How Economic Stakeholders and Public Institutions Shaped the Basque Iron Market (14th-16th Centuries): Power, Credit and Finance

Abstract

Throughout the Low Medieval period, a number of initiatives and strategies fired the development of a powerful iron industry in Basque territory. The result of interaction between economic stakeholders and public institutions, iron and steel production acquired an early and well-developed legal framework, focusing partly on promoting and protecting an economic activity on which the region’s supply leaned and ultimately depended. In addition to the institutional inequalities that characterised the regions of Vizcaya, Guipuzcoa and Alava during this time, power relations initiated by the groups that interfered in the sector led to the superposition of certain interests that not always favourable or to the liking of the majority. Aware of its undoubtedly strategic nature, the monarchy also played a fundamental role in this process, in terms of meeting and mediating the needs of councils, committees and owners of mines and industries, at the same time as providing a whole set of incentives for encouraging production whilst safeguarding the general interests of the Crown. Based on these premises and focusing attention on the spheres of power, economic practice and taxation, this paper aims to describe and analyse this complex web of actions and interests that eventually shaped the Basque iron market in precise and unequivocal terms.