Institutionalising Patents in Nineteenth-Century Spain

David Pretel

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319962986
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

This book examines the development of the Spanish patent system in the years 1826 to 1902, providing a fundamental reassessment of its evolution in an international context. The Spanish case is particularly interesting because of this country's location on the so-called European periphery and also because of the centrality of its colonial dimension. Pretel gauges the political regulation and organisation of the system, showing how it was established and how it evolved following international patterns of technological globalisation and the emergence of the 'international patent system' during the late nineteenth century.

Crucially, he highlights the construction and evolution of the patent system in response to the needs of Spain's technologically dependent economy.The degree of industrial backwardness in mid-nineteenth-century Spain set the stage for the institutionalisation of its modern patent system. This institutionalisation process also entailed the introduction of a new technological culture, social infrastructure and narrative that supported intellectual property rights. This book is important reading to all those interested in the history of patents and their role in globalisation.

© The Author(s) 2018

David PretelInstitutionalising Patents in Nineteenth-Century SpainPalgrave Studies in Economic Historyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96298-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Institutionalising Backwardness

David Pretel¹

(1)

El Colegio de Mexico (COLMEX), Mexico City, Mexico

David Pretel

Abstract

The relative industrial backwardness of nineteenth-century Spain set the stage for the institutionalisation of its patent system between 1826 and 1902. International patterns of technological development, industrialisation and trade largely explain the distinctive peripheral character of Spain’s patent system and its institutional organisation. The institutionalisation of patent rights in this country went hand in hand with the expansion of a new industrial culture, socio-technical infrastructure and a rhetoric in support of intellectual property rights. This chapter provides the historical context and analytical framework for an understanding of the evolution of the Spanish patent institution and culture during the nineteenth century.

Keywords

BackwardnessTechnologyCultureInstitutionsAgencyPatents

End Abstract

On 1 May 1851, Queen Victoria inaugurated The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations in London, hailed as an unprecedented global event. The Exhibition took place in Hyde Park in a single sizeable landmark building that would become an icon of modernity, the Crystal Palace designed by Joseph Paxton. In record time, only 11 months, this massive prefabricated building would be constructed with vast quantities of steel, timber and glass supplied by manufacturers from several parts of the country. The pioneering introduction of the railway throughout Britain provided the infrastructure to move the various components to London. The large exhibition hall that housed this great exaltation and celebration of modern industry was in itself the foremost example of British economic hegemony during the Victorian era. Great Britain was by then the first industrial country, the factory of the world. Inside the Crystal Palace, dozens of countries, including Spain, exhibited their most representative products, from steam engines to samples of wool or charcoal to extravagant art samples such as the Medieval Court of the architect A. W. N. Pugin.

According to the chronicles of the time, the massive scale of the steam engines exhibited in the Machinery Hall sparked great admiration among the over six million visitors who attended London’s Exhibition. The celebration of inventions and inventors was an essential part of the event. Technology was seen as the source of British economic superiority, and the Great Exhibition was a cathedral of industrial progress. Concerns about the social consequences of mechanisation and the relative decline of British industrialisation were, however, not uncommon during the Great Exhibition as evidenced by the opinions of, among others, Charles Babbage and Lyon Playfair.¹

In addition to highlighting British industrial supremacy and economic power, the London Exhibition served as a space to unleash international comparisons. The public presentation of the latest mechanical inventions before the delegates of various countries itself had an exacerbating effect on nationalism. Periodicals and popular writings on the Exhibition made stereotyped judgements between the civilised West and the barbarian East, between prosperous Protestantism and impoverished Catholicism. While the internationalist ideal was one of the pillars of the event, the apparent material disparities that emerged during the Exhibition led local commentators to emphasise British exceptionalism.²

At the Crystal Palace, each country was assigned a space to exhibit its cutting-edge products, techniques and designs. Nearly half of the approximately 14,000 total exhibitors were from Great Britain . Spain had 289 exhibitors (see Fig. 1.1 for an illustration of the kinds of products showcased by Spanish manufacturers and artisans). The chronicles of the Exhibition evidenced the limited relevance and quality of the goods and inventions presented by Spain, while the official catalogue of the Exhibition directly deplored Spain’s dismal participation.³ Catalonia, despite being that country’s most industrially advanced region, only contributed 24 exhibitors to the London World’s fair. One of the Spanish representatives at the Exhibition, the Catalan economist and politician Joan Yllas Vidal, admitted that he blushed with disappointment when he visited the Spanish section.⁴ Yllas wrote extensively about this world’s fair, including his A Look at the London Exhibition published in Barcelona in 1852.⁵ The Spanish magazine La Ilustración went a step further and correlated British mechanical superiority with the reliability of its patent system, which encouraged invention and industrial progress.⁶ In a similar vein, the weekly The Illustrated London News also drew attention to the poor Spanish participation, despite Spain’s superior natural resources, and blamed Spain’s lack of industrial wealth to its pervasive traditions and prejudices, which the magazine claimed were more influential than its laws.⁷

Fig. 1.1

Spain’s exhibit at London’s Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851. (Source: Dickinson’s Comprehensive pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851: from the originals painted for H.R.H. Prince Albert (London: Dickinson Brothers, 1854))

Despite the liberal reforms introduced in Spain during the two decades prior to the 1851 world’s fair, the country remained technologically backward relative to industrial leaders, particularly Britain . A modern patent law had been introduced, engineering schools had been established and tariffs on machinery imports had been reduced—all with the goal of promoting technological progress, yet without much success. Although some new industrial sites, expert professionals and mechanical journals had emerged, Spain primarily remained an impoverished, agrarian and illiterate country, with very limited technological stock and industrial capabilities. This relative industrial failure was explained by many contemporary commentators as the consequence of Spanish culture and institutions.⁸ According to the stereotype, the essence of Spanish culture was a proclivity for leisure, a lack of entrepreneurial initiative and a disregard for the law. This characterisation contrasted sharply with the popular image of mid-nineteenth-century British culture, which was identified with creativity, rationality, innovation, moderation and openness to change.⁹

Yet while Spain was far from enjoying a widespread use of industrial technologies, the machine gradually became the dominant symbol of economic progress in this country during the mid-nineteenth century. Foreign technologies became signifiers of modernity while national artisanal products were increasingly considered archaic. Notwithstanding Spain’s apparent industrial backwardness, domestic political and economic elites were attracted—with important exceptions such as some agrarian classes—by the virtues of mechanisation and its promise of a better material future.¹⁰ In his 1865 article ‘Should Spain Be an Industrial Country?’ Ramón de Morenés, deputy director of the Telegraph Corps, who would win a bronze medal at the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1867, put it eloquently: ‘When industry develops, the products of the earth will be multiplied a hundredfold and the most painful tasks will be done efficiently and cheaply by powerful iron machines’.¹¹ Along similar lines, but some years later, the politician and jurist Manuel Dánvila, instrumental in regulating intellectual property rights in Spain during the 1870s, declared in 1882 that the ‘civilising action of steam and electricity’ demanded the universal protection of human inventiveness and industrial activity.¹²

Spain’s Technological Backwardness

In the European context, Spain was a paradigmatic example of relatively low levels of industrial innovation during the nineteenth century.¹³ This may explain why Spain, despite periods of considerable growth, failed to achieve any real convergence, in macroeconomic terms, with the most advanced European economies during the second half of the nineteenth century.¹⁴ The history of nineteenth-century Spanish industrialisation is one of assimilation of already available foreign technologies. It is not one of invention but of imitation and adaptation to local contexts. In other words, it is the history of a delayed mechanisation and industrialisation of a technologically backward country in the European periphery . Over the course of the nineteenth century, technical capabilities and industrial productivity remained lower in Spain than on the other side of the Pyrenees.

Although it had failed in its attempts at industrialisation, nineteenth-century Spain was not without industry and machines.¹⁵ The introduction of industrial technology followed well-defined regional patterns and was concentrated in a range of sectors, including metallurgy, textiles, railways, weapons, chemicals and commercial services. Most Spanish regions failed to industrialise; others, such as Catalonia, were early-industrialisers (thanks notably to Barcelona’s cotton textile industry).¹⁶ Likewise, some Spanish regions of the maritime periphery and the capital city of Madrid would follow a pattern of late industrialisation during the final decades of the nineteenth century. Several industrial districts in smaller towns in Catalonia, Valencia and the Basque Country would also concentrate sector-specific technological microcultures with higher innovation rates during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.¹⁷

Even when some Spanish regions did industrialise, relatively speaking, they remained well below the production levels of the most advanced industrial regions of Western Europe and the United States . In general, the last two decades of the nineteenth century in Spain were a period of economic depression and failed economic convergence with Western Europe and the United States . By the turn of the century, Spain was still not an industrial country and had lost its colonial possessions in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The scope of Spain’s lagging development, industrial failures and political disasters during the Restoration regime of the late nineteenth century has remained a controversial question in the historiography for decades, despite abundant empirical data.¹⁸

In an increasing international context of economic globalisation and integration of the world markets, nineteenth-century Spain remained de...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Institutionalising Backwardness
• 2. Making the System
• 3. Organising the System
• 4. The International Dimension
• 5. The Colonial Dimension
• 6. Inventing Late Industrialisation
• Back Matter