II Congrés d’Història de l’Horta Sud. Un món rural en transformació / 11-12

VI:11/12 (1991), 428 pp.

Presentation / Agustí Colomines i Companys, Enric Juan i Redal and Vicent S. Olmos i Tamarit: A decade of historiographic research in l’Horta-Sud (Silla: 1981-Torrent: 1990) (Una dècada de treball historiogràfic a l'Horta-Sud (Silla:1981-Torrent:1990) The area of the Horta-Sud has been a pioneer one, if not in the Valencian Country, at least in its historical research. That is confirmed by the amount of publications, scientific workshops, sessions of history didactics, and so on. Our presentation mainly focuses in the interest for local history and the issues provided by this pattern of historical analysis. In this double issue, Afers. Fulls de recerca i pensament publishes the proceeding of the second Congress of history in l’Horta-Sud, that under the theme “a changing rural world” took place in Torrent the days 19th, 20th and 21st of October, 1991. At the end of this presentation, we include a brief biography of cristòfor Agudo i Medina (Picassent, 1955-1991) who was a founder member of the editorial board of this journal and who, despite his youth, committed an important part of his life to local research and teaching.

Agustí Colomines i Companys and Vicent S. Olmos i Tamarit: Local areas. A proposal of scope for historical studies (L'espai local. Indagacions sobre la història policèntrica) The authors analyse different conceptions of the space as a pattern for the study of history. Their proposal regarding local history studies, focuses on the definition of a local area as the one that should lump together individuals’ interactions in a geographic area but attending their mental image. So, a local area would be the best research area to accomplish a deep and generalizable approach to the reality of the place concerned in relation with the most wider spheres of social and administrative life proper to each historical period.  /

Presentations: Antoni Furió i Diego: The rural communities of l’Horta-Sud from the Middle ages to the early modern times (Les solidaritats veïnals en el món rural de l'Edat Mitjana a la Moderna) Focusing mainly in the Horta-Sud, the author analyses the framing unities of Valencian countrymen —both the family and the household—in the rural community, the manor and the ward as the main constitutive elements of rural communities. This article seeks to combine a double structural and dynamic view, by a close exam of the development of a juncture set by demographic and economic    indicators. The main outstanding points are: the genesis of rural communities from feudal conquest and the settlement of Christian repopulation; its progressive internal stratification as a result of the demographic and agrarian growth; the system of divisible heritage and market activity; the organization of local government, neighbourhood solidarity and the solidarity and conductivity respectively shown either by mutual aid or cooperation or by the controversies and litigations among neighbourhood; and finally the influence of manorial structures and urban penetration, especially noticeable in a ward like the Horta that was the subsidiary rural space of Valencia city, but that did not lead to a substantial modification of agrarian structures/

James Casey: Kinship and Community in Statutory Valencia (16th and 17th centuries)  (Parentela i comunitat en la València foral (segles XVI i XVII) This paper is about the hierarchization and socio political integration of the family in Modern Valencia. The interaction between the rural community and the state has been one of the main traits of the history of Spanish kingdoms. In order to understand this feature it is relevant to make clear how did the system of kinship and patronage work out. Focusing in the Modern Age, when political centralization started to develop, the author analyses the source of nobiliary solidarities in the Valencian Country as well as other questions related with the knowledge of Valencian social order such as: In which territorial frame did élite weddings perform? How did family links turn up? How did Valencian people make use of their kinship in the political or labour areas? How was the system of legacies and heritages? Which role did primogeniture or matrimonial vinculum perform? /

Manuel Ardit i Lucas: The origins of a myth. Was the Horta a peculiar area? (Els orígens d'un mite. Fou l'Horta una comarca peculiar?) We are in presence of a peculiar territory that goes beyond the historical logic that characterised the other Valencian areas. Therefore, the mere construction of a theoretical pattern from a small ensemble of disperse testimonies seems quite risky. Historians face a double challenge, on the one hand they must verify the fact implied and on the other hand, they have to explain it avoiding any ahistorical essentialism arising from easy categories such as treacherous bourgeoisie that do not provide any further explanation. The conceptual tools that could be used to explain a phenomenon that might be pretty topical, are the following ones: intensive crops, high yields and the likely low productivity of work, the scarcity of high qualified working hand demanded by horticultural crops, high salaries and high property concentration in ecclesiastical hands, urban nobility and bourgeoisie.  /

Pedro Ruiz Torres: Privilege and inequality in the rural world, 1780-1870 (Privilegi i desigualtat en el món rural, 1780-1870) The author describes the evolution of the groups that in a certain way were favoured by the inequality that typified rural society in the end of the Old Regime. He also analyses how some other forms of inequality did emerge during the revolutionary period and the way they expanded afterwards. He deals with the relations of exploitation between these privileged groups and the rural population, and he talks about the transformations resulting from the revolution. The general hypothesis to explain these social changes during the period at issue take into account the case-studies and the information available on/about the Horta Sud area.   /

Jesús Millán: Workers and burgesses in a citizen society (Obrers i burgesos en una societat de ciutadans) Traditionally, worker’s historical function has been judged according to their capacity to formulate a proper alternative to a given social order. Since the emergence of the First International, the leakage between the workers and the rest of the currents generically progressive has been considered a normal feature designing a minimal class meaning. Providing that class alignments render an ample ensemble of experiences, we must take into account not only the economic status in the production process but a wide range of relation among classes. With liberalism, we could look forward to a «society of citizens», politically equal, but this hope was frustrated in a greater of lesser degree by the emergence of a capitalism that was only partially liberal. Was it possible then to remake the liberal discourse in its progressive sense? Social dynamics —the perspectives of promotion and mobility, the daily ways of coexistence or the increasing cultural differentiation— ends up by providing each place a peculiar answer.  /

Communications: Manuel V. Febrer Romaguera: The 14th century crisis in the basin of the Albufera and in Alfafar tumults in 1367 (La crisi del segle XIV a la conca de l'Albufera i els avalots d'Alfafar de 1367) The 14th century was a period of economic recession and demographic adversities that precipitated the crisis of the prevailing feudal regime. The war of the Union and the one of the Two Peters, Black Death, and the deaths occurred everywhere, depopulation wards and ruining both peasants and seigneurs. Seigneurs could just get into debt with hews, trying to transfer the burden of their debts to the peasants renting their fields, increasing the fiscal pressure and demanding new taxes. AS a matter of fact, it is not odd that conflicts arose, as the one of Alfafar in 1367, that as a sign of confined disturb could have become one of the typical jerarquies, so frequent in the contemporary European west.  /

Pau Viciano i Navarro: The borrowing strategy of Valencian patricians: rentals and land according to the investments of a 15th century merchant (L'estratègia rendista del patriciat valencià: el censal i la terra en les inversions d'un mercader del segle XV) From Joan Amalric’s post mortem inventory drafted in 1463, we can know the investments of this merchant who belonged to the oligarchy of Valencia city. His main devotees were public institutions such as the Generalitat an the very township of Valencia. Public liabilities provided him more than the half of his rental incomes, while a large number of private debtors —above all peasant and artisans— get into debt with modest capitals, lower than half a thousand centimes. The rental burden was of short geographic extent because the most part of the debtors resided in Valencia city or in the Horta /

Tomàs V. Pérez Medina: Rice, paludism and population in the Horta area. 1784 Epidemic (Arròs, paludisme i població en la comarca de l'Horta. L'epidèmia de 1784) Pauledism is a transmissible disease that occasionally and periodically may become endemic. In 1784, a paludi rash affected all of the Valencian Country populations located next to swampy areas and/or that had rice plantations. From the file started as a result of this epidemic, the author analyses the case of the Horta area, being one of the most affected. This area accomplishes the three characteristics that bring about this epidemic: it is an important marshy area (from Puçol to Silla, interrupted but the great urban nucleus of Valencia); remarkable organization of the irrigation and excessive horticultural exploitation; and an area of great human density (104 inhabitants per km², excluding Valencia city, and 196 inhabitants per km² including this one) /

Josep V. Castelló i Ballester: The transformation of the commons in the Albufera, 1761-1840 (La transformació dels comunals a l'Albufera (1761-1840) The promulgation of the Royal Ordinances of 1761, submitted the Albufera borders to a strict regulation in order to increase the royal finance. This feature provided the colonisation and landing of great extensions of ground that leaded to the emergence of an agrarian bourgeoisie originated in the Low Middle Ages. It also emerged in parallel, a class of royal rights tenants who found in the collection of taxes a chance of enrichment. The tenants of the right over pastures did not get the highest absolute yield, but possibly they were in a  certain way the ones getting the most benefit, despite of the unfavourable juncture in which the commons were privatized without the opposition of the popular classes.  /

Virgínia Maria Cuñat Ciscar and Enric Juan Redal: Conflicts in the seigneurial administration during the first half of the 19th century: the archives of the House of Alaquàs (Conflictes en l'administració senyorial durant la primera meitat del segle XIX: l'Arxiu de la Casa d'Alaquàs) The authors try to explain the vicissitudes of the seigneurial archives of the House of Alaquàs during the first half of the 19th century. This study mainly focuses on three sections: a) the evolution of the local lordship, b) the conflicts regarding territorial administration during the first third of the 19th century and c) the archives of the house of Alaquàs from diplomatic perspective. These two latter section are correlated because the problems concerning the people under the administration of the lordship were the ones that provided the documentary funds of the archives of the Valencian Kingdom that they have studied: both the chronological order of the chats and the inventories for the transferee of competences that shape the administration from beginning to end. /

Josep Royo Martínez and Josep Ramon Sanchis Alfonso: The structure of property in Torrent in 1840 (L'estructura de la propietat de Torrent en 1840) Starting from an affluence census drafted in the year 1840, the authors analyse the structure of the urban and agrarian property in the township of Torrent. They reach the conclusion that there was a great concentration of property in very few hands, the most part of them were rentiers from Valencia city who exploited their hands through tenancies. Municipal inhabitants had the 43% of the total value, which implied a 30% of the irrigated and a 44% of the dry farming fields. /

Francesc A. Martínez Gallego: The other side of the transformation: the industrial growth in Valencia and in its environment circa 1850 (L'altra vessant de la transformació: el creixement industrial a València i el seu entorn al voltant de 1850) There were two international exhibitions previewed for the year 1850 on agrarian, cattle, mining and industrial products: ine to be held in Madrid and the other in London. Therefore, the «Statistical Commission of the Kingdom» and its provincial branches gathered all the existent information in order to provide it for local representations. The basis of this works are founded in the documentation resulting from the surveys about the state of provincial affluence, carried out by the commission of the province of Valencia. Perhaps due to its fame as an agrarian country, advanced in techniques such as crops, irrigations and fertilizers —or precisely by this reason— the inquires stress the growth of the industrial sector. The degences of Valencia city and the Horta are the most interesting ones. The image they give has nothing to do with the agrarian and underindustralized picture presented by current historiography. There were some interesting and premonitory productive processes in course of development.  /

Francesc J. Castellanos Guijarro and Joan C. Fernàndez Pacheco-Riesgo: Landlords and yeomen: tenancy engagements in Valencia, 1870-1885 (Amos i masovers: les relacions d'arrendament a València, 1870-1885) In opposition to the idea of stability, absenteeism and social character diffused by Orellana and Garrido Juan, and from the analysis of two hundred contracts of tenancy, the authors show s the dynamism of Valencian agrarian engagements in the Horta area, and their great capacity for investing in the specialized trading crops. Therefore, one can also appreciate the control exerted by the landlord, who not only perceived the rents but managed and controlled carefully the exploitations. It was neither a renter bourgeoisie in the traditional sense, nor an entrepreneurial one, because in fact it did not assume the direct exploitation of its properties. /

Covadonga Tirado Jiménez: Salvador Castillo i Madroño. The study of a case of territorial accumulation in the second half of the 19th century (Salvador Castillo i Madroño. Estudi d'un cas d'acumulació territorial en la segona meitat del segle XIX)This article relies upon some notarial documentation: sharing-out of Salvador Castillo’s properties (1893) as well as contracts of buying and selling performed between 1839 and 1892. He was a member of a merchant bourgeois family —by paternal ancestry— recently ennobled, and he was linked by maternal ancestry to a small noblesse who founded the entailments circa the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 19th one. Due to his economic strategy he was able to increase his heritage and to climb the social ladder after marrying Conceció Crespí de Valldaura. The author seeks to explain his strategy, where several factors meet: the mentality and the economy of the family and the juncture in which the purchases were produced /

Tomàs V. Pérez Medina: Property and land use in Torrent at the end of the 19th century (Propietat i ús de la terra en Torrent a finals del segle XIX) The author studies the changes occured in the structure of agrarian property throughout the 19th century that leaded to the fragmentation and rise of a small peasantry, through the study of the register of properties recast in 1897 in Torrent township, comparing this information with other complementary data. The aim of this work is to answer the following questions: 1) Does this consolidation of the complete and absolute property of the land, of the capitalist property, have any effect or any relationships with the trends towards dividing property? 2) Does the resultant structure yield to any purely capitalist rules? 3) Has the intensification and specialization of crops anything to do with this logic of the market?  /

Rafael Valls Montés: Local groups of the Valencian regional right wing: a model of political agitprop in l’Horta, 1931-1936 (Les agrupacions locals de la Dreta Regional Valenciana: un model d'agitació-propaganda política en la comarca de l'Horta (1931-1936))  During the second Republic, the ‘Dreta Regional Valenciana’, a conservative political party, timidly valencianist, represented the paradigm of a bourgeoisie rightly political force commited to get a modern and clever organisation addressed to people. Not any other party from CEDA could structure an internal organisation so lubricated and modern as DRV did. By its structure and its aim at mobilize conservative group, it seemed like a left wing party rather than a conservative force. Its control over educational, recreative, religious, social assistance...associations granted it the popular support of the catholic and conservative sectors. This article tackles the structure and working of the propaganda and agitation apparatus of the DRV, specifically the one it had in l’Horta: casinos, sport centers, social assistance and school activities, ecclesiastic movements, and so on. /

 Francesca Peris Serra and Hernan Canós Beltran: Women and country family life in the Horta of Valencia along the 19th century (Dona i vida familiar camperola al llarg del segle XIX) The authors approach the study of the country family life, where women exerted their role, identificated themselves with and realized themselves as such. Family exploitation forms the basic primary unit of country society and its economy. As a small unit of production and consume, it finds its main resources in family agriculture. But this small units became linked by three main poles: the husband, the wife and their lands. Therefore, those pole were the axle to accomplish the basic division of labour and country exploitation related with family structure according with sex and age. This rigidity of the sexual division of roles forced the work —both feminine and masculine— in each family exploitation while converting marriage ina compulsory condition.  /

Josep Ramon Sanchis Alfonso: Town-planning and toponymy of Aldaia in the middle of the 18th century. Analysis and configuration of a rural nucleus from l’Horta of València  (Urbanisme i toponímia d'Aldaia a mitjans del segle XVIII. Anàlisi i configuració d'un nucli rural de l'Horta de València) While studying the toponymy of the main buildings, the author rebuilds, house by house, the urban plan of aldaia through the study of some seigneurial quarrels from the middle of the 19th century concerning the lordship of Aldaia and Quart. He dwells on the importance of the rentier classes from Valencia city, who controlled the economy of this rural nucleus regarding its agrarian production and its commercialization as well as a great deal of the central plots susceptible of speculation    /

Agustí Colomines i Companys and Vicent S. Olmos i Tamarit: Biography on the Horta-Sud. Evaluation and proposals.  (Bibliografia de l'Horta-Sud. Propostes d'organització i recerca) This paper provides a bibliographical directory of the works on history published in the Horta-Sud area. The repertory reckons 381 titles of books and articles, all classified by its township and author, thematic and ideological-toponymic indexes.Therefore, they weigh the value of these publications and rise several proposals in order to give guidance to future local historiographic research in this area  /

Postscriptum:

Lluís Guia i Marín: The Valencia of Charles the II in the eyes of Sebastià Garcia Martínez (Valencia bajo Carlos II, de Sebastià Garcia Martínez. Obra clau de la historiografia valenciana) The author reflects on the figure and personality of the historian Sebastià Garcia Martínez from the analysis of one of his most transcendental works, his doctoral dissertation, published twenty years after his defense. He also justifies the need for a so late publishing, mentioning the aspects overcame —mostly by S.Garcia in his latter works— and all the others that still prevail in the historiography of the final decades of the 18th century /

Alfons Cucó: Linguistic minorities in western Europe (Les minories lingüístiques a l'Europa Occidental) Starting from the reading of a book on the linguistic minorities in western Europe, published by the Vasc Parliament, the author links over this relevant fact for the current policy of changes actually implemented in our continent. From the consolidation of the NAtion-State confirmed by the French Revolution, that merely emphasized the ideological principles of the centralist and unifier barroc State up to the most relevant events of the 19th century, produced by the amazing fall of the communist régimes of central and western Europe, he accomplishes a quick review of a book and of certain questions that certainly do not envisage the end of history  /

Recensions: Manuel Ardit, Isabel Burdiel, Llorenç Ferrer i Alòs, Vicent Olaso i Cendra, Josep Royo Martínez, Pau Viciano / Cultural Reviews: Jesús Alonso i López, Carme Barceló i Fortuny, Joaquim Bolufer i Marqués, Carles Jover i Carrasco, J. Daniel Simeon Riera / Received publications / Cover illustration: Josep Sanleón.