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The reputation of Petrarch as being the man to initiate the Renaissance with his historical consciousness, his correlative attempt to imitate classical style, and his representation of the self as divided is discussed, focusing on his successful works, Africa and Trionfi. The use of Dido as the most powerful objection to imperial ideology and the reconstruction of Roman forms instigate the visible sign of a new disciplinary force than it serves a truly historical consciousness.

English poets in the Renaissance wrote politically charged elegies using the style and symbolism of the Latin poet Ovid. The Earl of Surrey wrote an elegy to Thomas Wyatt in 1503 that directly insulted the King using Roman symbolism. Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century poem 'Complaint Unto Pity' is Ovidian in all its features.

Guido delle Colonne's 'Historia destructionis Troiae' is a less popular book that focuses on the Trojan war as compared to the 'Aeneid.' Its translations constitute a considerable part of English vernacular writing in the 14th and 15th centuries concerned with the fall of kings and empires. The tradition contained in the texts affects rhetoric and anachronism and can be distinguished from the historiographical tradition of imperial foundation and expansion and the narrative of imperial foundation. Unlike those traditions, the Guido tradition is anti-imperialistic in a variety of ways.

Indicators of the good health of Spanish economic history include the growing number of publications in English, the proliferation in the number of academic journals within Spain, and the fact that the 1998 International Economic History Congress is to be held in Seville. It is not possible to provide here a general note on all aspects of recent research, but this essay offers a critical examination of the major arguments advanced for the slow growth in the Spanish economy over the century or so before the civil war of 1936-9. The period after 1936 has been excluded because, although many of the obstacles to development remained until the 1960s, three excellent surveys of the literature have recently been published.(1) Where possible, English versions of works are cited, and the essay lists only those Spanish publications which are likely to be relatively easily obtainable. After considering recent estimates of economic growth and development, the survey tries to explain the slow change by looking at three areas: agriculture, industry, and the role of the state.

Spain's Republican government from 1931 to 1936 enacted no meaningful land reform, which became one of the root causes of the Spanish Civil War, not only because the conditions of the rural poor worsened. Analysis of statistics show that economic conditions in Andalusia remained about the same, which was a problem because economic conditions for everyone else got better. The area was known for its tendency towards unrest but the government did little to intervene and fluctuations in harvests caused difficulties for the workers in the region during that period, increasing the impact of their poverty.

The question of faith in one particular tradition of interpretation of religion is dealt with. It is argued that no tradition can claim superiority over other, as one interpretative community is different from the other. So interpretation is necessarily a matter of choice, be it hermeneutics, deconstruction or positivism.

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Wine cooperatives were relatively scarce in Europe before the Second World War, but by the 1980s accounted for more than half of all wines made in France, Italy, and Spain, the three major producer countries. Unlike Danish dairy cooperatives, whose success before the First World War was linked to their ability to improve product quality and compete in high-value niche markets, wine cooperatives are often associated with the production of large volumes of low-quality products. This article argues that the initial slow diffusion of wine cooperatives was caused by the difficulties of improving quality due to environmental conditions in European vineyards ('terroir') and measurement problems, rather than institutional shortcomings. Cooperatives only became widespread when the state found them a useful instrument to regulate markets, especially after 1950. The problems associated with poor wine quality were never resolved, and cooperatives have become increasingly uncompetitive in the market place, especially following the major decline in per capita consumption and shift towards premium wines from the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For long periods, and in line with recent theoretical literature, the rabassa morta sharecropping contract successfully reduced problems of moral hazard and opportunistic behavior, and provided incentives for sharecroppers to respond to market opportunities. However, from the late nineteenth century, technical change, rising wages, and weak wine prices all increased the incentives for postcontractual opportunistic behavior on the part of the sharecropper, leading to conflicts and loss of trust between the principal and agent. Under these conditions, contemporaries often considered the contract synonymous with 'exploitation' and 'impoverishment,' terms frequently found in the more traditional literature on sharecropping.

Copyright of Historia Agraria is the property of Historia Agraria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)