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The Prudent Peasant: New Findings on Open Fields

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Donald N. McCloskey
Donald N. McCloskey
Affiliation:
The author is John F. Murray Professor of Economics and Professor of History, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 53346
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Abstract

The usual picture of the medieval peasantry is based on nineteenth-century scholarship, which has proven difficult to dislodge from educated minds. This article continues the revision of an important detail in the picture, the scattering of plots in open fields. Some recent work on the subject by Robert Allen and Gregory Clark is midly disputed, and new evidence is presented that risk avoidance is the key to understanding peasant behavior. The reason for the scattering was not sentiment or socialism. Peasants were not perhaps rational in every detail; but they were prudent.

Type
Papers Presented at the Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 1991 , pp. 343 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1991

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References

He wishes to thank David Galenson and the members of the Economic History Workshop at the University of Chicago for keeping the faith.Google Scholar

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7 Thomas Weiss has pointed out to me that incompetent landlords would also be incompetent at seizing (even large) gains from enclosure. They would be bad at farming and also bad at enclosuring. So a cross-section on this account would exaggerate the experimentally controlled difference in efficiency. Wrandyke hundred would be the region of stupid landlords.Google Scholar

8 Allen, “Efficiency and Distributional Consequences.” p. 939. Emphasis is added.Google Scholar

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