Nature's Evil

The Shepherd Brotherhood, or Mesta – the first agricultural corporation in European history – was created for dealing with the Merinos. The Mesta didn’t own any sheep and didn’t pay the shepherds; it was a guild and not a joint stock company. It branded every Merino and noted the brand markings in special books; it also licensed the shepherds. All these operations combined the ancient practice of transhumance with the complex logistics that could be achieved only by a bureaucratic state. From the end of the fifteenth century, the head of the Mesta became a member of the Consejo Real , the Spanish cabinet of ministers. The shepherds of the Mesta became a privileged stratum; they were exempt from military service and civil law. Authorised officials of the Mesta defended them in local conflicts. The courts of the Inquisition also supported them.

But then, just about the time when America was discovered, the Spanish Empire fell into a debt crisis. Charles I, king of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, involved the powerful banker Jakob Fugger in these transactions, and after 1545 the house of Fugger controlled the finances of the Mesta (see chapter 6 ). Most of the wool was now sent to Spanish Flanders for spinning and weaving; Bruges was the centre for this activity. Pirates and storms increased the cost of transportation: in the middle of the sixteenth century a sack of Spanish wool cost three times as much in Bruges as in Burgos. The influx of American silver exacerbated the problems. Imported goods cost now five times more, but the price of wool only doubled. The volume of wool exports fell, and old truths had to be revisited. The enlightened historian Pedro Campomanes became in 1762 head of the Treasury and, later, head of the Council of Castile. Judging that the privileges of the Mesta acted as a hindrance on the path to development, he persuaded the king that more tax could be obtained from arable land than from pasture; that settled sheep rearing was more profitable than transhumance; and that the population was denser on the northern coast where there was no Mesta presence. Supporting his ideas with field research, he wrote two substantial volumes about the damage caused by the Mesta . Like his contemporary Adam Smith, Campomanes believed that landowners were better placed to decide on how to use their land than state bureaucrats. 15

By the end of the seventeenth century the Mesta was on the verge of bankruptcy. The price of grain rose while the price of wool fell. Cavalry horses displaced the Merinos from the best meadows. The most unusual privileges were abolished. Liberal lawyers characterised the Mesta as ‘the enemy of the towns’. Only then was it discovered that Merino sheep were perfectly happy leading a settled existence. Smuggling delivered the final blow: in 1720 a flock of Merino sheep was sold to Sweden; then they appeared in Prussia and France. Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, imported Merino sheep to England, and Jefferson took some to North America. In 1836 the new Spanish government banned the use of the word Mesta . Throughout the world, flocks of Merino sheep now grazed on fenced pastures.

Leviathan in sheep’s clothing

Medieval England, like Spain, exported wool to Flanders. In the mid-fourteenth century, King Edward III, wanting to celebrate the importance of wool in the country’s revenue, ordered his lord chancellor to sit on the Woolsack. The Company of Merchant Adventurers, founded in 1407, enjoyed a monopoly on wool exports and was hugely successful under Henry VII; financed by the company, ‘wool churches’ all around East Anglia testify to its ambition. 16 Eager to do business with the company, landowners replaced their traditional grain and meat production with wool, which could now be traded and taxed. This caused a rapid growth in state revenue. Not content with their own fields and pastures, the landlords turned to the commons to provide more grazing land. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, English landowners, with the support of Parliament, took arable land and common meadows from the peasants, enclosed the plots, and put sheep on them. The smallholders and the poor had used these fields for producing wheat, meat and dairy products for their survival. Enclosing these plots, the landowners lost their tenants but increased their flocks: unlike humans, the sheep were able to ‘turn sand into gold’. The interests of the landowners, the merchants and the crown finally coincided.