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The Growth of English Agricultural Productivity in the Seventeenth Century*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
This paper undertakes an examination, in the light of economic theory, of the growth of English agricultural productivity before and after the Civil War. The hypothesis is simply that the mid-seventeenth century witnessed an inflection point in the growth of agricultural productivity, specifically, a significantly more rapid growth after 1650 than before.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Social Science History Association 1977
Footnotes
*
The author wishes to express his appreciation to Elias Tuma, Hiromitsu Kaneda, and Manfred P. Fleischer for their criticisms and comments on earlier drafts of this paper; responsibility for errors in the present form, of course, remains with the author.
References
Notes
1 Jorgenson, Dale W., “The Development of a Dual Economy,” Economic Journal, LXXI (June 1961), 309–334CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Surplus Agricultural Labour and the Development of a Dual Economy,” Oxford Economic Papers, XIX (November 1967), 288-312.
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4 “Pastoral regions” were indeed the birth-place of industrialization and would in the following century become the centers of Industrial Revolution.
5 See Davis, Ralph, “English Foreign Trade, 1660-1700,” in Carus-Wilson, E. M., ed., Essays in Economic History (London, 1966), II, 270–271Google Scholar; Brown, E. H. Phelps and Hopkins, Sheila V., “Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables, Compared with Builders’ Wage-Rates,” Essays in Economic History, II, 180Google Scholar; Kerridge, Eric, The Agricultural Revolution (London, 1967), 332Google Scholar; and Chambers, J. D. and Mingay, G. E., The Agricultural Revolution 1750-1880 (New York, 1966), 10–12Google Scholar.
6 Bowden, Peter, “Agricultural Prices, Farm Profits, and Rents,” in Thirsk, Joan, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 1500-1640 (Cambridge, 1967), IV, 617Google Scholar.
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One might raise the reasonable contention that, although fen drainage did not increase agricultural productivity from a pre-drainage base of zero productivity, drainage did “improve the quality” of the land involved. From this point, one might posit the scenario of increased supply of fertile land; increased supply of grain; and, other things equal, decreased price of grain. Alternatively, Professor De Vries suggests the following: “This capital-intensive form of land acquisition was highly sensitive to the economic climate. With the downturn of agricultural prices after the mid-seventeenth century drainage activity diminished rapidly. In certain regions, most notably the Dutch Republic, the new land directly affected the supply of agricultural products, but in Europe as a whole it can be said that land augmentation of all types was no longer the chief avenue to increased supply. If the land area cannot be increased without undergoing great expense, there is but one alternative; increasing the productivity of the land, which chiefly takes the form of adopting more intensive crop rotation systems.” Vries, Jan De, The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600-1750 (Cambridge, 1976), 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Jorgenson, , Economic Journal, LXXI, 316Google Scholar.
9 Ibid., 318-19.
10 Ibid., 334.
11 Rostow, W. W., The Process of Economic Growth (New York, 1962), 281–87Google Scholar; and The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge, 1964), 37-41.
12 Jorgenson, , Economic Journal, LXXI, 333–334Google Scholar.
13 See Brown, Phelps and Hopkins, , “Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables,” 183Google Scholar; Thirsk, Agricultural History Review, XVIII, Supplement, 148; and Hoskins, W. G., “Harvest Fluctuations and English Economic History, 1480-1619,” Agricultural History Review, XII (1964)Google Scholar, graph facing 29, and Hoskins, , “Harvest Fluctuations and English Economic History 1620-1759,” Agricultural History Review, XVI, (1968)Google Scholar, graph facing 15. For an up-dating, using the prices of all grains, and critical analysis of Hoskins see Harrison, C. J., “Grain Price Analysis and Harvest Qualities, 1465-1634,” Agricultural History Review, XIX (Part II, 1971), 135–155Google Scholar.
14 See Jones, E. L., “Agriculture and Economic Growth in England, 1660-1750: Agricultural Change,” Journal of Economic History, XXV (March, 1965), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coleman, D. C., “Labour in the English Economy of the Seventeenth Century,” Essays in Economic History, II, 300Google Scholar; and Kerridge, Agricultural Revolution, 332.
15 N.B., although the series reveal for 1620-9 to 1640-9 a relative shortage in Europe, there is no evidence of an export response by England in this period.
16 More generally speaking (leaving the grain market for a moment) we perceive in the literature a questioning of the prime significance of the expansion of foreign trade to the development of seventeenth-century England, e.g., “while foreign trade expanded in this period, its level was lower than that of internal trade, and there is no evidence to show that it grew faster. Domestic commerce, therefore, may very well have played the dominant role.” Reed, Clyde C., “Transactions Costs and Differential Growth in Seventeenth Century Western Europe,” Journal of Economic History, XXXIII (March 1973), 184Google Scholar. Also see Roehl, Richard, “Comment”, Journal of Economic History, XXXIII (March 1973), 230Google Scholar.
17 Roehl, ibid.
18 Kerridge, Agricultural Revolution, 332.
19 Rickman, J., “Estimated Population of England and Wales, 1570-1750,” Great Britain: Population Enumeration Abstract (1843), XXII, 36fGoogle Scholar. cited by Helleiner, Karl F., “The Population of Europe from the Black Death to the Eve of the Vital Revolution,” in Postan, M., and Habakkuk, H.J., Gens, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, ?? vols. (Cambridge, 1967), Vol. 4Google Scholar: The Economy of Expanding Europe in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, E. E. Rich and C. H. Wilson, eds., 52.
20 Helleiner, “The Population of Europe,” 53.
21 Ibid., 53-54. Also see Chambers, Agricultural Revolution, 12.
22 As noted below, even a slow rate of population growth in this fixed land supply, traditional agriculture framework can not be taken lightly in the consideration of the impact of diminishing returns.
23 Phelps Brown and Hopkins, “Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables,” 186.
24 Chambers, Agricultural Revolution, 11.
25 Hoskins, Agricultural History Review, XII, 29. See also, for elaborations on this theme, Alan Everitt, “Farm Labourers” (397-398) and Peter Bowden, “Agricultural Prices, Farm Profits, and Rents” (598) in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 1500-1640, IV.
26 Chambers, Agricultural Revolution, 11.
27 Hoskins, Agricultural History Review, XII, 28.
28 “… The entire seventeenth century seems to have experienced a ‘little ice age’ in which severe winters occurred with unusual frequency. The last decade of the seventeenth century stands out in northwestern Europe as an era of unusually wet summers and cold winters.” From De Vries, The Economy of Europe…, 12. See also in De Vries a graph depicting “Climate trends in northwestern Europe”, 13. De Vries cites E. LeRoy Ladurie, trans, by Barbara Bray, Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate since the Year 1000 (Garden City, N.Y., 1971).
29 Hoskins, Agricultural History Review, XII, 42.
30 Bowden, “Agricultural Prices,” 602-603; 636-42. In terms of cross elasticities, it seems that for this period the absolute value of the cross price elasticity, cloth/grain (≡ percent change in quantity of cloth ÷ percent change in price of grain) was greater than the absolute value of the cross price elasticity, edible animal products/grain.
31 Brenner, Y. S., “The Inflation of Prices in England, 1551-1650,” Economic History Review, 2nd series XV(no. 2, 1962), 273Google Scholar.
32 Kerridge, , “The Movement of Rent, 1540-1640,” Essays in Economic History, II, 220Google Scholar.
33 Hoskins, , “The Leicestershire Farmer in the Seventeenth Century,” Agricultural History, XXV (no. 1, 1951), 11Google Scholar.
34 Jorgenson, Economic Journal, LXXI, 330.
35 Kerridge, Agricultural Revolution, 332; Chambers, Agricultural Revolution, 12.
36 See quote in Lipson, E., The Economic History of England (London, 1962), II, 484Google Scholar. Also Bowden, “Agricultural Prices,” 598.
37 Coleman, “Labour in the English Economy,” 294-95.
38 Thirsk, Agricultural History Review, XVIII, Supplement, 149. For full quote see Bowden, “Agricultural Prices,” 632.
39 Fisher, F. J., “The Development of the London Food Market, 1540-1640,” Essays in Economic History, I, 151Google Scholar.
40 Convertible agriculture implies “… the alternation of arable and grass in place of the ancient division of the cultivated area between permanent arable and permanent grass which tended to undermine the fertility of both.” Chambers, Agricultural Revolution, 4.
41 Kerridge, Agricultural Revolution, 210; and Hoskins, Agricultural History, XXV, 10-12.
42 Bowden, “Agricultural Prices,” 599-600.
43 See Phelps Brown and Hopkins, “Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables,” 183; Thirsk, Agricultural History Review, XVIII, Supplement, 148; and Hoskins, Agricultural History Review, XVI, graph facing 15.
44 Chambers, Agricultural Revolution, 12.
45 “Closed” in the sense of insignificant grain export or grain import - thus excluding foreign market demand from the domestic demand function. Of course, in the general sense, the economy was open - witness the colonial trade and postwar Navigation Laws.
46 One may note the emergence of large scale graziers in Leicestershire in the post-war period. The assumption, however, of a fixed supply of land suitable for pasture and/or tillage remains in force. Furthermore, coincidentally with Leicestershire being turned to pasture much of East Anglia was adopting the sheep-corn-fodder crop innovations which would more than offset the demise of Leicestershire grain production.
47 Helleiner, “The Population of Europe,” 53-54.
48 Phelps Brown and Hopkins, “Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables,” 186.
49 Hoskins, Agricultural History Review, XVI, 22.
50 Brenner, Economic History Review, XV, fn. 2, 22.
51 Brown, E. H. Phelps and Hopkins, Sheila V., “Wage-rates and Prices: Evidence for Population Pressure in the Sixteenth Century,” Economica, XXIV (November 1957), 306Google Scholar.
52 Grassby, Richard, “The Personal Wealth of the Business Community in Seventeenth-Century England,” Economic History Review, XXIII (August 1970), 223–26Google Scholar.
53 Jorgenson, Economic Journal, LXXI, 330.
54 Kerridge, Agricultural Revolution, 332.
55 One may question what impact the Navigation Laws and, specifically, the corn bounties had on this observed, dramatic upsurge in grain exportation. Although it is certainly difficult to isolate this factor, it would seem that a substantial surplus emerged prior to the institution of corn bounties, i.e., the bounties were instituted in response to a growing agricultural surplus created by the adoption of new techniques (see below for comments of a contemporary describing this relationship).
56 Ralph Davis, “English Foreign Trade, 1660-1700,” 270-71. Employed together with Hoskins’s price series data.
57 Riches, Naomi, The Agricultural Revolution in Norfolk (New York, 1967), 31–32Google Scholar.
58 Chambers, Agricultural Revolution, 12.
59 Quoted from Kerridge, Agricultural Revolution, 346.
60 Quoted from Thirsk, Agricultural History Review, XVIII, Supplement, 164.
61 Quoted from Ibid., 159.
62 Ibid., Textbook lag cannot be ruled-out here; the implication that all the changes emerged in a three year period is difficult to accept. We would suggest, however, that Blith’s “newer pieces of improvement” were not in wide use before the mid-1640s.
63 Jones, Journal of Economic History, XXV, 5.
64 County—boundary of political/administrative origin; as opposed to “country”—boundary determined by identification of unique husbandry system. See Kerridge, The Agricultural Revolution, 41.
65 Jones, , Journal of Economic History, XXV, 5Google Scholar.
66 Hoskins, , Agricultural History, XXV, 9Google Scholar.
67 Ibid., 14.
68 Havinden, M. A., “Agricultural Progress in Open-field Oxfordshire,” Agricultural History Review, IX, (1961), 82Google Scholar.
69 Kerridge, , “Turnip Husbandry in High Suffolk,” Economic History Review, 2d series VIII (No. 3, 1956), 390–92Google Scholar.
70 Ibid., 391.
71 Kerridge, Agricultural Revolution, 294, 326.
72 Chambers, Agricultural Revolution, 12.