The Village and the Outside World in Golden Age Castile: Mobility and Migration in Everyday Rural Life.

By David E. Vassberg (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xvii plus 253pp. $59.95).

In this often impressive work, Professor Vassberg aims to disprove a "tenacious myth of the modern world" - namely, the myth that "pre-industrial villages were essentially stable communities whose inhabitants rarely ventured beyond their own territory." (p. 1) He draws on recent scholarship and his own quite interesting research about early modern Spain to accomplish his goal and show that ordinary life in Castile was characterized not only by a great deal of coming and going between one place and another but also by much indirect communication and a high level of general socioeconomic interdependence.

Nevertheless, in his first chapter, Vassberg does justice to the opposing view, long entertained by many social historians and anthropologists, that most rural people of the period passed their lives in closed corporate communities. Indeed, Vassberg readily concedes that a "profound sense of loyalty" to local communities (p. 11) is one of the more distinctive elements of Hispanic cultures, both past and present, and he does a fine job of summarizing many of the political, economic, and cultural factors that seem to have supported "sociocentrism" during the ancient regime. He also quite rightly stresses, however, that an "exaggerated 'us versus them' mentality" (p. 24) is not necessarily to be construed as evidence of isolation and insularity but is probably better explained as a defensive response to local people's sense of vulnerability and exposure to the threats posed by immigrants, outsiders, and superordinate authorities.

In the remaining seven chapters, Vassberg further supports his argument by examining a wide range of evidence about different facets of rural villagers' lives. Among other things, he demonstrates that the complex agrarian arrangements and marketing systems and fairs of early modern Castile regularly brought locals into contact with itinerant peddlers, urban wholesalers, muleteers, seasonal migrant workers, and royal officials and tax collectors and that even residents of remote mountain villages engaged in artisan production for outside markets. Most notably, in the chapter entitled "Family Relations with the Outside World," Vassberg argues convincingly that it was common for youths to be employed as servants for several years before marriage and that, particularly in the case of males, this period of "life-cycle service" (p. 86) frequently took the youths outside their native villages and exposed them to the perils and pleasures of the wider social world. Other chapters consider the impact that such matters as various as travelers' inns, epidemics, gypsies, vagabonds, pilgrimages, the administration of justice, military service, and the billeting of troops had on rural communities.

Indeed, although the book is presented as a monograph primarily concerned with the issue of mobility and migration, so broad is the range of topics discussed and primary and secondary sources cited that both scholars and new students of the Golden Age will likely find it an indispensable resource on everyday rural life. Viewed from this broad perspective, there are, however, some notable weak points in the account. While very strong on topics related to the economy and general patterns of domestic and social relations, the book devotes less attention to political and religious ties and institutions and to the wide variety of overlapping cultural forms and practices that villagers often shared not only with one another but also with urban elites. This imbalance is unfortunate because it makes the task of arriving at a new, more accurate and synthetic vision of the constraints and possibilities that shaped life in early modern Spain more difficult. As a result, while Vassberg shows in compelling detail why it is wrong to represent Castilian rural life as closed, insular, and static, he does not go much beyond articulating the general counterclaim that it was, in fact, open, fluid, and dynamic. Yet many secondary aspects of his own analyses and interpretations clearly suggest that an over-reliance on such conventional historiographic antitheses often represents more a barrier than a gateway to understanding.

Richard Maddox Carnegie Mellon University