres jesuítas na invenção do senhorio colonial (p. 9) e o seu caráter rentista, o que, em nosso entender, é a sua maior contribuição por oportunizar o conhecimento da ação jesuítica no campo de discussão do direito de propriedade nas terras do que mais tarde seria o Brasil, e nos
levar a conhecer suas ações frente aos direitos de propriedade seus e de outrem (p. 11).
Ao entender a propriedade como uma relação social –não um recurso ou bem em si, mas um feixe de direitos (p. 9)– afirma que não somente as leis definiam esses direitos pelos contratos de aforamento, mas ainda as fricções e acomodações (p. 11) vividas pelos senhores e foreiros. A sua compreensão de propriedade não se limita à propriedade absoluta e abstrata, pois entendida como resultado das relações contingentes e históricas. Ainda nesta parte aponta os limites de acesso às fontes no estudo dos direitos de propriedade no período colonial, por muitas estarem vedadas ao acesso público –como os documentos das ordens religiosas– e por não serem consideradas de utilidade pública.
No capítulo 1 “Rumo a uma história social da propriedade da terra no Brasil” faz um balanço historiográfico desta discussão no Brasil, na Europa e nos Estados Unidos. No primeiro parágrafo enuncia ser o campo da história social da propriedade ainda bastante desconhecido no Brasil (p. 21). Ao entender-se como uma das precursoras desse debate no país, Pedroza apresenta os aportes teóricos constitutivos dessa história desde a Europa de Locke aos iluministas, economistas políticos e fisiocratas na discussão da propriedade privada no sistema capitalista. Utilizando-se da historiadora, Rosa Congost (2007), enuncia que esta autora ao estudar a propriedade metáfora explicita que esta nova propriedade, desde a formulação do Código Civil Francês, deveria manter a aparência de abstrata, subjetivista, universalista e perfeita (p. 24). Nessas considerações Pedroza desenha o campo historiográfico da história das propriedades a partir da Europa e enuncia Congost como referência ao avanço mais profundo deste novo campo de estudo.
Talvez o limite da crítica de Pedroza esteja em não reconhecer um campo de produção do conhecimento da história das propriedades também no Brasil, como os trabalhos, de longa data, de Márcia Maria Menendes Motta (1998, 2005, 2012; Motta & Secreto, 2011), como continuidade e semente germinada e cultivada desde as abordagens de Maria Yeda Linhares e Francisco Carlos Teixeira da Silva (1981). Exemplo disso está no Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT)-Rede Proprietas, coordenado por Márcia Motta, que, desde 2014, vem realizando importantes pesquisas na constituição de uma rede de pesquisadores sobre a história social das propriedades na sua acepção mais ampla. Apontar para os avanços do estudo da propriedade no âmbito da historiografia europeia e norte-americana é importante para a troca de saberes e de experiências diversas. Esses avanços ganham ainda mais sentido quando reconhecem a possibilidade de espaços de produção do conhecimento em múltiplos lugares e continentes, como no Brasil. Afinal, a história social das propriedades –assim como qualquer outra– não necessita de proprietários e nem mesmo de cercamentos, mas de partilha de saberes, pois há lugar para todos.
No capítulo 2 “Práticas proprietárias e mentalidades possessórias no Antigo Regime europeu”, Pedroza demonstra a face rentista da Igreja Católica e da Companhia de Jesus no Antigo Regime. Neste ponto, elucida a preocupação da Igreja em bem gerir seus capitais, pelo status, proximidade com reis e papas, manipulação da salvação da alma, entre outros (p. 53). Para a análise do sistema de morgadio parte das pesquisas de Carmen Alveal (2008), ao observar que em sua essência consistia numa forma institucional e jurídica destinada a defender a base econômica e territorial da nobreza (p. 55). A tese de Pedroza do comportamento proprietário e rentista dos jesuítas é muito interessante, pois desvela que o acúmulo de bens, riquezas e rendas, foi então elemento a romper com a unidade de interesses entre os jesuítas, a monarquia católica portuguesa e outros colonos, decorrendo em sua expulsão no século xviii.
No capítulo “Senhorios, capitanias e sesmarias no Império português”, discorre a formação da classe senhorial em Portugal, analisando, por meio de Rafael Bluteau (1728), o conceito de senhor e de senhorio e suas transformações ao longo do tempo. No século xv, uma palavra antes voltada para designar a idade assumia o sentido de quem mandava nas pessoas que habitavam um determinado território (p. 92). Analisa também a disputa entre reis e senhores que se estendia no tempo, sendo o problema maior: estabelecer a extensão do direito dos senhores em detrimento do poder do rei (p. 94). Como uma faca de dois gumes (p. 96), em Portugal, o senhorio viveu essa contradição. Mesmo sendo necessário à monarquia, pelos recursos e investimentos, também era uma afronta aos poderes régios que tentavam, a todo custo, controlá-lo. Quando da formação do Estado português e de seu império ultramarino, a autora reforça que esta briga fora perdida pela Coroa.
Pedroza defende a tese de que os capitães donatários não recebiam terras e com elas poderes, direitos e deveres, e sim jurisdições que eram sem dúvida, mais importantes, e rentáveis, do que o pequeno domínio útil de dez léguas que vinha no pacote da capitania (p. 109). Partindo do conceito de senhorial colonial, de Carmen Alveal (2008, 2015a, 2015b) aponta as especificidades das sesmarias na América portuguesa e a sua distinção com Portugal, como as larguíssimas extensões nos trópicos que poderiam ser exploradas pelo sesmeiro e subconcedidas a outras pessoas criando uma gama de gente subordinada política e economicamente a este sesmeiro-senhor (p. 116). Ao polemizar com Maria Sarita Mota (2014), para quem, no entender de Pedroza, as sesmarias fizeram parte, e contribuíram, para o processo social e histórico de sedimentação da ideia de propriedade privada (p. 118), observa ser preciso entender a propriedade na colônia por um sentido outro que não o de propriedade privada moderna. Em seu entender existiam direitos de propriedade na colônia, mas encontravam-se fracionados: diferentes pessoas os possuíam sobre um mesmo bem (p. 121).
No capítulo 4 “Jesuítas e práticas proprietárias heterodoxas na América portuguesa” a autora adentra o objeto específico do livro. Nesse ponto enuncia suas contribuições centrais, ao nos levar pelos caminhos nada previsíveis das práticas possessórias desses agentes católicos em terras da colônia. Inicia enunciando que afora a intervenção direta no âmbito da produção fazia-se necessário o monopólio sobre os homens e as suas almas: do soberano sobre seus súditos, e do deus católico sobre seus fiéis (p. 135). Daí a relevância das ações da Igreja Católica entrelaçadas aos interesses da coroa portuguesa. Como hipótese destaca que o assenhoramento dos primeiros grandes territórios coloniais pela Companhia de Jesus deu-se diretamente pela expropriação dos nativos (p. 137), pela violência dos padres sobre essas populações e fizeram tão bem o serviço que se julgavam no direito de ter para si seus bens, suas terras e seus corpos (p. 137). Como padres-administradores geriam os bens terrenos, de modo que a balança de pagamento fosse sempre positiva, a fim de gerar rendas, produzir mercadorias valorizadas e também alimentos que sustentassem a missionação (p. 153). Dentre essas práticas, destaca a aquisição de terras ilegalmente.
No capítulo 5 “Colonizadores, colonos e colonizados na construção cotidiana da propriedade”, nos fornece elementos das ações dos jesuítas face aos demais agentes envolvidos na colonização, entendendo-os como classe senhorial em construção (p. 174). Como hipótese diz que se utilizando de práticas como negociação, imposição, concessão e fiscalização dos direitos de uso sobre seus domínios (p. 175), construíram a si mesmos como senhores e transformaram terras aparentemente livres em típicas regiões coloniais, e homens supostamente livres em seus subordinados, seja como tutelados, escravizados, arrendatários ou foreiros (p. 175). Como recorte específico de sua abordagem discute a Fazenda de Santa Cruz e as suas origens que remontam a 1566, narrando como chegou às mãos dos jesuítas, na segunda década do século xvii. Ao discutir os jesuítas e a Fazenda de Santa Cruz reforça que está tratando de senhorios coloniais e não de propriedades privadas plenas e absolutas.
No último capítulo “Senhores, enfiteutas, e a disputa pela renda da terra na colônia”, Pedroza inicia discutindo Marx e sua interpretação da renda fundiária, apontando que pode contribuir se feita uma relação entre o seu conceito de propriedade fundiária e os direitos senhoriais do Antigo Regime. Entende então a renda da terra como um dos direitos senhoriais, e nessa perspectiva discute o aspecto senhorial da vida dos padres jesuítas na América em termos de auferição de renda fundiária sobre seus domínios (p. 240). Assinala que o precoce monopólio da terra somando-se à autoridade e fiscalização severas fizeram com que os jesuítas impusessem aos seus arrendatários, foreiros, enfiteutas e partidistas condições de trabalho, produção e pagamento incontornáveis (p. 251), com inúmeras cláusulas proibitivas. Mas, nos lugares em que havia menos pressão para o uso das terras, como na Fazenda Santa Cruz, os contratos de direitos de concessão de domínios foram menos rigorosos, quase gratuitos e perpétuos, pagos quase sempre em produtos como cana, açúcar, mandioca e galinhas. Na Fazenda, os contratos, de dois a três anos, tinham como pagamento anual seis galinhas, como os 26 arrendatários, encontrados na documentação de 1729.
Na Conclusão, Pedroza retoma pontos centrais, especialmente sobre a Igreja Católica e os jesuítas, observando que suas práticas proprietárias iriam de encontro à mentalidade possessória da América portuguesa colidindo com outros colonizadores e, principalmente, com a monarquia portuguesa, de quem dependiam fundamentalmente. Discute o conceito de senhorio e seus significados em Portugal e no Novo Mundo, entendendo-o como chave para a análise do processo de colonização e para compreender como os jesuítas incorporaram a condição de proprietários práticos, sendo eficientes gestores e administradores. Como uma das teses centrais, enuncia ter percebido que milhares de foreiros, enfiteutas, arrendatários e locatários (p. 276) pagavam algum tipo de renda (em gênero, trabalho, dinheiro) para ter acesso a terra já na colônia, muito antes da Lei de Terras de 1850. Questiona, então, a afirmativa de José de Souza Martins (1998) de um cativeiro da terra no Brasil tendo como marco 1850, e diz que a tese é válida para algumas situações, mas não para o todo de nossa história. Exemplifica novamente Carmen Alveal, historiadora bastante trabalhada em todo o livro, ressaltando seus estudos como fundamentais para a apreensão das práticas dos sesmeiros-senhores face à valorização de seus domínios, o aumento de rendas e a expulsão de posseiros (2015a; 2015b). Reforça que o rentismo não era algo acessório no período colonial e conclui que os jesuítas foram vitoriosos em muitos lances, especialmente na relação com os seus domínios até que o jogo fosse perdido.
É uma obra necessária para a análise da história rural e das propriedades. As fontes, como enuncia, são esparsas e de difícil acesso, em particular as eclesiásticas, mas no encontro desses indícios percebemos ir desenhando práticas outras para além da história da propriedade por si só. Ao final, pode-se dizer que alcançou o seu intento. Mas, é importante reforçar que o caminho é largo e as extensões são amplas para que esta tessitura também possa ser partilhada por outros historiadores e historiadoras brasileiros. Reconhecer estes percursos e mesmo as trilhas anteriormente tecidas é um avanço na produção do conhecimento histórico.
Maria Celma Borges
Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Brasil
REFERÊNCIAS
Alveal, C. M. O. (2008). Converting Land into Property in the Portuguese Atlantic World (16th-18th Century). Tese de doutorado. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. http://bit.ly/21X5VdN
Alveal, C. M. O. (2015a). De senhorio colonial a território de mando: Os acossamentos de Antônio Vieira de Melo no Sertão do Ararobá (Pernambuco, século xviii). Revista Brasileira de História, 35 (70), 41-64.
Alveal, C. M. O (2015b). Transformações na legislação sesmarial, processos de demarcação e manutenção de privilégios nas terras das capitanias do norte do Estado do Brasil. Estudos Históricos, 28 (56), 247-263.
Bluteau, R. (1728). Vocabulário portuguez e latino. Coimbra: Colégio das Artes da Companhia de Jesus.
Congost, R. (2007). Tierras, leyes, historia: Estudios sobre «la gran obra de la propriedad». Barcelona: Crítica.
Linhares, M. Y. & Silva, F. C. T. da (1981). História da agricultura brasileira: Combates e controvérsias. São Paulo: Brasiliense.
Martins, J. de S. (1998). O cativeiro da terra. 7.ª ed. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Mota, M. S. (2014). Apropriação econômica da natureza em uma fronteira do império atlântico português: O Rio de Janeiro (século xvii). In J. V. Serrão et al. (Org.) Property Rights: Land and Territory in the European Overseas Empires (pp. 43-54). Lisboa: CEHC/IUL.
Motta, M. M. M. (1998). Nas fronteiras do poder: Conflito e direito à terra no Brasil do século xix. Rio de Janeiro: Vício de Leitura/Arquivo Público do estado do Rio de Janeiro.
Motta, M. M. M. (Org.) (2005). Dicionário da Terra. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira.
Motta, M. M. M. (2012). Direito à terra no Brasil: A gestão do conflito (1795-1824). 2.ª ed. São Paulo: Alameda.
Motta, M. M. M. & Secreto, V. (Orgs.) (2011). O direito às avessas: Por uma história social da propriedade. Guarapuava/Niterói: Unicentro/EDUFF.
Sarah R. Hamilton
Cultivating Nature: The Conservation of a Valencian Working Landscape
Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2018, 312 pp.
En el verano de 2005 Sarah Hamilton seguía una ruta senderista atravesando los Pirineos cuando, en el corazón de un parque nacional español, quedó sorprendida por unas vacas que pastaban libremente sobre praderas protegidas
por sus valores naturales. Este hecho, intrascendente a los ojos de una
europea, dejó consternada a Sarah, procedente de una América en la que la protección de los espacios naturales se centra en la preservación de naturalezas prístinas; donde prima una noción de wilderness que no es fácil traducir escuetamente al español y que refleja la búsqueda de la asepsia de los procesos y formas naturales frente a la impureza
antrópica.
De esas impurezas está hecha la naturaleza europea y muy particularmente, la del Mediterráneo. Modelado por numerosas acciones humanas, el paisaje mediterráneo es reconocido como un territorio palimpsesto, en el cual se pueden leer las señales dejadas por varias culturas. Nuestros espacios naturales protegidos son artefactos de naturaleza y cultura, y en su mayoría albergan ecosistemas adaptados a una prolongada presencia humana. Son, hoy todavía, o quizás más aun, escenarios de múltiples interacciones socioecológicas. Esto hace que su gestión y conservación sean sumamente complejas, porque presentan flujos cruzados de beneficios y restricciones entre los distintos usuarios.
L’Albufera de València es uno de los mejores ejemplos del desafío que supone la protección de un espacio natural en la cuenca mediterránea. En ella coinciden numerosas administraciones, un conjunto heterogéneo de productores con distintas tradiciones –algunos con rivalidades pluriseculares–, presiones asociadas a usos urbanos y turísticos, competencia por los recursos hídricos, exigencias de conservación del medio natural… y todo ello en un escenario con una enorme carga simbólica que sobredimensiona y amplifica cualquier conflicto. Aquí, el paradigma conservacionista norteamericano carece de sentido. No hay wilderness, sino una naturaleza cultivada, como oportunamente establece el título de la obra.
De esta observación parte el libro de Hamilton para mostrar, principalmente a un lector foráneo dedicado a la conservación, la dificultad de gestionar estos espacios. Lo hace a través de un relato histórico de los conflictos que han jalonado el devenir de l’Albufera a lo largo del siglo xx y hasta la primera década del presente siglo. El libro presenta una introducción con un estilo que recuerda a los buenos libros de viajes. Hilvana recuerdos personales, descripciones geográficas y notas literarias, de escritores u otros viajeros, para establecer finalmente una periodificación que estructura la obra en cinco etapas.
La primera parte de la obra cubre el periodo que va desde la desvinculación del humedal del Patrimonio Real en 1874 hasta la Guerra Civil, una etapa que la autora denomina de construcción del territorio nacional. Durante este periodo, l’Albufera padeció una cierta indolencia administrativa por parte del Estado, hasta que, a inicios del siglo xx, los republicanos blasquistas pusieron en marcha una operación para transferir el humedal al Ayuntamiento de València, un largo trámite que concluyó en 1927. El traspaso de l’Albufera fue el resultado de un proceso de construcción cultural, que como bien refleja el trabajo, tiene sus raíces en la Renaixença, y adquiere un enorme impacto social tras la publicación de Cañas y Barro (1902) por Blasco Ibáñez. La sociedad valenciana descubrió este espacio de la mano de esta obra y de las de otros artistas, en paralelo a su puesta en valor como espacio de ciencia por los investigadores del Laboratorio de Hidrobiología del Instituto General y Técnico ubicado en la ciudad. La lucha de la ciudad por tomar el control de humedal y preservarlo de su completa transformación agrícola refleja un significativo giro de las clases urbanas en su percepción de la naturaleza, y puede considerarse, como bien apunta la autora, como la primera etapa de una conflictiva relación entre los sectores sociales, principalmente urbanos, defensores de la protección del paisaje, y aquellos que viven en él y de él.
La segunda parte abarca la mayor parte del periodo franquista. La Dictadura y el hambre de la posguerra dieron prioridad al productivismo, desplazando las percepciones conservacionistas que habían cristalizado en las primeras décadas del siglo. Un conservacionismo que solo encontró cobijo en la actividad científica y entre algunos grandes propietarios. Para reforzar esta idea la autora traslada al lector a Doñana, donde relata los esfuerzos efectuados por Francisco Bernís y los tres grandes propietarios de la marisma (Salvador Noguera, el marqués de Bonanza y el de Mérito) para frenar la transformación agrícola del humedal, detallando su estrategia para cautivar al dictador y preservar el espacio natural. Este viaje sirve para explicar cómo el régimen, inmerso en su giro aperturista, vio en Doñana la oportunidad de limpiar su penosa imagen ante los ojos de los europeos. La creación de la Sociedad Española de Ornitología y de ADENA, vinculadas a organizaciones internacionales (Birdlife y World Wildlife Fundation) son piezas clave de esta maniobra. Doñana sirve en esta obra de espejo al caso de l’Albufera. En el tiempo en el que en las marismas del Guadalquivir se tejía esta alianza, en Valencia el falangista Rincón de Arellano impulsaba la urbanización de la Devesa del Saler, el cordón dunar arbolado que separa l’Albufera del Mediterráneo. Este proyecto, auspiciado por el Ministerio de Turismo de Fraga Iribarne, se convirtió en el principal campo de batalla, y por ende en la cuna, del ecologismo valenciano.
Los últimos cinco años del régimen franquista ocupan el tercer capítulo. Son los años del desastre. La Devesa quedó arrasada por la actividad urbanizadora y la contaminación procedente del área metropolitana de Valencia llevó l’Albufera a una situación de hipereutrofia todavía hoy no revertida. A partir de entrevistas con agentes clave del periodo, trufadas de anécdotas y detalles muy pertinentes, Hamilton reconstruye la respuesta de un conservacionismo heterogéneo, en el que coincidieron organizaciones consolidadas como ADENA, nuevas asociaciones vecinales, estudiantes universitarios, reputados divulgadores como Rodríguez de la Fuente –hablando de la crisis de l’Albufera en el prime-time televisivo– y el diario conservador Las Provincias, que en aquel momento era la única alternativa valenciana a la prensa del Movimiento.
La cuarta parte cubre el periodo 1975-1990, coincidente con la democratización del país y los gobiernos regionales y municipales de izquierdas. La transición dio el poder político al conservacionismo, pero le legó un territorio sumamente degradado y amenazado por la reducción de recursos hídricos del humedal, como consecuencia del desarrollo de los regadíos de la Mancha Oriental. El conservacionismo tomó las riendas de l’Albufera a través de dos instituciones, la Oficina Técnica Devesa-Albufera abierta por el Ayuntamiento de València y el parque natural creado en 1986 por la Generalitat Valenciana. La primera centró sus actuaciones fundamentalmente en la Devesa, y a pesar de las resistencias iniciales –llegó a ser atacada con cócteles molotov–, consiguió una regeneración espectacular del monte público. El parque natural tuvo una trayectoria más adversa, ya que tenía un ámbito territorial mucho más amplio y unas competencias de ordenación de usos más conflictivas. Fue recibido por los usuarios como una imposición, en un tiempo en el que no existían procesos participativos y primaban las políticas de enfoque top-down, y generó una larga lucha legal y política. Se enfrentaban conservacionistas y productores, y ambos bandos admiten en el texto los errores del proceso. Se pusieron en práctica ideas llegadas de Europa –en buena medida inspiradas en el wilderness norteamericano–, sin que hubiera un parque desarrollado por convicciones internas. Hamilton ha sabido poner en perspectiva este proceso, alejada de interpretaciones maniqueas. También de cualquier intento de blanquear el pasado. En este sentido, no deja de lado que, detrás de las legítimas y razonables protestas de una mayoría de loa agricultores comprometidos con la conservación de su naturaleza cultivada, se escondía la codicia de algunos especuladores del suelo.
La quinta y última etapa, entre 1990-2012, tiene una clara continuidad con el proceso anterior. Detalla cómo poco a poco fueron venciéndose esas resistencias y el papel clave desempeñado por las ayudas agroambientales de la Política Agraria Común. Estas descubrieron a muchos agricultores que, lo que habían visto como una amenaza, se convertía en una oportunidad para la supervivencia del sector. El relato mantiene aquí el interés y la altura en la reflexión, pero tropieza con algún error en la secuencia cronológica y política de la dirección del parque natural, seguro imperceptible para el lector foráneo, pero que puede resultar confuso para el local.
La trayectoria de este humedal a lo largo del último siglo, como concluye la autora, destierra del lector cualquier tentación de considerar la agricultura y la conservación como actividades incompatibles. Las tierras del parque no son simplemente ecosistemas, son también paisajes, con toda la carga cultural que ello implica, y son repositorios de un patrimonio y un capital simbólico esenciales. La biota está adaptada y debe parte de su diversidad a la presencia humana. El valor y la singularidad de l’Albufera, y la de tantos otros parajes naturales mediterráneos, radica precisamente en esta naturaleza cultivada. El magnífico trabajo de Hamilton apunta en la dirección que hoy muchas personas, desde distintos ámbitos, están intentando llevar en el parque natural. Es una tarea que no está exenta de dificultades, ni de conflictos e histriones, pero que poco a poco está contribuyendo a cerrar buena parte de las heridas abiertas en los años ochenta, bien descritas en este trabajo. El libro ofrece una mirada serena y rigurosa que, aunque dirigida al lector foráneo, resulta provechosa para el local. Un lector éste que, aunque quizás cuente en su biblioteca con buena parte de la abundante literatura citada por esta obra, carece seguro de una síntesis y una reflexión de este alcance sobre l’Albufera del último siglo.
A riesgo de parecer frívolo, no puedo acabar la reseña sin hablar de la paella, porque aparece como icono en las primeras y las últimas páginas del libro, quizás pensando en ese lector foráneo al que he aludido repetidamente. Al comienzo del texto, Hamilton utiliza este plato, elevado a la categoría de estandarte cultural, para describir el peso de la tradición arrocera que germina en estas tierras aguanosas, mucho más diversa de lo que se resume en un solo guiso. Para ponderar su arraigo social, nos remite al dolor inferido sobre los guardianes de la tradición por una paella con chorizo cocinada en televisión por el mediático chef británico Jamie Oliver. Posteriormente, al final del libro, disculpen el spoiler, el lector encontrará un inusual y único apéndice: una receta de paella fiel a la tradición local. Una fórmula detallada para lograr un buen grano y una fina capa de socarrat que concentre las esencias del sofrito, y para recordar a Jamie Oliver que, como tuiteó un periodista local, no negociamos con terroristas.
Carles Sanchis Ibor
Centro Valenciano de Estudios del Riego
Universitat Politècnica de València
Presidente de la Junta Rectora del Parque Natural de l’Albufera
Pablo F. Luna y Francisco Quiroz (Eds.)
Haciendas en el mundo andino, siglos xvi-xx
Lima, Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos/Fundación M. J. Bustamante de la Fuente, 2019, 253 pp.
El libro Haciendas en el mundo andino nos recuerda que el problema de la tierra y su posesión por parte de diferentes grupos fue una realidad común en toda América Latina: desde el momento de la conquista hacienda y colonización iban de la mano (p. 14). Su lectura abre la posibilidad a ricas discusiones y comparaciones, en
particular, con los casos mexicanos. El plural es expreso, como bien
puntualizan los editores, pues es necesario ir más allá de las generalizaciones y de los modelos sobre los cuales se construyó cierto tipo de historiografía rural, que fue la dominante por años. No se puede hablar de una única «hacienda» latinoamericana, mexicana, peruana o andina, pues los matices son múltiples.
Los coordinadores Pablo Luna y Francisco Quiroz nos llevan de la mano por las haciendas andinas desde el siglo xvi hasta el xx, las cuales se adaptaron a diferentes sistemas, pisos ecológicos y climas, cada una desarrolló sus lógicas particulares. Tampoco eran semifeudales (como se llegó a afirmar); los propietarios se preocupaban por fomentarlas y obtener ganancias, un aspecto que Alejandro Tortolero (2008) ha insistido en remarcar para los casos mexicanos.
Descubrimos que en el mundo andino –como sucedió en varias regiones de México– el latifundio convivió con las haciendas medianas y pequeñas. Luna y Quiroz las describen así: como lugar de vida, de producción y reproducción económicas […] como espacio de intercambio mercantil y especulación, como centro abastecedor de alimentos […] como centro simbólico y material de poder, de administración de justicia y hasta jurisdicción […] lo mismo respecto a la práctica religiosa (p. 14). Unidades totales, micromundos en acción.
En la introducción, Luna y Quiroz subrayan la importancia de remontarse a los orígenes de la hacienda –no por buscar al ídolo de los orígenes, en palabras de Marc Bloch (1990)– sino para distinguir la pluralidad de contextos y procesos en que surgió, y después darle seguimiento. Los recientes estudios de historia rural muestran que la hacienda iba más allá de la dualidad propietarios/mano de obra, generalmente encasillada en la historiografía como españoles e indios, ya que participaron hombres y mujeres, blancos, castas, negros y mestizos, en múltiples formas de trabajo. También sugieren poner más atención a los contratos de enfiteusis y las diferentes formas no legales que tomó. De hecho, insisten que tanto los censos enfitéuticos como las desvinculaciones civiles y las desamortizaciones eclesiásticas pudieron contribuir a la consolidación de la propiedad privada. Nos recuerdan que estos temas aún requieren ser explorados.
El libro consta de cuatro partes: «Análisis de haciendas», «Hacienda y región», «Haciendas y trabajo», y finalmente «Fuentes». En la primera parte, el enfoque fue elegir una hacienda y seguirla en la larga duración. Raquel Neyra se centra en San Felipe de Combayo, en Cajamarca (Perú); Cecilia A. Fandos analiza San José de la Rinconada, en Jujuy (ahora en Argentina); y Pablo F. Luna sigue el destino de la Quebrada y Casa Blanca, en Cañete (Perú). Esta mirada de larga duración, que resulta una estrategia metodológica muy enriquecedora, permite observar a los diferentes propietarios y las estrategias que usaron para aprovechar sus fincas, la preocupación por hacerlas productivas y las diferentes relaciones que establecieron con sus trabajadores según las coyunturas.
En los análisis interesa el papel de los actores sociales, tanto los propietarios como toda la gama de trabajadores y los vínculos entre ellos, a veces de tensión, sobre todo en los pleitos de tierra, y en otras ocasiones incluso de colaboración. Hubo familias que lograron mantener por años sus propiedades, cierta estabilidad en la posesión, aunque el endeudamiento fue una práctica presente en todas épocas. En la segunda mitad del siglo xix hubo crisis y cambios al llegar el siglo xx, tanto en los sistemas económicos como en las propiedades, cuando éstas pasaron al estado, a los pueblos o cambiaron de dueños.
En estas haciendas las ganancias no estaban forzosamente basadas en la explotación de la mano de obra: por ejemplo en Rinconada (Jujuy), se componía de los arriendos de los criadores de ganado, las rentas por sembradíos y el alquiler de las casas de habitación. También descubrimos diferentes tipos de dueños, entre ellos los miembros de las órdenes religiosas. Pablo Luna estudia a la Orden de la Buenamuerte y nos muestra que se apropiaron de las tierras gracias, en parte, a censos enfitéuticos, y que pudieron mantener su base rural hasta principios del siglo xx.
En la segunda parte del libro, titulada «Hacienda y región», se incluyen otros tres capítulos centrados en los circuitos mercantiles y los productos que se llevaban al mercado. Nelson Pereyra Chávez se ocupa de las haciendas de la región de Huamanga (Ayacucho), y Guillermo Toro-Lira Stahl, Moisés Cueva Rodríguez y Carlos Buller estudian la producción de vino.
En Huamanga, además de la existencia mayoritaria de pequeñas y medianas propiedades ubicadas en diferentes pisos ecológicos, los productos más importantes de comercialización fueron el aguardiente, la coca (en la época colonial) y el trigo (en la época republicana). Justamente dos capítulos se consagran al aguardiente. En el primero, los autores proponen que la industria vinícola no nació para satisfacer a la sociedad española, sino a la población indígena; de otra forma no se explica el desarrollo exponencial que tuvo poco después de la conquista. La participación de los curacas indios fue primordial: ponen de ejemplo al cacique Caqui, uno de los plantadores más entusiastas. Los autores también arguyen que el vino fue aceptado como herramienta de prestigio y reciprocidad en la sociedad india. Como argumenta Carlos Buller, la industria fracasó por factores externos, como la política de la Corona de prohibir la venta de vino peruano, por lo cual los viñedos se habrían reconvertido al aguardiente, que se volvió un eje dinamizador de la economía regional y fuente de riqueza, al menos hasta las dos primeras décadas del siglo xix. El principal mercado eran las minas, pero no en exclusiva. El sistema entró en crisis total a mediados del siglo xx, cuando los hacendados fueron remplazados por nuevos miembros procedentes de otras partes, que sin lealtad a la tierra reconvirtieron sus actividades.
La tercera parte, titulada «Haciendas y trabajo», consta de un solo capítulo de Francisco Quiroz acerca de la mita en Lima. Resulta de gran interés porque, como indica el autor, la mita (trabajo temporal y rotativo que se daba como forma de tributo) se relaciona con la minería y con los obrajes, pero no con las haciendas, cuyos propietarios entablaron una enorme competencia para ser beneficiados con la mano de obra. Aunque con el paso del tiempo la demanda de mitayos fue disminuyendo por razones como las crisis demográficas, el autor encuentra que los hacendados con influencia política recibieron esta mano de obra hasta la independencia. Hubiera sido muy enriquecedor integrar otros análisis sobre la compleja cuestión del trabajo, pero esto queda como tarea pendiente, como los mismos editores admiten.
Un aspecto que quisiera mencionar concierne a las fuentes utilizadas. Para ello es necesario hacer alusión al capítulo (de colofón) de Humberto Rodríguez Pastor, «El archivo agrario», pues en este acervo, que ahora forma parte del Archivo General de la Nación de Perú, se guarda la memoria de las haciendas. El autor refiere que este fondo fue impulsado por destacados historiadores de la talla de Eric Hobsbawn, Joan Martínez Alier y Heraclio Bonilla, a raíz de que el 29 de junio de 1969 se puso en marcha la Ley de Reforma Agraria, por la cual se expropiaban las grandes propiedades agrícolas en el territorio nacional. Así surgió la idea de reunir y concentrar en un mismo espacio la documentación concerniente a las propiedades rurales. Lo ejemplifica con la hacienda Cayaltí, que durante un siglo (de 1860 a 1960) fue propiedad de una sola familia: los Aspíllaga. Pero así como existe este expediente, hay cientos de fojas emanadas de las haciendas que son fundamentales para entender su funcionamiento.
Además de este archivo agrario, en los distintos capítulos se menciona el uso de otras fuentes documentales con las cuales fue posible reconstruir el mundo de las haciendas y que ofrecen ideas para quienes estén interesados en esta línea de investigación: las cédulas censales manuscritas y nominativas de los censos nacionales de población para identificar propietarios, trabajadores y criadores; los censos económicos para construir diagnósticos de la situación productiva; las matrículas y padrones de predios rurales que dan cuenta de las pequeñas y medianas propiedades y su producción; los registros de diezmos, en particular las tazmías (exclusivo para contar los granos del diezmo), que permiten hacer el seguimiento de la producción de cada hacienda e incluso reconstruir el desarrollo productivo de algunas de ellas; y, naturalmente, los protocolos notariales, fundamentales para identificar las compra-ventas y a través de los testamentos tener un acercamiento a los propietarios.
Para quienes nos hemos centrado en el estudio de las haciendas en México, leer Haciendas en el mundo andino es una bocanada de aire fresco por las ideas que aporta y las novedosas líneas de investigación que abre. Quizás el siguiente paso sea empezar a comparar y conectar a través de la historia rural estos dos mundos, y otros más.
Laura Machuca
Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores
en Antropología Social, CIESAS, México
REFERENCIAS
Bloch, M. (1990). Introducción a la historia. 15.a ed. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Tortolero, A. (2008). Notarios y agricultores: Crecimiento y atraso en el campo mexicano, 1780-1920: Propiedad, crédito, irrigación y conflictos sociales en el agro mexicano. México: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana/Siglo XXI.
Enrique Llopis y Elisa Ruiz García
El monasterio de Guadalupe y la Inquisición
Madrid, Ediciones Complutense, 2019, 667 pp.
Santa María de Guadalupe fue, sin duda, uno de los santuarios marianos y monasterios más importantes de Castilla en el siglo xv. Un famoso lugar de peregrinaje, pero también un centro económico, religioso y político de primer orden, tras cuyos muros en 1485 tuvo lugar un suceso insólito. El primer juicio de la Inquisición en un monasterio en Castilla.
Si bien la inquisición realizada en Guadalupe en 1485 ha sido objeto de diversos estudios (Fita, 1893; Beinart, 1961; Sicroff, 1965; Coussemacker, 1991; Evans, 1998; Starr-Lebeau, 2003; Herrera Vázquez, 2014-2015), la monografía El monasterio de Guadalupe y la Inquisición, constituye una nueva y rigurosa contribución al mejor conocimiento de este extraordinario acontecimiento, desde una enriquecedora perspectiva interdisciplinar, al aunar el enfoque de la historia y de la filología y la codicología. Dicha colaboración interdisciplinaria contribuye a desentrañar el contexto político, religioso y social en el que se llevó a cabo el proceso inquisitorial y las consecuencias que para el monasterio, y por ende para la orden jerónima, trajo tal suceso. Además, esta obra aporta como material inédito la edición con criterios paleográficos rigurosos de dos documentos de gran valor histórico: una copia del proceso realizada en 1486, así como la sentencia condenatoria al primer fraile condenado por la inquisición, Diego de Marchena.
El libro consta de dos partes complementarias, a cargo de acreditados profesionales. Enrique Llopis, doctor en Ciencias Económicas, catedrático de Historia e Instituciones Económicas de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, y Elisa Ruiz García, doctora en Filología Clásica, catedrática emérita de Paleografía y Diplomática, también en la Universidad Complutense.
En la primera parte de la obra, «El monasterio de Guadalupe, 1389-1561: Éxito económico, disidencias, conflictos e Inquisición», Enrique Llopis lleva a cabo un estudio sintético de la trayectoria histórica del santuario y monasterio, analizando el desarrollo económico, político y social del cenobio desde su fundación, en 1389, para luego intentar determinar las causas y consecuencias del establecimiento de dos tribunales inquisitoriales en Guadalupe en 1485: uno extramuros, efectuado a los vecinos de la Puebla, y otro intramuros llevado a cabo a los frailes del monasterio.
En primer lugar el autor analiza pormenorizadamente las claves de la prosperidad económica del santuario entre 1389 y 1561. Cuando los jerónimos se establecen en Guadalupe, para cumplir con el encargo de Juan I de aceptar la gestión material y religiosa del famoso santuario mariano de Villuercas, ya reciben de los anteriores gestores, los priores seculares, el legado de lo que Llopis define como una auténtica joya. Pues, tras más de un siglo de existencia, dicho santuario había acumulado un notable patrimonio material, con numerosos bienes inmuebles, privilegios reales, y sobre todo inmaterial, como lugar de peregrinación, con elevados rendimientos obtenidos de los servicios espirituales, a través de la recolección de limosnas y mandas. En todo caso, el autor constata cómo entre finales del siglo xv y las primeras décadas del xvi los jerónimos consiguen acelerar de forma notable el desarrollo económico de Guadalupe, merced a su excelente capacidad de gestión económica, diplomática y política, apoyada en un valioso capital humano que el monasterio logró reunir, atrayendo a los monjes mejor formados, de origen geográfico muy diverso, muchos de ellos cristianos nuevos.
Gracias a una apropiada estrategia económica y a una política de inversiones acertada (compras de bienes, obras en el monasterio y el santuario, creación de una creciente infraestructura hospitalaria y de hospedería para atender a los peregrinos, etc.), junto con el apoyo real, y el propio vigor del santuario, los jerónimos logran una diversificación de sus fuentes de ingresos, manteniendo unos índices de rentabilidad altos hasta el segundo cuarto del siglo xvi. Así, Llopis confirma cómo los jerónimos incrementan de forma espectacular las rentas y el patrimonio rústico –dehesas fundamentalmente– y pecuario. Además, a través de una hábil gestión de la economía de los milagros explotaron al máximo su patrimonio inmaterial, logrando popularizar aún más la devoción a la virgen de Guadalupe, consolidándolo como el principal y más prospero centro mariano ibérico, con una capacidad impresionante de generación de recursos.
En un tercer apartado, Enrique Llopis observa cómo a pesar del balance económico espectacular alcanzado por Guadalupe en el siglo xv y primeras décadas del xvi, los monjes tuvieron que hacer frente a un clima de disensiones y conflictos en el seno del cenobio y de la orden, y de problemas y enfrentamientos entre los monjes y los vecinos de la Puebla.
A continuación el autor trata de desvelar los motivos de las dos inquisiciones de 1485 en Guadalupe, haciendo hincapié en el creciente clima de fanatismo antijudío, que impulsado principalmente por franciscanos y dominicos, brota en poblaciones urbanas de la Corona de Castilla desde el siglo xiv, alcanzando en Toledo, con la rebelión anticonversa de 1449, uno de sus episodios más destacados. Dichas persecuciones llevan a numerosos cristianos nuevos a buscar refugio estableciéndose en Guadalupe, lo que contribuye al crecimiento demográfico de la Puebla y consolida una comunidad conversa ocupada fundamentalmente en actividades comerciales y artesanas. Ello acabó por resquebrajar los frágiles equilibrios entre cristianos viejos y nuevos.
El interés de los Reyes Católicos por utilizar la popularidad del santuario para difundir su política religiosa y el mensaje inquisitorial, y así reforzar y sacralizar su autoridad, puede estar detrás de los procesos establecidos por el Santo Oficio en 1485. Primero tiene lugar la inquisición en la Puebla de Guadalupe, en donde el tribunal actúa con gran dureza, condenando a la hoguera entre 51 y 71 personas, según las diversas fuentes. En el monasterio el 30% de los frailes eran conversos, y corrían rumores de que algunos eran judaizantes, lo que constituía un deterioro de su imagen y la creciente animadversión entre los monjes a los cristianos nuevos. Para Llopis, el prior fray Nuño de Arévalo, buen diplomático y conocedor del mundo político castellano, movido por las presiones internas y externas de los radicales anticonversos del cenobio y de la orden, así como de los Reyes Católicos, se limitó a cumplir con lo que entendía que era la voluntad de los monarcas, dando prioridad a preservar los privilegios y el patrocinio real. En todo caso, el prior procuró que la inquisición fuese breve –poco más de un mes–, para no dar lugar a habladurías y escándalos, y que el contenido de las averiguaciones no se difundiese. Los inquisidores juzgaron con mayor severidad a los vecinos que a los monjes, pues de la casi treintena de religiosos acusados de ser sospechosos de judaizar, solo cuatro fueron sentenciados a penas severas, siendo la más dura para fray Diego de Marchena, primer miembro del clero regular quemado por la Inquisición real.
A modo de epílogo, Enrique Llopis sintetiza las principales consecuencias que el proceso de 1485, la posterior inquisición interna en la orden jerónima de 1486-1487, y la aplicación del estatuto de limpieza de sangre, tuvieron sobre el desarrollo del monasterio de Guadalupe. Para el autor, dichos sucesos marcaron un antes y un después en la trayectoria del cenobio, e influyeron de manera directa e indirecta en su posterior declive. Al debilitar la vitalidad del monasterio y de la propia orden jerónima, se regionalizó, perdió diversidad y, en última instancia, también poder. La composición social de los jerónimos quedó profundamente alterada, sus vínculos con la monarquía se debilitaron y su influencia política mermó. La actuación de la Inquisición, al perseguir a los conversos, ocasionó una gran pérdida de capital humano al cenobio, cuyo éxito se debía en buena medida a la capacidad profesional y de gestión de los cristianos nuevos.
De la segunda parte del libro, «Anatomía del proceso inquisitorial del monasterio de Guadalupe (1485)», se ocupa Elisa Ruiz García. En ella la autora hace un análisis detallado del origen y naturaleza de la orden jerónima a través del corpus normativo y documental conservado, así como un estudio crítico de la Sentencia condenatoria de fray Diego de Marchena y de tipo morfológico del Códice del Perpetuo Socorro, ofreciendo además una edición paleográfica y crítica de ambas fuentes inéditas, de notable interés para la historia del monasterio de Guadalupe, de la orden jerónima, de la Inquisición y de la España de los Reyes Católicos.
El análisis de ambas fuentes permite a Elisa Ruiz aproximarse al proyecto inicial ideado por la institución. La carta fundacional de la orden jerónima, sancionada por la bula de Gregorio XI en 1373, autorizaba la fundación de cuatro monasterios e imponía a los profesos la regla de san Agustín. En todo caso, del análisis de diversos estatutos y constituciones, la autora deduce que la orden jerónima adoptó un modelo de religiosidad a medio camino entre la vida contemplativa y la activa, acumulando considerables bienes materiales en sus cenobios.
El estudio crítico del Códice del Perpetuo Socorro y de la Sentencia condenatoria de fray Diego de Marchena permite a la autora abordar el desarrollo de las fases del proceso inquisitorial (instrucción, probatoria, pruebas periciales, y conclusiva), en general bastante farragosas e incongruentes, y trazar la semblanza de personajes que por diversas razones tuvieron un papel destacado en el proceso. Elisa Ruiz advierte cómo Marchena fue acusado de diversas herejías por más de la mitad de los religiosos que declaran en la causa, los cuales insisten en su criptojudaísmo, manifestado en el hecho de estar circuncidado, en haber profanado la Eucaristía y celebrar de manera irreverente la misa, así como el sacramento de la penitencia, en ayudar y empatizar con los judaizantes, o en errores doctrinales como cuestionar la virginidad de María, la resurrección de los muertos y el misterio de la Trinidad.
Con la edición del Códice del Perpetuo Socorro los lectores tienen la oportunidad de consultar las declaraciones de más de un centenar de frailes, que ofrecen mucha información sobre la vida de la comunidad religiosa, y las relaciones entre conversos y cristianos viejos, en una época especialmente conflictiva, en particular para los cristianos nuevos.
En nuestra opinión, la obra que brevemente se ha reseñado en estas páginas, supone una rigurosa e enriquecedora aportación al conocimiento de la historia del monasterio de Guadalupe, al presentar tanto a la comunidad de historiadores como, en general, a todo el público interesado, no sólo el contexto político, religioso y social en el que se llevó a cabo el doble proceso inquisitorial que tuvo lugar en Guadalupe en 1485 y las consecuencias que para el monasterio, y más ampliamente para la orden jerónima, trajo tan extraordinario acontecimiento, sino también la edición de dos documentos inéditos de gran valor histórico.
El libro, enmarcado en la nueva política religiosa desarrollada por los Reyes Católicos tras la creación del Santo Oficio, aproximará al lector al complejo clima de intolerancia y fanatismo religioso vivido en España a finales del siglo xv, que acabaría desembocando en el decreto de expulsión de los judíos de 1492, borrando siglos de una riquísima historia y diversidad cultural, lo que, sin duda supuso la pérdida de un importante capital humano, y por ende el empobrecimiento cultural de España.
Hortensio Sobrado Correa
Universidad de Santiago de Compostela
REFERENCIAS
Beinart, H. (1961). The Judaizing Movement in the Order of San Jerónimo in Castile. En A. Fuks & I. Halpern, Studies in History (pp. 167-192). Jerusalem: Magnes Press. (Scripta Hierosolymitana, 7).
Coussemacker, S. (1991). Convertis et judaïsants dans l’Ordre de Saint-Jérôme: Un état de la question. Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 27 (2), 12-15.
Evans, J. A. (1998). Heresy as an Agent of Change: Inquisitionin the Monastery of Guadalupe. Tesis doctoral. Stanford: University of Stanford.
Fita, F. (1983). La Inquisición en Guadalupe. Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, (23), 283-341.
Herrera Vázquez, M. (2014-2015). La Inquisición en el monasterio de Guadalupe (i-vii). Guadalupe, 837-843.
Sicroff, A. A. (1965). Clandestine Judaism in the Hieronymite Monastery of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. En I.A. Langnas y B. Sholod (ed.), Studies in honor of M. J. Benardete (pp. 89-125). New York: Las Americas.
Starr-Lebeau, G.D. (2003). In the Shadow of the Virgin: Inquisitors, Friars and Conversos in Guadalupe, Spain. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lourenzo Fernández Prieto y Daniel Lanero Táboas (Eds.)
Leche y lecheras en el siglo xx: De la fusión innovadora orgánica a la Revolución Verde
Zaragoza, Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2020, 286 pp.
A principios del siglo xxi el rendimiento lechero de las vacas gallegas alcanzaba los 5.000 litros anuales;
medio siglo antes esta cifra apenas alcanzaba los 1.500 litros; hacia 1900, las
estimaciones disponibles indican un rendimiento muy inferior a esta última cifra. Este largo período de tiempo que va desde el último tercio del siglo xix hasta los primeros años del xxi ha supuesto una transformación profunda de las condiciones de producción, distribución y consumo de leche a escala europea y muy especialmente de aquellas regiones
donde diferentes factores han contribuido a su especialización láctea. Galicia constituye un buen ejemplo de este fenómeno y si bien no destacó hasta bien entrado el siglo xx, la consolidación e importancia del sector lácteo durante la segunda mitad del siglo xx la ha convertido en una de las principales regiones productoras a escala
europea.
El recorrido de Galicia hacia su especialización lechera ha estado condicionado por diferentes factores cambiantes a lo largo del período. La estructura de propiedad de la tierra, las oportunidades de los mercados exteriores e interiores, la introducción de nuevas razas de vacuno, los nuevos cultivos, el avance del conocimiento científico (higiene, sanidad animal, química analítica), el uso de nuevas técnicas o el asociacionismo agrario entre otros, moldearon el desarrollo del sector en la región y profundizaron su nivel de especialización.
La diversidad de variables que intervinieron en este proceso de especialización constituye el centro de atención de Leche y lecheras en el siglo xx: De la fusión innovadora orgánica a la Revolución Verde, volumen coordinado por Lourenzo Fernández Prieto y Daniel Lanero Táboas.
Si bien el libro se presenta con la voluntad de abordar la cuestión láctea en diferentes territorios de la Europa atlántica, seis de los ocho capítulos que componen el volumen están dedicados a Galicia, de manera que esta región española protagoniza la mayoría de las investigaciones de los autores. El planteamiento del volumen parte de la voluntad de incorporar disciplinas diversas en el estudio del fenómeno para así abordar toda su complejidad y cooperar en el avance del conocimiento sobre los factores que intervinieron en la evolución de la especialización ganadera y lechera de Galicia, Portugal y Suecia desde finales del siglo xix hasta entrado el siglo xxi.
El libro está estructurado en ocho capítulos divididos en tres partes que siguen un desarrollo cronológico: la primera dedicada al primer tercio del siglo xx; la segunda al período 1940-1980; y la tercera al periodo de 1980 a principios del siglo xxi.
En la presentación del libro, Fernández Prieto subraya la importancia de las investigaciones que combinan disciplinas diversas y el reto que supone afrontar la investigación histórica con la finalidad de no sólo conocer el pasado, sino también los caminos alternativos, las opciones bloqueadas y, sobre todo, las vías «resilientes» (p. 10). Así, los trabajos compilados en el volumen son el resultado de diferentes encuentros, seminarios e investigaciones realizados durante los años precedentes, y en ellos confluyen enfoques de disciplinas como la veterinaria, la historia de la medicina, las ciencias ambientales, la economía agraria, la historia económica o la historia agraria.
Dentro de la primera parte, el primer capítulo de David Simón y María Luisa Rúa trata sobre las instituciones de beneficencia e higiene surgidas en Ourense durante las primeras décadas del siglo xx. Entre las diferentes iniciativas, Simón y Rúa prestan especial atención al Laboratorio Municipal de Higiene (1910) y la Gota de Leche (1912), ésta última pionera en Galicia. Destacan el papel del laboratorio en el análisis de leches dentro de su labor de control de los productos y del fraude alimentario, donde el aguado de la leche constituía la principal práctica fraudulenta, como también sucedía en otras zonas de España. El artículo describe detalladamente el desarrollo de aquellas instituciones, las principales personalidades que las impulsaron, organizaron y dirigieron, así como la dependencia de la caridad privada para sostenerlas hasta que el Estado, en un período posterior, no empezara a asumir estas funciones de forma decidida.
El segundo capítulo, de Alberte Martínez, se centra en el proceso de especialización cárnica de la ganadería gallega. Las exportaciones a Inglaterra iniciadas en 1861 supusieron una progresiva especialización del vacuno que continuó a pesar del cierre del mercado inglés a partir de la década de 1880. La reorientación hacia el mercado interior se vio facilitada por la llegada del ferrocarril a finales del siglo xix y por el dinamismo de los mercados urbanos nacionales. El autor señala que los cambios en las dietas urbanas que se evidencian con el cambio de siglo favorecieron la exportación de ganado gallego (fundamentalmente vacuno) estimulando así una mayor vocación mercantil de las explotaciones. La ganadería dejará de ser una actividad complementaria y empezará a ocupar una posición hegemónica. En todo este proceso el asociacionismo agrario jugó un papel importante.
En el tercer capítulo, Diego Conde y Lourenzo Fernández revisan la legislación higiénica y sanitaria relativa al sector lechero en tres momentos. El primero cubre desde las primeras normativas del siglo xix, como el reglamento del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona de 1865 que inspiró la Real Orden de 1867 para la regulación de las casas de vacas, burras, cabras y ovejas, hasta 1908, año de publicación del Real Decreto para evitar el fraude en el comercio alimentario. El segundo cubre hasta el inicio de la Guerra Civil, donde no se analiza tanto la legislación aparecida, sino las malas condiciones de la leche en los principales mercados urbanos a partir de fuentes de la época. Finalmente, el tercer momento analiza las iniciativas realizadas hasta 1970 bajo la dictadura franquista. En este periodo se describen las primeras campañas de saneamiento ganadero destinadas a controlar la cabaña nacional, la extensión de los servicios de higienización municipal o la creación de las centrales lecheras a partir de 1952. Los autores subrayan que, a pesar de los esfuerzos de veterinarios y otros especialistas sanitarios, diversos factores e intereses lastraron la aplicación de las normativas para mejorar la higiene de la leche hasta mediados del siglo xx.
La segunda parte cuenta con los trabajos de Telmo Otero y Daniel Lanero. Si antes Alberte Martínez describía las características de la especialización cárnica de Galicia, en el cuarto capítulo Otero hace lo propio con la especialización lechera de la región a partir de 1920. El autor describe las iniciativas de mejora de la aptitud lechera del ganado que se desarrollaron en la región entre 1920 y 1936, destacando los concursos y ferias para estimular el reconocimiento y la selección de los mejores ejemplares, si bien estos esfuerzos tuvieron un impacto limitado sobre el conjunto de la cabaña gallega. El periodo 1944-1955 supuso un salto en la selección y mejora del vacuno lechero gallego, condicionado por las circunstancias de la autarquía, por el estímulo del consumo de leche en el conjunto del país y por la decidida apuesta de las autoridades por la intensificación láctea como vehículo de modernización agraria. El período 1955-1975 será el de la consolidación del sector lácteo de la región, iniciada con la introducción de variedades extranjeras especializadas en la producción lechera (especialmente detallado es el espacio dedicado al ganado frisón) y completada con una creciente capitalización del sector (refrigeración mecánica y mecanización de las explotaciones).
En el quinto capítulo, Daniel Lanero analiza los factores que contribuyeron a la especialización lechera de la región de la Beira Litoral en Portugal entre 1965 y 1980. El primer apartado describe las características de la ganadería portuguesa entre 1930 y 1965, prestando especial atención al ganado lechero. Durante este periodo se evidencia la falta de una política ganadera, algo que no se subsanará hasta la década de 1960. Destaca en este periodo el importante incremento del número de cooperativas lecheras a partir de 1945, momento en que el Estado pasó a apoyar y prestar asistencia técnica a estas entidades. Este apoyo y otras medidas, como los créditos oficiales favorables, facilitaron la incorporación de innovaciones tecnológicas como el ordeño mecánico, los sistemas de refrigeración, el material de laboratorio o los tanques isotérmicos para el transporte. En la especialización lechera de Beira Litoral a partir de 1965 influyó la creciente demanda de leche de Lisboa, así como el desarrollo del cooperativismo lechero. El autor también destaca el permanente intervencionismo del Estado a lo largo del periodo.
La tercera parte está formada por los trabajos de David Soto, Edelmiro López y Bernardo Valdês, y Kristina Nordéus. En el primer trabajo de este bloque Soto muestra las características biofísicas del modelo de especialización láctea y ganadera de Galicia desde 1960. El autor cuestiona el éxito de este modelo y lo ilustra con evidencias cuantitativas que subrayan las consecuencias de la intensificación láctea de la región. A destacar, por un lado, la creciente dependencia de la importación de inputs y alimentos para el ganado, y, por otro, la moderada evolución de la renta agraria como consecuencia del aumento del consumo de productos intermedios y la evolución desfavorable para las explotaciones de los precios relativos. Además, el trabajo de Soto aporta evidencias del impacto de la intensificación láctea gallega sobre el entorno ambiental, así como sobre la articulación social del territorio. En conjunto, un artículo que plantea la importancia de incorporar en los análisis el conjunto de variables que influyen en la formación de los ecosistemas agrarios.
El capítulo de López y Valdês analiza la evolución del sector lácteo gallego desde la integración a la Unión Europea hasta la actualidad y plantea algunos retos de futuro para el sector. Los autores realizan una descripción detallada de la situación del sector lácteo gallego, donde destaca primero el impacto del establecimiento de las cuotas lácteas y después el desmantelamiento de este sistema y la mayor liberalización del sector. El análisis muestra el aumento del peso del sector lácteo gallego sobre el total español a lo largo de aquel período, la aportación del sector al PIB regional, así como la reducción del número de explotaciones y su mayor especialización. Entre los retos de futuro que plantean los autores se encuentran la disminución de la dependencia de la importación de alimentos para el ganado, la diversificación de la industria regional y su apuesta por productos de mayor valor añadido, y el fortalecimiento del tejido cooperativo para que los ganaderos capten un mayor valor de la transformación industrial de la leche.
Finalmente, el último capítulo de Nordéus sobre Suecia describe el proceso que llevó al Gobierno sueco a prohibir en 1985 el uso en el ganado de antibióticos promotores del crecimiento (en inglés antibiotic growth promoters, AGP). Este caso es especialmente relevante por ser pionero en su ámbito y adelantarse en dos décadas a la normativa europea. La autora describe las primeras investigaciones que apuntaban a los efectos negativos sobre el ganado del uso de antibióticos para acelerar su engorde y crecimiento. Estas evidencias movilizaron al cooperativismo ganadero sueco, que impulsó la campaña y colaboró activamente con el Gobierno para lograr la prohibición del uso de estos antibióticos en el ganado. Asimismo, la autora subraya la influencia de otras variables sobre este decidido compromiso de las cooperativas de ganaderos, que tienen que ver con los retos de la diversificación productiva, la apuesta por la calidad y la necesidad de crear una mayor confianza entre los consumidores.
Se trata, en definitiva, de una obra que aporta nuevas evidencias sobre un sector de una importancia central en el sector ganadero europeo contemporáneo y muy especialmente en Galicia. La organización de los diferentes artículos permite observar la evolución del sector a largo plazo, las continuidades del proceso de especialización y, a la vez, evidenciar las particularidades de cada período. A esto cabe añadir la diversidad de puntos de vista, que enriquecen el conjunto del análisis y contribuyen, como se apunta en la presentación del libro, a introducir en él los factores políticos, económicos, sociales y culturales que apuntan a la necesidad de asumir la insostenibilidad cultural del modelo de producción lácteo actual y pensar en una nueva historia (y a formular nuevas propuestas) para construir su futuro (p. 32).
Ismael Hernández Adell
Tecnocampus, Universitat Pompeu Fabra