Guillermo Pérez Sarrión. The Emergence of a National Market in Spain, 1650–1800: Trade Networks, Foreign Powers and the State.

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The establishment of a national market has been a major theme in economic history because it was thought to be a required condition for an industrial revolution. This social feature was considered a nineteenth-century economic process constituted by the emergence of regions that later became coordinated in a single unit of commercial exchanges. More recently, analysis of Castile’s wheat prices has shown that the volatility of markets declined markedly over the eighteenth century, indicating a price convergence, and therefore that the national market was taking its first steps. In The Emergence of a National Market in Spain, 1650–1800, Guillermo Pérez Sarrión takes a longer view, maintaining that market integration began to take off in the second half of the seventeenth century, with a marked acceleration after the War of Succession (1700–1715), and was institutionally buttressed by the legal reforms initiated by Felipe V, the first king of the new Bourbon dynasty. Pérez Sarrión offers an original perspective on the integration of the market, linking its peninsular dynamics to foreign—British and French—trade networks. France and Great Britain’s growing manufactures, political institutions, and state attitudes vis-à-vis the economy are shown in their comparative advantages with respect to competition in the world market. Salaries were lower in France than in Britain or Spain, making French textiles preferable in the Peninsula and the Americas. In addition to offering advantageous prices, Paris had become the capital of fashion, and French fabrics were highly sought after in Spain and the Americas. A good example is the ladies of Veracruz who took to wearing French garments when the wife of Mexico’s viceroy adopted a Parisian way of dressing.