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The Agricultural Revolution in Nineteenth-Century France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

William H. Newell
William H. Newell
Affiliation:
St. Olaf College
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Extract

The literature on French economic history generally dates the onset of the agricultural revolution in France from the midnineteenth century. However, the available empirical evidence on national agricultural trends, brought together in 1961 by Toutain, shows that the rapid, sustained growth in both total and per capita agricultural production comes earlier, during the period from 1815–24 to 1865–74. This article explores the sources of this rapid national growth by assembling and analyzing previously unutilized regional data on production and hectares of major field crops. The southern diffusion of mixed farming is identified as the change in the productive process which may account for the French agricultural revolution.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , December 1973 , pp. 697 - 731
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1973

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References

This paper is an outgrowth of two chapters of my dissertation done at the University of Pennsylvania under Richard Easterlin, who provided invaluable assistance on previous drafts. I wish to acknowledge suggestions on earlier versions of this paper made by William Parker, Vernon Ruttan, and discussants at both the Yale Conference on Economic Issues in European Agrarian History, and the Agricultural Development Workshop of the Minnesota Economic Development Center. Any errors are, of course, my own. Research was partially funded by NSF grant GS-2621.

1 Clapham, J. H., Economic Development of France and Germany, 1815–1914, 4th edition, reprinted 1966 (England: Cambridge University), p. 6.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 158.

3 Ibid.

4 Augé-Laribé, M., L'évolution de la France agricole (Paris: A. Colin, 1912).Google Scholar

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8 Ibid., p, 217.

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11 Ibid., p. 69.

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16 Toutain, Le produit, p. 42.

17 When changes in crop composition are taken into account, the proportion of the change in output explained by the change in yield is more nearly three times that explained by change in hectares planted. The faster growth in area cultivated in relatively low-yield wheat than in high-yield oats is responsible for the understatement of the importance of growth in yields. The. overstatement of labor force growth leads to an understatement of the growth in labor productivity relative to the growth in potential labor force.

18 When extremely rough estimates of wine production are included in per capita production the north-south differential persists, with the exception that region north-west, where virtually no wine is grown, drops relative to other regions. Other crops are either of small quantitative importance or, like vegetables, serve to accentuate the higher levels of the north. Sugarbeets, for example, are relatively unimportant and confined to the north until after mid-century. Their exclusion, necessitated by the unavailability of departmental figures for the early part of the period, understates the growth in output and productivity for the second half of the period. They have minimal impact on land use, however, accounting for only 253,000 hectares in 1873, at the end of the period of rapid growth.

19 Pautard, Les disparities, p. 67–68.

20 Ibid., p. 61: “The agricultural censuses of 1840… and 1852 furnish the only departmental statistics existing for the first half of the 19th century.”

21 21 Toutain, Le produit, pp. 214–215.

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24 Pautard, Les disparities, p. 118.

25 Clapham, Economic Development, p. 27.

26 Gironde is retained in the sample because, unlike the departments containing the three largest cities, it remains primarily agricultural throughout the period.

27 The rapid yield increase in Ardèche, for example, might appear more plausibly explained by movement of ill-suited land out of cereals or potatoes into cash crops than by the introduction of mixed farming. However, total area under cereals and potatoes increases, and changes in crop composition explain less than 7 percent of the change in output.

28 The results in this section still obtain when fewer cities are used in the urban measure.

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31 Hayami and Ruttan, Agricultural Development.

32 Toutain, Le produit, pp. 214–215.

33 France. I.N.S.E.E., Annuaire statistique de la France, Vol. 73, (Paris: 1967), pp. 199–200.Google Scholar

34 A more detailed description of the aggregation process and its assumptions is available in Newell, W., Population Change and Agricultural Development in Nineteenth Century France (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, 1971), p. 58–63.Google Scholar

35 Pautard, Les disparities, pp. 27–32.

36 Collins, “Labor Supply,” p. 65.

37 Dutens, J., Essai comparatif sur la formation et la distribution du revenu de la France en 1815 et 1835 (Paris: Guillaumin, 1842), pp. 100–101Google Scholar and 104–105.

38 Newell, Population Change, pp. 59–60.

39 Toutain, Le produit, p. 13.

40 Ibid., p. 171.

41 Delefortrie, N. and Morice, , Les révenus départementaux en 1864 et en 1953 (Paris: A. Colin, 1959), p. 16.Google Scholar