Inequality and conflict as drivers of cooperation: the location of wine cooperatives in pre-1936 Spain

Abstract

As it is usually believed that cooperatives made a great contribution to the modernisation of agriculture and when they began to spread agriculture still had a great weight in European economies, it is of interest to know why agricultural cooperatives had uneven success, both from one crop to another and between and within countries. In this article, I focus on the intriguing case of wine, a product of great importance to Mediterranean Europe. After defending that, in actual fact, wine cooperatives were generally unable to offer members important economic advantages; I argue that they only flourished where some 'local' factor increased the attraction of belonging to them and, in addition, it was possible to finance their construction. I use what happened in France as a reference and show that in Spain both circumstances only converged in (a part of) Catalonia, as a paradoxical result of inequality and the social conflicts caused by a sharecropping contract called rabassa morta.

Vins, aiguardents i caves

“…D' aquesta manera s'han aconseguit resultats extraordinaris en l'increment en la qualitat i el valor afegit dels seus productes, cosa que s'ha traduït en un gran creixement de les seves vendes i especialment de la seva comercialització en determinats segments dels mercats internacionals. éxito de Miquel y Costat & Miquel (siglos xviii-xxi) (2016, darrerament també publicat en anglès)� Ha estat editor de Revista de Historia Industrial (2012-2021.…”

Assessing Corruption in Agricultural Cooperatives: Differences in the Perceived Level of Corruption Using Microdata

“…Although the number of cooperatives in relation to the number of enterprises, in general, is very small, there is still a lot of attention to cooperatives as an alternative organizational form (Boone & Özcan, 2014). The cooperative model has been regarded as the most appropriate to envelop the needed modernization of agriculture and its integration into the market (Ndongala, 1966;Garrido, 2020).…”

Old wine in new wineskins? Understanding the cooperative movement: Catalonia, 1860–1939

“…Samuel Garrido (2014), however, argues that social capital does not necessarily lead to the emergence of cooperatives, as shown by the citrus-growing cooperatives in eastern Spain. In fact, it has been recently suggested that wine cooperatives emerged in (a part of) Catalonia as a result of the unequal distribution of land and the ensuing political and social conflics (Garrido, 2020).…”

“…In economic history, several studies have recently explored the formation and development of cooperatives, broadly defined as organisations where profits or benefits are shared by their members (Henriksen et al 2012;Beltrán 2012;Martínez-Soto et al 2012;Garrido 2014Garrido , 2020Fernández 2014a;Fernández and Simpson 2017;Watts 2017;among others). Yet, little attention has been paid to the spatial dimension which, in turn, raises a relevant question.…”

“…Historical studies have claimed that the early development of agricultural cooperatives is related to property (land) structure, human capital, market access, as well as institutions and product specialisation (Henriksen 1999;Simpson 2000;O'Rourke 2007aO'Rourke , 2007bGarrido 2007Garrido , 2020; Martínez-Soto et al 2012;Fernández 2014b;Fernández and Simpson 2017). Likewise, these and other studies have investigated the implications of trust and social capital (Galassi 1999;Beltrán 2012;Fernández 2014a;Garrido 2014).…”