Mallorca keeps an age-old biocultural heritage embodied in their appealing landscapes, largely exploited as an intangible tourist asset. Although hotel and real estate investors ignore or despise the peasant families who still persevere in farming amidst this worldwide-known tourist hotspot, the Balearic Autonomous Government has recently started a pay-for-ecosystem-services scheme based on the tourist eco-tax collection that offers grants to farmers that keep the Majorcan cultural landscapes alive, while a growing number of them have turned organic. How has this peasant heritage survived within such a global tourist capitalist economy? We answer this question by explaining the socio-ecological transition experienced from the failure of agrarian capitalism in the island, and the ensuing peasantization process during the first half of the 20th century through a local banking-driven and market-oriented land reform. Then, the early tourist specialization during the second half of the 20th century and the spatial concentration of the Green Revolution only in certain areas of the island meant a deep marginalization of peasant farming. Ironically, only a smallholder peasantry could keep cultivating these sustenance-oriented marginal areas where traditional farming was partially maintained and is currently being reinvigorated by turning organic. Now the preservation of these biocultural landscapes, and the keeping of the ecosystem services it provides to Majorcan society, requires keeping this peasantry alive.

Recently, an intense historiographical debate has developed concerning female participation in rural labour markets and its impact on the gender wage gap before 1800. The underlying hypothesis is that increased participation of women in the labour market should lead to a reduction in the wage gap and a parallel improvement in their life conditions. However, research results to date are inconclusive. This article aims to address some of these issues, using the island of Mallorca during the seventeenth century as a case study. Female par ticipation in the labour market was more intense there than in other Mediterranean and Atlantic regions. In addition, the seasonality of labour demand on the island provoked more instances of collusion than complementarity with regard to agrarian tasks, in contrast with what happened in Atlantic regions. Finally, we also explain why higher rates of female occupation did not necessarily imply a significant reduction of the gender wage gap.

The permanence of slave labour until the 16th century was a lasting legacy of the late feudal colonization of the Mallorca Island. Through a large set of probate inventories and accounting books, we have documented the use of a great deal of slaves in farming large noble estates during the 14th and 15th centuries. The defeat of the peasant revolt of 1450–1454 offered to nobles and patricians the opportunity to seize much of the land previously colonized by Mallorcan peasants. This creation of a dispossessed peasantry, combined with new trade demands, led to a transition from slave-powered manorial farms to capitalist olive oil-exporting estates that took advantage of the low-wage workforce reserve. A peculiar feature was the massive use of women’s gangs as olive pickers when olive oil became the main cash-crop exported from the 16th century onwards. By linking changes in work and land uses, this study brings to Southern Europe the debate over the driving forces of the emergence of agrarian capitalism.

This article presents a method for estimating an annual series of English wheat production in physical units during the intriguing period of 1645-1761, when the English Agricultural Revolution began. It is based on Davenant’s Law and the assumption of a decrease in long-term crop variability, taking into account the yields obtained from probate inventories and farm accounts. The exercise confirms the idea that the King-Davenant accounting of the inverse variation of prices and quantities through price elasticity was indeed a common rule at that time, whereas income elasticity did not become a decisive factor until the mid-18th century. From then on it gained momentum, as can be observed by lengthening the series until 1884. The new series of English wheat production presented here also shows that, from a physical and environmental perspective, the Agricultural Revolution began before 1750 and resumed after 1800. The results are consistent with recent estimates of agricultural GDP put forward in the literature on English economic history.