Chapter Economic inequalities in an Iberian urban society: Tortosa before and after the Black Death

Abstract

The city of Tortosa was one of the most important urban centres in late medieval Catalonia, mainly thanks to its river port, which linked the Iberian interior to the Mediterranean trade networks. In the archives of Tortosa there are several registers of wealth, called manifests, which served as the basis for the distribution of direct taxes according to the wealth of each taxpayer. This paper examines the only two manifests that are complete, those of 1316 and 1353: together they allow us to study the impact of the Black Death on population and wealth. The paper first describes the socio-economic and urban structure of the city in the fourteenth century and then the main features of the sources used. Secondly, it examines the structure and evolution of the distribution of population and wealth between 1316 and 1353. Finally, we propose some reflections on the impact of the plague of 1348 on both economic inequality and the demographic structure of the city of Tortosa.