Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T00:40:45.323Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Harvest Shortfalls, Grain Prices, and Famines in Preindustrial England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2011

BRUCE M.S. CAMPBELL  and
CORMAC Ó GRÁDA
BRUCE M.S. CAMPBELL*
Affiliation:
Professor of Medieval Economic History, School of Geography, Archaeology, and Palaeoecology, Queens University of Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. Email: b.m.campbell@qub.ac.uk.
CORMAC Ó GRÁDA*
Affiliation:
Professor, School of Economics, University College Dublin, Newman Building, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. Email: cormac.ograda@ucd.ie.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The frequency of bad harvests and price elasticity of demand are measured using new data on English grain yields 1268–1480 and 1750–1850 and a revised price series. The analysis shows that major harvest shortfalls were a significant component of most historical subsistence crises, as back-to-back shortfalls were of the worst famines. Although serious harvest shortfalls long remained an unavoidable fact of economic life, by c.1800 yields had become less variable and prices less harvest sensitive. By the eve of the Industrial Revolution, England had become effectively famine-free.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 71 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 859 - 886
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2011

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

REFERENCES

Allen, Martin. “Silver Production and the Money Supply in England and Wales, 1086–c.1500.” Economic History Review 64, no. 1 (2011): 114–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, Robert C. Enclosure and the Yeoman: The Agricultural Development of the South Midlands, 1450–1850. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Apostolides, Alexander, Broadberry, Stephen N., Campbell, Bruce M. S., van Leeuwen, Bas, and Overton, Mark. “English Agricultural Output and Labour Productivity, 1250–1850: Some Preliminary Estimates.” Unpublished Working Paper, University of Warwick, 2008. Available at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/broadberry/wp/agriclongrun4.pdfGoogle Scholar
Appleby, Andrew B. Famine in Tudor and Stuart England.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Baillie, M. G. L. “Dendrochronology Provides an Independent Background for Studies of the Human Past.” In L'uomo e la foresta secc. XIII–XVIII: Atti della “Ventisettesima di Studi” 8–13 maggio 1995, edited by Cavaciocchi, Simonetta, 99–119. Prato: Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini,” 1995.Google Scholar
Baillie, M. G. L. “Bad for Trees—Bad for Humans?” In Life on the Edge: Human Settlement and Marginality, edited by Mills, Coralie M. and Coles, Geraint, 13–20. Oxford: Oxbow 1998.Google Scholar
Baillie, M. G. L. “Putting Abrupt Environmental Change Back into Human History”. In Culture, Landscape, and the Environment: The Linacre Lectures, 1997–8, edited by Flin, Kate and Morphy, Howard, 46–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Barquin Gil, Rafael. “The Elasticity of Demand for Wheat in the Fourteenth to Eighteenth Centuries.” Revista de Historia Económica – Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History 23, no. 2 (2005): 241–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bateman, Victoria N. “The Evolution of Markets in Early Modern Europe, 1350–1800: A Study of Wheat Prices.” Economic History Review 64, no. 2 (2011): 447–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bohstedt, John. The Politics of Provisions: Food Riots, Moral Economy, and Market Transition in England, c. 1550–1850. Ashgate: Farnham, Surrey 2010.Google Scholar
Broadberry, Stephen N., Campbell, Bruce M. S., Klein, Alexander, Overton, Mark, and van Leeuwen, Bas. “British Economic Growth, 1300–1850: Some Preliminary Estimates.” Unpublished Working Paper, University of Warwick, 2009. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/broadberry/wp/britishgdplongrun1.pdfGoogle Scholar
Buttress, F. A., and Dennis, R. G. W.. “The Early History of Seed Treatment in England.” Agricultural History 21, no. 2 (1947): 93–102.Google Scholar
Campbell, Bruce M.S. English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Bruce M.S. “Four Famines and a Pestilence: Harvest, Price, and Wage Variations in England, Thirteenth to Nineteenth Centuries.” In Agrarhistoria på många sätt; 28 studier om manniskan och jorden. Festskrift till Janken Myrdal på hans 60-årsdag (Agrarian history many ways: 28 studies on humans and the land, Festschrift to Janke Myrdal 2009), edited by Liljewall, Britt, Flygare, Iréne A., Lange, Ulrich, Ljunggren, Lars, and Söderberg, Johan, 23–56. Stockholm: KSLAB 2009.Google Scholar
Campbell, Bruce M.S. “Nature as Historical Protagonist: Environment and Society in Preindustrial England.” Economic History Review 63, no. 2 (2010): 281–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Bruce M.S. “Physical Shocks, Biological Hazards, and Human Impacts: The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century Revisited.” In Le interazioni fra economia eambiente biologico nell'Europe preindustriale. Secc. XIII–XVIII (Economic and Biological Interactions in Preindustrial Europe from the Thirteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries), Proceedings of the XLI settimana di studi, edited by Cavaciocchi, Simonetta, 13–32. Prato: Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini,” 2010.Google Scholar
Campbell, Bruce M.S. “Agriculture in Kent in the High Middle Ages.” In Later Medieval Kent, 1220–1540, edited by Sweetinburgh, Sheila, 25–53. Woodbridge: Boydell and Kent County Council 2010.Google Scholar
Campbell, Bruce M.S. “Grain Yields on English Demesnes After the Black Death.” Chapter Four In England in the Age of the Black Death: Essays in Honour of John Hatcher, edited by Bailey, Mark and Rigby, Stephen H.. Turnhout: Brepols 2011.Google Scholar
Campbell, Bruce M.S. “Panzootics, Pandemics, and Climatic Anomalies in the Fourteenth Century.” In Beiträge zum Göttinger Umwelthistorischen Kolloquium 2010–2011, edited by Herrmann, Bernd, 177–215. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, forthcoming 2011.Google Scholar
Campbell, Bruce M.S. “Three Centuries of English Crops Yields, 1211–1491.” http://www.cropyields.ac.uk, 2007.Google Scholar
Clark, Gregory. “The Cost of Capital and Medieval Agricultural Technique.” Explorations in Economic History 25, no. 3 (1988): 265–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Gregory. “The Price History of English Agriculture, 1209–1914.” Research in Economic History 22 (2004): 41 125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Gregory. “The Long March of History: Farm Wages, Population, and Economic Growth, England, 1209–1869.” Economic History Review 60, no. 1 (2007): 97–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Gregory. “Markets and Economic Growth: The Grain Market of Medieval England.” http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/210a/readings/market99.pdf, 2001.Google Scholar
Collins, E. J. T. “Dietary Change and Cereal Consumption in Britain in the Nineteenth Century.” Agricultural History Review 23, no. 2 (1975): 97–115.Google Scholar
Dawson, A. G., Hickey, K., Mayewski, P. A., and Nesje, A.. “Greenland (GISP2) Ice Core and Historical Indicators of Complex North Atlantic Climate Changes During the Fourteenth Century.” The Holocene 17, no. 4 (2007): 427–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickson, David. Arctic Ireland: The Extraordinary Story of the Great Frost and Forgotten Famine of 1740–41. Belfast: White Row Press 1997.Google Scholar
Dodds, Ben. “Estimating Arable Output Using Durham Priory Tithe Receipts, 1341–1450.” Economic History Review 57, no. 2 (2004): 245–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dodds, Ben. Peasants and Production in the Medieval North-East: The Evidence from Tithes, 1270–1536. Woodbridge: Boydell Press 2007.Google Scholar
Epstein, S. R. Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300–1750. London: Routledge 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farmer, D. L. “Prices and Wages.” In The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol. II, 1042–1350, edited by Hallam, H. E., 716–817. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Farmer, D. L. “Prices and Wages, 1350–1500.” In The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol. III, 1348–1500, edited by Miller, Edward, 431–525. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Farr, William. “The Influence of Scarcities and of the High Prices of Wheat on the Mortality of the People of England.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 9, no. 2 (1846): 158–74.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert W. “Second Thoughts on the European Escape from Hunger: Famines, Chronic Malnutrition, and Mortality Rates.” In Nutrition and Poverty, edited by Rahman Osmani, Siddiqur, 243–86. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert W. The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, Robert Worth. Jr. “The ‘Hungry Gap,’ Crop Failure, and Famine: The Fourteenth-Century Agricultural Crisis and Piers Plowman.” Yearbook of Langland Studies 4 (1990): 87 104.Google Scholar
Gooder, Eileen A. “The Population Crisis of 1727–30 in Warwickshire.” Midland History 1, no. 4 (1972): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, John D. The Great Debasement. Currency and the Economy in Mid-Tudor England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Gras, N. S. B. The Evolution of the English Corn Market from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926.Google Scholar
Head-Koenig, Anne-Lise, and Veyrassat-Herren, Béatrice. “Les revenus décimaux à Genève de 1540 à 1783.” In Les fluctuations du produit de la dime. Conjuncture décimale et domaniale de la fin du Moyen Age au XVIII siècle, edited by Goy, Joseph and Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, 165–79. Paris: Mouton 1972.Google Scholar
Healey, Jonathan. “Economic Fluctuations and the Poor: Some Lancashire Evidence, 1630–80.” http://www.ehs.org.uk/ehs/conference2008/Assets/NRPrizeWinners2008.doc.Google Scholar
Hindle, Steve. On the Parish? The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England, c.1550–1750. Oxford: Clarendon Press 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hindle, Steve. “Dearth and the English Revolution: The Harvest Crisis of 1647–50.” Economic History Review 61, S1 (2008): 64–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoskins, W. G. “Harvest Fluctuations and English Economic History, 1480–1619.” Agricultural History Review 12, no. 1 (1964): 28–46.Google Scholar
Hoyle, Richard W. “Famine as Agricultural Catastrophe: The Crisis of 1622–4 in East Lancashire.” Economic History Review 63, no. 4 (2010): 974–1002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordan, William Chester. The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Morgan, and Ó Gráda, Cormac. “Living Standards and Mortality Since the Middle Ages.” University College Dublin Centre for Economic Research, Working Paper 2010/26, http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/wp10_26.pdf.Google Scholar
Kelly, Morgan, and Ó Gráda, Cormac. “The Poor Law of Old England: Institutional Innovation and Demographic Regimes.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 41, no. 3 (2011): 339–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kershaw, Ian. “The Great Famine and Agrarian Crisis in England, 1315–22.” Past and Present 59 (1973): 3 50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knighton's Chronicle, 1337–1396, edited by Haward Martin, Geoffrey. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laslett, Peter. The World We Have Lost. London: Methuen 1965.Google Scholar
Lee, Ronald. “Short-Term Variation: Vital Rates, Prices, and Weather.” In The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction, 2nd edition, edited by Anthony Wrigley, E. and Schofield, Roger S., 356–401. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Letts, John B., Moir, James, Smith, David, and de Moulins, Dominique. Smoke Blackened Thatch: A Unique Source of Late Medieval Plant Remains from Southern England. London: English Heritage 2000.Google Scholar
López-Salazar Pérez, Jerónimo, and Martin Galán, Manuel. “La producción cerealista en el Arzobispado de Toledo: 1463–1699.” Cuadernos de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea 2 (1981): 21 104.Google Scholar
Malthus, Thomas Robert. An Essay on the Principle of Population. 6th edition. London: John Murray, 1826.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Deirdre N. and Nash, John. “Corn at Interest: The Extent and Cost of Grain Storage in Medieval England.” American Economic Review 74, no. 1 (1984): 174–87.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Brian Redman. Abstract of British Historical Statistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Mokyr, Joel. The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Moriceau, Jean-Marc. Les Fermiers de l'Ile de France: L'ascension d'un patronate agricole (XVe–XVIIIe). Paris: Fayard 1994.Google Scholar
Moriceau, Jean-Marc. Terres Mouvantes. Les Campagnes françaises du féodalisme à la mondialisation XIIe?XIXe siècles. Paris: Fayard 2002.Google Scholar
Munro, John H. “Before and After the Black Death: Money, Prices, and Wages in Fourteenth-Century England.” In New Approaches to the History of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Selected Proceedings of Two International Conferences at the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen, edited by Dahlerup, Troels and Ingesman, Per, 335–64. Copenhagen: Historisk-Filosofiske Meddelser 104 2009.Google Scholar
Munro, John H. Revisions of the Phelps Brown and Hopkins “Basket of Consumables” Commodity Price Series, 1264–1700.” Revised data, converting index numbers into prices (in pence sterling English), http://www.economics.toronto.ca/munro5/Prices%20and%20Wages.htm, 2006.Google Scholar
Neveux, Hugues, and Tits-Dieuaide, Marie-Jeanne. “Étude structurelle des fluctuations courtes des rendements céréaliers dans l'Europe du Nord-Ouest (XIVe–XVIe siecle).” Cahiers des Annales de Normandie 11 (1979): 17 42.Google Scholar
Ó Gráda, Cormac. “Making Famine History.” Journal of Economic Literature 45, no. 1 (2007): 3–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ó Gráda, Cormac, Vanhaute, Eric, and Paping, Richard, eds. When the Potato Failed: Causes and Effects of the “Last” European Subsistence Crisis. Turnhout: Brepols 2007.Google Scholar
Olmstead, Alan L., and Paul, W. Rhode. Creating Abundance: Biological Innovation and American Agricultural Development. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Ormrod, David. English Grain Exports and the Structure of Agrarian Capitalism, 1700–1760. Hull: Hull University Press 1985.Google Scholar
Overton, Mark. “Agriculture.” In Atlas of Industrializing Britain, 1780–1914, edited by Langton, John and Morris, R. J., 34–53. London and New York: Methuen, 1986.Google Scholar
Overton, Mark. “Re-estimating Crop Yields from Probate Inventories.” The Journal of Economic History 50, no. 4 (1990): 931–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Overton, Mark. Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy, 1500–1850.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penn, Simon A.C. and Dyer, Christopher. “Wages and Earnings in Late Medieval England: Evidence from the Enforcement of the Labour Laws.” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 43, no. 3 (1990): 356–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, Karl Gunnar. Grain Markets in Europe, 1500–1900: Integration and Deregulation.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phelps Brown, Henry and Hopkins, Sheila. A Perspective of Wages and Prices. London and New York: Methuen, 1981.Google Scholar
Poos, L. R. “The Rural Population of Essex in the Later Middle Ages.” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 38, no. 4 (1985): 515–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Post, John Dexter. “Climatic Variability and the European Mortality Wave of the Early 1740s.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 15, no. 1 (1984): 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Post, John Dexter. Food Shortage, Climatic Variability, and Epidemic Disease in Preindustrial Europe: The Mortality Peak in the Early 1740s.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Randall, Adrian. Riotous Assemblies: Popular Protest in Hanoverian England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Randall, Adrian, and Charlesworth, Andrew, eds. Moral Economy and Popular Protest: Crowds, Conflict, and Authority. Basingstoke: Macmillan 2000.Google Scholar
Razi, Zvi. Life, Marriage, and Death in a Medieval Parish: Economy, Society, and Demography in Halesowen, 1270–1400.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya Kumar. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1981.Google Scholar
Slack, Paul. Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Longman 1988.Google Scholar
Smith, Allan E., and Secoy, D. M.. “Salt as a Pesticide, Manure, and Seed Steep.” Agricultural History 50, no. 3 (1976): 506–16.Google Scholar
Smith, Richard M. “Social Security as a Developmental Institution? Extending the Solar Case for the Relative Efficacy of Poor Relief Provisions Under the English Old Poor Law.” Paper prepared for the History and Development Workshop, University of Manchester, 7–8 April 2008. Unpublished paper, 2009.Google Scholar
Stigler, George J. Essays in the History of Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Thick, Malcolm. “Garden Seeds in England Before the Eighteenth Century.” Agricultural History Review 38, no. 2 (1990): 105–16.Google Scholar
Titow, Jan Z. Winchester Yields: A Study in Medieval Agricultural Productivity.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Tits-Dieuaide, Marie-Jeanne. La formation des prix céréaliers en Brabant et en Flandre au XVe siècle. Bruxelles: Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles 1975.Google Scholar
Trouet, V., Esper, J., Graham, N. E., Baker, A., Scourse, J. D., and Frank, D. C.. “Persistent Positive North Atlantic Oscillation Mode Dominated the Medieval Climate Anomaly.” Science 324, no. 5923 (2009): 78–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Michael E., Beckett, John V. and Afton, Bethanie. Farm Production in England, 1700–1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wells, Roger Anthony Edward. Wretched Faces: Famine in Wartime England, 1793–1801. Gloucester: Sutton, 1988.Google Scholar
Wrigley, E. Anthony. “Reflections on Corn Yields and Prices in Preindustrial Economies.” In People, Cities, and Wealth, edited by Anthony Wrigley, E., 92–130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Wrigley, E. Anthony, and Roger, S. Schofield. The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar