HILA 2001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Little Ice Age, Navigation Acts, Ferdinand Iii Of Castile
27 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Development of highly unequal social hierarchy in the spanish conquest: nobility forged in conquest: extreme inequality in landownership. 1% of iberian peninsula = owned majority of the land and wealth: grandes, hidalgos, church and religious orders. Catholic church = very serious economic power. Essentially a state: many political, economic and religious institutions. 2nd largest land owner after crown = arch bishop of toledo. Religious orders are given a priority against the war vs. islam: accumulate large wealth from this war. Have their own legal system: create an entire nobility class within bishops. Intertwine church nobility with overall monarch"s nobility where monarch"s elite"s have their younger sons go into church. Huge social honor, status: merchant class. Mainly based in catalonia and aragon: merchant bourgeois class, dynamic trading class which developed a signi cant textile industry. Castile = pretty backwards, but in 1400"s, this region rises.
