Hacienda y agricultura en España durante el siglo XIX

Abstract

This paper studies the relationship between the Treasury and agriculture in Spain during the 19th century by investigating the tax burden borne by agricultural incomes. The first section deals with methodology. The second briefly describes the tax reform of 1845, which established the liberal Treasury system, and analyzes contemporaries' assessments about whether the agricultural sector paid more to the Treasury before or after the reform. The third and fourth sections measure the tax burden borne by the agricultural sector from a macroeconomic viewpoint, and estimate how much the agricultural sector paid in relation to the industrial sector between 1850 and 1900, in order to assess whether or not the tax system was pro-industrialist. The fifth section deals with the tax burden from a microeconomic perspective, using data from the private accounts of large estates in various geographical locations in Spain. In some cases, these data begin as far back as 1801; this permits us to show the broad lines of the evolution of the tax burden on the income of large landowners during the entire 19th century.