José Ángel Lema Pueyo

The Basque weapon industry that became so important in the Modern Age had its roots in the Medieval period. However, historiography has not paid enough attention to arms production in the 14th and 15th centuries. Thus, the aim of this paper is to make a first approach to the issue, offering a synthesis from various perspectives. On the one hand, the chronological and geographical distribution of the different trades dedicated to the fabrication of offensive and defensive weapons will be addressed, also taking into account the specialization developed in some of the towns and regions. Likewise, the way in which production was organized and the interference of the crown in the process will be analyzed. Finally, the general characteristics of the commercialization of the arms produced will be outlined. The available sources are especially helpful for this task. Basque municipal archival records, edited in recent decades by Eusko Ikaskuntza, provides a significant number of references to disputes, transactions, council tax payments or census, which are useful to try to reconstruct what could have been the Basque arms production. In the same way, the documents generated by the royal administration allow to know part of the process in which the Basque Country ended up becoming one of the main suppliers of arms to the Hispanic monarchy.