How to maintain fair market relations, a major contemporary concern, is addressed in this study of the regulation of bread prices. The humble loaf serves as a prism through which to explore major developments in early modern European society and how public market regulation affected private economic life.

In this distinctive new history of the origins of the Spanish Civil War, James Simpson and Juan Carmona tackle the highly-debated issue of why it was that Spain's democratic Second Republic failed. They explore the interconnections between economic growth, state capacity, rural social mobility and the creation of mass competitive political parties, and how these limited the effectiveness of the new republican governments, and especially their attempts to tackle economic and social problems within the agricultural sector. They show how political change during the Republic had a major economic...