This is in the first instance an account of the growth of Barcelona from a governmental and agricultural center to one of the dominant powers of the Western Mediterranean. Barcelona and its Rulers is the first book in English to consider the history of medieval Barcelona and the emergence of its patriciate. Bensch concentrates on the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whereas most Catalan scholarship concerning the city has been devoted to its origins and first growth in the eleventh century or its prolonged decline in the fifteenth century.
The book is also an important work of comparative history, placing Barcelona's evolution against the dominant model of northern Italian towns. Bensch is able to show that Barcelona did not conform to this model, but beyond that, he calls into question the unexamined assumptions about Mediterranean urban development based on the Italian examples.
As a history of Barcelona over two centuries, Barcelona and its Rulers makes an important contribution to the history of Catalonia and of Mediterranean trade. Bensch has thoroughly examined the massive archival material that survives for this period, mostly in the comital collections (the Archive of the Crown of Aragon) and in the equally large but only slowly organized cathedral archive of Barcelona. His reconstructions of family history, urban topography, crafts, and the economy are based on thousands of previously little-known and unknown parchments and registers.
Bensch shows how Barcelona grew initially (beginning right after its destruction by the Islamic armies in 985) as the center of comital government and a thriving although constricted agricultural region. Bonnassie and Ruiz Domenec first demonstrated the establishment of this agricultural base from which, they believed, there succeeded smoothly commercial expansion and an assertive mercantile class. Bensch argues convincingly that the history of Barcelona did not proceed in a linear fashion but rather in uneven and unpredictable steps. The years 1090 to 1140 saw stagnation and decline in economic activity. The city had reached the limits of its ability to expand its market role for agriculture and suffered the effects of the Almoravid renewal of Islam which ended the tributary payments from the weak party kingdoms bordering Catalonia and Aragon.
A second phase of expansion began in 1140, fueled by a combination of artisanal production, real estate development, commerce, and the financing of the ruling dynasty's expansion. The urban elite that developed out of this was different from that of the eleventh century. By the thirteenth century Barcelona had a powerful patriciate, but one that differed from the Italian pattern in that it had little corporate sense of identity or independence. Relations between the citizens of Barcelona and the monarchy were symbiotic and thus Barcelona lagged in the formation of urban government. Even the royal privilege of 1249 conferring certain powers of self-government was more a royal initiative (born of the desire for revenue) than the proof of urban assertiveness. As Bensch notes (p. 325), "Barcelona continued to function after 1249 much as it had done before, as a political organ within the enlarged body of the Crown of Aragon, not an independent merchant republic."
Additionally, members of the new elite did not adopt aristocratic practices nor ally themselves with noble families. While the first phase of Barcelona's expansion included the highest levels of the Catalan political order, notably the viscounts of Barcelona, the patriciate that formed after 1140 had little to do with the castle-holding classes of the countryside. Not only was there a sharp distinction between urban and rural elite, but the former did not adopt aristocratic practices in the Italian manner so that Barcelona lacked the urban clans, tower-societies, and factions of Genoa, Lombardy or Tuscany.
Barcelona, according to Bensch, seems an exception to common generalizations of Mediterranean urban historiography. It did not grow naturally out of an initial agricultural base. Its urban elite of the thirteenth century was sharply distinguished from the rural aristocracy. The patriciate did not set up institutions to throw off the central political authority. Even in rather particular aspects Barcelona differed from northern Italian towns: the rise in the amount of dowry did not render women powerless or deprived of property; the institution of the consulate was not a sign of political autonomy and was never influential.
In Barcelona, unlike the towns of northern Italy, urban government did not displace a weakened central authority. The power of the counts of Barcelona did not diminish and indeed the development of overseas commerce was joined to the expansion of Aragon-Catalonia. Additionally, Barcelona never controlled a contado but rather became progressively less involved with the nobles and peasants in the areas beyond its narrow surrounding territorium. Finally the structure of class and family was radically different in Barcelona from the agnatic clans that dominated and feuded over the Italian cities. Barcelona's patriciate did not divide up the city nor did they manifest an aristocratic outlook by their marriage patterns, concepts of lineage or dowry practices.
These findings, supported as they are by impeccable archival investigation, correct an over-emphasis on the northern Italian experience as a model for Mediterranean urban development. Bensch also restores some of the distinctiveness of the city and its institutions against the tendency to blur the boundaries of urban and rural societies that has prevailed since the era of Pirenne when the image of a defiant, anti-aristocratic commercial class was at its height. Barcelona's elite citizens were distinct in their economic activities, shallow sense of lineage and corporate cohesion, but at the same time this distinctiveness did not translate into political autonomy.
In recent history Barcelona has attracted so much of the Catalan population that it is common to speak of "Catalunya- ciutat"--the demography and identity of Catalonia concentrated in its one gigantic city. While the medieval city did not have quite the same preponderance, it shared with contemporary Barcelona its combination of sophisticated, polyglot entrepot and symbol and admired (rather than resented) capital; distinct and yet not ideologically separated from the larger polity. Bensch has effectively demonstrated the origins of Barcelona's power and character while showing us a more complex medieval Mediterranean world.