Why Democracy Failed

James Simpson is Professor at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. Among his many publications are Spanish Agriculture: The Long Siesta, 1765–1965 (1995) and Creating Wine: The Emergence of a World Industry, 1840–1914 (2011). Juan Carmona is Associate Professor at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. He has published widely on rural institutions, organizations and conflicts, including, with James Simpson, the book, El laberinto de la agricultura Española (2003).

• Introduction; Part I. The European Experience: Economic and Political Development, 1870–1939: 1. The modernization of European societies; 2. European agriculture in an age of economic instability; Part II. Spanish Agriculture, Economic Development and Democracy: 3. The limits to Spanish modernization, 1850–1936; 4. Agricultural growth, regional diversity, and regional land-tenure regimes; Part III. Explaining the Weakness of the Family Farm: 5. The family farm and the limits to village – level cooperation; 6. The persistence of the landed elites and the nature of farm lobbies; Part IV. Rural Elites, Poverty, and the Attempts at Land Reform: 7. Land ownership, economic development and poverty in Andalusia and southern Spain; 8. The limits to land reform; Part V. Rural Conflicts and the Polarization of Village Society: 9. Creating parties, political alliances, and interest groups: rural politics in the 1930s; 10. The growing polarization of rural society during the Second Republic; Conclusion; Appendix 1. Agricultural statistics in Spain, France and Italy in the early 1930s; Appendix 2. Dry-farming and the economics of the family farm.

'The Spanish Civil War was many wars, Catholics versus anti-clericals, regional nationalists versus centralists – especially military ones, and industrial workers versus employers. Arguably, the most divisive issue was the long-running agrarian war now illuminated by this sophisticated and lucid study. Within a lengthy chronological span and an awareness of the wider European and Latin-American context, the authors have produced a welcome and highly nuanced work that will supplant the now fifty-year old classic on the agrarian question by Edward Malefakis.' Sir Paul Preston, author of The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth Century Spain