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Taxes and Agrarian Life in Early Modern France: Land Sales, 1550–1730

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Philip T. Hoffman
Philip T. Hoffman
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Histroy and Social Science at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125.
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Abstract

Between 1550 and 1730, privileged investors in France—nobles, officers, and wealthy merchants—bought up enormous quantities of land from peasants. The transfer of property has attracted considerable attention from historians, but it has never been satisfactorily explained. The paper invokes the tax exemptions the privileged enjoyed to account for the transfer—an explanation that fits both the chronology of the land sales and the identity of the purchasers. The paper then examines how the tax system throttled growth in the agricultural sector.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 37 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1986

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References

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2 Quoted Gascon, Richard, Grand commerce et vie urbaine au XVIe siècle: Lyon et ses marchands, 2 vols. (Paris, 1971), vol. 2, p. 841.Google ScholarFor additional instances of contemporary complaint, see Archives municipales de Bourg-en-Bresse (Ain), AA 11; and Doren, Llewain Scott Van, “War Taxation, Institutional Change, and Social Conflict in Provinical France–The Royal Taille in Dauphiné, 1494–1559,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 121 (1977), p. 84.Google Scholar

3 It should be stressed that urbanites were not the only outside buyers in Saint-Genis-Laval. Nor were all the purchasers of peasant land wealthy.Google Scholar

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6 Jacquart, “Immobilisme,” pp. 259–75; Landurie, Le Roy, “Vraie croissance,” pp. 424–29, 594;Google ScholarLe Roy, Landurie, “La paysannerie,” pp. 622–32, 786–99;Google ScholarChevalier, Bernard, Les bonnes villes de France du XIVe au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1982), pp. 129–49.Google ScholarFor the exceptional case of Toulouse, see Ladurie, Le Roy, “Vraie croissance,” pp. 428–29, 594;Google Scholarand Frêche, Georges, Toulouse et la région midipyrénées au siècle des lumières (ver 1670–1789) (np 1974), pp. 164, 187–209, 457–89. The evidence for continued land sales near Toulouse after 1730 is less than conclusive. Frêche (whose work Le Roy Ladurie refers to) relies almost exculusively upon tax records from the 1680s or 1690s on the one hand, and form the eighteenth century on the other, and despite his assertions about greater sales after 1730, such tax records say nothing about the detailed chronology of transfers. After all, the land could have changed hands in the years 1680–1730. Furthermors, the figures Frêche does have for loss of peasant land are often stikingly samall.Google Scholar

7 Jacqart, Ile-de-Fracne, p. 733; Jacqart, “Immobilisme,” pp. 259–75; Le Roy Landurie, “La Paysannerie,” pp. 786–99; Jacqart, “Vraie croissance,” pp. 424–29; Chevalier, Les bonnes villes, pp. 129–49;Google ScholarHuppert, Georges, Les Bourgeois Gentilshommes (Chicago, 1977), pp. 39–50.Google Scholar

8 Jacquart, “Immobilisme,” pp. 250–52.Google Scholar

9 Three tithe series and one series of farm harvest records from various regions of France suggest that gross revenues were no higer in the years 1550–1730 than before or after. For two of the series the cofficients of variation of gross revenues were in fact lower in 1550–1730 than before or after, and in the other two series, although the coefficients of variation were higher, the differences were so slight that they were not significant, even at the 0.25 probability level. (Here gross revenues are defined as tithe collecitons times price for the tithe series and harvest times price for the tithe series and harvest times price for the harvest series.) Using deviations from a moving average of gross revenues led to similar results. Gross revenues, for course, are not profits, and tithe records always pose problems. The fluctuations of gross revenues, though, ought ot have accounted for most of the variation of profits, and the tithe records used are better than most. They were collectd annually in kind, and they coem from holdings where the are farmed and the tithe rate did not vary significantly. The sources for the three series of tithe records, the series of harvest figures, and the associated grain prices are: Ladurie, Le Roy, Paysans de Languedoc, vol. 2 pp. 820–22, 844–48 (price and tithe of wheat at Béziers, 1587–1757);Google ScholarNeveux, Hugues, Vie et déclin d'une structure économique: Les grains du Cambrésis (fin du XIVe–début du XVIIe siècle) (Paris, 1980), pp. 396–99,Google Scholarand Goy, Joseph and Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy, eds., Les fluctuations du produit de la dîme: Conjoncture décimale et domaniale de la fin dy Moyen Age au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1972), pp. 58–66 (prices and tithes of wheat and oats at Cambrai, 1401–1633);Google ScholarBaehrel, Réné, Une croissacne: La basse provence rurale (fin XVIe siècel–1789) (Paris, 1961), p. 554,Google Scholarand Goy and Le Roy Ladurie, Les fluctuatuons, pp. 243–53 (prices and wheat production figures from the farm of Saint-Louis-de-Casau near Arles, 1621–1786).Google Scholar

10 Ladurie, Le Roy, Paysans de Languedoc, vol. 1 pp. 261–314, 457, 490–91;Google ScholarJacquart, Ile-de-Fracne, pp. 247–53.Google Scholar

11 For periods and regions of population decline, see Dupâquier, Jacques, La population française au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1979), pp. 11–13, 38–39, 41.Google ScholarFor Ile-de-France and Burgundy, see Jacquart, Ile-de-Fracne, pp. 681–82, 699–701,Google Scholarand Roupnel, La ville et la campagne. In the Les paysans de Languedoc, vol. 1, pp. 567–81, Le Roy Ladurie abandons population growth and fragmentation as explanations for purchases of land by urban elites after the mid-seventeenth century. The reason is that by this time the populaiton was declining in Languedoc and fragmentation had ceased. By his logic, thought, the sales to elites should have stopped as well.Google Scholar

12 Durand, Georges, Vin, vigne, vignerons en lyonnais et beaujolais (Lyon, 1979), pp. 225–50, 363–86, 445–62, 507–10.Google Scholar

13 Bloch, French Rurla History, p. 124;Google ScholarCartellier, Joseph, Essai historique sur Saint-Genis-Laval avant la Révolution (Lyon, 1927; reprint, Saint-Genis-Laval, 1980); Archives départementales du Rhône, 3 BP 1886 (May 12, 1595), 3869, 3872, fols. 92–98, 163.Google ScholarThis assessment of the Gadagnes and their ilk draws upon Huppert, Les Bourgeois Gentilshommes. pp. 24–50, 115–19, 141–44; Chevalier, Les bonnes villes, pp. 129–49;Google Scholarand Dewald, Johnathan, The Formation of a Provincial Nobility (Priceton, 1980). One could argue that the tightening of the market for government offices pushed memebrs of the privileged elite to buy land, but the cost of offices did not rise until the end of the sixteenth century, well after land sales began. Nor do office prices explain the end of the land sales in 1730. Similarly, the flutuations in the value of other investments, such as rentes, do not appear to explain the sales, and it would be difficult to argue that the security of land, albeit considerable, suddenly increased after 1550 and thereby attracted money into the countryside.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 In areas of taille réelle, where tax exemptions were tied not to persons but to pieces of land, privileged persons would (at least in theory) have paid the taile on land purchased from commoners. In practice, though they too often escaped with low tax assessments.Google Scholar

15 Gascon, , Grand commerce, vol. 2, pp. 862–66;Google ScholarDurand, Vin, pp. 481–84;Google ScholarMarion, Marcel, Les impôts directs sous l'ancien régime principalement au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1910), pp. 187–88.Google ScholarSee also Wolfe, Fiscal System, pp. 312, 325–27.Google Scholar

16 Esmonin, Edmond, La taille en Normandie au temps de Colbert (1661–1683) (Paris, 1913), pp.225–28, 250–56, 271–72;Google ScholarWolde, Fiscal System, pp. 310–15;Google ScholarMousnier, Roland, La vénalité des offices sous Henri IV et Louis XIII (Rouen, 1945), pp. 352–56;Google ScholarMousnier, Roland, The Institutions of France under the Absolue Monarcdhy: 1598–1789, trans. by Goldhammer, Arthur and Pearce, Brian, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1979–1984), vol. 1, pp. 125, 172–73; vol. 2, p. 58;Google ScholarBonney, Richard, Political Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin (Oxford, 1978), pp. 272–73;Google ScholarClamgéran, Jean-Jules, Histoire de l'impôt en France depuis l'époque romaine jusqu'à 1774, 3 vols. (Paris. 1867–1876; reimpression, Geneva, 1980), vol. 2, pp. 357–59, 619–20;Google ScholarMarion, Les impôts, pp. 9–11.Google Scholar

17 Esmonin, La taille, pp. 151, 160, 225–28, 250–56, 364–68; Mousnier, Vénalité, pp. 412–15;Google ScholarMousnier, , Institutions, vol. 1, pp. 172–73; vol. 2, pp. 58, 433–35;Google ScholarBonney, Political Change, p. 448;Google ScholarDeyon, Pierre, “A propos des rapports entre la noblesse française et la monarchie absolue pendant la premiére moitié du XVIIe siècle,” Revue historique, 231 (1964), pp. 342–43, 354–55;Google Scholar[Sébastien le Prestre de] Vauban, , Projet d'une dixme royale: Suivi de demix écrits financiers, ed. Coornaert, E. (Paris, 1933), pp. 27–28, 36–37;Google ScholarBonnin, Bernard, “Un aspect de la société rurale: Les milieux dominants en Dauphiné au XVIIe siècle,” in Gutton, J. P., ed., Lyon et l'Europe: Hommnes em sociétés: Mélanges d'histoire offerts à Richard Gascon, 2 vols. (Lyon, 1980), vol. 1. pp. 60–61;Google ScholarClamagéran, , Histoire de l'impôt, vol. 2, pp. 357–59, 619–20.Google ScholarFor comments made in 1717 that resemble Vauban's, see [de Forbonnais, François Véron], Recherches et considerations sur les finances de France depuis 1595 jusqu'en 1721, 6 vols. (Liege, 1758), vol. 6, p. 131. The royal government tried repeatedly to tax the tenants of privileged landowners, but the repetition of edicts suggests that the government's efforts were not tremendously successful, at least until the eighteenth century. Even when tenants of privileged landlords were taxed at the full legal rate in the seventeenth century, their tax (the taille d'exploitation) fell far below the tax paid by peasant proprietors (the taille de propriéeté).Google ScholarWhether it was this difference in the legal taille rates or simply underassessment of the tenants of privileged landlords, the evidence from Saint-Ouen-de-Breuil reveals a huge gap between the taille levied upon rented land and that levied upon peasant-owned land. A regresson of taille assessments from the year 1645 (TAILLE, in livers tournois) on the acres of land each peasnt owned (OWN) and the acres he rented (RENT) yielded the following: The hypothesis that peasant property in Saint-Ouen-de-Breuil was assessed at less than twice the rate of rental propetry can be firmly rejected (t=4.01 with 75 degress of freedom). It is therefore clear that renters in Saint-Ouen-de-Beruil did not pick up the tax for privileged landlords. the source for the invividual taille assessments, acres rented, and acres owned in Saint-Ouen-de-Breuil comes from an unusually complete 1645 talle roll in Archives dépt. de la Seine-Maritime, C 2108 (1645). I thank James Collins for furnishing me a copy and for the informaiton that 75 percent of the land was in the hands of the exempt.Google Scholar

18 Rough estimates suggest that taxes also increased as a fraction of agricultural output: Morineau, Michel, “La conjoncture ou les cernes de Ia croissance,” in Labrousse and Braudel, Histoire économique, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 980.Google ScholarMathias, Peter and O'Brien, Patrick, in “Taxation in Britain and France, 1715–1810: A Comparison of the Social and Economic Incidence of Taxes Collected for the Central Governments,” Journal of European Economic History, 5 (1976), pp. 601–50, arrive at similar figures for the wheat equivalent of per capita taxes in the eighteenth century.Google ScholarThe labor equivalent of the tax burden was derived using figures in Baulant, Micheline, “Les salaires des ouvriers du bâtiment à Paris de 1400 à 1726,” Annales, 26 (1971), pp. 463–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarThe calculation assumes that the Parisian worker is the sole support for a family of four. The 40 days he spends working for the fisc amounts to approximately 16 percent of the labor year. See also Tilly, Charles, As Sociology Meets History (New York, 1981), p. 203. It should be pointed out that the central government's tax receipts, which form the basis of Table 2, actually understate the weight of royal taxation in the provinces, for they ignore collection costs and omit tax revenues that were spent directly in the provinces without being remitted to Paris. On this and related matters,Google Scholarsee Doren, Van, “War Taxation,” p. 70;Google ScholarBeik, William, “Etat et société en France au XVlle siècle: La taille en Languedoc et la question de la redistribution sociale” Annales, 39 (1984), pp. 1270–98;CrossRefGoogle Scholarand Collins, James B., “Sur I'histoire fiscale du XVIIe siècle: Les impôts en Champagne entre 1595 et 1635,” Annales, 34 (1979), pp. 325–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarStill, despite the problems with the central government's tax figures, the few long-term series of local tax receipts that we have do sketch the same chronology for the rise in real taxes: see, for example, Le, Ladurie, Roy, Paysans de Languedoc, vol. 2, p. 1026,Google Scholarand Beik, “Etat,” pp. 1281–83. One might wonder whether Table 2. which includes all tax levies, might misrepresent the size of the taille and the aides, the taxes of greatest interest to us. The answer is no. Although the per capita taille apparently peaked in the 1670s (separate taille and aides figures are not available for all years). aides receipts were increasing, and the sum of the two levies probably followed the total tax receipts curve fairly closely.Google Scholar

19 Vauban, Projet, pp. 27–28;Google ScholarAutrand, Françoise, Naissance d'un grand corps de l'état: Les gens du Parlement de Paris, 13457–1454 (Paris, 1981), pp. 210–43, 351.Google ScholarFor additional contemporary perceptions of the effect exemptions had on land values, see de Forbonnais, , Recherches, vol. 6, p. 131.Google ScholarIn Saint-Genis-Laval in the early eighteenth century, taille exemptions held by three officials from Lyon (none of them owners of huge estates) cost the community 700 livers annually, a considerable sum: Archives dépt. du Rhône, 1 C 51m “Etat du nombre des privilégiées.” An arrét from 1734 in the same bundle of documents reveals that an attempt in 1705 ot limit tax exemptions to contiguous pieces of property casused privileged landloras to consolidate their holdings—further evidence of the effect tax exemptions had.Google Scholar

20 On costs supervision, see de Serres, Olivier, Le théâtre de l'agriculture (Paris, 1600), pp. 45–54;Google ScholarDewald, Formation, pp. 183–201. It would be relatively easy to change this simple model to include risk aversion, subsistence farming by peasants, or the nonpecuniary benefits that landownership conferred.Google Scholar

21 Gascon, , Grand commerce, vol. 2, pp. 817, 848–51. In Jacquart's study, the one community where the peasants retained their land was far from Paris and from the other cities where privileged landlords ususlly residedGoogle Scholar(Jacquart, Ile-de-France, p. 724).Google Scholar

22 Mathias and O'Brien, “Taxation,” pp. 608–11, reach similar conclusions about the trend of per capita real taxes in the eighteenth century. The leveling off of taxes also helped quell endemic tax revolts.Google Scholar

23 For tax reform and the campaign against exemptions, see Marion, Les impôts. pp. 6–11, 127, 129, 131, 187–188, 190–94; Deyon, “Rapports,” pp. 354–55; Bonney, Political Change, pp. 424–25, 433, 437–38;Google ScholarMousnier, , Institutions, vol. 1, p. 172, vol. 2, pp. 433–35;Google Scholarclamagéran, , Histoire de l'impôt, vol. 2, pp. 357–59, 619–20, vol. 3, p. 41. Marion contains examples form regions other than the Lyonnais where intendants used taxes d 'office and other techniques to attack exemptions in the late seventeenth and early eihteenth centuies.Google ScholarIn the Lyonnais, a royal arrêt of 1734 concernign the bourgeois of Lyon restricdted their taille exemption to one contiguous piece of property of less than 10 hectares, including woodlands and vineyards. This represented a far nore serious limit than did seventeenth-century legislation, which did not cover woods and vines and which granted bourgeois of Lyon exemptions covering a far more liberal 45–60 hectares. Nobles and officers enjoyed even more liberal privileges under seventeenth-century law. Archives dépt. de Rhône. 1 C 51. contains the arrét of 1734 plus evidence that it was being eforced and that tenants were being taxed equaitably. See also Archives dépt. du Rhône, 3 C 96 (1756, 1759), where bourgeois from Lyon claim only the limited protection of the 1734 arrét. The shift to indirect taxes late in the seventeenth century and the new taxes imposed in the eighteenth century (especially the vingtième) were less riddled with loopholes than the taille. Taille rolls form Normandy also suggest that by the eighteenth century, teneants of privileged landlords no longer evaded the taille; see, for example, Archives dépt. de la Seine Maritime, C 2108, Nossonville (1727).Google Scholar

24 For and example of land purchases when taxes were high, see Deyon, Amiens, pp. 332–38.Google ScholarFor Lyon and Pairs, see Gascon, , Grand commerce, vol. 2, pp. 862–67,Google Scholarand Autrand, Naissance, pp. 210–43.Google Scholar

25 Landurie, Le Roy “Vraie croissance,” pp. 428–29, 594, Frêche, Toulouse, pp. 140, 164, 187–209, 457–89, 504;Google ScholarBloch, French Rural History, p. 140. The evidece from Saint-Genis-Laval comes from research I am doing in local notarial records from Archives dépt. du Rhône, 3 E. Even with a number of lenders in Saint-Genis-Laval, the problem of default might have intorduced imperfectons into the credit market. Although this matter of peasant debt occupies a large place in the social history of the period, it is largely irrelevenat to my explanation for the land sales. Whether a peasant owner was deriven into debt by taxes or not, the higher price offered by the privileged would make him sell his land to them instead of to other peasants.Google Scholar

26 Baehrel, Une croissance, pp. 403–6, 476–77. In areas where the privileged could exploit tax exemptions, the price of land should have remained relatively insensitive to increases in taxes, for when taxes rose, the amount the privileged would pay for land would have declined slightly, if at all. In areas like lower Provence, by contrast, land prices should have dropped considerably whenever taxes increased. The problem with testing this, however, is the nearly insurmountable one of getting a long time series of land prices or rents that controls for land quality and a matching series of local tax figures.Google Scholar

27 Gascon, , Grand commerce, vol. 2, pp. 862–63;Google ScholarDoren, Van, “War Taxation,” pp. 82–90; Bligny, Histoire du Dauphiné, pp. 204–9, 227–49, 257–73.Google Scholar

28 For the stratification of the rural community, see Ladurie, Le Roy, Paysans de Languedoc, vol. 1, pp. 261–314;Google ScholarJacquart, Ile-de-France, pp. 248–53, 450–540; Jacquart, “Immobilisme”, p. 261; Bloch, French Rural History, pp. 136–37. For the village elite's ability to gain tax exemptions and manipulate tax assessments (either on their own or via the patronage of absentee landlords),Google Scholarsee Esmonin, La taille, pp. 151, 160, 225–28, 364–68; and Bonney, Political Change, pp. 181, 446–49.Google ScholarFor the small offices a member of the village elite might buy, see Mousnier, Vénalité, pp. 404–15. In addition to earning a return on their skills and assets, the members of the village elite may have colluded with the tax-exempt and thus have shared some of the advantages of the tax break. For the rest of the peasantry, though, the possibility of splitting the benefits of tax evasion does not seem to have been in the cards politically.Google Scholar

29 Esmonin, La taille, pp. 57–58, 201–2, 271–72: Bonney, Political Change, pp. 437–38, 446–49.Google Scholar

30 Lütge, Friedrich, Geschichte der deurschen Agrarserfassung (Stuttgart, 1963), pp. 136–37.Google Scholar

31 See, for example, Jacquart, Ile-de-France, pp. 220–23; Roupnel, La ville et campagne;Google Scholarand Mousnier, , Institutions, vol. 1, pp. 555–61.Google ScholarFor sales of rights to vaine pâture, see Bloch, Marc, “La lutte pour l'individualisme agraire dans la France du XVIIIe siécle,” Annales, 2 (1930), p. 339; and Archives nationales, G7 101 (1678). In the late eighteenth century, some 10 percent of the agricultural land belonged to the villages:Google ScholarIkni, Guy, “Sur les biens communaux pendant la Révolution française,” Annales hisroriques de la Révolution française, 54 (1982), pp. 73–74. In addition to the communal land itself, village use rights such as the vaine pâture could extend (in regions such as the northeast) over nearly all a community's arable land.Google Scholar

32 See Mousnier, , Institutions, vol. 1, pp. 559–61,Google Scholarand Root, Hilton, “Crown and Peasantry in Burgundy, 1661–1798” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1983), the best local study of the monarchy's takeover of village finances and its effect upon agriculture. A revised version of Root's dissertation is forthcoming from the University of California Press.Google Scholar

33 For the obstacles to enclosures, see Root, “Crown and Peasantry,” and Bloch, “La lutte pour l'individualisme agraire,” pp. 329–83, 511–56. The peculiarities of the tax system were not the only reason communal agriculture was slow to disappear in France, and in the last half of the eighteenth century many government officials did push for the passage of enclosure edicts and other measures against communal farming. But enforcement of these measures often ended up in the hands of staunch defenders of communal rights like the intendant of Rouen, De Crosne. In 1780, for example, De Crosne preserved communal rights to a pasture shared by inhabitants of the two communities of Petit-Quevilly and Grand-Quevilly even though the residents of Petit-Quevilly acknowledged that sharing rights between the two villages cut productivity and frustrated plans to improve drainage. De Crosne's reason for his decision was his fear that without these communal rights, a number offamilies in each community would be unable to “pay their taxes.” See Archives nationales, QI 13810 (Nov. 28, 1780). Since communal land was often marginal, one might ask whether preserving communal rights really did depress agricultural productivity seriously. Contemporaries thought so, and it is worth noting that certain communal rights, in particular vaine p´rure, reduced every property owner's incentive to adopt new agricultural technologies. Banning sales of such communal rights to private individuals, as the French state did, blocked one simple way to restore the proper incentives (a “Coase theorem” resolution of the externalities), and it saddled most new technologies with insurmountable free-rider problems. The result was fewer enclosures and fewer agricultural improvements in general. This topic will be explored more fully in a book I am preparing on the social and economic history of the French countryside.Google Scholar

34 Vauban, Projet, p. 28. Mathias and O'Brien show that by the eighteenth century the central government's tax receipts were lower per capita in France than in England, but the central government's figures may understate the size of French fiscal levies. In any case, Mathias and O'Brien acknowledge that French taxes did seriously penalize investment. This was particularly true in agriculture. The French peasant, for example, payed a higher taille if he improved his land; by contrast, the eighteenth-century British landowner owed what was in effect a fixed (and in real terms declining) land tax assessment that, as Adam Smith noted, “did not discourage … improvements, nor keep down the produce of the land below what it would otherwise rise to.” Similarly, although the excise on beer in England may have reduced the demand for barley a bit, it was also part of a system of protection that guarded British farmers against foreign competition. The key here, of course, is not per capita taxation, but the incidence of taxes and their effect at the margin, and as Adam Smith noted, French taxes, though apparently lower by the eighteenth century on a per capita basis, were far more oppressive.Google ScholarSee Mathias and O'Brien, “Taxation,” pp. 614–17, 621–25;Google ScholarSmith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Cannan, Edwin, 2 vols. in 1 (Chicago, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 352–58, 365, 437–38;Google ScholarChandaman, C. D., The English Public Revenue, 1660–1688 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 9–76, 188–91;Google Scholarward, W. R., The English Land Tax in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1953), pp. 3–7, 20–22, 34–35, 67, 87–88, 93–97.Google Scholar

35 Esmonin, La taille, pp. 270–71, 354; Wolfe, Fiscal System, p. 249. See also Vauban, Projet, pp. 27–28, 35–38.Google Scholar