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Rich Agriculture and Poor Farmers: Land, Landlords and Farmers in Flanders in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Eric Vanhaute
Eric Vanhaute
Affiliation:
Department of Modern History, Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte, Universiteit Gent, Blandijnberg 2, B-9000, Gent, Belgium
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Abstract

This article focuses on the property relations in Belgian and Flemish agriculture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The main question is: what was the relationship between land use, land ownership and land rents? By analysing the position of the (small) farmers and of the (small) landlords we could confirm that the dominance of small-scale farming coincided with a specific pattern of property distribution and surplus extraction. The high and increasing returns of the land were almost entirely pruned away by private landowners. The extreme fragmentation of the land, the large proportion of leaseholds and the high rents grew to a maximum in the second half of the nineteenth century due to competition both on the property market and on the leasehold market. This put the Flemish farmer in the worst possible situation, with a sad contrast between brilliant harvests and the miserable existence of those who generated them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , April 2001 , pp. 19 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

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