L'auteur examine ici une forme de contrat d'exploitation agricole, le contrat Colonia, très largement utilisé dans l'île de Madère depuis son introduction vers 1750 jusqu'à son abolition en 1967. Elle note que l'instauration du Code Civil de 1867, de caractère libéral, a introduit de nouvelles formes de traitement de ces contrats. Le propriétaire perdait le contrôle de ses droits d'exploitation. Le fait que les règles auxquelles devait obéir la négociation de ces contrats aient changé explique en partie leur moindre usage après 1867, mais c'est dans les insuffisances que manifestait antérieurement ce type de contrat qu'il faut aller chercher la raison profonde de ce changement.

The following four articles arise from a one-day conference on ‘Sharecropping in History’, organized by Benedita Câmara and held at the University of Madeira on 8 October 2004. The papers gathered here, though revised, reflect the variety of approach evident in their first presentations at the meeting. A fifth paper, by Kyle Kauffman, on ‘Monopsony land tenure and sharecropping in Dutch South Africa, 1652–1795’ (which was not presented for publication here) also suggested that same variety, not only in terms of the inevitable spatial and temporal range but also in terms of approach. That said, a number of discrete themes emerged from the meeting, with ‘sharecropping’ a central concept, tantalizingly clear and yet fiercely resistant to close categorization, offering a number of avenues for exploration. The majority of these approaches were conditioned by, and set out to test, some of the more prevalant assumptions of economic history and economic theory with regard to sharecropping.

In this article the author examines a form of agricultural contract known as the colonia contract, which was widespread throughout the island of Madeira from 1750 and which was abolished in 1967. She argues that the publication of the liberal Civil Code of 1867 changed the rules concerning the operation of this contract. The landlord lost control of his economic property rights over the land. The change in the rules governing this type of contract partially explains the reduction in its use but the impact of the change is attributed to inefficiencies that already existed in the contract.

Historians of sharecropping in France have usually emphasized its negative effects on growth and on the workers' welfare. However, from about 1840 the regions of central and western France, regions where sharecroppers were especially numerous, were also areas that saw great improvements and the specialization in commercial livestock. As the author shows, landowners from these areas used sharecropping contracts in order both to seize the opportunities given by the potential scale economies in livestock rearing and to take advantage of family labour at a time of increasing wages. After presenting some basic data regarding sharecropping contracts, the second section is intended to describe the improvements in livestock farming in the area under sharecropping after 1840 and the contribution of landowners. Section III offers an explanation of why landowners preferred sharecropping to fixed-rent contracts. Three causes in particular are identified: (i) a lack of physical and human capital sufficient to allow potential farmers to engage in large scale farming; (ii) the contribution of landlord managerial expertise; and (iii) the fact that the complexity of mixed farming required a quality of work that would have been too expensive with wage labour. In a final section the ways in which the success of sharecropping minimized transaction costs are discussed.

Most of the literature on sharecropping deals with the reasons for the adoption of an allegedly irrational contract. Empirical testing of theoretical hypotheses is comparatively under-developed and the data on the worldwide diffusion of sharecropping are very scarce. This article argues that sharecropping is much less common than is sometimes assumed and that its share of total land has been decreasing. These ‘stylized facts’ are the ‘real’ puzzle that economic historians and theorists should try to explain.

Theoretical debates about the efficiency of sharecropping discuss risk-sharing in relation to farmers' wealth and credit, as one explanatory factor. This perspective is explored here in the southern Portuguese province of Alentejo, from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Three points are made: (1) leasing and sharecropping coexisted on the same land; (2) there was no unequivocal relationship between risk sharing, on the one hand, and the contractual mode of tenancy (fixed-rent or sharecropping), on the other; and (3) relating risk-sharing, defined as a continuous variable, with social differentiation of demand for tenancies provides a rationale for a hypothetical long-term shift in contracts, from medieval sharecropping to fixed-rent tenancies with sharecrop subletting in the nineteenth century.

This article argues that naming can reveal personal ideologies, family connections, social interactions and changes in the concerns of the inhabitants of Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ethnic and religious differences are indicated by the differing naming practices used by the Gaelic Irish, Old English and New English, Scots and Welsh inhabitants of Ireland. Much can be divined about the symbolism underlying naming practice when the names given to children are compared with those of their parents, godparents, family members and other significant individuals. The associated importance of nicknames and by-names, wordplay about names, and the circumstances under which people might change their names are also considered.

This article contributes to debates over the ‘land–family bond’ in Early Modern England, in which social historians have engaged periodically during the past decade. It examines the work of Jane Whittle, Govind Sreenivasen and Alan Macfarlane and adds new archival evidence from my own study of three East Sussex villages, circa 1580–1770. Its focus is on the factors that influenced the land–family bond over time. It argues that a more nuanced understanding of individual tenant behaviour during this period cannot be reached without also charting the social, economic and demographic context in which such behaviour operated.