For the Common Good: Popular Politics in Barcelona, 1580-1640.

Luis R. Corteguera. For the Common Good: Popular Politics in Barcelona, 1580-1640.

Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002. xviii + 231 pp. index. append. illus. gloss. bibl. $32.95. ISBN: 0-8014-3780-6.

In For the Common Good, Luis Corteguera sets out to uncover and analyze the political participation of Barcelona artisans, hoping to "decipher the meaning" of popular political behavior and "incorporate popular politics into the political history" of the decades leading up to the 1640 Catalan Revolt (x-xi). The book's chronological limits and topical coverage mirror the state of the primary sources ("abundant between 1580 and 1640"), including the archives of the municipal governing body, the Consell de Cent--where Barcelona's guildsmen enjoyed representation alongside the city's oligarchs--as well as records of the principality's Generalitat, and of the royal administration and courts (xiii). As an extended prehistory of one of the uprisings that convulsed the Spanish Monarchy in the mid-seventeenth century, For the Common Good is inevitably reminiscent of Rosario Villari's classic La rivolta antispagnola a Napoli (Bari, 1967), though Corteguera shares neither Villari's somewhat schematic Marxism nor, regrettably, his broad historical vision or his success in explaining the origins of a significant revolt. Corteguera also labors in the imposing shadow of John Elliott; while his focus on more popular elements does not challenge Elliott's argument that an alienated provincial aristocracy was the crucial element in dangerous revolts, it does usefully refine historical understanding of the complex interplay of municipal, provincial, and monarchical authorities and agendas within the Catalan capital.

This book is a revision of Corteguera's 1992 Princeton dissertation, and much of its contents will be familiar to specialists from a series of previously published articles. The imperatives of academic promotion aside, the author might have been better advised not to recombine these pieces into a monograph, since the sum of the book amounts to distinctly less than the whole of its parts. In endeavoring to stitch together his accounts of several widely disparate episodes that included artisanal political intervention, Corteguera resorts to numerous reiterations of the unexceptionable axiom that early modern politics was not the sole preserve of the elite. This results in a number of obvious statements, as for example the conclusion of chapter 2, with its assertion that guildsmen's participation in lobbying efforts meant to curb rising prices and deter hoarding "confirm[s] that ordinary men and women could see themselves as political actors and behave accordingly" (47). Both Marie Antoinette and Max Beloff having gone to their rewards some time ago, who precisely would gainsay this truism?

More damaging, though, is Corteguera's failure to link the culminating revolt of 1640 convincingly to themes developed earlier in the book. His gripping narration (chap. 8) of the early days of the uprising represents a fine achievement and fills the best pages of the book. Corteguera's explanation of the rioters' motives hinges upon postulating their "visceral hatred of royal judges" or "deep resentment toward members of the royal justice system in Catalonia," a seemingly tenable interpretation given the violence perpetrated against members of the royal Audiencia (172, 189). Regrettably, though, Corteguera does not adequately explain the origins of this phenomenon or the virulence it attained by 1640. His previous treatment of popular attitudes toward royal justice, in the thinly-researched chapter 6 ("Demand for Justice"), conveys the impression that Barcelona artisans placed considerable faith and reliance upon the royal courts; unfortunately, making sense of the deterioration of this trust by 1640 is left almost entirely to the reader's imagination.

Flaws in the book's argumentation are compounded by factual inaccuracies and other indications of careless composition or sloppy editing. Specialization in popular politics does not exempt a scholar from the obligation to get the facts of high politics right. So, for example, Corteguera should know that "Charles of Habsburg" (i.e., Emperor Charles V) died in 1558, not 1559, or that, having been born in 1578, the future Philip III was not "nine years old" in 1585 (13, 48, 103). Similarly, his account of the origins of the 1591 revolt of Aragon seems to exonerate Antonio Perez, who by Corteguera's account "had learned about the king's decision in 1578 to murder Juan de Escobedo" rather than masterminding the conspiracy himself (94). It also seems questionable practice to assert, on the basis of another historian's calculation that the crown's yield from Catalonia in 1634 amounted to 40,000 lliures, that "8,000 lliures" made up one-fifth of those revenues in 1587 (77, n. 6). Thorough copyediting should presumably have caught such blatant lapses as a footnote reference to "Kamen, Phoenix of the Flame," when the book's title is given correctly in the bibliography (54, 219), or the confounding of names in adjacent sentences or paragraphs (for example, "Miquel Joan Monrodon," 156-57, becomes "Joan Miquel Monrodon" later on 157, while the village of "Riudarenes" is transformed into "Ruidarenes" in the space of five lines on 158).

For the Common Good retains value for the author's extensive archival research and his success in delineating some of the challenges and opportunities of urban politics under the regime of multiple overlapping authorities characteristic of the Spanish monarchy of the Habsburgs. Unfortunately, Corteguera has not succeeded in crafting this material into a book that connects disparate episodes into original or persuasive broader explanations. Readers with access to Corteguera's published articles will not need to purchase For the Common Good.

JAMES M. BOYDEN

Tulane University