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England's Two Agricultural Revolutions

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Enclosure and the Yeoman: The Agricultural Development of the South Midlands, 1450–1850. By AllenRobert C.. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Pp. xiv, 376. $79.00.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

George R. Boyer
George R. Boyer
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Type
Review Article
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The Journal of Economic History , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 1993 , pp. 915 - 923
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1993

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References

1 Important works by these authors include but are not limited to the following: McCloskey, Donald N., “The Enclosure of Open Fields: Preface to a Study of Its Impact on the Efficiency of English Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century,” this Journal, 32 (03 1972), pp. 15–35Google Scholar; McCloskey, , “The Economics of Enclosure: A Market Analysis,” in Jones, Eric and Parker, William, eds., European Peasants and their Markets (Princeton, 1975)Google Scholar; McCloskey, , “The Open Fields of England: Rent, Risk, and the Rate of Interest, 1300–1815,” in Galenson, David, ed., Markets in History (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar; Turner, Michael E., English Parliamentary Enclosure (Folkestone, 1980)Google Scholar; Turner, , “Agricultural Productivity in England in the Eighteenth Century: Evidence from Crop Yields,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 35 (11 1982), pp. 489–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Turner, , “English Open Fields and Enclosures: Retardation or Productivity Improvements,” this Journal, 46 (09 1986), pp. 669–692Google Scholar; Yelling, J. A., Common Field and Enclosure in England, 1450–1850 (London, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dahlman, Carl, The Open Field System and Beyond (Cambridge, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Turner, , “Agricultural Productivity,” pp. 498–99, 505.Google Scholar

3 McCloskey, , “The Open Fields of England,” pp. 21–24.Google Scholar

4 Allen's major data sources include the following: Batchelor, T., General View of the Agriculture of the County of Bedford (London, 1808)Google Scholar; Parkinson, R., A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Rutland (London, 1808)Google Scholar; Parkinson, , A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Huntingdon (London, 1811)Google Scholar; Young, Arthur, A Six Weeks' Tour Through the Southern Counties of England and Wales (London, 1769)Google Scholar; Young, , A Six Months' Tour Through the North of England (London, 1771)Google Scholar; and Young, , The Farmer's Tour Through the East of England (London, 1771).Google Scholar

5 Table 7–2 (p. 136) reports that enclosure raised yields in the heavy arable district by 14.7 percent, but this appears to be a typographical error. The correct value is 13.7 percent.

6 Timmer, C. Peter, “The Turnip, the New Husbandry, and the English Agricultural Revolution,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 83 (08 1969), pp. 375–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 To be fair to Timmer, his analysis was concerned with the eastern county of Norfolk, not the south Midlands. Evidence discussed later supports Timmer's contention that in the east enclosures led to an increase in grain acreage and employment.

8 McCloskey, , “The Enclosure of Open Fields,” p. 33.Google Scholar

9 This argument was first put forward by Allen, in his “The Efficiency and Distributional Consequences of Eighteenth Century Enclosures,” Economic Journal, 92 (12 1982), pp. 937–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 McCloskey, , “The Open Fields of England,” pp. 20–21.Google Scholar

11 Evidence on the increases in rents immediately after enclosure in several villages is given in McCloskey, , “The Open Fields of England,” p. 17.Google Scholar

12 Once again, this is largely due to the fact that Allen's results are obtained from an analysis of cross-sectional data. He does not present any evidence of the effect of enclosures on rents and farmers' surplus in individual farms or villages. It is therefore not possible to determine how often open-field farms let at below-equilibrium levels had their rents raised to equilibrium levels upon enclosure.

13 Allen's full sample contains 90 probate inventories. He does not state why the regressions contain so few observations.

14 Coleman, D. C., “Labour in the English Economy of the Seventeenth Century,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 8 (04 1956), pp. 280–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mathias, Peter, The First Industrial Nation (London, 1969), p. 27.Google Scholar

15 Quoted in Coleman, , “Labour in the English Economy,” p. 289.Google Scholar

16 Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., The Population History of England, 1541–1871 (Cambridge, MA, 1981), pp. 219–28.Google Scholar Wrigley and Schofield's estimates indicate that the net emigration rate per 1,000 of total population was higher in the seventeenth century than in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. David Levine contends that as many as 850,000 emigrants left England between 1630 and 1699. See Levine, , Reproducing Families (Cambridge, 1987), p. 82.Google Scholar Using a different methodology, Henry Gemery estimated that between 1630 and 1700 approximately 375,000 individuals emigrated from Britain to her North American colonies. See Gemery, , “Emigration from the British Isles to the New World, 1630–1700: Inferences from Colonial Populations,” Research in Economic History, 5 (1980), pp. 179–231.Google Scholar

17 Goldstone, J. A., “The Demographic Revolution in England: A Re-examination,” Population Studies, 40 (03 1986), pp. 5–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed Quotations are from pp. 24, 26.

18 On the effect of protoindustry and poor relief on birth rates, see Levine, Reproducing Families, chaps. 2 and 3; Boyer, George R., “Malthus Was Right After All: Poor Relief and Birth Rates in Southeastern England,” Journal of Political Economy, 97 (02 1989), pp. 93–114CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Schofield, Roger, “Family Structure, Demographic Behaviour, and Economic Growth,” in Walter, John and Schofield, Roger, eds., Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society (Cambridge, 1989).Google Scholar

19 See, for instance, Kelley, Allen C. and Williamson, Jeffrey G., “Population Growth, Industrial Revolutions, and the Urban Transition,” Population and Development Review, 10 (09 1984), pp. 419–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Schwarz, L. D., “The Standard of Living in the Long Run: London, 1700–1860,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 38 (02 1985), pp. 24–41.Google Scholar

21 The data are discussed in Yelling, Common Field and Enclosure, pp. 194–97.

22 Prince, Hugh C., “The Changing Rural Landscape, 1750–1850,” in Mingay, G. E., ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales: Vol. 6, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1989), p. 33.Google Scholar

23 Turner, Michael, Enclosures in Britain 1750–1830 (London, 1984), pp. 21–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Chambers, J. D., “Enclosure and Labour Supply in the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 5 (No. 3, 1953), pp. 319–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Holes had already been knocked in Chambers's argument by Crafts, N. F. R., “Enclosure and Labor Supply Revisited,” Explorations in Economic History, 15 (03 1978), pp. 172–183;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and by Snell, K. D. M., Annals of the Labouring Poor (Cambridge, 1985),CrossRefGoogle Scholar chap. 4.