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The Persistence of Open-Field Farming in Nineteenth-Century France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

George W. Grantham
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Abstract

The enclosure of the open fields is an example of Europeans' willingness to alter long-standing social and economic institutions in the interest of higher living standards. In Scandinavia, England, and Germany the rise in the value of enclosed relative to unenclosed land induced widespread abandonment of open-field forms of agrarian organization by the middle of the nineteenth century. In France, on the other hand, the traditional patterns of landholding maintained themselves until after the First World War. This paper examines some of the ways French farmers responded to the possibilities of agricultural change within the traditional framework of open-field agriculture.

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Articles
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The Journal of Economic History , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , September 1980 , pp. 515 - 531
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Copyright © The Economic History Association 1980

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References

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16 The right to issue bans stemmed from problems associated with “voisinage” or geographical externalities; , Fournel, Les Lois rurales, pp. 345–49Google Scholar. Some examples are cited in the compilation of Verneilh-Puyraseau, Joseph de, Observations des commissions consultatives sur le projet de Code (Paris, 1810–1814), vol. I, pp. 199–200, 333Google Scholar. See also Meuvret, Jean, Le Problème des subsistances à l'époque de Louis XIV. La production des céréales dans la France du XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle, vol. I (Paris, 1977), pp. 165–66Google Scholar.

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18 Département de Seine-et-Marne, Recueil des usages locaux publiés sous les auspices du Conseil Général et de l'administration départemental (Melun, 1910), p. 281Google Scholar; Usages locaux du département de Seine-et-Oise (1938), p. 228Google Scholar;Grully, Paul de, Le Droit de glanage (Montpellier, 1912), pp. 138–39Google Scholar; Revcueil des usages locaux dans le département de I'Aisne (Laon, 1863)Google Scholar; Bourgueil, Edgard, Usages locaux du département des Ardennes (Charleville, 1898), p. 183Google Scholar; Usages locaux reconnus dans les cantons de Chartres Nord et Sud (Chartres, 1874), pp. 26, 43Google Scholar; Département de la Seine et Oise, Usages locaux (1939), p. 56Google Scholar; Berthelin, Egmont, Usages locaux ayant force de loi dans le département de I'Aisne (Troyes, 1856), pp. 162–65Google Scholar; Roy, Frederic Le, Receuil des usages locaux, particulier au canton de Calais en matiere civile et commerciale (St.-Pierre-les-Calais, 1880), pp. 10–11Google Scholar; Tailliandrer, Maurice, Les usages locaux en matière agricole dans le département du Pas-de-Calais (Arras, 1939), pp. 56–57Google Scholar; Chambre d'Agriculture du Calvados, Usages locaux à caractère agricole (Caen, 1936)Google Scholar. General adoption of the scythe occurred between 1840 and 1870 as a result of tighter rural labor markets. Even before these dates, however, landlords were inserting clauses into leases that required their tenants to scythe the standing grain; Henault, Jean-Baptiste, Usages locaux du département d'Eure-et-Loir (Chartres, 1861), pp. 149, 172, 178Google Scholar; , Hénault, Recueil des usages locaux suivis dans le canton de Bri-jolles (Chartres, 1845), p. 24Google Scholar; Usages locaux de canton de Brulon (Le Mans, 1856)Google Scholar; , Clement, Usages du Pas deCalais, p. 220Google Scholar.

19 Gottman, Jean, ed., Documents pour servir à l‘étude de la structure agraire dans la moitié occiden-tale de la France (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar.

20 As long as farmers followed the same rotations, access to isolated strips raised few difficulties. In the words of a saying in Picardy, “Terre en labour, terre en clavée/Doivent passage à terre en-clavée”; Bouthors, Alexandre, Les Proverbes, dictons, et maximes du droit rural traditionnel (Paris, 1858), p. 108Google Scholar. See Pyot, Louis, Usages locaux de la Côte-d'Or (Dijon, 1934), p. 36Google Scholar; Berthelin, Egmont, Usages locaux… Aube, pp. 90–91, 114Google Scholar; Meurthe-et-Moselle, Préfecture de, Usages locaux à caractère agricole (Nancy, 1933), pp. 19–20Google Scholar; Vosges, Prefecture des, Usages locaux à caractire agricole (St.-Die, 1934), p. 295Google Scholar. In some districts where long narrow furrows did not dictate plowing methods, unrestricted access to isolated plots depended on farmers maintaining the traditional furrows; Madriere, Andre Di-doux de la, Recueil des usages locaux ayantforce de hi dans… Pontarlier (Pontarlier, 1937), p. 17Google Scholar.

21 Colin, G. E. and Blane, A., “Extension et declin de l'assolement triennal au XIXe siècle: L'évolution d'une commune Lorraine,” Revue géographique de V'Est, 6 (1966), 91–93Google Scholar.

22 The minimum efficient size of a flock of sheep in the nineteenth century was determined by two indivisibilities. The first was the fixed cost of the shepherd, which was a relatively skilled occupation in areas that practiced sheepfolding or where the flock had to be moved frequently; the second was the size of flock that was needed to manure a piece of land adequately. At a salary of 300 francs and sheep producing wool and meat worth 6 to 10 francs per year, the minimum flock size was above 50 sheep. The same minimum also seems to hold for sheepfolding, which before the late nineteenth century was the most efficient means of moving manure onto the fields. To ensure even distribution of manure a fold had to be densely packed, which implied minimum flocks of 50 to 75 head. At the end of the eighteenth century it required flocks of 120 to 150 sheep to keep 15 hectares of land well manured. See , Meuvret, Le Probléme des subsistances, vol. I, pp. 133–34Google Scholar, and vol. II, pp. 113–14. In the 1830s and 1840s flocks of 150 to 500 sheep were normal in Meuse. At the then common stints to 4 head of sheep per hectare of arable, this implies a minimum farm size of from 75 to 100 hectares to support a single flock; Delamarre, Mariel, Le Berger dans la France des villages (Paris, 1970), pp. 200, 215–17, 231Google Scholar. These were giant-size enterprises by French standards.

23 This estimate is based on calculations of the income obtainable from 6 sheep and a cow taken from data in the census manuscripts of the 1862 agricultural census. Six sheep would yield wool and meat (assuming sheep were killed at 4 years) worth 40 francs a year. A cow in milk and bearing one calf would yield about 150 to 160 francs a year. The income of a rural landless family at this time would.have ranged from 800 to 1000 francs. See Ministere de l'Agriculture, Statistique de la France… risuhats giniraux de I'enquete dicennale de 1862 (Strasbourg, 1868)Google Scholar. Detailed calculations for the departments of Eure-et-Loir and Yonne were made from the manuscripts, Enquete agricole dicennale, 1862: questionnaires cantonnaux. Archives Nationales, Paris, F 2693–2697Google Scholar.

24 See Sée, Henri, “La Vaine Pâture en France sous la Monarchic de Juillet d'après l'enquête de 1836–1838,” Revue d'histoire moderne, 1 (1926), 202, 205Google Scholar. There are frequent references in the usages to the abuse of common grazing by large farmers. See Recueil des usages locaux du département du Nord (Lille, 1856), p. 65Google Scholar: , Cherest, Usages locaux de I'Yonne, p. 239Google Scholar; , Henault, Usages locaux d'Eure-et-Loir, p. 204Google Scholar; Paris, Andre, “Les Conditions du progres agricole dans le centre du bassin parisien: Droits seigneuriaux, jachere, et vaine pature dans la region de Montford-l'Amaury (XVIIIe a XIXe siècles),” in Elhnologie et histoire (Paris, 1975), pp. 236–38Google Scholar.

25 Berthelin, Egmont, Usages locaux encore en vigueur dans le département de la Marne (Chalons, 1857), p. 84Google Scholar; Antoine Grandveau, Usages locaux du département de la Marne, 2nd ed. (rpt. of 1855 usages; Bar-le-Duc, 1922), p. 38; Bouthors, Alexandre, Les Usages locaux du dèpartement de la Somme, prictáts d'un essai d'application des usages ruraux du nord de la France au projet de code rural (Amiens, 1861), pp. 70–73Google Scholar; Loiret, Département du, Recueil des usages locaux (Orléans, 1905), p. 18Google Scholar. In others a light picket fence or a furrow marked off the area to be withdrawn from common pasture. See, for example, , Henault, Usages locaux d'Eure-et-Loir (1861), p. 204Google Scholar; Bourgueil, La vaine pature (rpt. of 1855 usages of the départment of Ardennes), pp. 101, 107; and , Berthelin, Usages locaux de I'Aube, p. 65Google Scholar.

26 This estimate is based on the assumption that all of the fodder potentially obtainable from fallow grazing was consumed by sheep. Estimates of production are derived from figures on value and output per hectare on fallows published in Statistique de la France, I serie, Agriculture (Paris, 1840–1841), andGoogle ScholarStatistique de la France, 2e me serie, Statistique agricole dicennale de 1852 (Paris, 1858, 1860)Google Scholar. These estimated yields were then multiplied by the areas reported to lie fallow in 1882. Estimated consumption of all sheep in northeastern France was computed on the basis o f mid-century reports that sheep consumed roughly 5 percent of their live weight daily in hay-equivalent fodder; Moll, Louis and Gayot, Eugene; La Connaissance general du boeuf (Paris, 1860), p. xxxixGoogle Scholar. Numbers of sheep are taken from the 1852 and 1882 agricultural censuses. Live weights of sheep are a weighted average of figures reported in the 1882 agricultural census. In 1852 fallows supported at most 25 percent of the sheep in northeastern France.

27 Barral, Pierre, Les Agrariensfrancais de Meline a Pisani (Paris, 1968), pp. 28–29Google Scholar; Coudert, J., “La Vaine Pâture dans les pays de la Meurthe au XIXe siècle,” in Mélanges Paul Voirin (Nancy, 1967), pp. 152–54.Google Scholar, Delamarre, Le Berger, pp. 159, 171–73Google Scholar; and Jolas, Tina and Zonabend, Françoise, “Gens du finage, gens du bois,” Annales: E.S.C., 28 (1973), 298Google Scholar.

28 See Grantham, George W., “The Diffusion of the New Husbandry in Northern France, 1815–1840,” this Journal, 38 (06 1978), 311–37Google Scholar.

29 This procedure, which was apparently very common in districts of large-scale farms near Paris, was extensively described in the report of the French land system at the Exposition Universelle of 1900. “A kind of exchange which occurs sometimes on highly subdivided property cultivated mainly by leasehold farmers is exchange by sub-lease. Two farmers exchange leaseholds of parcels in order to round out their farms. No lease is signed, the agreement is verbal, and its duration is determined by the length of the original leases. Most often the actual landlords of the respective plots are unaware of these exchanges; but even if they were it would not be in their interest to oppose them. Their rights bear on the harvest of their own land, cultivated by another farmer, rather than on the harvest of their own farmer on other lands…. The most frequent cases… are verbal and because of this escape attention; for there exists no trace of these agreements either in the municipal archives or in the land registry”; Grandeau, Louis N., L'Agriculture et les institutions agricole, vol. 3, p. 118Google Scholar. For a discussion of the development of large tenant farms in this area, see Brunet, Pierre, Structure agraire et économie agricole entre la Seine et I'Oise (Caen, 1960)Google Scholar.

30 The correlation between the percentage of farms over 40 hectares in size and the percentage of farms held on leasehold tenure as reported in the 1862 agricultural census is.47.

31 For example, O'Brien, Patrick and Keyder, Caglar, Economic Growth in Britain and France, 1780–1914: Two Paths to the Twentieth Century (London, 1978), pp. 127–37Google Scholar.

32 See , Hottenger, Morcellement, p. 90Google Scholar. The enclosure at Neuville created a new park, apparently at the expense of land previously farmed by the peasants, since they reclaimed it during the Revolution. In 1831, as part of the Restoration settlement, the heirs of the enclosures had to cede back 40 hectares to the village in compensation for land taken during the enclosure. , Peltre, “Les Remembrements,” p. 245Google Scholar; and , Chauveau, Le Remembrement, p. 363Google Scholar.

33 Peltre, “Les Remembrements.”

34 Marmottan, Paul, “Un Projet de Code Rural sous de ler Empire,” Revue des etudes napoleon-iennes, 6 (1913), 321–46Google Scholar.

35 , Sée, “La Vaine Pature sous la Monarchie de Juillet,” pp. 198–213Google Scholar.

36 Napoleon III appointed a commission to study a reformulation of the Code Rural in 1855. Articles on the German states' legislation facilitating consolidation (flurbereinigung) began to appear at the end of the 1850s.

37 This is well brought out in the debates conducted in the Corps Legislatif over the authority of the syndicat autorisée. See Le Moniteur universelle, 1865, pp. 628–29Google Scholar. A full account is to be found in , Van-dervynct, Le Remembrement, pp. 134–36Google Scholar; and , Colonna, La Petite Propriété, p. 128Google Scholar.

38 Zeldin, Theodore, France 1848–1945, Vol. I, Ambition, Love and Politics (Oxford, 1973), pp. 522 -23, 530–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In 1890 per capita debt incurred by local authorities in France was 37 francs, excluding the large towns. In England local authorities indebted their citizens to the amount of 180 francs per head; Ibid., p. 524.

39 In contrast, American state governments were almost indecent in their readiness to expropriate private property for purposes of economic development. See Scheiber, Harry N., “Property Law, Expropriation, and Resource Allocation by Government: The United States, 1789–1910,” this Journal, 33 (03 1973), 232–51Google Scholar.

40 In this and the preceding paragraph I follow David Thomson's interpretation of post-Revolutionary French politics as an expression of the tension between the Revolutionary ideal of popular sovereignty in an omnicompetent state, with overtones of social as well as political egalitarianism, and the embodiment of this ideal in ministerial government. The question to whom the executive was to be responsible was never adequately resolved, with the result that in 1791, 1830, and 1848 governments were changed by popular uprisings. See his Democracy in France since 1870, 4th ed. (London, 1964), pp. 13–14Google Scholar. For a similar verdict, see Hoffmann's, Stanley brilliant analysis of the “stalemate society” in “Paradoxes of the French Political Community,” in Hoffmann, et al., In Search of France (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 12–18Google Scholar.

41 , Grandeau, Agriculture et les institutions agricole, vol. 3, p. 133Google Scholar.

42 , Vandervynct, Le Remembrement, p. 175Google Scholar.

43 , Zeldin, France, vol. I, pp. 582–84Google Scholar. Deputies in the Third Republic were professional agents of their districts in Paris, and owed their election more to their ability to provide patronage and small-scale public works than to their stand on “national” issues. General elections were infrequent and the turnover of deputies was very low. At any time in early twentieth century, over a quarter of them had served more than 20 years. Thus the frequent turnover of governments was matched by the infrequency of changes in the personnel of the Assembled Nationale. The deputies could thus block strong executive actions, while their hold on patronage prevented the emergence of a “ministerial party” that might have provided some room for government to maneuver.

44 , Chauveau, Remembrement, pp. 40, 102–03Google Scholar; , Grandeau, Les Institutions agricole, vol. 3, p. 128Google Scholar; , Vandervynct, Le Remembrement, p. 168Google Scholar. The numbers of consolidations actually carried out are impossible to determine, owing to the apparently common device of exchange in leasehold, as discussed above. There is no question, however, that consolidation of land by sale and exchange was very rare. On the eve of the First World War Chauveau estimated that only one commune (probably Teuton-ville) had taken advantage of an 1865 law making it possible for landowners to form themselves into a syndicate for the purpose of carrying out consolidation of their land. The number of resurveys of open-field villages combined with a reduction in the number of parcels and a reorientation of paths seems to have been under one hundred. See , Grandeau, L'Agriculture et les institutions agricole, vol. 3, p. 128Google Scholar. Hottenger lists the communes having carried out full or partial abornements generaux in Morcellement, Appendix.

45 “The Consolidation of Farms in Six Countries of Western Europe,” International Journal of Agrarian Affairs, 1 (1952), 25–28Google Scholar; , Barral, Les Agrariens frangais, pp. 199, 258Google Scholar.

46 Valentin, Lucien, L'Action administrative dans la vie rurale (Paris, 1961)Google Scholar.