9 - Agrarian Reforms

Summary

The prevailing view in Danish historiography is that the agrarian reforms represented the great turning point in Denmark's history. The freehold legislation of 1769, the enclosure ordinance of 1781, the abolition of adscription in 1788, the Forest Reserve Act of 1805, and the Village School Act of 1814 formed, together with a number of less conspicuous laws, the point of departure for the rapid economic, cultural, social, and political development of the whole of Danish society during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In the course of the present examination of Denmark's transformation from a society gradually sinking into an abysmal ecological crisis to one in permanent growth, nothing has emerged to confirm the accuracy of this view. The agrarian reforms emerge only at a late stage in the course of events, both chronologically and analytically, because they are the result of the ecological revolution and not its cause. There is no demonstrably positive connection, for example, between, on the one hand, progressive measures such as water level regulation and the introduction of clover and, on the other, the order imposed on the organization of agriculture by the agrarian reforms.

Had there been such a connection one might have presumed that key innovations such as water level regulation and clover cultivation would have initially appeared on estates where enclosure had taken place, in freehold areas, and in areas where little or no villeinage existed.