In this article we argue that Ming China had a fundamental impact on the rise and decline of the Spanish Empire. China's demand for silver was of such magnitude that private mining profits in the Spanish Empire remained high until about 1640. The decline of these profits led to abandon production. Spain faced a deepening financial crisis due to the fall of silver's value. The loss of purchasing power from the Crown's American enterprise was inevitable and the state's relentless pressure for increased taxation within Castile and elsewhere was mandatory in order to compensate for lost external purchasing power.

This article studies the Spanish Tax on Consuptions during the second half of the 19th century. It focuses on three issues: a), its significance within the funding of local governments; b), its importance to explain the protests against taxation in the 19th century; and c), its incidence. Our hypothesis is that the mutinies against this tax constituted one of the recurring practices of the resistances against taxation in the 19th century, but not the most important, represented by the tax defraudation. It is also indicated that the Tax on Consumptions was not only a tax on expenditure, and was in part transferred to agriculture. We provide some data that question the exclusively urban character that has been usually attributed to this tax.

The aim of this work is to study the foreign trade in agrarian products and foodstuffs during the period 1849–1935. To that end, we have first carried out an analysis of the evolution and composition of agrarian products imports, thereafter reflecting on the reasons which explain the U turn in policy which gave rise to protectionism in 1891 and its effects on these imports.

The second section concentrates on the tendency followed by agrarian exports, seeking to explain the causes for the changes to their make-up.

The work concludes with an attempt to study simultaneously the behaviour of agrarian exports and imports, in order to analyse both their mutual influence and their global effects over the totality of the Spanish economy.

The goal of this article is to inquire into the knowledge and sensibility of Keynes with regard to the entrepreneurial world. The vision of Keynes is faced to the interpretation of Marshall. The main conclusion is that Keyne's entrepreneurial ideas led him to misunderstand the reasons and consequences of the industrial decline of the U.K. On the contrary, Marshall, an strict academic, was capable of a better understanding of the English industrial decay.

Pedro Rodriguez Campomanes (1723–1802) is one the most interesting personalities in the political scene of the long Charles III reign. He possessed a great intelligence, a strong character and a non common working capacity. His family was one of modest «hidalgos» in Asturias, and he leaved very young to try his own destiny in the capital. He worked as an assistant and was afterwards a lawyer, always linked to the progrssive groups of «novatores» in Madrid. His entrance to the Public Administration (1755), and above all to the Counsel of Castile (1762), took place in connection with the political struggel against the dominant faction of the «colegiales», who were united to the Jesuits and to the Inquisition. He stands out, most of all, as a public prosecutor in the Counsel, collaborating in the reforms of Charles III and his more progressive ministers.