Introduction; Part I. The European Experience: Economic and Political Development, 1870-1939: 1. The modernization of European societies; 2. European agriculture in an age of economic instability; Part II. Spanish Agriculture, Economic Development and Democracy: 3. The limits to Spanish modernization, 1850-1936; 4. Agricultural growth, regional diversity, and regional land-tenure regimes; Part III. Explaining the Weakness of the Family Farm: 5.

The family farm and the limits to village - level cooperation; 6. The persistence of the landed elites and the nature of farm lobbies; Part IV. Rural Elites, Poverty, and the Attempts at Land Reform: 7. Land ownership, economic development and poverty in Andalusia and southern Spain; 8. The limits to land reform; Part V. Rural Conflicts and the Polarization of Village Society: 9. Creating parties, political alliances, and interest groups: rural politics in the 1930s; 10. The growing polarization of rural society during the Second Republic; Conclusion; Appendix 1.

Agricultural statistics in Spain, France and Italy in the early 1930s; Appendix 2. Dry-farming and the economics of the family farm.