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European Social Science History Conference
International Institute of Social History; Belfast, 4-7 April 2018
Merchant Groups and Urban Oligarchies in Late Medieval Castile:
Different Models of Interrelationship?
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David Igual Luis (University of Castilla-La Mancha)
1. Merchants and oligarchies: content and problems with a historiographical question
The interrelationship established at the end of the Middle Ages between merchants and
urban oligarchies constitutes a classic theme of historiography. In recent decades the question
has even been included in at least two more general discussions. The first one revolves around
the formation of the city elites: was it a single elite that concentrated political and economic
power, or were there several that could be distinguished by the extent to which they amassed
political resources (the “political elites”) or commercial and financial resources (the “economic
elites”)? (IGUAL LUIS, 2010: 138-141 and 159). The second discussion tackles the problem of
social mobility and the existence not just of processes of ascent towards the upper echelons of
society, sometimes seen as an authentic step up from the bourgeoisie to the nobility, but also as
the dynamics of the way in which the groups that held the reins of urban power opened up or
closed ranks (IGUAL LUIS, 2018: 103-104 and 113-116).
On this point, research has emphasized the introduction of strategies that would at least
lead to merchants and oligarchies gradually coming together and, at the most, full symbiosis
between both groups. In Europe there is an abundance of images in this respect, and also in the
case of the two largest late medieval Hispanic kingdoms, Castile and Aragon (ASENJO-
GONZÁLEZ, ed., 2013). From the point of view of the merchants, those strategies would lead
for example to the attempt to forge links with the oligarchies (through friendship, kinship, as
neighbours, or simply having activities and interests in common), to the reiteration of
investments in rents and immovable assets, to the imitation of aristocratic social conduct and to
integration by different means in the urban institutions, including direct access to offices and
the functions of political representation and decision-making.
The apparent clarity of these situations cannot hide certain important underlying
difficulties. Some are conceptual. What do we mean by “merchant”? What do we mean by
“oligarchy”? Is there such a thing as “mercantile behaviour”, radically opposed to “oligarchic
and/or aristocratic behaviour”? I shall not answer these questions here, since I have already
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This study is part of the research project HAR2013-44014-P, funded by the Spanish government’s Ministry of
Economy and Competitiveness and directed by María Asenjo-González at Complutense University of Madrid.
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done so in several of my previous studies (for example: IGUAL LUIS, 2010, 2013 and 2018). I
shall merely point out a couple of issues: as far as the merchants are concerned, those affected
by the circumstances that I have mentioned would belong to the middle and, above all, upper
reaches of the commercial profession; with regard to the oligarchy, with this term I am
referring to the stratum of political power in the cities, heavily involved in councils and
municipalities and defined on numerous occasions as an authentic urban nobility.
Other problems refer more to the facts and their interpretation. I express them on the
basis of certain warnings that historians have formulated: 1) although we can detect merchants
rubbing shoulders with the oligarchy, it would be useful to distinguish whether or not these
processes are the result merely of the ambitions of individuals or minorities, or of an authentic
group movement (IGUAL LUIS, 2010: 167; 2018: 113); 2) similarly, we ought to assume that the
quest for political pre-eminence was not necessarily the ultimate goal of any individual who
excelled in trade and finance (PETRALIA, 2018: 162-163); 3) if the focus is placed on the
merchants’ access to the institutions, we must look carefully at the hierarchy of offices and
institutions in each city, since not all of them were equally important, and consequently, opting
for them did not always have comparable significance (IGUAL LUIS, 2018: 114); 4) lastly, the
plural nature of European cities and, specifically, the differences between cities with respect to
their merchants and oligarchies, mean that relations between both groups could have taken
different forms (MARTÍN ROMERA, 2012: 505-507).
The Crown of Castile offers good examples of this possible diversity of situations. The
aim of my paper is to look more closely at this question, also with a view to considering how
far the different circumstances that are attested to can be matched with different models of
interrelationship. To do this I have chosen four cities (Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo and Seville)
and a particular period (from the late fifteenth to the early sixteenth century, 1480 to 1520,
approximately). My analysis will be based on the bibliography already available for the four
cases and, at the same time, on my direct research into Valladolid and Toledo. The timeframe
chosen is justified because, as is well known, between 1480 and 1520 there is a particular
accumulation of sources in Castile and political and economic changes took place there that
were crucial for the development of the territory. These four cities have been selected due to
their important hierarchical position in the urban fabric of Castile, from multiple perspectives:
political and economic once again, as well as demographic and geostrategic. Evidence of their
specific economic role is for example the large number of merchants (local or not) who lived in
the four cities or who said that they came from them. Various estimates, taken from different
series of documents and with different criteria, put the number of merchants in each city in the
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tens or hundreds (BELLO LEÓN, 2012: 272; CARVAJAL DE LA VEGA et al., 2015: 49; OTTE,
1996: 194 and 199; PEREZ, 2016: 169).
BELLO LEÓN
(late 15th-early 16th C)
CARVAJAL DE LA VEGA et al.
(1486-1520)
OTTE
(1472-1515)
PEREZ
(1455-1500)
Burgos
173
290
92
---
Valladolid
105
170
---
---
Toledo
63
375
---
---
Seville
336
21
358 (Andalusians)
296
2. An overview of the four Castilian examples
2.1. In Burgos: an oligarchy based on merchants
And so, in my study I shall compare the four cities. I shall begin in Burgos, the smallest
of the four cities: it may have had about 10,000 inhabitants by around 1500 (ASENJO-
GONZÁLEZ, 2003: 128 and 139). Its merchants, however, became the most powerful in all
Castile, due to their economic power and to the geographical expansion of their businesses. In
fact, what has been called the “early mercantile vocation” of Burgos (GUERRERO NAVARRETE,
1998: 82 and 87) determined the nature of its oligarchy, which appears clearly monopolized in
the years I am talking about by men who based their predominance on commerce and finance,
working in Castile and in other countries (CASADO ALONSO, 1987: 470; GUERRERO
NAVARRETE, 1998: 86-87). It was merchants who at that time controlled, and made their own,
the highest offices in the city’s government, who used the municipal treasury for their own
ends and also diversified their wealth with the management of taxes and rents and the
acquisition of properties in the city and the surrounding area (CASADO ALONSO, 1987: 485;
GUERRERO NAVARRETE, 2013: 150-152). In this dominant group, personal and generational
advancement (some beginning in the fourteenth century) has been detected that frequently
passed through various stages: the consolidation of a large fortune, the establishment of
marriage alliances with people who had institutional power and social prestige, collaboration in
the tasks of local government and the definitive obtainment of an office in the council (MARTÍN
CEA – BONACHÍA HERNANDO, 1998: 31).
Among the paths mentioned are those taken by individuals and families who came from
mercantile and even artisanal backgrounds. But, as Hilario Casado explains, there are some
examples of individuals who were already noblemen and landowners and who became
merchants as well, or notaries who were also traders and were fully integrated in the power
structure in Burgos (CASADO ALONSO, 1985; 1987: 483-484 and 498-500). Hence, although the
members of the Burgos oligarchy originally enjoyed distinct socio-professional and economic
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status, their members eventually converged in a fairly common substratum of interests and
relationships (CASADO ALONSO, 1987: 485; 1988: 328-329). In this substratum, I repeat, being
a merchant was essential. All this took place in a dual context: on one hand, the non-existence
in Burgos of the structure of knightly “lineages”, which in other cities and towns in Castile
opened doors to political power; on the other, the relative fluidity that seems to appear when
the composition of the ruling elite was renewed and, therefore, the “nouveaux riches” were
welcomed into its ranks (CASADO ALONSO, 1988: 328; GUERRERO NAVARRETE, 1998: 88-89).
These circumstances do not mean, of course, that all the merchants in Burgos achieved
the same degree of insertion in the urban institutions (GUERRERO NAVARRETE, 1998: 87).
Some filled subordinate posts, and in any case this insertion depended on the division of the
oligarchy in Burgos between the truly dominant families and those that were less important. At
the end of the fifteenth century, according to Yolanda Guerrero, the former included the
Cartagena, Villegas, Bocanegra, Arceo, Burgos, Lerma and Covarrubias families, and the
latter, the Castro, Maluenda, Rico and Ayala families (GUERRERO NAVARRETE, 1998: 92). For
several of these, David Carvajal has examined their kinship ties, the contracts for mercantile
companies and mercantile work, and their functions in the local council. This combination of
factors enables the author to deduce that, over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Castro,
Maluenda, Burgos, Soria, Miranda and Orense families constituted one of the most important
networks of political and economic power in the city (CARVAJAL DE LA VEGA, 2011: 98-99).
2.2. In Valladolid: the secondary role of merchants
The situation in Valladolid is just the opposite. The town had over 30,000 inhabitants in
the first third of the sixteenth century and it was an important centre for trade, consumption and
craftsmanship (ASENJO-GONZÁLEZ, 2015: 116-120). From the mid fifteenth century at least, its
merchants extended different mechanisms of economic control all over the city and they were
even active in other parts of the Iberian Peninsula. But their radius of influence was much
smaller than that of the merchants of Burgos, as was their ability to gain access to the local
oligarchy (CARVAJAL DE LA VEGA, 2016: 171-172; IGUAL LUIS, 2014: 108-113).
Since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, an aristocratic model of social and
political organization had been typical of Valladolid. This time, two lineages of knights did end
up monopolizing the share-out of council power and its evolution: the Tovar and Reoyo
lineages. The analysis that María Ángeles Martín makes of both lineages and of the Valladolid
oligarchy as a whole between 1450 and 1520 points out that of the total of eighteen families in
this oligarchy, researched by the author, only two (Verdesoto and López de Calatayud)
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demonstrated a palpable commercial and financial orientation; secondly, that in this oligarchy
the sources of wealth were generally based on the possession and management of land and
mills, houses and shops, rents and even slaves, leaving little room for attention to commerce
(MARTÍN ROMERA, 2012: 508-522). In short, the mercantile did not tend, in Valladolid, to be a
crucial element for defining the ruling urban group, although there were some merchants who
with their fortune and their behaviour adopted aristocratic ways, just as some in the nobility
were concerned about trading produce such as cattle, wool and wine (ASENJO-GONZÁLEZ,
forthcoming; IGUAL LUIS, forthcoming a).
Nevertheless, these conditions did not prevent other forms of relationships between
merchants and the oligarchy from materializing in about 1500, apart from those implied by the
paths of the Verdesoto and López de Calatayud families. At that time the lineages in Valladolid
showed a certain degree of flexibility when incorporating people from unprivileged
backgrounds, such as lawyers, middle-ranking merchants and wealthy shopkeepers, and even
people of a more modest condition: wool shearers, barbers, drapers, or servants, for example
(IGUAL LUIS, forthcoming a; MARTÍN ROMERA, 2012: 538-549). But, in accordance with the
hierarchies of the lineages themselves and of the council posts, lower-class individuals held
only secondary offices in the town’s institutional structure. This was the case of the Santiago,
Sánchez de Collados, Salamanca, Bollo, Mudarra, Sanz, Barroso and Álvarez families. Thus,
although these sectors took virtually no part in overall decision-making, they did obtain some
quotas of power that must have afforded them social and economic benefits (MARTÍN ROMERA,
2012: 597-598, 600-606 and 617). Along these lines, the management of several municipal
rents at the end of the fifteenth century was the basis, at the same time, for a large group of
small and medium-sized dealers and financiers, local and from elsewhere, to participate in
controlling important chunks of the urban economy. They included merchants, money
changers, silversmiths and mercers who did not belong to the town’s commercial elite, or to the
principal organ of city government: the regimiento (CARVAJAL DE LA VEGA, 2016: 187-188).
2.3. In Toledo: the limited political representation of the urban middle classes
Two lineages were also important in the civic life of Toledo during the fifteenth and the
early sixteenth centuries: the Ayala lineage, the head of which was the Count of Fuensalida,
and the Silva lineage, led by the Count of Cifuentes (PALENCIA HERREJÓN, 1999: 222-228). A
large part of the ruling urban society revolved around them, structured according to two
principal variables of division: the social (which made it possible to distinguish the nobles and
knights from an up-and-coming middle class, which could be called “bourgeois”, in which the
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importance of the merchants was clear) and the religious (which differentiated between old
Christians and new ones, or Jewish conversos, very numerous in Toledo since the late
fourteenth century). Indeed, the Silva family’s faction tended to take in quite a few merchants
and to show itself to be close to the Jewish conversos. Let us not forget that many Toledo
merchants came from a real or supposed Jewish converso background (IGUAL LUIS,
forthcoming a; LÓPEZ GÓMEZ, 2012: 730-731).
In this context the merchants fulfilled a not inconsiderable function. Toledo, which
must have had more than 30,000 inhabitants by around 1530 (ASENJO-GONZÁLEZ, 2003: 128
and 139), was able to generate an important mercantile class. At its heart the existence was
defined of a select minority of operators, focusing on the production and sale of quality goods,
which extended its radius of action all over the Iberian Peninsula and made solid inroads into
the monarchy’s networks of finance and supply. This minority established itself in the highest
echelons of the middle-ranking or bourgeois groups and, based on its economic muscle, aspired
to enter (or get close to) the ranks of the authentic oligarchy in Toledo, composed of the urban
aristocracy that controlled the basic mechanisms of local government (IGUAL LUIS,
forthcoming b; PALENCIA HERREJÓN, 1999: 839-880).
The merchants were able to channel their socio-political aspirations through the city’s
lineages (especially, as I said, the Silvas) or via the classic route of marriage and the
establishment of multiple ties with the civic nobility. But in Toledo these aspirations also
found a particular institutional avenue. In 1422, the monarchy reformed the municipal
government and, copying the model in Seville, created two new councils: of regidores (the
highest-ranking government officials, appointed by the king) and of jurados (representatives of
the city’s parishes, with a more advisory capacity). The council of regidores basically
represented the urban knights and held real political power in the city. Meanwhile, the council
of jurados became the focus of attention of the middle classes, especially the merchants.
Before 1520 it is easy to observe the presence in this organ of men from families with
mercantile backgrounds, or generically bourgeois, such as the Acre, Hurtado, Husillo, Jarada,
Cota, Franco, de la Fuente, San Pedro and De la Torre families (IGUAL LUIS, 2002: 218; LÓPEZ
GÓMEZ, 2007: 95-97 and 194-200).
The merchants aspired to be jurados because of the prestige and power that it afforded
them, the privileges it entailed (tax exemption and debt immunity) and because it was a way in
to the clientele of the really powerful men of Toledo. Although the jurados were supposed, in
some ways, to counterbalance the regidores, in practice the former acted within the latter’s
sphere of influence. In reality, as Óscar López has shown, these regidores pulled strings to
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appoint both the jurados and the minor municipal government officers in order to extend their
power networks throughout the city (LÓPEZ GÓMEZ, 2012: 739-740). Thus, the scope of the
merchants’ political achievements in Toledo was clearly limited.
2.4. In Seville: a distinction between the socio-political elite and the economic elite
As I have just said, at the end of the Middle Ages Seville also had a council of
regidores (the famous “twenty-four”) and a council of jurados. As in Toledo, it was the
regidores who were the real urban government, oligarchic and aristocratic in nature, while the
jurados constituted the more habitual horizon of advancement for the city’s merchants. This
distinction helps to sustain Antonio Collantes’ idea that in Seville there was a socio-political
elite clearly separate from the economic elite (COLLANTES DE TERÁN SÁNCHEZ, 2000: 13-14;
2015: 146). Perhaps, however, three other factors may have influenced this division of elites.
All could be clearly seen just at the turn of the sixteenth century: the demographic splendour of
the city, the largest in the Crown of Castile, which at that time had a population of between
40,000 and 50,000 (ASENJO-GONZÁLEZ, 2003: 128 and 139-140); the proliferation of traders
from all the other Hispanic territories or from outside the Peninsula (BELLO LEÓN, 2012; OTTE,
1996: 184-200), and the first effects of the American adventure (PEREZ, 2016: 322). These
conditions provided merchants with numerous opportunities for social and economic
advancement. And this, together with the logically limited possibilities of direct access to
political supremacy, could have encouraged the success and the solidity of other parallel routes
of personal and family progress.
Whatever the case, continuing with Antonio Collantes’ arguments, the socio-political
elite of Seville was made up of the titled nobility and a lower level of knights and citizens. The
differences in the backgrounds of both groups gradually became blurred. At the same time
foreigners and, in a very minor way, merchants and financiers, some of them Jewish conversos,
managed to gain access to this class. This elite controlled the local government and, although it
conformed to the pattern of the nobility’s way of life, it did not look down on participating in
the market economy by growing saleable crops (like olives) and, even, by taking an active part
in merchant companies. The economic elite comprised merchants, financiers, tenants and
collectors of taxes and services. They were sometimes wealthier than many members of the
socio-political elite, whose aristocratic behaviour they imitated occasionally. Moreover, a few
members of the economic elite managed to join the knightly class and thus obtain, legally or
fraudulently, tax exemption privileges. But, as a rule, when the merchants and other middle-
ranking urban groups made moves to obtain a post in the municipal government, they were
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aspiring to the minor offices, beginning with the jurados, as I suggested earlier (COLLANTES DE
TERÁN SÁNCHEZ, 2000: 16-17 and 29-33; 2015: 146-147).
In short, Seville allows us to observe evident intersections between commerce,
merchants and oligarchy, in the same way that it attests to certain routes of socio-political
advancement among the merchants. Nevertheless, as in the case of Toledo, Seville also clearly
shows the limits of these circumstances. In this respect, I find the path that Beatrice Perez
traces very significant, in the work that she dedicated in 2016 to the “restless” world of the
merchants of Seville in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The author starts by mentioning in
her introduction the preconceived idea that, for the European merchant, patrimonial fortune,
financial clout and an ambition for power and ennoblement were different aspects of the same
reality. However, in her conclusion she is forced to acknowledge that in Seville, the merchant’s
career was not the swift ascent towards the summit of municipal power that she had imagined
when she began her research. If such a path did exist, it was narrow, a minor one, only ending
after a long time. For the majority of the merchants in Seville, prospering through trade
basically only produced financial gains (PEREZ, 2016: 11, 15 and 321-322).
3. Conclusions
In my paper you will have noticed some notable similarities, either among the four
examples given (varied elements of merchant-oligarchy interrelationships, the merchants’
pathways of political and institutional participation, routes of socio-political ascent of
merchants), or only between some of them (especially through certain dynamics detected in
Toledo and Seville). But in actual fact my previous arguments have sketched two main
scenarios. On the one hand, Burgos, where the status of certain groups of merchants was fully
equal to that of the oligarchy. On the other, the other cities examined, where the presence of
trade and merchants in oligarchic circles and political decision-making was secondary or
encountered very palpable limitations.
Both situations might perhaps actually be identified as different models of defining the
relationships between merchants and oligarchies. Nevertheless, it is necessary to add a proviso.
In late medieval Castile, the case of Burgos does not seem to be common. Its exceptional
nature has even been stressed: the condition of Burgos as “a city unique in the urban panorama
[of Castile]”, due to the prominence of its merchants in oligarchies (GUERRERO NAVARRETE,
1998: 82). On the contrary, the circumstances of Valladolid, Toledo and Seville would be more
usual as they illustrate the subordinate position of the merchants and the more obviously noble
character of the oligarchy. Lastly, these three cities would confirm that, as was the case in
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others in the Iberian Peninsula, social mobility towards the middle to upper levels of the urban
classes was relatively common, although it was not matched by a similar fluidity to enable one
to reach the true summit of social and political power. Let me put it another way. The existence
of pathways of socio-economic mobility was repeated, especially among middle ranking urban
groups who progressed (horizontally) within their own class like a “wheel of fortune”. But
socio-political mobility and moving up the class ladder towards the very top in cities was much
less simple (IGUAL LUIS, 2018: 104 and 115; IRADIEL MURUGARREN, 2010: 296-299).
From the point of view of the study of the merchants, at least in Castile, this has to help
to put the relationship that is usually established between economic and political ascent into
perspective. In Castile, the search for parallels between both processes may have something to
do with the relative shortage of records for studying trade and commerce. This is why powerful
merchants are sometimes identified too automatically as people who carved out a place for
themselves in the institutions (JARA FUENTE, 2014: 36). However, on a European level too, the
idea that the determining factor for understanding the position of a social group is its ability to
express a political project or its visibility on the political scene has been criticized as
“obsessive” (MAIRE VIGUEUR, 2018: 398). Yet none of these qualifications can deny that, in
the end, in medieval cities processes of creating elites were generated based on the
materialization of multiple social relationships, and, above all, on the combination of an
amalgam of conditions in which those associated with political and economic power almost
always stand out, together or separately.
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