Chapter Economic inequalities and transformations of the rural world in the Iberian Peninsula before and after the Black Death

Abstract

This article studies economic inequality in late medieval Iberia, from the mid-thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth century, based on three observatories – Olite, Oriola and Vera – located in the north and southeast of the peninsula. To this end, we have used fiscal sources, the most common in this type of research, as well as a lesser-known source that has not previously been used to study inequality: the so-called libros de repartimiento (distribution books), which record the allocations made to Christian settlers during the colonization process that followed the great conquests of the thirteenth century and again at the end of the fifteenth century. The results obtained from the various measurement indexes are contextualised and compared with those available for other sites in the peninsula in order to provide an overall view.