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Agricultural Fluctuations and the English Economy in the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

J. D. Gould
J. D. Gould
Affiliation:
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
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Extract

A notable difference of opinion exists among economic historians as to the effect of harvest fluctuations on general economic conditions. The question has arisen, specifically, in the interpretation of European experience in the eighteenth century. T. S. Ashton has suggested that good harvests, both by cheapening food and thus setting free purchasing power for others forms of expenditure, and by providing ampler supplies of agricultural products used as industrial raw materials, had a stimulating effect on the economy. J. D. Chambers and G. E. Mingay have taken the opposite view. According to them, bad harvests may have had the more beneficial effect, for the incomes of landowners and farmers were higher in lean years, and their prosperity or distress was of greater consequence than the dearth or cheapness of provisions.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 1962 , pp. 313 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1962

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References

1 Ashton, T. S., An Economic History of England: The Eighteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1955), pp. 60 ffGoogle Scholar. Ashton has subsequently restated his position with an authoritative wealth of detail in Economic Fluctuations in England, 1700–1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959)Google Scholar.

2 J. D. Chambers, “The Vale of Trent, 1670–1800,” Economic History Review, Supplement 3, pp. 39 ff.; G. E.

3 Haberler, G., Prosperity and Depression (3rd ed.; New York: United Nations, 1946), p. 154Google Scholar.

4 Cf. Furniss, E. S., The Position of the Laborer in a System of Nationalism (New York: Kelley & Millman, 1957)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 6.

5 Gould, J. D., “The Trade Depression of the Early 1620's,” Economic History Review, 2nd Series, VII, No. 1 (Aug. 1954), 83Google Scholar; see also the letters of John Chamberlain printed in Birch, T., The Court and Times of James I (London: H. Colburn, 1849), II, 200Google Scholar, 213–14, 221–22.

6 To some extent the differences of interpretation relating to the eighteenth century put forward in the writings of Ashton on the one hand, and Chambers and Mingay on the other, may arise from the fact that while the latter two considered primarily the adverse experience of grain producers in the first half of the eighteenth century, Ashton was more conscious of the importance of such products as wool, hides, and animal fats.

7 For example, Davenant, C., An Essay upon the Probable Methods of Making a People Gainers in the Ballance of Trade (1699), pp. 82–83Google Scholar. It might be added that the emergence of the concept of elasticity is an important and neglected aspect of the early history of economic thought. The earliest clear-cut example of the use of this concept that I have found occurred during the trade depression of the early 1620's; cf. Gould, J. D., “The Trade Crisis of the Early 1620's and English Economic Thought,”. The Journal of Economic History, XV, No. 2 (June 1955), 121–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 But see pp. 321–22.

9 I might also mention here the argument which featured largely in Jevons' theory of the trade cycle and which seems to have earned Keynes' approval too [Keynes, J. M., The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1936), pp. 329 ff.]Google Scholar. This is that there would be an automatic tendency for investment to increase in good harvest years, and vice versa, by virtue merely of the running up or down of stocks. I find it extremely difficult to believe that this was really a factor of any great importance—before the eighteenth century, at any rate—if only because the ratio of stocks to consumption seems to have been extremely low. For example, notwithstanding a succession of outstandingly good harvests in 1620 and the preceding two or three years, accumulated stocks were insufficient to prevent shortages in early 1622 following an only moderately poor yield in 1621. Precisely because the “carry-over” from one year to another was small in the early modern period, prices had to fluctuate violently so as to equate each year's consumption with the harvest yield for that year.

10 In the depression of the early eighteenth century, arrears of rent had often to be written off; see Mingay, “The Agricultural Depression,” p. 327.

11 Cf. Ashton, An Economic History of England, pp. 213 ff.

12 This hypothesis would enable us to place some credence in Arthur Young's well-known aphorism about the poor being kept poor without committing ourselves to a belief in its truth irrespective of place or time. The extent to which wages were in fact subsistence-based in the eighteenth century is, of course, disputable, as appears from the discussion of Adam Smith's views on wage levels later in this article. But it would seem difficult to question the validity of the broad historical comparison between the eighteenth and the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries made in the text.

13 It is not necessary here to allow for such complicating factors as price-fixing schemes, nor to discuss the case of industry producing for home markets—though about the beginning of the eighteenth century the low-costs argument was in fact mainly advanced with reference to imports of cheap Indian textiles and the competition they offered to home-produced cloth.

14 Labrousse, C. E., Esquisse du mouvement des prix et des revenus en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Dalloz, 1932), II, 407 ff.Google Scholar; La Crise de l'économie françaisc (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1944), I, 173.Google Scholar

15 This has already been pointed out by Landes, David S. in his interesting article, “The Statistical Study of French Crises,” The Journal of Economic History, X, No. 2 (Nov. 1950), 195–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Pp. 316–17.

17 Mingay, “The Agricultural Depression,” p. 337.

18 Glasspoole, J., “Two Centuries of Rain,” The Meteorological Magazine, 63 (Feb. 1928), 1–6.Google Scholar

19 One task awaiting local historians is to improve our knowledge of eighteenth-century weather. The vast activity in English local records in the past two decades must surely have unearthed some valuable meteorological evidence.

20 Brooks, C. E. P., “The Climate of the First Half of the Eighteenth Century,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 56 (1930). 389–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 This statement appears inconsistent with the view expressed by Ashton (Economic Fluctuations in England, p. 11) that harvests could be forecasted “at least as early as April.” He offers no evidence for this claim, however, which seems difficult to reconcile with the later statement (p. 33) that “fairly accurate estimates of the coming yield could be made by the beginning of July—indeed several weeks before this.” The only actual instances of harvest prospects affecting prices cited by Ashton are given on pp. 32–33, and from these it appears that in the years in question (1795 and 1796) harvest forecasts did not significantly affect the level of prices until June and July respectively.

22 Gilboy, Elizabeth W., “The Cost of Living and Real Wages in Eighteenth Century England” Review of Economics and Statistics XVIII No. 3 (Aug. 1936) 134–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elizabeth B. Schumpeter “English Prices and Public Finance 1660–1822” ibid. XX No. 1 (Feb. 1938) 21–37.

23 These three series were published under the name of Mrs. Schumpeter and not, as Ashton seems to suggest (An Economic History of England, p. 197), by Elizabeth Gilboy.

24 I believe that this factor bearing on agronomic structure has been unduly neglected in other periods of English history as well; cf. my remarks in “Mr. Beresford and the Lost Villages: A Comment,” Agricultural History Review, III (1955), 107–13Google Scholar.

25 Mingay, “The Agricultural Depression,” pp. 335–36.

26 Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations (Everyman, ed.; London: Dent, 1937–1938), II, 8 ffGoogle Scholar.

27 If the bounty did in fact exert the influence here imputed to it, it might be expected to have done so most noticeably in those areas suited to grain-growing and well situated for its export, that is, the Thames valley and the Eastern Counties. Since the fall of grain prices was in fact particularly marked in these areas (A. H. John, “The Course of Agricultural Change,” Studies in the Industrial Revolution, p. 137), the hypothesis advanced here is to that extent supported.

28 Other, more technical explanations of such rigidity also suggest themselves. One was the increasingly general practice of stipulating courses of production in husbandry covenants; see Parker, R. A. C., “Coke of Norfolk and the Agrarian Revolution,” Economic History Review, 2nd Series, VIII, No. 2 (Dec. 1955), 156–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar