Chapter 119 0 General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Turkey

……

The taxation ideas of the Physiocrats are also worth learning from.

However, Ferdinand's current concern is actually different from that of the physiocrats.

In fact, Ferdinand's current concerns are somewhat similar to those of ancient China, although the causes of the problem are different.

He's really going to protect agriculture now – it's time for Spanish agriculture to really do it! While the power of the Mesta sheep main group is not large, Spain's food supply can still be self-sufficient! In the long run, arable land will be trampled and destroyed, and Spain will become a major importer of grain, which is not a proud status.

……

However, Valencia does offer good news in this regard. In Valencia, the power of the great nobles, the sheep lords, did not dominate.

As a province set up by the king of Aragon to fight south against the pacifists and regain the land inch by inch, the province of Valencia had roughly three main forces.

On the one hand, there is the royal family.

On the one hand, there were knights - small feudal nobles such as knights made great contributions in the war, were given a large amount of land, and had considerable independence, so they were also called the monk knight group. The acquisition of large tracts of land by the feudal minor nobles in Valencia was also a means for the king to win over the feudal minor nobles and suppress the large nobles.

On the other hand, there were the peasants - the war for the recovery of Granada could use more than 100,000 troops, and naturally a large number of peasants joined the army. The same is true of Ollie's war against the pacifists for more than two hundred years, and the support of the peasants is absolutely indispensable. Although the rewards were certainly not as good as those of the knights, there were benefits to the peasants – at that time, until 1492, large areas of rural Spain were still serfdom, but in places like Valencia, the northern peasants, after the victory in the Reconquista, moved to the newly recovered lands and became small land yeoman farmers or free village communities (the feudal obligations of the free village communities were greatly reduced, personal freedom, and land rights were increased).

Next, it was the turn of the "Mesta" sheep master group of the great nobles.

In the decades that followed, the Spanish royal family's extravagance and the sheer investment in religion and warfare led to the bankruptcy of the government, which forced high taxes on peasants and businessmen and allowed the sheep lords to trample on the land. The wool in Spain is different from that in England. English wool was produced locally, while Spanish wool was produced off-site, so it was extremely aggressive and devastating to agriculture, and the sheep herding industry of the great aristocracy spread everywhere, encroaching on almost all provinces, accompanied by a large number of bankruptcies of the peasants, the loss of land for small homesteaders, and the loss of freedom for free villages. Serfdom in Spain was strengthened when Western European countries gradually got rid of serfdom and established new rural economic and social relations in which tenant relations and even small peasants owned their own land.

Capitalism failed to establish itself in the Spanish countryside and to grow in the industrial sphere, and Spain passed by the title of the world's first capitalist country.

That being the case, it was necessary for Ferdinand to take some measures in Valencia to consolidate the socio-economic situation of this province, which had already been identified as a base for the development of its own continent.

"So, Valencia should start the enclosure movement......"

"To be precise, it was the French-style English enclosure movement in Valencia......"

The enclosure movement, famous in England, was sheep eating people, and homesteaders went bankrupt and lost their land. But it was also a large-scale land planning and reorganization to improve agricultural productivity, and it was an orderly reorganization of land that had been unclear in property rights since ancient times.

After all, the enclosure movement made it possible to increase agricultural productivity and make it possible for cities to grow. Overall, fewer people can now feed everyone. Britain was the first modern power in the world to make such a major leap forward.

Some French agricultural reformers saw the achievements of Britain and wanted to do similar land rezoning, but much of the land in France was owned by peasants, and the idea of communal life was so deeply rooted that even the absolutist monarch could not touch it - this was the "small life" of the French small farmers, who bravely defended their rights and interests, but also limited their profits, and although the French agricultural production was not bad, it was not able to get rid of the inefficient inhabitants who operated in a fragmented and scattered manner.

In the Spanish province of Valencia, Aragon, Ferdinand saw the prospect of a more positive effect on the enclosure movement, where land ownership was similar to that of France, and where peasants who had migrated from the north for the sake of land and freedom (albeit only a fraction more) were far less stubborn than their French counterparts.

The enclosure movement in this small peasant society will not only increase the productivity of all land as a whole, but in fact it will be more inclined to protect the interests of the peasants than the great aristocracy. With small landowners dominant, unclear division of land titles, and no basic law at all for the great aristocracy, the aristocracy was simple and crude, simply indulging their flocks and trampling on the peasants' farmland—and they did not want any farmland to be fenced off to interfere with their livestock.

Later, the great nobles pushed for a decree prohibiting the enclosure of cultivated land, which can be seen that enclosure will play a role in protecting agriculture here.

In the 21st century, Ferdinand wondered why Spain could not form a virtuous circle of capitalist ranches through the enclosure movement, as Britain did. Now that he has learned about the productivity situation and social reality in Spain, forget it, where does he have the time and energy to talk about the ways and means of animal husbandry with those big aristocrats, and talk about the so-called transformation and upgrading? I'm afraid that in the end, the mistakes of the past will be repeated, and the animal husbandry is still extensive and inefficient, and it has become a major importer of grain, which will make me cry without tears!

If the capitalist farms with the full development of animal husbandry cannot be ensured, then food self-sufficiency in agriculture should be guaranteed. Between the so-called capitalist farms, which were completely blind cats and rats, and the industries that made the peasants lose their land and go bankrupt and plunged into the future, and the pursuit of grain self-sufficiency, moderately completed intensive land management, and increased peasant incomes to expand the market, Ferdinand chose the latter.

Of course, this enclosure movement can only be carried out in Valencia at present, and if it is carried out in the province of Aragon, where the great nobles occupy large tracts of land and serfdom prevails, who knows if it will be, and it is very likely that there will be a large-scale encroachment on the land of the peasants and the displacement of bankrupt peasants, but Ferdinand has no plans to open a large number of workshops in the north-west, and the social problems will be great at that time.

In Valencia, Ferdinand had a greater grasp of the investigation, and began to prepare for the investigation at the beginning of 1495, and contacted the representatives of the local knights, free villages and other relevant parties, and was relatively well prepared.

Ferdinand in Valencia, on the question of agriculture, mainly united the representatives of knights, free villages, and small land yeoman farmers, and was about to be established - the Common Land Planning Management Committee, with His Majesty King Ferdinand himself as the ******** of the Common Land Planning Management Committee, referred to as the ***** of the Land Common Planning Management Committee.

……