Chapter An approach to inequality and social mobility in Northern Castile (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries)

Abstract

This work is a first approach to economic inequality and social mobility in the north of Castile in the 15th and 16th centuries, aspects that are little known and, especially, scarcely measured. On the one hand, the sources for their study are analysed. The second part establishes some quantifications of the evolution of economic inequality in different parts of the Duero Valley (the most populated and richest region in Spain at that time), showing how inequality increased as economic growth progressed. The third part studies social mobility in these two centuries, starting with two specific cases: access to the lower nobility in Castrojeriz; and socio-economic mobility and advancement in Olmedo. In both places, which are very representative of Castile as a whole, we observe a growing social mobility and the emergence of new elites in the heat of economic growth and, especially, the rise of trade.