UCLA

Around the year 1300, after over three hundred years of sustained economic growth, Europe entered a period of prolonged crisis and recession. This thesis examines the economic development of a Pyrenean town, Puigcerd�, and the surrounding valley, Cerdanya, between 1260 and 1360, during this transition. I examine the economic role this valley played in southern Europe and show that Puigcerd� experienced an unusually profound transition from growth to contraction beginning in the 1340s. I begin, in Part 1, with an extended methodological analysis of the notarial institution of medieval Puigcerd�, to demonstrate that notarial sources may be used as accurate proxies for understanding economic and demographic trends. Part 2 examines the population and economy of Puigcerd� in one year, based on in-depth analysis of over 7,800 notarial entries surviving from the year 1321/2. I introduce a new method for estimating population using notarial registers and show that the town had a likely population of around 8,500 people in 1321/2. I also examine the structure of the valley’s economy, revealing that industrial and commercial activity were dominated by the cloth industry, while much of the local agricultural activity centered on sheepherding.

In Part 3, I examine how the town’s economy rose and fell, and the shifts in the valley’s connections to other regions and broader trade networks between 1260 and 1360. Using sampled acts from decade-long intervals, I show that the town’s economy rose during the late-thirteenth century led largely by the early growth of a local cloth industry. The economy stagnated in the early fourteenth century, even as the town began to become increasing connected, through the cloth trade, to distant regions. Finally, the town faced a profound economic and demographic collapse that began in the 1340s around the time of Cerdanya’s reincorporation into the Crown of Aragon. Many wealthier members of Puigcerdan society, often from mercantile families who had begun exporting Puigcerdan cloth, particularly in Aragon, Navarre and Castile, relocated to Lleida and Barcelona shortly after reincorporation into the Crown of Aragon, undoubtedly contributing to the decline. My findings highlight the need for greater attention to regional and sub-regional differences in studying medieval economic growth and decline and suggest that late-medieval regional integration benefited central cities, at the expense of peripheral towns like Puigcerd�.