Occupation of a ‘rayana’ villa: Valencia de Alcántara at the end of the Old Regime

Abstract

The eighteenth century was a period of important changes. The demographic increase experienced since the beginning of the century and illustrated policies carried out —the loss of crops, fences and land shoulder—, produced a restructuring of economic activities that originated a sec- toral movement of its agents. The unpublished document presented here, the extraordinary military enlistment in 1795 in the town of valencia de alcántara, highlights these and other changes that occurred in the final moments of the old regime, facts that seem extensible to other places of the antique Province of extremadura.