Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T11:28:23.228Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Agricultural Supply During the Industrial Revolution: French Evidence and European Implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

George Grantham
George Grantham
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T7 Canada.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Analysis of the spatial pattern of prices and output in the manuscript returns of the French agricultural census of 1852 indicates that the availability of market outlets was probably the dominant factor determining the rise in agricultural productivity prior to the mid-nineteenth century and that agricultural supply was probably price elastic. The belief that the period of the industrial revolution was one of inelastic agricultural supply is shown to rest on a misinterpretation of the extant data on agricultural prices.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 43 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

I wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their generous support. The article has also benefited from criticism given at the First International Cliometrics Conference in Evanston, Illinois, the Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association in 1985, the Harvard Workshop in Economic History, and the agrarian workshop of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris. I would especially like to thank Maurice Aymard, Jean-Michel Chevet, Knick Harley, Philip Hoffman, Paul Hohenberg, Barry Ma, Michel Morineau, John Nye, William N. Parker, Gilles Postel-Vinay, David Weir, Tom Weiss, Jeffrey Williamson, and the referees of the JOURNAL for their counsel and encouragement. Errors and omissions are all of my own making.

1 Between 1750 and 1850 the population of Europe excluding Russia rose from 94.2 to 177 million; including Russia it rose from 122 to 245 million. de Vries, Jan, European Urbanization, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1984), p. 36;Google Scholar for Russian estimates, Mitchell, B. R., “Statistical Appendix”, in Cipolla, Carlo, ed., The Fontana Economic History of Europe. Vol. 2: The Emergence of Industrial Societies (London, 1973), p. 747.Google Scholar

2 Mitchell, B. R., European Historical Statistics (London, 1975), pp. 337–40.Google Scholar An accurate balance for Germany entails netting out the re-export of Polish, Austrian, and Russian grain from Germany's Baltic ports. However, estimates of German production indicate that agricultural output doubled between 1800 and 1850, while the German population grew by only 40 percent. See Aubin, Hermann and Zorn, Wolfgang, eds., Handbuch der deutschen Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte (Stuttgart, 1976), vol. 2, p. 312.Google Scholar

3 Thomas, Brinley, “Food Supply in the United Kingdom During the Industrial Revolution”, in Mokyr, Joel, ed., The Economics of the Industrial Revolution (London, 1985), p. 147.Google Scholar

4 Property rights proponents include Allen, Robert C., “The Growth of Labor Productivity in Early Modern English Agriculture”, Explorations in Economic History, 25 (04 1988), pp. 117–46;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hoffman, Philip, “Institutions and Agriculture in Old Regime France”, Politics and Society, 16 (06–09 1988), pp. 241–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Proponents of exogenous shifts in behavior include Clark, Gregory, “The Cost of Capital and Medieval Agricultural Technique,” Explorations in Economic History, 25 (07 1988), pp. 265–94; and “Productivity Growth without Technical Change in European Agriculture before 1850”, this JOURNAL, 47 (06 1987), pp. 419–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For stronger incentives to invest, see Grantham, George W., “The Diffusion of the New Husbandry in Northern France, 1815–1840”, this JOURNAL, 38 (06 1978), pp. 311–37.Google Scholar

5 The argument is consistent with the one advanced by Meuvret, Jean in Le problème des subsisiances à l'époque Louis XIV: La production des cérééles dans la France du xviie et du xviiie siècle (Paris. 1977). See my review article, pp. 184–200.Google Scholar

6 Parker, W. N., “Opportunity Sequences in European History”, in Kindleberger, C. P. and DiTella, G., Economics in the Long View: Essays in Honour of W. W. Rostow (London, 1982), pp. 1–24Google Scholar, reprinted in Parker, W. N., Europe, America, and the Wider World: Essays on the Economic History of Western Capitalism (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 191–213.Google Scholar

7 The agricultural statistics of the 1850s and early 1860s are the culmination of over 80 years of agricultural reporting that evolved from eighteenth-century estimates of the percentage deviation from normal levels of the current harvest and counts of militarily useful animals or fodder supplies to the agricultural census of 1852, which required a booklet of 37 pages to hold its 900 questions. The 1852 and 1862 censuses record product and factor prices, labor inputs, costs per hectare of field crops, the stock and prices of livestock, the value of their annual product, agricultural implements, wage rates, rental rates, the number of days worked per year, estimates of both the expenditures and the savings of agricultural laborers, the amount of migratory labor imported and exported from each district, and information about modes of tenure, the size distribution of farms, and the scattering of holdings in individual parcels. The published statistics have been subject to an exploratory econometric analysis in Heifer, Jean, Mairesse, Jacques and Chanut, Jean-Marie, “La culture du blé au milieu du xixe siècle: Rendement, prix, salaires et autres coûts”, Annales, Economies, Socidtés, Civilisations [henceforth Annales, E.S.C.], 41 (1986) pp. 1273–1301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 The communal returns were prepared by the village mayor with the help of the teacher and large farmers. The returns were submitted to cantonal statistical committees, which rectified obvious errors, estimated missing values, and aggregated the communal data into cantonal returns that then became the basis of subsequent manipulations. Thus, although the commune is the unit of observation, the basic unit of preparation of the returns was the canton.

9 Where they have been preserved, the manuscript returns are catalogued in the Série M of the Departmental archives. A small sample of returns also exists in the National Archives under the côte F20 561. “Comptes de frais de cultures par hectare de terres, Ardennes à Meuse (1852–1854).”

10 Even the canton encompasses historically significant agricultural variation. Many cantons straddle distinct geological formations, the market town or bourg that constitutes their fixed point having emerged between the tenth and twelfth centuries to facilitate exchange between the inhabitants of adjacent natural environments.

11 The following estimates, derived from experiments carried out in the 1840s, give the amount of manure (in kilograms) needed to restore fertility used up by a quintal (100 kilograms) of net product: wheat, 640; rye, 630; oats, 600; barley, 560; colza, 1,000; poppies, 1,100; madder, 2,000; and tobacco, 1,300. See Heuzé, Gustav, Matières fertilisantes (Versailles, 1857), p. 497.Google Scholar

12 Thirty to 40 tonnes of rotted manure per hectare was considered a normal rate of fertilizing in three-course rotations based on fallowing. Horses and cattle under ordinary conditions produced 10 to 12 tonnes, with sheep computed at one-eighth of a large animal. The implied stocking levels and land allocations for different cropping patterns are set out in Heuzé, Gustav, Les formules des fumures er des étendues en fourrages (Paris, 1868).Google Scholar

13 In the 1820s, for example, farmers in French Flanders exported labor-intensive products such as butter, poultry, eggs, and fruits and vegetables to England; Cordier, Henri, Mémoire sur l'agriculture de la Flandre française (Paris, 1823), pp. xvii–xix.Google Scholar See also Lecouteux, Edouard, Principes de la culture améliorante (Paris, 1866), p. 22.Google Scholar

14 In his survey of farming practices in the Election of Paris in 1785, Gilbert frequently complains that absorption of valuable manure by vineyards that had been recently planted to serve the Paris market was preventing wheat yields from rising; Gilbert, Hilaire-François, Traité des prairies artificielles (Paris, 1789).Google Scholar

15 In the eighteenth century hay destined for Paris was floated down the Seine from as far away as Arcis, more than 120 kilometers upstream. Gilbert, writing in the 1780s observes that although the soils in the immediate vicinity of Paris were at best mediocre, they produced rich harvests. “Les provisions qui, de tous les points de la France, viennent se consommer dans cette ville, sont rendues en engrais aux terres qui l'avoisinent.” Gilbert, Hilaire-François, Traité des prairies artificielles, 1826 edition, p. 20.Google Scholar

16 “… aux environs de Paris, la facilité de se procurer des engrais et le haut prix des fourrages leur font perdre de I'importance. Le but du cultivateur, en une telle position, est la production végétale … Les cultivateurs qui font autorité parmi leurs confrères pensent que, dans leur position, ils ne sauraient avoir de système de culture régulier; toujours disposés à profiter des chances qui se présentent, ils ne veulent s'assujettir à aucun assolement qui, faisant une division uniforme de leurs terres, les empêcherait d'étendre ou de restreindre à volonté certaines productions”. Lecouteux, Edouard, Traité élémenraire de l'agricuture de la Seine (Paris, 1840), pp. 125, 138.Google Scholar

17 See appendix for details for the construction of net farm income. Forests and woodlots are excluded from the calculations.

18 A regression of the form X = α + βRANK, where X is net revenue per hectare, yields an estimate for β of -0.307 for the first 23 cantons and –0.028 for the bottom 140.

19 Every urban canton in the sample is in the top quartile of net revenue per hectare.

20 See Dion, R., Hisroire de la vigne en France des origines au xixe siècle (Paris, 1959).Google Scholar Even a small city like Chateaudun on the confines of Beauce and Perche had its own small vineyard for local consumption that maintained between 10 and 20 percent of the working population; Couturier, Marcel, Recherches sur les structures sociales de Chateaudun, 1525–1689 (Paris, 1969), p. 164.Google Scholar

21 Gilbert, , Traité des prairies artificielles, “Tableau Topo-agronomique de la Généralité de Paris,” p. 19. The 1826 edition, cited in fn. 15, does not contain this valuable table, which estimates the distribution of land by use and the number of farm animals in each Election of the Généralité de Paris.Google Scholar

22 The notion is developed in Lecouteux, Principes de la culture améliorante.

23 The averages are as follows, giving a weight of 1 to full-grown horses and cattle; 1'2 to young horses; 1'6 to veal, sheep, goats, and pigs; and 1'12 to lambs: Cantons near Pans, 0.45 beasts per hectare; other urban cantons, 0.62 per hectare; non-urban cantons, 0.50 per hectare. All but one of the 40 cantons with the highest stocks per hectare were situated in the western cantons that specialized in rearing cattle and horses. The only urban commune near Paris to have high holdings of stock per hectare and a high share of animal product in total product was the urban canton of Versailles.

24 Lavoisier estimated from the taxes paid on hay and straw entering Paris that the city contained 21,500 horses in 1789. It was about 16,000 in 1815 but increased rapidly after that, reaching 54,269 according to an army census taken in early 1874, over 72,000 if the horses in the suburban arrondissements of Sceaux and St-Denis are included. Husson, Armand, Les consommations de Paris, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1875), pp. 119–20;Google Scholar and Martin, Alfred, Etude historique et statistique sur les moyens de transport dans Paris (Paris, 1894).Google Scholar

25 Lecouteux, , L'agriculrure de la Seine, p. 125.Google Scholar Some farmers even had contracts with the omnibus companies to restore worn-out animals to working condition. See Lecouteux, Edouard, Cours d'économie rurale (Paris, 1879), vol. 2, p. 119.Google Scholar Cordier reports the same trade in eighteenth-century Flanders, where Continuous warfare on the French border with the Austrian Netherlands generated a large supply of rundown artillery horses; Cordier, , Mémoire sur … la Flandre française, p. 43.Google Scholar

26 See François Dupin, Baron Claude, Mémoire statislique du département des Deux Sèvres (Paris, An 12), pp. 294–296. These remarks are based on an analysis of the consumption and production data from a sampling of the departmental income accounts prepared in An X (1801) by the Napoleanic prefects. lam currently preparing a study based on analysis of the extant accounts.Google Scholar

27 The cantons in the départements of Seine-et-Oise, Eure-et-Loir, and Aube raised bread corn for the Paris market. Stock raising is discussed in Mulliez, Jacques, “Du blé, ‘mal nécessaire’: Réflexions sur les progrès de L'agriculture de 1750 à 1850,” Revue d' Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 36 (01–03, 1979), pp. 3–47. This important article shows conclusively that the land-extensive systems of western France were not technologically “backward,” but in fact met the requirements of specialized animal husbandry.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 See Meuvret, Jean, Le problème des subsisrances à I'epoque Louis XIV: Le commerce des grains el la conjoncture (Paris, 1988).Google Scholar

29 See my review essay, pp. 184–200.

30 Calculated from data reported in Ministère de l' Agriculture et du Commerce. Direction de l'Agriculture. Récoltes des céréales et des pommes de terre de 1815 à 1870 (Paris, 1873).Google Scholar

31 Rye continued to be sown in wheat-specializing districts because rye straw was used to tie the sheaves.

32 In principle it is possible to analyze the whole of agricultural output in this way, but because of the difficulty of obtaining unambiguous estimates of the amount of land used to support animals, the exercise was restricted to the small grains. I have adopted the analytical method from Parker, William N. and Klein, Judith L. V., “Productivity Growth in Grain Production in the United States, 1840–60 and 1900–10,” Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States After 1800, Studies in Income and Wealth, vol. 30 (New York, 1966), pp. 523–80.Google Scholar

33 The average Paris yield was about twice the average non-urban yield. Price differences play a larger role in the total variation because they reflect differences in crop mix that are not statistically separated out.

34 Gilbert, , Traité des prairies artificielles, p. 19.Google Scholar

35 For evidence on this point, see Grantham, G., “Capital and Agrarian Structure in Early Nineteenth-Century France,” in Grantham, George and Leonard, Carol, eds., Agrarian Organizalion in the Century of Industrialization (in press).Google Scholar

36 Estimating labor inputs from data recorded in the census returns is rendered difficult by inconsistent accounting of the labor used to plow the fallow preceding the wheat crop. Even so, the heavy clays required at least 25 percent more labor per hectare than the average soils. a Woman-days weighted at 0.6 man-days and child-days at 0.45.

37 This is borne out by an analysis of variance of yields by soil type and urban location. Only urban location is significant. The effects are most pronounced on poor soils, on which investments made in response to high demand were likely to have their strongest effect.

38 Newell, William H., “The Agricultural Revolution in Nineteenth-Century France,” this JOURNAL, 33 (12 1973), pp. 697–731.Google Scholar

39 The discrepancy holds for other classes and other types of land, such as meadows.

40 Lecouteux noted with disapproval the disparate mix of urban and rural, migrant and local workers in the fields around Paris. (L'agriculture de la Seine, p. 6). On the other hand, inferior diets probably resulted in low farm labor productivity in the poor regions of the west and southwest.Google Scholar

41 Gasparin attributed the high turnover and more competitive English land market to the English farmers' practice of keeping careful accounts on each parcel of land they farmed, which over time permitted them to evaluate accurately the rent they could afford to pay on unfamiliar farms; Gasparin, De, Guide des propriétaires de biens ruraux affermés (Paris, 1851, reprint of 1828 edition), pp. 66–68.Google Scholar On the nonhomogeneity of the land market, see Postel-Vinay, Gilles, La rente foncière dans le capiralisme agricole (Paris, 1974);Google Scholar and Béaur, Gérard, Le marché foncier à la veille de la Révolution (Paris, 1984), pp. 262 ff.Google Scholar

42 I am grateful to Gilles Postel-Vinay for providing me with information on the wealth of some of the large farmers of the Paris region.

43 The size of farms producing grain for the Paris market and their huge capital requirements resulted in thin rental markets, despite the limitation of leases to nine years. Comparing the south of France with the Paris basin, Gasparin observed that in the Midi, where the land was divided into small parcels, peasants knew the value of every parcel and “la voix publique en instruit le propriétaire.” In the north, large farms turned over infrequently and, in the absence of a vigorous market, rented at a discount which he estimated to be 25 percent. Gasparin, De, Guide des propriétaires de biens ruraux affermés, pp. 66–68; and Postel-Vinay, La rente foncière.Google Scholar

44 For example, in the analysis of census data by Lewis, Frank D. and McInnis, Marvin, “Agricultural Output and Efficiency in Lower Canada, 1851,” in Uselding, Paul, ed., Research in Economic History vol. 9 (London, 1984), pp. 45–87;Google Scholar in her analysis of the 1774 Massachusetts tax valuation rolls Bettye Hobbs Pruitt records that grain surpluses were highest in the counties near Boston, although only a small proportion of total improved land was under the plow, a result of what she describes as “some improvements in practice for the purpose of increasing output (“Self-Sufficiency and the Agricultural Economy of Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts,” The William and Mary Quarterly 41 [07 1984], p. 391).Google Scholar

45 An aggregate price index for each canton was constructed by computing the weighted average of local prices relative to the average price in the sample, using the share of each product in net farm output to weight the local prices. The output index was constructed by deflating the value of each crop by the cantonal price relative to the average sample price.

46 Crafts, N. F. R., “Income Elasticities of Demand and the Release of Labor by Agriculture During the Industrial Revolution,” in Mokyr, Joel, ed., The Economics of the Industrial Revolution (Totowa, New Jersey, 1985). The change in output with respect to a 1 percent shift in demand is calculated as ËsI(Ës – Ëd) where Ës = supply elasticity and Ëd = demand elasticity.Google Scholar

47 Toutain, J. C., “Le produit de l'agriculture française,” Cahiers de l'Institut de Science Economique Appliquée. Série AF no. 2 (Paris, 1961), pp. 128–29, 214–15.Google Scholar

48 The instruments used in this estimation are population per hectare of agricultural land, the price of substitutes in bread consumption (wheat, rye, and meteil)—for forage crops the prices of hay and oats—and dummy variables for three soil types and proximity to Paris.

49 The census reports an estimated “normal” output, as well as the actual output, in 1852. One can thus reduce the bias towards high supply elasticities that is induced by deviations of actual from normal output, which result in above-normal yields producing lower local prices and below-normal yields producing higher prices. The estimates reported here regress the “normal” yield on actual 1852 prices, using the price of close substitutes for each crop as a supply instrument, on the grounds that high prices of substitutes will be correlated with below-normal yields, but uncorrelated with the estimated average yield of the crop in question.

50 The pessimistic view of agricultural possibilities at the turn of the nineteenth century is popularly associated with the ideas of T. R. Malthus, although Malthus in fact held an optimistic assessment of medium-term agricultural supply elasticities. von Tunzelmann, G. N., “Malthus's ‘Total Population System’: A Dynamic Interpretation,” in Coleman, David and Schofield, R. S., eds., The State of Population Theory: Forward From Malthus (Oxford, 1986).Google Scholar

51 The price data are conveniently summarized in Abel, Wilhelm, Agricultural Fluctuations in Europe, from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century (New York, 1980), pp. 198–219.Google Scholar For recent additions to the works cited by Abel, see Rothenberg, Winifred B., “A Price Index for Rural Massachusetts, 1750–1855,” this JOURNAL, 39 (12 1979), pp. 975–1002;Google ScholarAdams, Donald R. Jr, “Prices and Wages in Maryland, 1750–1850,” this JOURNAL, (09 1986), pp. 625–45;Google Scholar and Mironov, Boris, “Le mouvement des prix des céréales en Russie du xviiie siècle au début du xxe siècle,” Annales, E.S.C., (01–02 1986), pp. 217–51.Google Scholar

52 Dupâquier, Jacques, La population française aux xviiie et xviiie siècles (Paris, 1979), p. 86.Google Scholar

53 Jackson, R. V., “Growth and Deceleration in English Agriculture, 1660–1790,” Economic History Review, 38 (08 1985), p. 351.Google Scholar

54 Crafts, N. F. R., “English Economic Growth in the Eighteenth Century: A Re-examination of Deane and Cole's Estimates,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 29 (05 1976), pp. 226–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar and O'Brien, P., “Agriculture and the home market for English industry, 1660–1820,” English Historical Review (10 1985), pp. 773–99.Google Scholar

55 The movement in the price index dominates movements in English real wages in the eighteenth century. See Lindert, Peter H., “English Population, Wages, and Prices, 1541–1913,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 15 (Spring, 1985), pp. 609–634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Weir, David, “Life Under Pressure: France and England, 1670–1870,” this JOURNAL, 44 (03 1984), pp. 27–48.Google Scholar

57 The Netherlands and England have almost identical eighteenth-century real-wage patterns, although their economic and demographic history could hardly be more different. de Vries, Jan, “The Population and Economy of the Preindustrial Netherlands,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 15 (Spring, 1985), pp. 661–682. For America, see Adams, Prices and Wages in Maryland, 1750–1850.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 See Rothenberg, Winifred B., “A Price Index for Rural Massachusetts, 1750–1855”;Google ScholarAdams, Donald R. Jr, “Prices and Wages in Maryland, 1750–1850”;Google ScholarMironov, , “Le mouvement des prix des céréales en Russie du xviiie siècle au début du xxe siècle”.Google Scholar West Indies sugar plantations imported flour from as far away as southwest France and the Baltic. In the early 1770s the value of grain shipped from the Middle Atlantic colonies to southern Europe equalled what was shipped to the West Indies. McCusker, John J. and Menard, Russell R., The Economy of British America, 1607–1789 (Chapel Hill, 1985), p. 199;Google ScholarGilbert, Geoffrey, “The Role of Breadstuffs in American Trade, 1770–1790,” Explorations in Economic History, 14 (10 1977), pp. 378–87;CrossRefGoogle ScholarFrêches, Georges, “Etudes statistiques sur le commerce céréalier de la France méridionale au xviiie siècle,” Revue d'Histoire Economique et Sociale, 49 (1971), p. 32.Google ScholarJacob, William describes the many destinations of Baltic corn in Tracts relating to the Corn Trade and Corn Laws: including the Second Report (London, 1828), pp. 100–2.Google Scholar

59 Labrousse, C. E., Histoire économique et sociale de la France. Vol. 2: Des derniers temps de l'¢ge seigneurial aux préludes de l'¢ge industriel (Paris, 1970), p. 390.Google Scholar

60 See Meuvret, Le commerce des grains et la conjoncture. In the mid-nineteenth century grain cleaned for market sold at a 33 percent premium. See Bax, L., Guide des négociants en grains (Lectoure, 1854), pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

61 Neveux, Hugues, “L'alimentation du xive au xviiie siècle,” Revue d'Histoire Economique et Sociale, 51 (1973), pp. 336–79.Google Scholar See also Appleby, Andrew, “Grain Prices and Subsistence Crises in England and France,” this JOURNAL, 39 (12 1979), pp. 865–88.Google Scholar

62 In 1800 58 percent of the English population subsisted on wheat, but in the northern industrial regions only 25 percent did. See Collins, E. J. T., “Dietary Change and Cereal Consumption in Britain in the Nineteenth Century,” Agricultural History Review, 23 (1975), p. 105;Google Scholar and Thomas, “Food Supply in the United Kingdom During the Industrial Revolution”. Chestnuts supported population densities as high as 46 persons per square kilometer in the Cévennes mountains in 1840. See Brueton-Governatori, Ariane, “Alimentation et idéologie: Le cas de la châtaigne”, Annales, E.S.C., 39 (1984), PP. 1181–89,Google Scholar and Molinier, Alain, Stagnations et croissance: Le Vivarais aux xviie–xviiie siècle (Paris, 1985), pp. 203–6.Google Scholar They were a staple in the poorer districts of Anjou by the end of the seventeenth century, where in the first half of the eighteenth century another new crop, buckwheat, was rapidly becoming the base of peasant diets. See Lebrun, François, Les hommes et la mort en Anjou aux xviie et xviiie siecles (Paris, 1975), pp. 17, 22.Google ScholarMokyr, Joel has enthusiastically reviewed the dietary qualities of the potato which, together with garden vegetables and the dairy products available to every family capable of keeping a cow, constituted a nutritious if bland diet; Why Ireland Starved (London, 1983), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar See also Morineau, Michel, “La pomme de terre au xviiie siècle,” Annales, E.S.C., 25 (1970), pp. 1767–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For maize, see Hohenberg, Paul, “Maize in French Agriculture”, Journal of European Economic History 6 (Spring 1977), pp. 63–101.Google Scholar

63 Dickler, Robert W., “Organization and Change in Productivity in Eastern Prussia”, in Parker, William N. and Jones, Eric L., eds., European Peasants and their Markets (Princeton, 1975), pp. 288–92,Google Scholar and Hohenberg, , “Maize in French Agriculture”, p.71.Google Scholar Morineau finds a crude correlation in eighteenth-century France between regions of high wheat prices and regions of high potato consumption; Morineau, , “La pomme de terre aux xviiie siècle,” p. 1781.Google Scholar

64 For example, wheat prices in Lower Normandy were 33 percent below those in Paris in 1700. By 1780 they were equal or higher, as the region increased its specialization on livestock husbandry; Garnier, Bernard, “Pays herbagers, pays céréaliers et pays ‘ouverts’ en Normandie(xvie-xixe siècles),” Revue d'Histoire Economique et Sociale, 53 (1975), pp. 493–25.Google Scholar See also Meuvret, Jean, “La géographie des prix des céréales et les anciennes économies européennes,” in his Etudes d'histoire économique (Paris, 1971), pp. 97–104.Google Scholar

65 Collins, , “Dietary Change and Cereal Consumption in Britain in the Nineteenth Century,” p. 104.Google Scholar

66 Shammas, Carol, “The Eighteenth-Century English Diet and Economic Change,” Explorations in Economic History, 21 (07 1984), pp. 254–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

67 Koenker, Roger, “Was Bread Giffen? The Demand for Food in England circa 1790,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 59 (05 1977), pp. 225–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68 Cited in Kaplan, Steven, Provisioning Paris: Merchants and Millers in the Grain and Flour Trade During the Eighteenth Century (Ithaca, 1984), p. 44.Google Scholar

69 The coarse grains contain little gluten and are prepared as porridges and pancakes rather than baked into bread. This use of cereals creates an entirely different tradition of food preparation from that of bread-based cuisines. See Carol Shammas, “The Eighteenth-Century English Diet.”

70 The weights used in the Phelps-Hopkins-Brown index to deflate nominal wages may exaggerate the importance of food expenditures by 25 to 33 percent; see Shammas, Carole, “Food Expenditures and Economic Well-Being in Early Modem England,” this JOURNAL (03 1983), pp. 89–101. The accounts from which Beveridge drew his prices for southern England are all of top-quality grain.Google Scholar

71 See Meuvret, , Le commerce des grains et la conjoncture. See also my review essay, pp. 184–200.Google Scholar

72 David Ormrod suggests that the rise in British grain exports to Holland in the 1720s and 1730s has less to do with contemporary improvements in agricultural productivity than with a slowdown in London's growth, which diminished the growth of demand for commercializable cereals; Ormrod, , English Grain Exports and the Structure of Agrarian Capitalism, 1700–1760 (Hull, 1985), pp. 48–49, 57.Google Scholar For this reason Crafts's ingenious attempt to deduce English agricultural growth in the eighteenth century from a market-clearing exercise does not seem to me to be entirely convincing. A regional or occupational shift in the population anywhere in the trading system that increased the commercialization of agricultural produce is likely to have pushed up the price of the traded cereals independently of population growth or increases in income. See Crafts, N. F. R., “English Economic Growth in the Eighteenth Century: A Re-examination of Deane and Cole's estimates.”Google Scholar

73 See Hueckel, Glenn, “Agriculture During Industrialization,” in Floud, Roderick and McCloskey, Donald, eds., The Economic History of Britain Since 1700. Vol. 1: 1700–1860 (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 182–84.Google Scholar On post-Napoleonic supply elasticities, Fairlie, S., “The Nineteenth-Century Corn Law Revisited”, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 18 (04 1965), pp. 562–75,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Williamson, Jeffrey G., “The Impact of the Corn Law Just Prior to Repeal,” Harvard Institute of Economic Research, Discussion Paper, no. 1279 (11 1986),Google Scholar assume that from the British perspective, the supply of corn was infinitely elastic. But William Jacob, who as controller of the grain returns in Britain undertook several personal enquiries into Eastern Europe in the early 1820s, believed that supplies were inelastic; Jacob, William, A View of the Agriculture, Manufactures, Statistics, and State of Society of Germany, and Parts of Holland and France (London, 1820);Google ScholarReport on the Trade in Foreign Corn and on the Agriculture of the North of Europe (London, 1826); and Tracts relating to the Corn Trade and Corn Laws: including the Second Report.Google Scholar

74 Allen, Robert C., “Inferring Yields from Probate Inventories,” this JOURNAL, 48 (03 1988), pp. 117–25.Google ScholarTurner, Michael, “Agricultural Productivity in England in the Eighteenth Century: Evidence from the Crop Yields,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 25 (11 1982);Google ScholarOverton, Mark, “Agricultural Productivity in Eighteenth-Century England: Some Further Speculations,” Economic History Review, 2nd series (05 1984), pp. 244–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

75 Allen, Robert, “Enclosure and Agricultural Productivity, 1450–1850,” in Grantham, George W. and Leonard, Carol, eds., Agrarian Organization in the Century of Industrialization (in press).Google Scholar

76 Turner, Michael, “English Open Fields and Enclosures: Retardation or Productivity Improvements,” this JOURNAL, 46 (09 1986), pp. 672–73.Google Scholar Robert Allen finds that over 90 percent of the enclosures in the south Midlands villages he studied were in pastoral districts; Allen, , “Enclosure, Capitalist Agriculture and the Growth of Corn Yields in Early Modern England,” University of British Columbia Department of Economics Working Paper, no. 86–39 (08 1986).Google Scholar

77 See Williams, Dale Edward, “Morals, Markets and the English Crowd in 1766,” Past & Present, 104 (08 1984), pp. 56–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

78 Toutain, , “Le produit physique de l'agriculture française,” pp. 128–29;Google ScholarLévy-Leboyer, Maurice, “La croissance économique en France au xixe siècle,” Annales, E.S.C., 23 (1968), pp. 802;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGallman, Robert E., “The Agricultural Sector and the Pace of Economic Growth: U.S. Experience,” in Klingman, Donald C. and Richard, K. Vedder, Essays in Nineteenth Century Economic History: The Old Northwest, (Athens, OH, 1975).Google Scholar Thomas Weiss's downward revision of Gallman's estimates of the share of farm labor in rural population in 1820 yields a rate of growth of farm labor productivity between 1820 and 1840 of 0.5 percent; Weiss, , “The Farm Labor Force by Region, 1820–1860: Revised Estimates and Implications for Growth,” NBER Working Paper No. 2438 (11 1987), p. 17.Google Scholar

79 These patterns are clearly evident in the patterns of yields and cropping patterns compiled by Biddick, Kathleen and Campbell, Bruce. Biddick, Kathleen, “Medieval English Peasants and Market Involvement,” this JOURNAL, 45 (12 1985), pp. 823–31;Google Scholar Bruce Campbell, Bruce M. S., “Arable Productivity in Medieval England: Some Evidence from Norfolk,” this JOURNAL, 43 (06 1983), pp. 379–404;Google Scholar see also McIntosh, Marjorie Keniston, Autonomy and Community: The Royal Manor of Havering, 1200–1500 (Cambridge, 1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 de Vries, Jan, European Urbanization, 1500–1800, pp. 121–50.Google Scholar Ann Kussmaul's ingenious manipulation of seasonal patterns of marriages dates the emergence of pronounced regional specialization in England to the period between 1625 and 1675; Kussmaul, , “Agrarian Change in Seventeenth-Century England: The Economic Historian as Paleontologist,” this JOURNAL, 45 (03 1985), pp. 1–30.Google Scholar

81 A considerable portion of the foodstuffs marketed on the continent were in payment of rent and taxes. These supplies must be distinguished from the presumably much smaller amounts of food that were marketed voluntarily by farmers in exchange for manufactured goods.

82 For an argument that cheap transport constituted the critical break between the ancien régime économique and the modern economy, see Price, Roger, The Modernization of Rural France: Communications Networks and Agricultural Market Structures in Nineteenth-Century France (London, 1983).Google Scholar

83 This requires that the demand for market-provided goods be more income elastic than the demand for leisure. See Hymer, Stephen and Resnick, Stephen, “A Model of an Agrarian Economy with Nonagricultural Activities,” American Economic Review, 59 (09 1969), pp. 493–506.Google Scholar

84 The employment of hand labor in early nineteenth-century European agriculture has not received the attention it deserves. Deep spading was a powerful, though expensive, means of raising crop yields, carried out not only on peasant plots, but by large farmers as an investment. See Nouveau cours complet d'agriculture théorique et pratique (Paris, 1820), articles on “Bêchage,” “Charrues,” and “Défoncement.”Google Scholar

85 Timmer, C. Peter, “The Turnip, the New Husbandry, and the English Agricultural Revolution,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 83 (08 1969), pp. 379–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

86 Crafts, N. F. R., British Economic Growth During the Industrial Revolution (London, 1985).Google Scholar

87 Field, Alexander James, “Sectoral Shift in Antebellum Massachusetts: A Reconsideration,” Explorations in Economic History, 15 (04 1978), pp. 146–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar