La Peste Noire contribua à accentuer la tension social déjà existante en Pays Catalan. La subite diminution démographique y modifie la relation de force qui existait et permet à certains secteurs de ...la paysannerie d'exiger des propiétaires fonciers une réduction des prestations. Les seigneurs, une fois surmontée la perplexité dans laquelle les avait plongé le changement de conjoncture, essaient de compenser, par de nouvelles exigences auprès des cultivateurs des possessions, les concessions qu'ils durent s'imposer au moment de la phase culminante de la crise. C'est alors, pendant le troisième quart du XIVeme siècle, quand les mauvais usages se fusionnent avec la rançon et deviennent les signes d'identité de la condition servile. L'oppósition paysanne contre la pression seigneuriale devient, d'un mouvement spontané et inorganisé qu'il était, un front de résistance coordonnée. La montée de la tension sociale à la campagne et la nécessité d'affirmer son autorité devant les feudataires, incitent la Monarchie à intervenir dans le conflit. Les Conseillers de Joan Iet de Martí l'Humà tentent d'utiliser l'énergie des paysans pour refaire l'autorité et le patrimoine du souverain, bien mal menés à cause des difficultés économiques passées et récentes. A partir de 1400, la Couronne transfère sur les communautés campagnardes les coûts de la récupération des juridictions locales qui, sous la pression de déficits budgétaires répétés s’étaient vues obligées de mettre en gage leurs richesses ou de vendre à des membres de l'aristocratie. La redevance se répartira, dans chaque ville ou village, entre tous les habitants, en accord avec leurs patrimoines respectifs. L’initiative de la cour, bien accueillie par les petits propiétaires et les exploitants aisés, n'éveilla guère d'enthousiasme parmi les paysans pauvres, plus intéressés à se libérer du paiement de la rançon et des droits de servage que d'entrer dans la juridiction royale. Les seigneurs opposèrent une résistance ferme à la mesure qui tendait à les priver d'une importante source de revenus et d'un moyen efficace d'influence politique. Le processus de rançons juridictionnelles augmenta, ce qui accrut la tension sociale à la campagne, du fait de l'appauvrissement d'un important secteur de la paysannerie, et aiguillonna l'agressivité entre les puissants. En l’espace de deux ans, 1427 et 1428, une calamité naturelle secoua la société catalane déjà hargneuse: une série de tremblements de terre destructifs à la Garrotxa, la Selva et les contrées avoisinantes font sentir d'une façon plus aiguë la diminution démographique, font empirer la crise économique et les affrontements d'intérets. La hâte des affectés à reconquérir la normalité est imputable tant à l'importance des dégâts comme au manque d'économies, de consensus social et d'une vision encourageante du propre futur.
The Romans discovered oriental spices in the first half of the 3th century BC, following the conquest of Magna Grecia. From then on, its consumption gradually increased among the elites and caused, ...despite the criticism from the most conservative sectors of the society, a growing of strong currency. Spices circulated between the Far East and the eastern Mediterranean along two networks of land and sea routes. Rome tried to increase its control over these routes with variable results. The growing consumption of exotic condiments was reflected in Apicio’s cookbook, literature and imperial customs tarifs. After the fall of Western Empire, the supply of spices, in both Mediterranean basins, was reduced and lost variety, but did not collapse. After bottoming in the second quarter of the 7th century, following the Islamic expansion, trade was reactivated by different circuits to those created by Rome.
Towards the end of the 13th century the kingdom of Majorca strengthened its relationsships with the Crown of Aragon, once it obtained its renounciation to its claims upon the Belarics islands, ...through the Argelers agreement. Together, the two states created by James I the Conqueror’s anachronistic policy towards his own succession, opposed the French advance towards the Pyrenees and the Corberes mountains; they also resisted Ligurian hostility towards them in the both basin of the Mediterranean. The alliance, however, entailed costs for James II of Majorca, who was not able to force the Catalan merchants to the payment of the new Baleaic Islands tariff. It also entailed costs for his homonymous nephew in Aragon, who had to accept the setting up of an independent monetary system in the Balearic enclave as well as the proliferation of Majorican consulates in the Maghrib. At the same time, the gouvernments of Barcelona and Perpignan, throuhgh a joint diplomatic pressure, obtained substancial results in theirs respective conflicts with the French monarchy; by 1313, at the Treatise of Poissy the commercial traffic in the Gulf of Leon and the Pyrenean border was normalized, some mechanisms for the compensation of the afecteds by the reciprocal confiscations of goods were established, and the Valley of Aran was returned and reintegrated into Catalonia.
James I, like his contemporaries Emperor Frederick II and Fernando III of Castile, was a major figure of the Mediterranean and Iberian Middle Ages. The scope of his achievements fully justifies the ...scientifically rigorous and forward-looking analysis of his work and inheritance being undertaken in 2008 by the peoples who were once part of the Catalan-Aragonese crown. For indeed, though some of his enterprises reveal insufficient foresight, a lack of vision of the future, much of what we are today in the demographic, economic, social, political and cultural spheres — and much of what we are not — was initially forged during his reign.
Great personages, however, do not arise from nowhere or operate in a void: they are always the fruit of earlier ages and act within a particular context. Their powerful actions, moreover, produce an impact on their own era, causing it to evolve in accordance with their projects and building up a legacy. So what were the essential traits of the historical context of James I? When he occupied the throne, the final phase in the long period of demographic and economic growth fuelled by the feudal system all over the Western World was drawing to a close; a strong upsurge in trade was getting underway, closely associated with structural surpluses of farm produce caused by the reclaiming of barren land for two hundred years, increases in the amount of money in circulation and the availability of credit, and advances in technology and thought. During the first two-thirds of the 13th century, the development of long-distance trading gave shape to western Europe along the Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboards and boosted the role of the bourgeoisie in economic, political and cultural life. It was a period of transition, during which the new Roman law vied with ancient feudal norms and the concentration of power in the hands of monarchs who no longer considered themselves merely the leading members of the nobility laid the foundations of the new territorial states. It was an age when sovereigns strove to make inroads into seigneuries that enjoyed immunity so as to recover jurisdictional and fiscal control over all the lands in their respective kingdoms; an age of rebellious nobles and administrative and tax reform, of the advance of ius commune over consuetudinary law. And it was then that curricula were renewed in the nascent universities, starting with law and medicine. While all these changes were taking place, the crusaders' last enclaves in Holy Land were slowly waning under pressure from the Mamluks, the Mongols were advancing on eastern Europe, and Christianity was fast gaining ground at the expense of Islam in the western Mediterranean.
El arroz asiático fue domesticado hacia el 8000 a.C. en la China meridional, desde donde se expandió hacia el sur y el oeste. Llegó al Mediterráneo oriental en el siglo II d.C., por Egipto y ...Palestina. Para griegos y romanos el nuevo cereal no fue más que un alimento exótico y secundario. El protagonismo de su expansión correspondió a los árabes, quienes, entre los siglos IX y XII, difundieron su cultivo y su consumo por el norte de África y la Península ibérica. En alAndalus, el arroz se convirtió en un alimento de lujo para colectivos sociales privilegiado
Durante la Alta Edad Media, la expansión islámica estimuló una profunda renovación agraria en la franja de territorios comprendidos entre la India y la Península Ibérica. La nueva agricultura ...musulmana introdujo en el Mediterráneo Occidental especies vegetales desconocidas, como la caña de azúcar, el arroz, los cítricos, la berenjena y la espinaca. Estos cinco alimentos desempeñaron, entre los siglos X y XIII, un papel muy importante en la cocina andalusí. Los catalanes, en la Baja Edad Media, adoptaron bastantes elementos culturales islámicos. La alta cocina cristiana integró estos productos a su propio estilo, creando recetas bastante diferentes a los modelos islámicos.
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