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The article presents information on a comment on the paper "Anachronistic Economics: Grain Storage in Medieval England," by J. Komlos and R. Landes that appeared in the 1991 issue of the journal "Economic History Review." The notion was that English fields were diverse enough that insurance against disaster was achieved by holding plots on the hill and in the valley, in the sands and in the clay. Meanwhile, economist S. Fenoaltea criticized the original notion, on the grounds that storage might be possible. As a theoretical possibility, Fenoaltea noted, if one could store grain cheaply they would not need to inconvenience themselves while growing it. Seven years of storage is good insurance against seven years of dearth and scattering would be unnecessary. Fenoaltea offered little evidence either at the time or later for the low cost of storage. If storage were very costly, then Fenoaltea's speculation could be set aside, and the insurance theory of scattering would gain in credence. It is of course not possible to construct direct measures by adding up such components as the rate of interest and the rate of rotting: medieval bond rates are difficult to interpret and no one knows how much of the peasant's crop rotted.

The article comments on the paper "The Landscape and the Machine: Technical Interrelatedness, Land Tenure and the Mechanization of the Corn Harvest in Victorian Britain," by Paul A. David, that appeared in the book "Essays on a Mature Economy: Britain After 1840," edited by Donald N. McCloskey. David contends that the slowness with which mechanical reapers were adopted by British farmers is to be explained by physical features of the farm landscape in Britain which made their adoption relatively unattractive. David's evidence for the index of the harvest differential turns out on inspection to be based on rates of pay of women workers on one farm in Northumberland. Whether this is an adequate basis for estimating the movement of the differential for (predominantly) male workers in all the corn-growing regions of England, might be questioned. Given that the critical factors determining the profitability of mechanization-cum-improvement were the incremental cereal yield and the cost of improvement, it is proper to ask whether any doubt attaches to the values David posits for the other parameters and variables composing these expressions.

The article presents a list of reference materials and papers on economics, agriculture, business and finance which were published in various journals. Some of the papers in the list include, "Gino Luzzatto," by various authors, published in the journal "Muova Rivista Storica, XLIX," are two issues dedicated to the memory of Gino Luzzatto, recalling his scholarly work and his high standing as a man and a teacher, "Ricordo di Yves Renouard," by F. Melis, published in the journal "Economia e Storia, XII," "Yves Renouard, uno storico amico dell' Italia," by A. Sapori, published in the journal "Mouva Rivista Storica, XLIX," is a commemoration and a bibliography of Yves Renouard, "I beni comunali e Forganizzazione del villaggio neli' Italia superiore fino al Mille," by G.P. Bognetti, published in the journal "Rivista Storica Italiana, LXXVII," describes the institutions of the early Middle Ages on lands of collective property and the passage to lands of communal property in the eleventh century.

This article discusses several papers on the economic history of England. In the journal "Sussex Archaeological Collections," P.F. Brandon discusses the fortunes of agriculture at Barnholme, Sussex, which was a home farm of Battle Abbey and included heavy uplands and exposed marshlands both much affected by weather conditions. His documentation is largely for the period after the Black Death and his verdict on the farming techniques practiced there is generally favorable. Two more articles are concerned with problems on a larger scale. In a fascinating attempt to explain the background to the astonishing parliament of 1386 and its attack on the king, J.J.N. Palmer reconstructs the business of the previous parliament, the official records of which are lamentably unrevealing. C.S. Cattel's paper "An Evaluation of the Loseley List of Ironworks Within the Weald in the Year 1588," suggests that iron making was fairly stagnant ill the first part of Elizabeth's reign. In an interesting paper on the "Genesis and Structure of the Foley "Ironworks in Partnership" of 1692," R.G. Schafer describes how the Foley brothers settled their personal rivalry by establishing a protean board of directors, creating a form of corporate entity which was not only unusual for its time but allowed the Foleys to control the charcoal iron industry well into the eighteenth century.

This article discusses several papers related to economic history of Italy, published in the several journals. In a short paper "La Polonia medievale tra occidente ed oriente europeo," by A. Giesztor, the author examines economic conditions of central Europe, particularly of Poland about A.D. 1000, with particular reference to agriculture. The author decides that Polish agriculture was well adapted for a variety of crops. The paper "La structure economique et sociale de I'etat de I'ordre teutonique en Prusse," sets out to analyse the role that the Teutonic Order had in the life of Prussia. With an indubitable political function the Order showed also its efficiency in the economic sector, revitalizing internal and external commerce to a degree, which the author describes as exceptional. In 1454 the insurrection put an end to its regime in most of the country. B. Geremek deals with the problem of the origins of pauperism in an essay "La popolazione marginale tra ii medioevo e I'eta moderna'." As is evident from the title, the author believes that the problem of pauperism was born in the period of the transformation of society that occurred at the beginning of the modern era.

This article examines the economics of innovation in livestock rearing during the first globalisation in Uruguay, the country with the most cattle per person in the world, both then and now. Using a new historical dataset of Uruguayan agriculture, the first one at a sub‐provincial level, I exploit regional differences in the adoption of cattle crossbreeding – the genetic improvement of local herds through hybridisation with foreign breeds. Contrary to traditional historiographical claims, I find that this innovation was not primarily explained by the location of enlightened elites (European or local) or by the scale of productive units (i.e. latifundia); rather, rural producers invested in crossbreeding wherever their local landscapes and previous productive choices encouraged it. While it affected biological processes that spanned several agricultural calendars, and thereby developed more slowly than innovations in crop farming, technical change in Uruguayan ranching was also environmentally sensitive, largely scale‐neutral, congruent with previous agricultural patterns, and hinged on a widespread response from producers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with agriculture and industrial revolution in Great Britain from 1659-1815. The literature of development economics and economic history has been marked by increased attention to agriculture's contribution to economic progress. Historians have not only taken proper cognizance of this theory and taxonomy but have added significantly to our comprehension of the way in which agriculture actually affected the pace and pattern of economic growth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Agriculture's role in the industrialization of Europe, America, and Japan has certainly not been neglected or derogated. Here in Great Britain, agrarian history may be the most deeply studied aspect of the first Industrial Revolution, and recent research on agriculture from the Civil to the Great War has taken that branch of economic history to a high level of sophistication. And his volume of republished papers evinces a real feeling for the landscape, soil, and techniques of British farming, and displays the qualities of intellectual caution and gritty integrity, that are the hallmarks of agrarian historians who till a field of history where national data are always hard to find and where sensible inference depends upon wide reading and long reflection into the secrets of rural economy--secrets not readily accessible to strangers from towns.

This article discusses the book "The Cambridge Economic History of Europe," vol. 1, "The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages," edited by M.M. Postan. The book's comments on the incidence of taxation could be the beginning of a very fruitful inquiry. The history of taxation is related to that of credit, usury, and even commercial transactions, because purchasers of agricultural produce seem usually to have called shortly before the tax collectors. A study of taxation would also throw light upon the tendencies, which perpetually renewed the social category of seigneurs, because most of the newly rich were not merchants but, as G. Fourquin observes, notables, that is to say, officials, servants of the prince, and their fortunes were promoted by fiscal innovations. Finally, it is conceivable that economic historians would find an examination of certain mental attitudes useful, if only to establish more clearly what were the true springs of economic development, because, as M. Finley has shown in a remarkable paper presented to the Aix-en-Provence conference, they were not located in earlier societies where they are today.

The article presents several reference materials and papers on finance and agriculture and natural resource development which were published in various journals. Some of the papers include, "Structure and Balance in Western Mining History," by L. Artherton, published in the journal "Huntington Library Quarterly," "California Crops That Failed," by J.E. Baur, published in the journal "California Historical Society Quarterly," "American Diplomacy, the 1933 Wheat Conference, and Recognition of the Soviet Union," by R.E. Bowers, published in the journal "Agricultural History," "An Economic Analysis of Midwestern Farm Land Values and Farm Land Income, 1860 to 1900," by J.D. Bowman, published in the journal "Yale Economic Essays," "Colonial Currency and Contemporary Monetary Theory: A Review Article," by M.L. Burnstein, published in the journal "Explorations in Entrepreneurial History," "Wildcats and Patriots: The Story of the Marine Bank" by D.J. Arnst, published in the journal "Minnesota History," "Sober Second Thoughts on Van Buren, the Albany Regency, and the Wall Street Conspiracy," by F.O. Gatell, published in "Journal of American History."

In Bulgaria the share of secondary production in GDP remained constantly low between c. 1870–1910. To explain the country's exceptionally weak growth, we use endogenous and unified growth theory. Gerschenkron and Palairet blame a self‐sufficiency‐oriented peasant economy for rising labour and raw material costs in industry, which destroyed the competitiveness of Bulgarian manufacturing and prevented industrialisation. We refute the existence of any long‐lasting cost increases in industry after 1878. Quite the opposite was true: the expansion of Bulgaria's secondary sector was restricted by detrimental changes on the demand side, for which peasants were not responsible. Recent research claims that, around 1910, Bulgarian textile production was significantly lower than in 1870. Our study brings to light new data and information that clearly disproves this view. Until around 1910, a booming modern manufacturing sector more than replaced the country's proto‐industries' textile outputs, which had plummeted dramatically during the early years of the newly founded Bulgarian state. However, as the rise of modern manufacturing in textile production coincided with the decline of the entire large sector of traditional manufacturing, secondary production as a whole stagnated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an input-output table for England and Wales for the year 1688 which is based on the extensive dataset compiled by Gregory King in the 1690s, together with other contemporary and modern material relating to the end of the seventeenth century. As well as showing the inter-relationships between the different parts of the economy, the data in the table can be used to compute national income and the shares of different sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, and services in total value added. Further, the approach used to compile the table provides a way to subject King's data to as much independent assessment as is possible given alternative sources of information. Sensitivity analysis is used to assess the impact on national income and sector shares of alternative estimates of the grain harvest, metal manufacture, and service sector output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines comparatively the slavery systems of the US and the British West Indies before and after their respective emancipations. The primary focus is on how differential factors in the two plantation economies, such as racial control, labour structures, and governmental mandates, impacted the development of accounting and those performing accounting functions. Other factors, such as plantation size and ownership structure, not only influenced accounting practices but management issues as well. These factors resulted in the substantially greater development of accounting in the British Caribbean, both in terms of the number of practitioners and the volume and uniformity of accounting records. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses agriculture decision making in one part of India, in Bihar, which was socio-economically backward yet deeply involved in commercial production during the nineteenth century. The combination of allegedly discordant characteristics is usually attributed to 'forced commercialization', the presumption being that the norm is free entry into the market. The term does not disturb the sway of most economic theories, which assume that capitalism was exported, and closed systems were opened out, as international trade expanded--a model which fits poorly with an agricultural system, previously but still incompletely market-involved, as in much of India. So-called commercialization differs case by case, therefore, because modes of production evolve within specific cultural and technical parameters. The findings of this paper modify some of the more sweeping interpretations of capitalism and of development. First, they contradict the idea that poorer, less commercial areas took little part in commerce and experienced little occupational diversity, and the opposite idea that commercialization necessarily implies economic advance. Scholars are understandably uncertain about classes in rural Bihar. Clearly, by the early 1800s or even earlier, some local producers already experienced competition from imported commodities, others suffered from a paucity of local demand when so many goods and services were exchanged through credit transactions, reflecting social prestige or in accordance with village custom.

This article focuses on the impact of sharecropping on agricultural practices and productivity in central and northern Italy before 1914. There exists a wide consensus among Italian scholars that the prevalence of share tenancy contracts in central Italy in the period before 1914 contributed to the backwardness of farming practices in that area compared with those in the northern regions of the Po valley. One way to interpret this observation is that the differences in agricultural techniques and productivity that existed between the advanced regions of the north and the less advanced regions of the centre in 1911 were due to different tenurial arrangements in the two areas. Sharecropping is viewed as an exploitative system which, in spite of efficiency losses, appealed to the landowning class because it obtained a relatively large share of a small pie. Although the pie would have been larger under a less exploitative system of tenure, the slice going to landowners might have ended up substantially smaller, thus making them worse, not better, off.

The article discusses some basic features of the long-run pattern of output change in British agriculture between the Restoration and the beginning of French wars. Although the chief concern of the article is simply to define the contours of long-run agricultural output change, the view of agriculture that is offered here obviously has the potential to alter people's perspective on a number of important issues concerning the role of agriculture in the early stages of England's industrialization. It is argued that between 1660 and 1740 the long-run trend in agricultural output was strongly upward. Total agricultural output was growing much more quickly than population and, accordingly, per capita levels of output and consumption of agricultural products increased. There was great short-run instability and on several occasions bad harvests brought subsistence crises and higher mortality. Year-to-year fluctuations in output are of the essence of agricultural activity and they make the identification of trend periods and changes in trend a hazardous business. The increase in agricultural output came to lag well behind the increase in population.

The article focuses on the amplification of an aspect of commutation not fully considered by Eric Evans in his study of tithes and English agriculture, namely the implications for farm incomes of the method by which the commutation payments were calculated. Tithes, it was argued, were a disincentive to improvement because a significant proportion of any increase in output could be claimed by the tithe-owner. One other possible influence on farm incomes stemming from the use of the corn averages was the employment of a national price to determine local tithe payments. Evans suggests that this caused friction in South Wales where the market prices were much lower than the national ones and the effect of using the latter was to burden landowners with higher increases than in the rest of the country. Until the Commutation Act, payments had included incomes from non-cereals and this was reflected in the calculation of the initial tithe rent charge, but afterwards grain prices alone were the variable influencing payments.

The article presents a historical overview of the agricultural revolution and land ownership problems at Warwickshire, Great Britain in the eighteenth-century. When speaking of its soil and topography most writers have observed that Warwickshire is distinguished by "the quality of variety in a high degree" all placed within the confines of a fairly narrow compass. At the end of the seventeenth century the Arden, lying north and west of the county town, was a neighborhood of mixed light soils formerly wooded, where common fields had never been a significant feature of the organization of farming. To the south and east of the Arden lay the Feldon, itself an area of contrasts in soils and farming pursuits. Extending in an arc from Stratford in the southwest to Rugby in the northeast, the Avon formed a band of rich loamy soil three to four miles deep on either bank. Beyond the river valley the most significant feature of the east and southeast Feldon was the extensive tract of Lower Lias Clay, which stretched up to the marlstone of the Cotswold plateau.

The article presents an overview of several studies on economic history published in various U.S. journals. The article "Investment in Medieval Agriculture," by M.M. Postan, published in the December 1967 issue of the "Journal of Economic History," arguers that the main reason investment was so small, when thirteenth-century profits from manorial farming were so high, was because the bulk of profits was squandered. The article "Levers and Levelers: Surveying Irrigation Canals in Medieval Valencia," by T.F. Glick, published in the 1968 issue of the journal "Technology and Culture," examines the profession of livelladors in Valencia, Spain from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, and details the tools and techniques used in their trade. The article "Town and Countryside in Fourteenth-Century Flanders," by D.M. Nicholas, published in the 1968 issue of the journal "Studies in Society and History,"concludes that the Flemish city state failed because of the almost exclusive preoccupation of the bourgeois with the town and their urban interests.

This article presents information on various papers related to agriculture, industrial history and economic growth, published in previous issues of various journals. Important new perspectives in evaluating agricultural change and its impact upon the economy are to be found in two articles appearing in tandem in the "Journal of Economic History." One of them is "Agriculture and Economic Growth in England, 1660-1750," by E.L. Jones, and another is "Agricultural Productivity and Economic Growth in England, 1700-1760," by A.H. John. The first seeks to structure innovation, not round the usual polarities of an east-west geographical or enclosure-open field contrast, but according to the differences between heavy and light land. Innovations took better on lighter soils--the light loams, sandy soils, chalk and limestone uplands stimulated by the need to absorb costs created by lower prices. Jones believes that total investment in agriculture rose modestly with falling prices in 1730-1750, a thesis which John supplements by documenting the rise in consumption standards which lower food prices allowed.

Even though Germany, Austria, and Hungary experienced a major financial crisis simultaneously in 1931, of the three, only Germany's and Austria's episodes have been investigated in depth. This article offers a thorough assessment of the missing piece. It finds that, just like Germany, Hungary also experienced a twin crisis. The primary reason for the weakness of the financial sector was banks' excessive exposure to agricultural loans. The fragility of the currency was the result of an early balance‐of‐payments crisis in 1928/9. The vulnerability of the banking and monetary systems culminated in a twin crisis in 1931. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Estimates of English income in Broadberry et al.’s British economic growth, 1270–1870 are founded upon a fourfold growth of farm output, and output per farm worker, over this interval. This article shows, using four separate tests, that farm output growth must have been much more limited. The tests are, first, whether in 1300 there was enough work at harvest to employ all the labour force; second, whether the value of output per worker in agriculture was greater than the annual earnings of workers; third, whether the implied relative outputs per acre of arable versus pasture were reasonable; and fourth, whether a much shorter medieval work year was possible. An alternative index of farm output consistent with the labour supply, wages, and farm rents is derived. This shows much less growth during the period 1270–1800. Overall economic growth in England during these years must consequently have been far less than Broadberry et al. estimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Race is a fundamental aspect of historical inequality and institutions, yet it is at times overlooked within the literature on comparative development in the Americas. This article investigates the nature of staple production in Brazil and attendant changes in the racial composition of 20 modern states from its discovery by the Portuguese to the present. The Indigenous population was surpassed by that of African descent in the north-east, south-east, and north, respectively, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; not until decades after the abolition of slavery did people of European heritage come to constitute a majority. These transitions were guided by the relative productivity, natural increase, and price of Native and African slaves, contingent on the extent of natural resource wealth (mineral deposits or land suitable for growing cash crops) and supply of free labour. In those areas where slavery was most profitable, a 1 per cent increase in the relative cost of Native labour raised the proportion of people of African ancestry by up to 2 per cent, depending on the measures of slave prices and racial classifications considered. This relationship is robust to changes in output prices or the populace of European descent, and alternative scenarios of aboriginal population decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Was there an agro-ecological crisis in Europe which preceded and contributed to pushing forward the agricultural revolution? This article presents a new theoretical and empirical approach to this controversial perspective on agricultural transformation and relates to an ongoing debate on conditions of growth in pre-industrial societies. The results demonstrate that there were indeed indicators of a crisis, which grew stronger during the eighteenth century and culminated in the early nineteenth century. The crisis was, however, not general, but was rather restricted to areas that stand out due to poor natural conditions for agriculture. In other words, the crisis was conditional. Furthermore, the findings show that the crisis could push forward changes that were important for enabling agricultural transformation and growth. However, both the emergence and reversal of the crisis were connected to new opportunities opened up by market development. Enough differences were found between different types of regions to suggest that there were many development paths within the agricultural transformation process, and that they were not necessarily linear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the case of Denmark-a country which historically had next to no domestic energy resources-for which new historical energy accounts are presented for the years 1800-1913. It demonstrates that Denmark's take-off at the end of the nineteenth century was relatively energy dependent. This is related to Denmark's well-known agricultural transformation and development through the dairy industry, and thus the article complements the literature which argues that expensive energy hindered industrialization, by arguing that similar obstacles would have precluded other countries from a more agriculture-based growth. The Danish cooperative creameries, which spread throughout the country over the last two decades of the nineteenth century, were dependent on coal. Although Denmark had next to no domestic coal deposits, this article demonstrates that Danish geography allowed cheap availability throughout the country through imports. On top of this it emphasizes that another important source of energy was imported feed for cows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late nineteenth-century Danish agricultural revolution saw the modernization and growth of the dairy industry. Denmark rapidly caught up with the leading economies, and Danish dairying led the world in terms of productivity. Uniquely in a world perspective, high quality micro-level data exist documenting this episode. These allow the use of the tool of modern agricultural economists, stochastic frontier analysis, to estimate production functions for milk and thus find the determinants of these productivity and efficiency advances. This article identifies the contribution of modernization through specific new technologies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refutes the criticism of writers S.J. Nicholas and M. Dziegielewski on the statistics on supply elasticities in Irish agriculture from 1850 to 1925. Mathematical model used by Nicholas and Dziegielewski; Focus on the claim by Nicholas and Dziegielewski that until the 1860s most of Ireland remained within the pre-Famine framework of peasant subsistence agriculture; Discussion on diverse agricultural commodities not marketed in post-Famine Ireland.

This article challenges the growing consensus in the literature that medieval manorial managers were price responsive in their production decisions. Using prices of and acreages planted with wheat, barley, and oats on manors held by the bishop of Winchester from 1325 to 1370, price elasticities of supply are estimated for each grain in aggregate and on each particular manor. Aggregate price elasticities of supply for wheat, barley, and oats were rarely statistically significant and when significant were very low compared with elasticities estimated for developing and developed countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The low levels of agricultural supply response in fourteenth-century England suggest that commercialization was not as dominant in the medieval economy as has been argued. Thus, structural changes in the economy, such as the leasing of demesnes, the growth of wage labour, and the end of villeinage, may have been more important than price fluctuations in driving long-run economic change after the Black Death. Likewise, a shift from low price responsiveness to higher price responsiveness could have been an important part of the capitalist transformation of agriculture in the early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the historical national accounts of Sweden are among the most detailed in the world, there is scope for improvement. This study revises previous historical estimates of Swedish GDP. Agricultural output is upgraded for the nineteenth century following recent research by Swedish agrarian historians on the underestimation of official statistics. Estimates of annual fluctuations before 1861 are significantly improved by using new sources on yield ratios of harvests. For manufacturing, home industries are added, in accordance with modern international guidelines (2008 SNA). The study concludes that early nineteenth-century Sweden was not as poor relative to other West European countries as previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the costs of transport regulation using the example of agricultural markets in the US. Using a large database of prices by state of agricultural commodities, we find that dispersion fell for many commodities until the First World War. We demonstrate that this reflected changes in transport costs which in turn in the long run depended on productivity growth in railroads. The year 1920 marked a change in this relationship, however, and between the First and Second World Wars we find considerable disintegration of agricultural markets, ultimately as a consequence of the 1920 Transportation Act. We argue that this benefited railroad companies in the 1920s and workers in the 1930s, and we put forward an estimate of the welfare losses for the consumers of railroad services (that is, agricultural producers and final consumers). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Newly available data on Russian commerce, industry, finance, incorporations, labour, and investment allow a fresh approach to two historical puzzles: the dating of cyclical peaks and troughs in Russia during the six decades before the First World War and the evaluation of theories advanced to explain the causes of these cycles. A diffusion index and a composite index establish the dates and amplitudes of seven complete cycles from 1855 to 1909 and part of an eighth, in 1910-13, interrupted by the First World War. The influence of wars and the Revolution of 1905 on the Russian cycle is clear. A comparison of diffusion indices for Russia and Germany reveals that Russian cycles occasionally diverged from the European pattern in the absence of war and revolution, notably during the industrial boom of the 1890s. The new findings give qualified support to the contention of several Soviet economists in the 1920s that this divergence resulted, at least in part, from the monetary stimulus of exports, primarily of grain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature on sharecropping has emphasized its importance in reducing problems associated with moral hazard in cultivation (in Tuscany), or providing a crucial 'rung' on the farm ladder (in the US south). Yet despite these and other important features, sharecropping was surprisingly absent in most regions. Using case studies associated with French wine production, this article argues that a number of factors have often been overlooked in the literature, the first of which is the need for landowners to be able to offer farms that were sufficiently large both to employ the sharecropper's family on a full-time basis, and to allow them to produce a variety of products to minimize risk. Second, measurement problems exist with the division of the harvest, especially when quality was an important factor in determining price. Finally, the nature of vertical cooperation and integration associated with the production and marketing arrangements of individual crops suggests that landowners were not indifferent to receiving payment in cash or kind, and this affected contract choice. This article incorporates these ideas to explain not just the presence and absence of sharecropping in different geographical localities, but also the wide variety of different forms of the contract that existed in France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians have documented rising farm sizes throughout the period 1450-1850. Existing studies have revealed much about the mechanisms underlying the development of agrarian capitalism. However, we currently lack any consensus as to when the critical developments occurred. This is largely due to the absence of sufficiently large and geographically wide-ranging datasets but is also attributable to conceptual weaknesses in much of the literature. This article develops a new approach to the problem and argues that agrarian capitalism was dominant in southern and eastern England by 1700 but that in northern England the critical developments came later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that historians have paid insufficient attention to the agrarian roots of early modern English famines. While not dismissing the insights arising from entitlements theory, the article takes issue with recent writings that have explained the famine of 1622-3 in north-west England as an entitlements crisis. It offers new empirical evidence from an estate in east Lancashire to demonstrate the scale of the crisis in the early 1620s, using estate accounts to produce new price data and estimates of productivity. On the basis of oat tithe data, the scale of the shortfall in foodstuffs in the harvest of 1621 is demonstrated as being probably in the region of a third; that of the following year has to be inferred from price data. The evidence shows that the crisis was not limited to the arable economy, but was followed by an extensive restocking of the pastoral economy. The article therefore makes a contribution to the growing interest in weather as an exogenous factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the effects of political structure on rulers' monopolistic gains and investment decisions in the context of the medieval milling industry in northern France, 1150–1250. Using Salop's spatial model, this article aims to show that political fragmentation increased investment in watermill construction because it reduced the capacity of rulers to limit competition from neighbouring mills. The calculations demonstrate that competition significantly reduced rulers' income from watermills and that the construction of more than 50 per cent of these mills cannot be economically ‘justified’ unless rulers' profit maximization over joint production is considered, and revenues from additional labour allocated to wheat production is included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The productivity of agriculture in England and the Yangtze Delta are compared c.1620 and c.1820 in order to gauge the performance of the most advanced part of China vis-à-vis its counterpart in Europe. The value of real output is compared using purchasing power parity exchange rates. Output per hectare was nine times greater in the Yangtze Delta than in England. More surprisingly, output per day worked was about 90 per cent of the English performance. This put Yangtze farmers slightly behind English and Dutch farmers c.1820, but ahead of most other farmers in Europe—an impressive achievement. There was little change in Yangtze agricultural productivity between 1620 and 1820. In 1820, the real income of a Yangtze peasant family was also about the same as that of an English agricultural labourer. All was not rosy in the Yangtze, however, for incomes there were on a downward trajectory. Agriculture income per family declined between 1620 and 1820, even though income per day worked changed little since population growth led to smaller farms and fewer days worked per year. The real earnings of women in textile production also declined, since the relative price of cotton cloth dropped—possibly also because a larger population led to greater production. The implication is that the Yangtze family, unlike the English family, had a considerably higher real income c.1620, and that period was the Delta's golden age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1200 and 1349, villeinage was not prominent in Suffolk, and, even in those places where it was locally significant, many of its exactions were lightly enforced. The gap between the theory and practice of villeinage was maintained by custom, although this article emphasizes both the importance of regional custom and its mutability. The relative insignificance of villeinage here has two main implications: first, villeinage cannot have caused any crisis of agrarian productivity before the Black Death; and second, its subsequent dissolution cannot have been the prime mover behind the transformation of the landholding structure and the emergence of agrarian capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that farm service was an adaptable and sustainable system of hiring labour in areas of midland and southern England after 1850, having much in common with the model recently identified for northern England and Scotland. Analysing the Census Enumerators Books from selected parishes in seven counties in 1851, 1871, and 1891, we reveal an intricate pattern of farm service ‘survival’ both within and between counties. We then use a range of reports printed between the 1860s and 1920s to examine the national picture. The later regional persistence of farm service has implications for broader debates on the rural workforce and social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All organic economies were subject to constraints upon growth for reasons familiar to the classical economists, but their relative success in coping with these constraints differed substantially. This is visible both when comparing different areas at the same point in time and when comparing the circumstances of a given economy at different points in time. In this article the state of the English economy in 1300 is compared with its state in 1800. At the former date the balance between output and population was unfavourable. A run of poor harvests spelled grave and widespread suffering. Five hundred years later this had ceased to be true. The particular focus of the article is upon the significance of a rising level of productivity per head in agriculture, not simply in supplying food but in providing the raw materials and energy needed if industry and transport were to expand. In the circumstances of an organic economy both were heavily dependent upon the ‘surplus’ made available by a productive agriculture after meeting the needs of the population for food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Von Thünen's model of the relationship between concentrated urban demand and rural land use proposes that towns will draw agricultural produce from a series of zones of specialized production around the urban centre. Using the accounts of King's Hall and King's College, this article identifies the areas that supplied Cambridge with food and fuel during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the persistence of such trade. Local geographical conditions meant that, contrary to von Thünen's model, firewood and charcoal were brought from more distant regions than those supplying wheat and malt barley, and Cambridge's hinterland also had to compete with demand from London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young was the most prolific and quantitative agricultural writer in England in the eighteenth century. Generally highly regarded by his contemporaries, his reputation among British agricultural historians is at an all-time low. This article charts and explains Young's fall from grace. It rebuts the criticisms made of his methods and writings, and shows that Young is a well-informed, accurate, reliable, and reasonable historical source. It demonstrates that the Farmer's tour is based on a broadly representative sample of English farms during the industrial revolution and argues that modern techniques of data analysis can overcome any errors or biases in Young's data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the extent and shape of land use and agriculture restructuring in Great Britain between the early 1870s and the middle of 1890s. Significance of continued cereal cultivation as evidence of managerial failure in agriculture; Description of various farmer responses to depression; Analysis of parish groups according to soil types.

This article explores the expansion of the south-western fisheries in late medieval England. South-western England, particularly the counties of Devon and Cornwall, experienced significant economic growth, during the late middle ages, as indicated in the leap in assessed wealth made by these counties between the early fourteenth century and the early sixteenth. To explain this prosperity, historians have pointed to south-western England's highly diversified economy, which allowed it to adjust to the crises of the late middle ages with less difficulty than most other regions. Although people are relatively well-informed about the regions growing manufacture of cloth for export, its rising profits from tin-mining and its lucrative shift from livestock husbandry, less is known about the developments in the regions maritime sector and almost nothing about its marine fisheries, one of the mainstays of the marine economy. This article explores the expansion of the regions sea fisheries from the late fourteenth century to the early sixteenth century and argues that this expansion is part of the maritime sector's critical but unappreciated contribution to the rising prosperity South-Western England during the late middle ages.