ABSTRACT
Uneven regional development in southern Europe is not a 20th century phenomenon, Regional problems were in fact consolidated by the beginning of this century, but their origins must be traced back to the 16th century (Braudel, 1972; Wallerstein, 1974). It was during the ‘long sixteenth century’, 1500-1640, as Braudel (1972) calls it, that an international social and spatial division of labour started to be established through a series of historical transformations.
