Property Rights, Land Markets and Economic Growth in the European Countryside (13th-20th Centuries) (RURAL HISTORY IN EUROPE) 9782503529554, 2503529550

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Rural History in Europe 1

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Property Rights, Land Markets and Economic Growth in the European Countryside (Thirteenth-Twentieth Centuries) (GLWHGE\*pUDUGBÉAUR, 3KLOOLSS5. SCHOFIELD -HDQ0LFKHOCHEVET, 0DUtD7HUHVD PÉREZ PÍCAZO †

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In memory of María Teresa Pérez Pícazo

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CONTENTS /LVWRI&RQWULEXWRUV



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Foreword

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I. ‘Imperfect property rights’ and economic change

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II. Landowners, land market and property rights



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III. Land market and economic change



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LIST OF TABLES 7DEOH 7DEOH

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1.

Institutional changes and agricultural growth Gérard BÉAUR & Jean-Michel CHEVET

The roots of economic development are still very much a matter of dispute. In recent works on the subject, Kenneth Pomeranz claims that the rapid economic rise of the West came from fortuitous causes – coal and exploitable colonial empires – and therefore sees the Industrial Revolution as the result of a happy convergence of circumstances (Pomeranz, 2000). Peer Vries, by contrast, believes that there was no takeoff in China not just because of circumstances but because of a bad match between the existing socio-cultural model and an inadequate political system (Vries, DQG 7KHÀUVWRIWKHVHLQWHUSUHWDWLRQVGHSHQGVXSRQDWKHRU\RIFKDQFH which excludes all intrinsic inevitability: the second is posited on a proper logic which claims to explain fundamental economic changes, and this approach requires some elucidation. The same questions arise in discussions of the role of agriculture in economic development during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly those concerning the origins of agricultural progress in that crucial period. There is no lack of explanations for it, some depending on chance, others on necessity. Gregory Clark holds that certain populations are gifted with a superior capacity for innovation and thus have genetic, physical or intellectual advantages that lead them directly to progress and the development of the agricultural resources at their disposal (Clark, 2007). Another version of this deterministic view even proposes that greater physical height, strength and, perhaps,cognitive capacity, in conjunction with a better standard of living, explain the higher productivity of certain agricultural systems – in this instance, English agriculture (Kelly & O’Grada, 2012). Other scholars from the humanities and social sciences constantly swing between economic determinism and DMXULGLFRSROLWLFDOW\SHRIVRFLDOGHWHUPLQLVPWRÀQGDUDWLRQDOH[SODQDWLRQIRUWKH difference in levels of development between agricultures. This is, for the most part, WKHSUHVHQWVWDWHRIWKHÀHOGDQGWKHQHRLQVWLWXWLRQDOLVWWKHRU\IROORZVLQWKLVWUDGLWLRQ by pushing the primacy of the second theory to its ultimate conclusion. Though historians long failed to weigh the importance of institutional constraints as key explanations for slow or non-existent growth from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries, recent developments in economic theory appear to have partially reversed this trend. For supporters of institutionalist theory like Douglass North (North &

19

Institutional changes and agricultural growth

Thomas, 1980; North, 1990 & 2005) institutions are central to economic development and agricultural backwardness. Institutional constraints, such as survivals of the feudal system and collective rights, have been put forward as the reasons for economic stagnation, since they tended to increase transactions costs (Williamson, 1981). In such conditions it was necessary for perfect, absolute, property rights to exist before the factors of production could be set free. Getting rid of the old systems of land holding and achieving full rights of private ownership were the indispensable prelude to setting off the virtuous circle of agricultural growth. From the eighteenth century onward physiocrats and agronomists campaigned against all kinds of collective rights and common lands and favoured the enclosure model, so successful in England, as a means to agricultural JURZWK:KLOH¶WKHSURWHFWLRQWKHVHFXULW\DQGWKHHIÀFLHQF\·RISURSHUW\ULJKWVZHUH guaranteed on one side of the Channel and supplied this indispensable prerequisite to an Agricultural Revolution, the French Revolution, by establishing ‘exclusive, free, absolute, perfect’ (Béaur, 1991a; Congost, 2000) ownership, brought about the same result by another process on the other side of the Channel (Congost, 2003). Historians WKXVVHHWKHUHGHÀQLWLRQRIRZQHUVKLSULJKWVDVWKHVWDUWLQJSRLQWRIWKHLUUHYHUVLEOH process towards a capitalist agrarian society and economy in Western Europe. The publication of this book was driven by such an assumption $QRWKHUVXFKDWWLWXGHZKLFKÁRZVIURPLWLVWKDWDIUHHDQGDFWLYHODQGPDUNHWLV a necessary condition of agricultural development. Freeing the land market (or the market in land; see below), as well as that in capital and labour, makes it possible to reallocate the factors of production to people best able to use them with the aim of causing agrarian capitalism to emerge, with its large producers, possessing capital and WKHDELOLW\WRPRELOL]HWKHZRUNIRUFHLQVHDUFKRISURÀW,QWKLVZD\H[FHVVZRUNHUV are eliminated and diverted to other sectors of production. Thus the growth of the land market was one of the necessary conditions for promoting agrarian capitalism, stimulating agricultural progress and making an Industrial Revolution possible. But is this not just as teleological a vision of the market, since nothing says that it actually IXOÀOOHGWKLVIXQFWLRQ"$OVRLILWKDGDVVXPHGWKLVUROHDWDFHUWDLQPRPHQWVKRXOGLW not have eventually lost its momentum as land was concentrated in the hands of those PRVWFDSDEOHRIDFKLHYLQJSURJUHVV" There is in fact a much older historical tradition that sees property systems as insurmountable handicaps to economic growth. The Spanish thinkers discussed by Pablo Luna are a perfect example of this (Luna, 2006). They believed that it was absolutely necessary to carry out a radical reform of the property system in order to revitalise the property market, to select the best farmers - those who were the most 20

Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

dynamic, the most enterprising, those who were most interested in increasing the value of their holdings or domains – and thus promote agricultural progress. While French seigneurs in the region of Bordeaux suggested reducing seigneurial fees on sales to increase the turnover of land and thereby increase their income (Aubin, 1989), the illustrados in Spain wanted to limit the extent of Church property, which FRXOGQRWEHVROGLQRUGHUWRFUHDWHDQDFWLYHODQGPDUNHWDQGWKHUHE\DSURÀWDEOH turnover of farmers (Campomanes, 1765; Jovellanos, 1794). Both maintained that changing institutions would have an impact on the economy, since absolute property rights were more effective than a confusion of rights (Luna, 2009). It was more or less accepted that a land market could not come about until legal property rights ZHUHGHÀQHGDQGWKHXQUHVWULFWHGULJKWWRGLVSRVHRISURSHUW\HVWDEOLVKHG7KHWZR necessary conditions for an effective land market were the destruction of institutional impediments to the circulation of property and the establishment of absolute property rights. Perfect property rights and a land market were linked together as the two necessary preconditions for improving agriculture. From then on institutions were cited as decisive factors in explaining why some countries or, more precisely, regions, were backward and, conversely, to account for the Agricultural Revolution which took place in the previous centuries. From one SRLQWRIYLHZWKHUHZDVDFHUWDLQLQHYLWDELOLW\DERXWWKHUHGHÀQLWLRQRISURSHUW\ULJKWV DQGWKHLUWHQGHQF\WRZDUGVWKHPRVWHIÀFLHQWIRUPDVVXPLQJWKDWWKHVWDWHGLGQRW oppose, or even favoured, this progress. In spite of momentary circumstances which might threaten to destroy such a necessary change, a socio-economic and sociopolitical process was bound to take place which would bring it about, as long as existing conditions permitted. With such assumptions the questions of property rights and the existence of a land market were seen as fundamental. In a way, since they considered property to be an essential institution, the institutionalists agreed with the presuppositions of the Enlightenment thinkers, and also with the nineteenth-century promoters of economic change, who saw a change in the system of property holding as a condition of economic progress. 8QIRUWXQDWHO\WKHVHWKHRULHVDVDWWUDFWLYHDVWKH\DUHDUHODUJHO\XQYHULÀHGDQG ÀUVWQHHGWREHVFUXWLQLVHGFULWLFDOO\:HVKDOOÀUVWWDNHDWKHRUHWLFDOSRVLWLRQDQGWKHQ look at the debates which arise as the complexity and variety of situations become evident.

21

Institutional changes and agricultural growth

I. A critical review of the importance of institutional change 2ZQHUVKLSULJKWVODQGPDUNHWVJURZWKWKHVHWKUHHFRQFHSWVQHHGWREHGHÀQHG before we go any further. 2ZQHUVKLSULJKWVDUHWKHFDSDFLW\KHOGE\WKHSRVVHVVRUVRISURSHUW\WRXVHSURÀW from and transfer it. This capacity may be individual or shared, it may be held by the community or the state, though of course, for the institutionalists, the best formula was that which endowed the possessor with the exclusive exercise of all rights on the property and gave rise to the least transaction costs. However, for a very long time, ownership was chopped up by the relations between lords and peasants and split between individual use and the enjoyment of collective rights (Chenon, 1881; Garaud, 1959). Collective and ecclesiastical ownership had to disappear and the feudal regime had to be destroyed, in order to free the farmers to use their own initiative, to respond to the signals of the market (Pinilla, 2009: 18-19). Thus this really was a discussion about the respective merits of different modes of possession. It really mattered to know who held the different ownership rights. Land markets, in the plural, were where the circulation of property took place (van Bavel & Hoyle, 2010). The use of the plural implies that there was not a single market where the actors freely confronted each other (and it was in no way a perfect market, UDWKHUD¶PDUNHWLQODQG·6FKRÀHOG EXWPDUNHWVWKDWZHUHVHJPHQWHGLQWKUHH ways (Cavaciocchi, 2004). First, they were segmented juridically, with multiple types of transactions bearing a mind-boggling terminology; secondly, they were split up VSDWLDOO\ZLWKVWURQJORFDOLQÁXHQFHVDQGÀQDOO\WKH\ZHUHGLYLGHGVRFLDOO\VLQFHDOO the actors did not have the same access to land. Even for non-family transfers there were multiple variations: ‘commercial/non affective transactions (e.g. sales and leases) versus non-commercial/affective transfers (donations and feudal grants), permanent transfers versus temporary transfers, transfers of complete farms/agrarian enterprises/ estates versus transfers of separate parcels of land, registered transfers versus nonregistered transfers, etc.’ (van Bavel & Hoppenbrouwers, 2004: 17). Acquiring land was therefore a complicated endeavour (Béaur, 1991a). In a sense ‘land market’ is ‘an umbrella term for what in reality is a range of sub-markets or partial markets’ (van Bavel & Hoppenbrouwers, 2004: 19). On the basis of this observation, we might say that the land market does not exist, since it in no way brings together supply and demand. It might perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a ‘market in land’, a market channelling landed property but impelled by motivations that may be extraeconomic, such as family arrangements. But since there has never been a pure, free land market anyway, we may as well treat the two terms as synonymous and use the concept of the ‘land market’ as it is commonly understood. In any case, here again,

22

Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

according to the institutionalists, reforms affecting ownership rights were needed to free the land market, make the farmers owners of their land and allow them to manage it in complete independence (Pinilla, 2009: 19). :HVWLOOQHHGWRGHÀQHZKDWZHPHDQE\JURZWK,QWKLVFRQWH[WZHZLOOIRFXVRQO\ on agricultural growth, since this is essentially what is involved in the land market and WKHRZQHUVKLSULJKWVSHUWDLQLQJWRLWZKLOHPDNLQJVRPHUHÀQHPHQWVWRWKHQRWLRQ WKDWZHFRQVLGHULPSRUWDQW2QHZD\RIGHÀQLQJJURZWKLVDVDQLQFUHDVHLQWKHJURVV product of the surface unit of land, from the productivity of the soil (van Bavel & Thoen, 1999; Béaur, 1996; Campbell & Overton 1996; Béaur & Chevet, 2000; Béaur, Chevet and Pérez Pícazo, forthcoming)1. But growth can also be seen as growing productivity of agricultural labour (North & Thomas, 1980). Assuming a relatively closed economy, the greater this kind of productivity, the greater was the chance of providing the food needed for a growing population; the conjunction of these two types of productivity growth in agriculture is termed ‘real growth’. ‘Real growth’ in both soil and labour productivity not only gives the whole of the population a better diet, but also makes it possible to transfer agricultural workers to other sectors. But things did not usually happen this way: even as agriculture became more productive for each unit of soil under cultivation, even as the agricultural workforce grew, and harvested more produce per worker, the total area under the plough also increased. As a result, more and more agricultural labour was needed to cultivate land hitherto under fallow or otherwise unused. The much-vaunted ‘transfer’ of much of the labour force to other sectors was held back until harvesting became a mechanised process, which only happened at the end of the nineteenth century or even later. It follows that one of the essential factors in the Industrial Revolution in England was the quite remarkable population growth in that country, from the early eighteenth century onwards, a demography which was so exuberant that, even without the help of irresistible technical breakthroughs in agriculture, it spilled over into the industrial sector (Chevet, 1998, 1999, 2010). This labour transfer was abetted by increasing imports of agricultural products, particularly wheat, from the nineteenth century onwards. But in these conditions, and contrary to what North and Thomas think, SRSXODWLRQJURZWKDQGÁXFWXDWLRQVFRXOGLQQRZD\KDYHEHHQFDXVHGE\DFKDQJHLQ property rights. Production certainly followed demographic movement but, as far as we can tell at the present, birth and death rates, particularly in England, seem to have been ‘externalities’. Let us look at the question from another angle and see if the link with changes in property rights is as clear as might be thought. We know that population growth in Western Europe underwent large variations between the thirteenth and eighteenth 1

For another method of estimating land productivity, see CHEVET (2002).

23

Institutional changes and agricultural growth

centuries, particularly after the Black Death. The fall in population caused certain cultivated areas to be abandoned and it is reasonable to assume that they must have returned to the control of the lords or been absorbed into common land. These areas, together with long-established common lands, made up the land surfaces that fed the increasing population, but in a way that did not constitute ‘real growth’. They were affected by property rights in so far as they moved from the communal ownership regime to private ownership. Equally, the supply of property available for purchase or sale varied according to these changes. Thus ownership rights were not the only factor affecting true growth. +RZZDVWKLVJURZWKVWDUWHG" According to the institutionalist theory, the Netherlands in the seventeenth century ZDVWKHÀUVWFRXQWU\ZKHUHWKHVWDQGDUGRIOLYLQJRIWKHSHRSOHLPSURYHGLQDSHULRGRI economic growth, a century before the Industrial Revolution (North & Thomas, 1980; Lepage, 1978). If this was the case it was because the United Provinces had developed ‘a system of institutions and property rights which made it possible effectively to mobilise individual motivations, and direct capital and energy to the most socially useful activities. The Industrial Revolution was not the cause of growth. It was only one of its manifestations, pointing to a new phenomenon, economic growth. The origins of the latter go much farther back, to the slow buildup in the preceding centuries of a structure of property rights that made it possible for society to function in a way that favoured a better allocation of its resources’ (Lepage, 1978). As one of WKHFRPPHQWDWRUVRQ'RXJODVV1RUWKVDLG¶JURZWKLVQRWLGHQWLÀHGZLWKWKHKLVWRU\ of technical progress’ (Lepage, 1978) but with that of law, particularly property law. Certainly there were technical innovations in the countryside before the seventeenth century; three-year rotations for example. However it is clear that they were not enough to bring about a demographic ‘takeoff’ and an improvement in the living standard of populations. So it was during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that a new wave of innovations transformed European agriculture. They were the foundation of the Agricultural Revolution and thus of the Industrial Revolution (North & Thomas, /HSDJH ,QFUHDVHVLQ\LHOGPDGHLWSRVVLEOHIRUWKHÀUVWWLPHLQWKHKLVWRU\ of humanity, to feed the population better and avoid the famines that customarily DFFRPSDQLHGGHPRJUDSKLFJURZWK7KLVÀUVWKDSSHQHGLQWKH1HWKHUODQGVDQGWKHQ of course, in England, even though the existing data does not show any superiority in the productivity of English land over that of the huge plains in the Paris basin, for example (North & Thomas, 1980; Lepage, 1978). If these innovations appeared at this period, rather than the Middle Ages, it was because ‘the structure of property rights was then much more favourable than previously to the widespread diffusion of innovations. In other words, it was not the genius of invention or the ‘quantity’ of

24

Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

innovation that was at stake, but the juridical structure of the property system. The ‘Agricultural Revolution’ was not essentially a technological phenomenon; it was the consequence of changes in property rights’ (Lepage, 1978). The law, like the market, becomes a magic formula which makes everything possible, and explains everything (Grantham, 1993; Chevet, 1994: 116, 143). Without a revolution in law, and therefore in politics, there could be no capitalist development. Thus in a way, ironically, the institutionalists were following in the steps of the Marxist theory (e.g. Soboul, 1966) that they expected to eliminate. In like manner, their ideas joined up with those of Robert Brenner, who clearly linked the development of capitalist relations of production to the evolution of feudalism towards a set of property relations, which happened in England and nowhere else (Brenner, 1976, 1982; Aston & Philpin, 1985; see Hoppenbrouwers & van Zanden, 2001: 20-21). Technical progress became an epiphenomenon, no longer assuming the role traditionally allotted to it, and the question of how the standard of living of populations increased was still unsolved, even though recent works have shown that enclosures were one of the factors that encouraged the introduction of new ‘crop rotations’ and technological change (Beckett & Turner, 2011: 74; Olsson & Svensson, 2011: 28). But was this liberty, plus a change in property rights (which was perhaps not as new as some think) really enough to transform producers’ attitudes and thereby LPSURYHWKHJHQHUDOVWDQGDUGRIOLYLQJ" 6R ZDV WKLV UHDOO\ KRZ WKLQJV KDSSHQHG" :RXOG LW QRW EH PRUH DSSURSULDWH WR question this dogma, one of the foundation myths of our society, if it is incapable of explaining the agricultural growth which, roughly speaking, took place gradually DURXQGWKHHQGRIWKHHLJKWHHQWKFHQWXU\RUDOLWWOHHDUOLHU" Some scholars in England have already added some nuances or even completely opposed this perspective. Richard Hoyle doubts that the change in property rights was as radical and that it happened as early as it is usually claimed (Hoyle, 1990: 12-18). Mark Overton has questioned the passion of landlords for improvements, the innate VXSHULRULW\RIODUJHIDUPVDQGÀQDOO\WKHVXSSRVHGOLQNEHWZHHQWKHHVWDEOLVKPHQW of capitalist relations in the countryside and the weakness of the rights the peasants previously held over their lands (Overton, 1996: 205). In fact, if the origins and growth of capitalist society arise out of the theory of property rights, how could full and complete property rights have come into being LI WKHUH ZDV QR UHDO SURSHUW\ LQ WKH IHXGDO SHULRG" ,QVWLWXWLRQDOLVWV DUH IRUFHG WR concede that it is because ‘The concept of property appears only gradually, as an RXWFRPHRIHFRQRPLFIRUFHVZKLFKSURJUHVVLYHO\FKDQJHWKH¶VRFLDOSURÀWDELOLW\·RI feudal relations’ (Lepage, 1978). In other words, for them it really was the internal 25

Institutional changes and agricultural growth

FRQWUDGLFWLRQVRIWKHIHXGDOV\VWHP²WKHDUULYDORIWKHH[FKDQJHHFRQRP\WKHÀUVW WRZQVWKHÀUVWPDUNHWV²ZKLFKJUDGXDOO\RYHUVHYHUDOFHQWXULHVXQGHUPLQHGLWIURP within. This return of ‘internal contradictions’ brings us back to familiar ground and throws some doubt on the wisdom of putting too much weight on juridico-political determinism. Some members of the institutionalist school maintain that the redemption of personal labour power during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries – it does not matter here that the process was much more complicated than this – as a result of internal contradictions, led, through the freeing of the serfs, to an initial form of individual property since the serf became owner of his ‘labour power’ (Lepage, 1978). Once more, it was changes within the economic sphere which led to changes in ‘property relations’, and not the opposite: the champions of this view invoke juridico-political determinism but then explain the evolution of property rights by economic determinism! Then, VD\WKHLQVWLWXWLRQDOLVWVGXULQJWKHSHULRGZKHQWKHVHUIVZHUHIUHHGWKHÀ[HG rent IHXGDOUHQW DSSHDUHGZKLFKZLWKLQÁDWLRQIHOOWRQH[WWRQRWKLQJ1RUWK 7KRPDV 1980). However, this ‘rent’, which was not the payment for a real property right, poses serious problems for the theory. For, if ‘property rights’ had been evolving since the Middle Ages, why, at a given moment in history – the seventeenth century – was the HVVHQFH RI SURSHUW\ WUDQVIRUPHG" &RXOG LW KDYH KDSSHQHG EHFDXVH RI WKH FKDQJHV which occurred with the creation of modern states, and then within these states – in WKH FDVH RI )UDQFH ZLWK WKH )UHQFK 5HYROXWLRQ LQ RWKHU FRXQWULHV HDUOLHU" ,Q WKLV hypothesis, society in France suddenly tipped from feudalism to capitalism, since by 1789 there survived only traces of what had made up the essence of the old regime, and it was this change alone which made economic development possible, as Marxist theories long taught (North & Thomas, 1980, Lepage, 1978). It was thus the theory of property rights, the heart of juridico-political theory, which established capitalism. While the lords acquired, around the twelfth century, the full ‘seigneurial property’ of their lands, and, at the same time, peasants themselves came closer to modern SURSHUW\WKHÀUVWW\SHVRIODQGUHQWDODSSHDUHG7KHLQVWLWXWLRQDOLVWVNQRZYHU\ZHOO that these innovations in land possession existed in mediaeval times, but according to them, they did not spread rapidly enough to bring about economic growth. Unfortunately there is a contradiction here: how could this be possible since real property, the one and only true property, did not yet exist, and it would be necessary WRZDLWXQWLOWKHVHYHQWHHQWKFHQWXU\IRUWKLVFKDQJHWREHJLQ"7KH\VHHPHGWRÀQGWKH answer in the missing piece of this unlikely puzzle: the famous enclosures. For a long time enclosures have been central to explaining agricultural growth; it followed that their absence signalled the backwardness of those who had not shut in

26

Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

WKHLUÀHOGV2IFRXUVHWKHVHH[SOLFDWLRQVQHYHUPHQWLRQHGWKHW\SHRIVRLOWKHIHUWLOLVHU or indeed any of the factors which, from an agronomic point of view, favoured the Agricultural Revolution. Since the time of Arthur Young, and the physiocrats along with him, the relevant historiography has repeated this assumption time and time again. On this point, historians of the countryside have made advances which cast serious doubt on the theory by showing that innovations were possible without enclosures (Chevet, 1984, 1998 and 1999). It is clear that on the whole the authors contributing to this volume have shown that imperfect property was not responsible for any agricultural backwardness. More recently, the notion that enclosures were superior to all other types of cultivation has been questioned. On the one hand, Robert $OOHQ IRXQG QR JDS EHWZHHQ WKH SHUIRUPDQFH RI HQFORVHG DQG RSHQ ÀHOGV LQ WKH seventeenth-century Midlands, even if he remains convinced that the disappearance of the yeomen occurred in the eighteenth century on account of the enclosures and that this then made a second Agricultural Revolution possible (Allen, 1992). On the other hand, it has been assumed that ‘enclosure was a continuing process and that much of England was already enclosed by the beginning of the eighteenth century’ (Brassley, Dyer, Hoyle & Turner, 2010: 64-65, 89; see Wordie, 1983), and therefore to a large extent before the agricultural growth, if we are to follow Mark Overton (Overton, 1996). In such hypotheses we tend to conclude that the Agricultural Revolution in England, whether it happened during the seventeenth century or during the eighteenth century, had little to do with enclosures. We may not then be surprised, in turning to the evolution of enclosure from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries and in PDNLQJ FRPSDULVRQV ZLWK )UDQFH WR ÀQG WKDW WKH UROH RI HQFORVXUH LQ HFRQRPLF growth was relatively slight (Chevet, 1997, 1998, 1999)2. We only need look at a map of the geographic distribution of common land in France to see that the division of collective land, which had absolutely nothing to do with the ending of collective rights, would have contributed very little to agricultural progress; the most fertile areas had almost no common land; in the plains it had all, or almost all, been put under cultivation long before (Béaur, 2000 & 2006). It is obvious that in a world waiting in suspense for perfect property to arrive, there was no wage labour, no cash, no markets. There was then, no land market, nor market in land. Unfortunately for this notion, as far back as we can go in the Middle Ages, exchanges existed and land changed hands continually according to procedures that were highly ritualised (Arnoux, 1996), but also pecuniary (Bois, 1989). Surely the 2

Clearly, it has not been possible within the limits of this introduction, to attempt a historiographical UHYLHZRIWKHERG\RIUHOHYDQWOLWHUDWXUH+RZHYHUWKLVDUHDZRXOGFHUWDLQO\EHQHÀWIURPDQHZDVVHVVPHQW focussed on consideration of property rights.

27

Institutional changes and agricultural growth

fact that anthropology contributes to an understanding of these exchanges does not QHFHVVDULO\RUGHÀQLWLYHO\GHVWUR\WKHLUHFRQRPLFQDWXUHLWRQO\PDNHVWKHPDUNHW a little more segmented. In a way, the exchange bore witness to the existence of property. The property had to exist if the possessor wanted to sell it. It can easily be objected that the exchange was severely restricted by rights of pre-emption held by the seigneur, the community or the family line. But WKLVDUJXPHQWVHHPVÁDZHG since those who pre-empted could only substitute themselves for the original buyer and thus become the buyers of the property placed on the market. Would we say that property does not exist and that there is no market in land and buildings because VWDWHVPXQLFLSDOLWLHVRUSURSHUW\DJHQFLHVIUHTXHQWO\KROGDULJKWRISUHHPSWLRQ" According to Douglass North, England and the Netherlands had a modern state earlier than all the other European countries (North & Thomas 1980; Lepage 1978). From this supposed advance in constructing the modern state, they deduced that (QJODQG DQG WKH 1HWKHUODQGV KDG EHWWHU GHÀQHG SURSHUW\ ULJKWV ZKLFK SURWHFWHG innovative entrepreneurs and so favoured economic growth. This hypothesis is not entirely new since some British authors maintain that the English Revolution did away with the feudal system (Postan & Hill, 1977). However, if it is also accepted, as it is by these same authors, that the new property rights resulting from the disappearance of the feudal system were at the origin of growth, it is clear that this can not be the case. In England the tithe was still in existence in 1835 (whereas in France it had been abolished during the French Revolution) when it became redeemable. It was not the only due that had been part of the feudal system. Feudal rights still existed in England at that period and following the tithe commutation there was a growing movement to redeem them. A series of laws, sometimes in conjunction with inquiries, were passed to this effect from 1841 (1852, 1858, etc.). However, they were ineffective and it was not until the laws of 1922 and 1925 that copyhold tenure and all the relics of the feudal system really disappeared, more than a century later than in France (Radcliffe, 1938; Offer, 1981; Riddall, 1988, Beckett & Turner 2010). In fact ‘the conversion of copyholds and customary freeholds into simple freeholds… did not JDLQVSHHGEHIRUHDERXW·YDQ%DYHO +RSSHQEURXZHUV XQWLOÀQDOO\ around 1900 ‘ancient tenures were lingering only in an emasculated form’ (Beckett & Turner, 2004: 290), which makes it clear that the process was far from being completed in the eighteenth century (Lavrovsky, 1937). If we turn to the United Provinces and inland Flanders, it is clear that there were seigneurs there until the French Revolution and therefore, presumably, feudal rights, even though at a low level, which seems to dispose of the illusion of perfect property (Hoppenbrouwers & van Zanden, 2001: 19-20). On the one hand, in certain regions, the older categories of tenure survived in manorial or collective form, even if, very

28

Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

early on ‘the only distinction that mattered was between property (eygendom) and short-term leaseholds (huer)’ (van Bavel & Hoppenbrouwers, 2004: 16). On the other hand, it is clear that although the rights of land were already crystallized during or even before the Late Middle Ages’ (van Bavel, 2004: 132), there was still some ambiguity. Although tenants had freedom to transfer or sell land and although they were responsible for paying taxes, this was not decisive and did not create a break with the seigneurial system and superposition of rights characteristic of other European countries, such as France. Paradoxically, feudal rights existed until the beginning of the twentieth century in England, longer than in many European countries. It follows from this that North and Thomas’ thesis (North & Thomas, 1980) becomes untenable, since, as the example of England shows, there was not necessarily a parallel development of the nation state and property rights, and, consequently, of the land market. All this leads to the conclusion that this is a purely intellectual construction, based on the treatment in traditional history of agriculture, commerce, enclosures, the struggle against piracy etc…. As England and the Netherlands were great commercial powers, it seems to KDYHEHHQDVVXPHGZLWKRXWDQ\SURRIRUYHULÀFDWLRQWKDWSHUFDSLWDJURZWKRFFXUUHG there while there was stagnation everywhere else in Europe, and that this growth could only be explained by a juridico-political theory based on trivial determinism. 8QIRUWXQDWHO\ KLVWRULRJUDSK\ GRHV QRW FRQÀUP WKHVH WKHRULHV 7KH IDFW WKDW exchanges existed shows that property rights existed since at least the year 1000, the starting point of North and Thomas’ analysis. In spite of the multitude of social changes that took place since that time up until the end of our period, the various contexts never hindered the transmission of land from one owner to another, nor the workings of the market. The anthropological elements so often referred to — rites, for example — instead of changing the terms of the market, were rather added on to them. Did charivaris, which could take place on the occasion of marriages, in any way FKDQJHWKHWHUPVRIWKHFRQWUDFWRUWKHIDWHRIWKHFRXSOH"7KXVDOWKRXJKLQDFDGHPLF studies rites and monetary transactions are analysed as two different elements, in real life they were one and the same act, the transmission of a property. The rite did not abolish or modify the monetary exchange. If it were otherwise, socio-economic studies would need to show that the rite changed the cost of the land transaction. There is no need to be a neo-classicist to recognise that the land market existed and WKDWLWLVRQHRIWKHPDQ\ÀHOGVRIKLVWRULFDODQDO\VLV Were there social factors that made it impossible to carry out property transactions LQWKH0LGGOH$JHV"7KHUHPD\KDYHEHHQKRZHYHUWKHH[LVWHQFHRIWKHVHWUDQVDFWLRQV indeed their relative abundance, shows that these factors could not have universal. At

29

Institutional changes and agricultural growth

the most, if they existed they must simply have limited the level of transactions. The available data seem to show that there was a market which existed for the most part outside family networks from the Middle Ages on (Campbell, 2000, McIntosh, 2002; Dyer, 2009; Mullan & Britnell, 2010; Hare, 2011). Logically, if no land escaped from the family, properties would have been subdivided very quickly and it would have been impossible to consolidate a holding. Historians’ studies have revealed a wide diversity of experience. This has encouraged us to examine the association between property rights, the land market and economic growth. It is clear that the time has come to reconsider the established hypotheses and common conceptions associated with land circulation and to do so in a comparative context, examining typical situations and variants throughout Europe, testing neo-institutionalist and Enlightenment theories, and submitting them to critical examination (Congost 2003; Ogilvie, 2007). This is the task that this collective work has taken on, seeking to understand whether the absence of ‘ownership rights’ was really a brake on economic growth in the West and, conversely, if their appearance there triggered growth. It will also examine whether the emergence of perfect property really served to energise the property market. Finally it will ask if increased circulation of property was really in phase with the expected economic progress. The WZHQW\ÀYHFRQWULEXWLRQVDVVHPEOHGLQWKLVYROXPHDUHWKXVWZHQW\ÀYHFDVHVWXGLHV for testing the validity of the institutionalist hypothesis and casting some light on the real effect of the institutional changes which mark the history of the European countryside. This work will therefore re-examine the following questions and explore on a European scale the varying contexts in which they arise: ³:KDWIRUPVFRXOGUHVWULFWLRQVRQWKHODQGPDUNHWWDNH"7KHLVVXHVKHUHLQFOXGH the status of the land (e.g. free or servile) and the relative demands on it such as customary rights and obligations, institutional claims, inheritance rights (including rules of succession and recovery, as well as dowry). ³:KDWIDFWRUVLQÁXHQFHGWKHODQGPDUNHW"7KHVHFRXOGEHWKHW\SHRIORUGVKLS or estate, rights of different social groups over the land, the importance of transaction costs (e.g. HQWU\ÀQHV WKHGHJUHHRILQIRUPDWLRQDYDLODEOHWKHUROHRIFULVHVSROLWLFDO events, social movements etc. — What were the debates that encouraged politicians or economists to allow circulation of property and what were the links between freeing the land market and UHIRUPVUHYROXWLRQDU\DQGOLEHUDOLQWHQGHGWRUHPRYHRWKHUIRUPVRIFRQVWUDLQW"

30

Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

— What was the relationship between the liberalisation of land exchange and HFRQRPLF SURJUHVV" 'LG WKH GHYHORSPHQW RI WKH PDUNHW HQFRXUDJH LQLWLDWLYH" 'LG it free capital to be invested in land or did it tie down capital which could have EHHQLQYHVWHGLQRWKHUVHFWRUVRUGLGLWGRERWK"'LGLWRUGLGLWQRWRSHQWKHZD\WR HFRQRPLFSURJUHVV"

II. Did shared property and collective rights block economic progress? Some historians have tried to show that the complex web of rights attached to property made major agricultural and structural innovation impossible. The Old Regime property system, according to this point of view, was a decisive obstacle to the changes needed to improve agricultural performance. As Rui Santos and Jose Vicente 6HUUDRUHPLQGXVWKHLQVWLWXWLRQDOLVWVKROGWKDWZLWKRXWZHOOGHÀQHGH[FOXVLYHDQG secure property rights there can be no incentives to economic progress. Since the 1DSROHRQLF&LYLO&RGHGHÀQHGSURSHUW\RZQHUVKLSDVWKHULJKWWRXVHSURSHUW\WR enjoy its fruits and to dispose of or transmit it, it is obvious that before the Revolution – and also after, but we shall come to this later – there were many types of property in which these three forms of right were not held by the same person, even though there were also types of property over which the same person held all three. 7KHVHKLVWRULDQVDUJXHWKDWWKHODUJHQXPEHURIULJKWKROGHUVPDGHLWYHU\GLIÀFXOWWR extend drainage in Normandy or irrigation in Provence before 1789 (Rosenthal, 1992). The Revolution in France, they maintain, put an end to this confusion and by clarifying and unifying rights to the land made it possible to undertake the improvements desired by promoters of economic progress. It can be argued however, that drainage and irrigation existed long before the Revolution, sometimes with very sophisticated PHDQVRIRUJDQLVDWLRQDQGWKDWLWWRRNZHOORYHUÀIW\\HDUVDIWHUWKH5HYROXWLRQIRU the reformed property rights system to be implemented on a large scale. It was thus possible to break free from the constraints which weighed on the property system. Also there may have been other factors limiting the spread of these techniques, starting with the cost and the lack of enthusiasm of tenant farmers for taking on the DVVRFLDWHGH[SHQVHVZLWKRXWWKHFHUWDLQW\RIEHLQJWKHORQJWHUPEHQHÀFLDULHV,WLV also not clear that drainage spread more quickly in England than in France and it is highly doubtful that property rights over water were any simpler there. However, it LVSRVVLEOHWRFRPSDUHDQGUHÁHFWRQWKHVDFURVDQFWXQOLPLWHGSURSHUW\ULJKWVWKDW the advocates of the so-called ‘liberal’ theory preached and dreamed of, and to ask whether they really existed. There was a vast range of ingredients in landed property rights in pre-industrial societies and in the days before the coming of ‘perfect

31

Institutional changes and agricultural growth

ownership’ (Congost, 2003 & 2007). The examples used to illustrate the pieces in WKLVYROXPHRIIHUDVXIÀFLHQWO\ZLGHVDPSOH ,WVHHPVFXULRXVWKDWWKHIHXGDORUVHLJQHXULDOKLHUDUFK\ZLWKLWVLQÀQLWHUHJLRQDO variations on the scale between eminent property and use property, has been so little discussed in these texts, as if it were too commonplace to be of interest. It was, however, an integral part of the Old Regime, and central to the apportioning of property rights. It is also the main institution targeted in discussions of how imperfect ownership handicapped economic progress. Moroever, it should be noted that the parallel fading of feudalism on both sides of the Channel has not discouraged the teleological interpretation, which labels England as the paragon of economic development and France as a symbol of backward agriculture. Other forms of shared property have received more attention here, particularly emphyteusis, which has already been studied in urban history (Faron & Hubert, 1995). Emphyteusis is ubiquitous in this ZRUNDQGLWLVVRPHWLPHVGLIÀFXOWWRGLVWLQJXLVKLWIURPVHLJQHXULDOFRQFHVVLRQZKLFK it has tended to engulf.3 The emphasis in this work has been placed on the permanent ways in which rights ZHUHVXSHULPSRVHGRQSURSHUW\WKHZD\VZHUHLQÀQLWHO\YDULHGLQWLPHDVZHOODV space. It has been observed that ‘in many cases several people had various rights to WKH VDPH SORW RI ODQG ZKLFK PDNHV LW GLIÀFXOW ² RU HYHQ LPSRVVLEOH ² WR HVWDEOLVK who was the sole owner of that land’ and that this was an enormous hindrance to the rise of a land market (van Bavel, 2008). Even without mentioning the extreme case of domaine congéable, encountered in Brittany by Philippe Jarnoux, which mixes sale and lease and establishes a complex hierarchy of rights on the land, it should be noted that all the types of emphyteutic leases, from those Luigi Lorenzetti found in the Valtelline (livello) to those described by Rosa Congost and Llorenç Ferrer in Catalonia and by Rui Santos and Jose Vicente Serrao for Alentejo and the Lisbon hinterland, created partial or uncertain owners. The Portuguese examples show how porous was the borderline between the different types of land devolution and how easy it was to slip from one to another according to the preferences and social standing of those involved. The contributions to this volume clearly show how different types of contracts both complemented and competed with others: emphyteusis/lease, emphyteusis/sale, emphyteusis/seigneurial lease, lease/sale, domaine congéable, lease/simple tenure, lease/seigneurial tenure. Take emphyteusis for example. Not only is it not clearly distinguished from a lease but it is also (in south-east France for example) sometimes close to seigneurial concession, with which it is often confused. 3

Emphyteusis was the theme of a conference held in Gerona in June 2011, organized by Gérard Béaur, Rosa Congost and Pablo Luna under the auspices of GDR (Groupe de Recherches) 2912 of the CNRS Histoire des Campagnes Europénnes and the Centre for Rural History at the University of Gerona.

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Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

Because of this, sometimes one type of contract offers an alternative and completes the arrangement, sometimes it piggy-backs on it; sometimes there are a multitude of forms and sometimes the range of possible contracts is limited. The juxtaposition of rights may be greater or less according to the type of crop cultivated or the region under study, as the Spanish case suggests. Emphyteusis has no one essential quality. Shifting from one type of contract to another had varying advantages for the farmers and affected the system of production in different ways according to conditions at a given time. Conversely, the status of a contract such as emphyteusis served purposes which differed from one period to another. Imperfect property rights have their own KLVWRU\DQGWKHLUMXVWLÀFDWLRQFKDQJHGRYHUWLPH ,WLVQRWGLIÀFXOWWRÀQGDUJXPHQWVVKRZLQJWKDWWKHVXSSUHVVLRQRIVKDUHGRZQHUVKLS and the freeing of the land played a vital role in the process of growth, introducing different rates of development in the areas where change took place from those where it did not. However it is now clear that there is no good reason to think that the advent of perfect ownership was the most important factor in agricultural progress. Many authors doubt that removing superimposed rights on land set in motion a process linking the ‘liberation’ of the land to agricultural growth. The link between property reforms and agrarian growth is not always present. Rosa Congost reminds us that in France, during the debates on Article 530 of the Code Civil, many argued in favour of retaining perpetual rents on the ground that they had helped bring previously abandoned land under cultivation (Congost 2003). Moreover, forms of shared ownership that were so strongly criticised by their contemporaries are treated with less suspicion nowadays (Congost & Lana, 2007). Was emphyteutic leasing of land an insurmountable obstacle to developing the FRXQWU\VLGH":DVWKLVW\SHRIFRQWUDFWUHDOO\VRDUFKDLFDQGUHVWULFWLYHDUHOLFZKLFK RQO\GLVDSSHDUHGYHU\ODWHIROORZLQJWKHXUEDQH[DPSOH6RPEDUW "1RUHSO\ several authors in unison. Emphyteusis did not necessarily hold back agricultural LQQRYDWLRQ HYHQ WKRXJK LW ZDV JURXQGHG LQ VSHFLÀF UHDO VRFLHWLHV DIIHFWHG WKH motivations of the social groups concerned and helped curb the free working of the economy. Rosa Congost, in her work on north-east Catalonia, and Llorenç Ferrer in his research on another part of Catalonia, show that emphyteutic contracts were H[WUHPHO\ IUHTXHQW LQ WKH VHFRQG KDOI RI WKH HLJKWHHQWK FHQWXU\ DQG WKH ÀUVW KDOI of the nineteenth. Llorenç Ferrer has been able to demonstrate that this type of FRQWUDFWDGPLWWHGO\GLIÀFXOWWRGLVWLQJXLVKIURPODQGFRQFHGHGLQUHWXUQIRUTXLWUHQWV (concessions à cens) in other areas, was becoming increasingly frequent over a much longer period. Both authors emphasise the importance of this method of tenure to agricultural change in Catalonia and its relation to the growth of the property market.

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Institutional changes and agricultural growth

According to Llorenç Ferrer, ever since the Middle Ages, emphyteusis, by dividing ownership and distinguishing two kinds of rights over the land, had opened the way for the growth of the property market. Rabassa morta4 (Carmona & Simpson, 1999) and sub-letting were also decisive factors. Although the system of transmitting property as a single bloc (Ferrer, 2011) created many obstacles to the circulation of property, it could not prevent alternating cycles of accumulation and subdivision over the course of time, under the impetus of urbanisation, increased recourse to credit, feudal concessions from the owners of eminent domain and demographic growth or decline. Rosa Congost shows that emphyteusis not only transferred the dominium utile but also established a new right over property, one which could also be sold. The number of these sales has been calculated using notaries’ records and mortgage registers and the result is surprising: the increase in these sales was greater than in those of free land. Even better, the emphyteutic contract was fundamental in privatising the woodland used by communities until the second half of the eighteenth century, and it ZDVWKHVPDOOSHDVDQWVZKREHQHÀWHGIURPWKHVHVDOHV,WWKXVSOD\HGDIXQGDPHQWDO part in social change and helped to start agricultural growth. It decisively determined the changes to the system of cultivation, it transformed the ownership structures and it allowed land to be treated as capital. Luigi Lorenzetti came to similar conclusions in his studies of the Valtelline, where he found aninstitution inherited from the old regime, the livello, a kind of emphyteutic contract. Recent research on the Alpine regions has led to a ‘rehabilitation of the economic rationality’ underlying the old regime property structures. Livello was decisive for instance in organizing the social relations in the valley until the twentieth century. Most of the common land was given over to the peasants under this type of contract. It had the advantage of making it easier for smallholders, with little cash, to get access to the land. Sales made in the context of ‘privatisation’ of the common lands did not, however, make a clear distinction between dominium direct and dominium utile. It probably lasted so long because winegrowing was the main type of cultivation, but also because of the budgetary problems of the Italian state. :HUH RWKHU W\SHV RI VKDUHG RZQHUVKLS OHVV IDYRXUDEOH" ,Q D YHU\ GLIIHUHQW geographical context, Lower Brittany, Philippe Jarnoux studied a unique phenomenon, the strange system called bail à domaine congéable. This was a type of contract, very common in the eighteenth century and still existing in the twentieth and twenty4 Rabassa morta was either a sharecropping contract or an emphyteutic cens. The landowner ceded to a farmer a plot to be planted with vines and to be cultivated as long as the vines were alive. The annual harvest was shared between the landowner and the winegrower.

34

Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

ÀUVWLQZKLFKWKHRZQHUfoncier) rented the bare earth to the peasant (domanier) on an annual rent. But the rental applied only to the land itself; the domanier owned everything upon the land: the house, the ditches, the hedges, certain trees, etc. Because of this, every time the lease ended or was broken the owner had to reimburse the domanier; in reality, the new tenant had to reimburse the old. Philippe Jarnoux does not see this in such a negative light as did contemporaries. This type of tenure allowed a sizeable minority of peasants, who had the means to carry out improvements and had access to the market, to reach a certain level of accumulation (Le Goff, 1989: 150156, 169-174). It can also be argued that this system, which survived for a long time after the French revolution, anticipated practices adopted in the second half of the nineteenth century. Tenant farmers of all kinds, then increasingly short of capital to pay for the investments needed for agricultural growth, managed to get the owners to share with them certain costs of improving cultivation, while other investments made on the land itself were reimbursed by incoming tenants. Ownership rights were not only limited by the existence of several co-owners, they were also burdened by usage rights on the land, which were also often collective (Ostrom, 1990; De Moor, Ward & Leigh, 2002). These two forms of exercising collective rights have almost always been criticised by economists and historians. Most historical works on this subject in the past have claimed that the destruction of collective rights on land was an important stage on the path to economic growth. The texts included in this volume are much less categorical on the subject. Researchers have been interested by the rights superimposed on the enjoyment of property, whether collective rights or restrictions on use: rights to vaine pâture or parcours here, rights of passage there, most of them lasting until our own time (Vivier, 2003). Traditionally, the right of ownership was split (cisaillé), as the expression went at the time, between collective rights and individual rights. The IURQWLHUV GHÀQLQJ WKH H[WHQW DQG XVH RI WKHVH ULJKWV DUH QRW DOZD\V YHU\ FOHDU DV Annie Antoine has shown in her work on western France. Moreover, these limits changed as the land moved back and forward between these two ways of enjoying rights, in particular as uncultivated land was temporarily brought under cultivation by members of the community, or more permanently, when a seigneur granted a piece of land as an enfeoffment, a change which was in theory permanent but in practice often proved to be ephemeral. 0RUHRYHUWKHUHZHUHVSHFLÀFW\SHVRIRZQHUVKLSZKLFKZHUHYHU\GLIIHUHQWIURP the ideal of individual ownership: collective property. These rights are discussed at length in this work as they still give rise to many debates and questions (Vivier, 1998). These properties did not all belong legally to rural communities, as was the case

35

Institutional changes and agricultural growth

in Brittany – though that in no way prevented the communities from using them collectively. There again, the line between land used by the communities on the one hand, and land cultivated by individuals on the other, seems to have been quite porous. Collective land was often cultivated by individuals, either on a temporary basis or sometimes permanently, legally or not, and was subsequently alienated. The area of collective lands varied over time. In periods of crisis, when times were hard and the population fell, they reached their greatest extent; vast expanses were abandoned and left in fallow because they were not needed to feed the dwindling population and keep them supplied with wood. At the lowest point of the demographic wave such lands were useless. By contrast, periods of demographic growth usually corresponded to an increase in cultivation, which largely encroached on the common lands. Thus the question of land ownership, from which the question of the common lands is usually approached, must be separated from the question of land use, even though in both FDVHVWKHOLQHEHWZHHQSULYDWHDQGFROOHFWLYHÁXFWXDWHV There are more general questions to be asked about the use and function of waste land and land subject to grazing rights, and their status, which was extremely imprecise: always under the control of the lords in one area, always under that of the rural community in others, sometimes under joint control, or, in some sparsely populated parts of east and central Europe, in an uncertain legal position. This LPSUHFLVLRQREYLRXVO\JDYHULVHWRDJUHDWPDQ\FRQÁLFWVDQGPDVVLYHQXPEHUVRIODQG grabs, which, though not necessarily spectacular, nibbled away at areas clearly held in common by the local community, or land with a doubtful status. The uncertainty of such terms of tenure also made it possible for agricultural labourers to get access to land, and thereby became one of the driving forces behind the property market in sixteenth-century Europe, as Markus Cerman has shown. We know that, from the eighteenth century onwards, there was an intense battle against this kind of common ownership, whether it had previously existed or not. Common lands were accused of being unproductive and useless and it was claimed that such rights should be removed and the land privatised (Demélas & Vivier, 2003). Large numbers of economists and agronomists had preached in favour of their disappearance, and states were hostile to mixed ownership of this kind, though some were more determined to do something about it than others. Pablo Luna describes the projects put forward by the Ilustrados in Enlightenment Europe for reforming property ownership in Spain and Spanish America. His careful examination of the proposals of Rodríguez Campomanes and Jovellanos in Spain, and Abad y Quiepo, a native of New Spain, in the Americas, reveals the points of agreement and the divergences between the three authors. Luna says that Rodríguez Campomanes and Jovellanos agreed that it was absolutely necessary to improve agricultural production by putting

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Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

more land under cultivation. To achieve this they proposed to abolish common lands and collective rights. But while Jovellanos believed that emphyteusis was the best system for distributing such land to the peasants, Rodríguez Campomanes favoured renting it out. The two enlightened philosophers did not dare to touch the property ULJKWV RI WKH FOHUJ\ DQG QRELOLW\ KRZHYHU IDFHG ZLWK WKH ÀQDQFLDO GLIÀFXOWLHV RI the monarchy, Jovellanos did propose issuing bonds (Vales Reales) backed by the property of charitable foundations. The similarity between the solutions proposed by Rodríguez Campomanes and Jovellanos and those of Abad y Quiepo is well-known. All shared the same contempt for common lands, which in Mexico took the form of the Comunidades Indias, 5 and all shared the belief that they led to backwardness and poverty. Inaki Iriate and Jose Miguel Lana Barasain have been trying to develop a theory to account for the place of communal lands in the traditional land property system and for the consequences when their existence was questioned. They suggest using the terms competition and hierarchisation to explain how the Spanish montes públicos 6 were privatised from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, beginning with the 1855 Civil Act of desamortización, and ending in the 1930s. During this long period, the reforms did not succeed in eliminating other types of ownership; in fact the coH[LVWHQFHRIODQGVODGHQZLWKFRPSHWLQJULJKWVOHGWRDUHFRQÀJXUDWLRQRIDJUDULDQ structures but one which took place according to the economic and social context prevailing in each region. There was no homogeneous national pattern: roughly, the level of privatisation increased going from north to south. In the Atlantic regions the percentage of privatised montes públicos did not exceed 25 per cent of the whole, in the centre and eastern Andalusia they amounted to around 40 per cent and in the Mediterranean fringe and western Andalusia they often reached 70 per cent. When they analysed the management of privatised and non-privatised montes Lana and Iriate found that in general the peasants held onto certain rights, even after privatisation. This de facto situation did not prevent the Spanish state from exploiting the montes according to the state of the market. This was the case with the harvesting of esparto grass which increased in the second half of the nineteenth century to meet the demand of the paper industry, and which gradually declined after that period. 'LG WKHVH IRUPV RI FROOHFWLYH RZQHUVKLS WKHQ DFW DV D EDUULHU HYHU\ZKHUH" 1R :HUHWKHVDOHVRIFRPPRQODQGVVXIÀFLHQWWRVHWIUHHWKHODQGPDUNHWDQGZHUHWKH\ UHDOO\ EHQHÀFLDO WR HFRQRPLF GHYHORSPHQW" 7KH PRQDUFK\ VROG XQFXOWLYDWHG ODQG 5

This was an institution created to gather the Indians together, to protect their land and to facilitate evangelisation. 6 The term monte was applied to a wooded area of natural growth. After the desamortización the adjective público was added when the property of villages, the propios, became the property of the State or municipality.

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Institutional changes and agricultural growth

(baldios) in the old kingdom of Castile during the sixteenth century. Many members of the Cortes, the arbitristas7 and present-day historians considered the economic and social consequences to have been catastrophic, and current historians have come round once again to the ideas of people living at the time of those sales, ideas in complete contradiction with the view of the partisans of privatisation at the time, who upheld the large capitalist farm as a model. Alberto Marcos re-examines this debate in the light of what really happened when these common lands were sold: land purchases by the privileged, that is, by some religious orders and by the ponderosas, the local elites, are thought to have brought about a great concentration of property and reduced the common lands that had aided and sustained the peasant holdings. This operation, which was intended to increase tax yields, in various ways drove many village communities and small peasants into debt and expropriation, and is thought to have been one of the reasons why Castilian agriculture declined in the last decades of the sixteenth century. However, without denying that the sale of land worsened peasant conditions in certain areas, Alberto Marcos concedes that the crisis had other causes: declining agricultural productivity, falling prices, increasing production costs and taxation and growing numbers of large and extensive estates. In the same way, Paul Servais looked at the long term, from 1750 to 1900, in three very different areas of what is now Belgium: a part of the Ardennes, which serves as a model, and Hesbaye and the Pays de Herve as comparisons. He found that the sale of the common lands after a law of 1847 had only a moderate effect. Neither the agrarian structures, nor the volume of production, nor agricultural productivity were drastically altered by that reform. Research based on the cadastre shows that agrarian changes as result of the sales were small, even though, at a local level, smallholdings were somewhat strengthened. Servais explains that when the inhabitants of the Ardennes moved to the towns, this migration limited competition for common lands. True, production and productivity increased but probably this was not because of the sale of the commons. At the very most it can be argued that the participation of new economic actors in these areas helped to develop market relations. In reality, the economic context seems to have been much more decisive than institutional changes. Prevailing conditions not only determined the health of the market but favoured or condemned one or another type of shared ownership. The livello was a good example of this: at times it was a factor of progress, at others a brake on the economy, depending on the prosperity of winegrowing. Conversely, economic changes could have unexpected social consequences on contracts and on

7

The arbitristas (projectors) were writers who, in the early modern period, wrote books and pamphlets, generally very critical, on the political and economic situation.

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Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

the promotion of a particular type of contractual relationship; Alentejo is an example of this unintended effect.

III. Did the emergence of ‘perfect ownership’ drive the land market? Contemporaries seem to have been unanimous in declaring that, for economic reasons, the market had to be opened up. To achieve this it was necessary to get rid of imperfect ownership as well as collective property and the monopolies of the Church, Crown and even the aristocracy, in order to give a bigger share of revenue to those working the land and to maintain the hope that redistribution would stimulate investment (Congost, 2007). The land market can be understood in different ways. It can be seen as a market in which free economic agents negotiate interchangeable assets in an impersonal manner. Such a market has probably never existed except in the imagination of some enthusiastic economists. Or, it can be seen as a market for goods unlike most others, made up of a multitude of transactions intended to transfer, at a cost, rights over landed property. These transactions could be for permanent title or not; they could give the right to transmit or alienate, or not; they could include all the rights which an owner could theoretically enjoy, or not; they could be subordinated to restrictions on the use of the property concerned, or not. In short, as Rui Santos and Jose Vicente Serrao say, they depended on two criteria: the range of restrictions on use and the length of the engagement. For a long time historians denied the existence of the land market or, more exactly, FRQVLGHUHGLWVRPDUJLQDOWKDWLWZDVQRWKLVWRULFDOO\VLJQLÀFDQWRUXVHIXO7KH\ZHUH eager to show that there was no such market before absolute property rights were established. In the same way, they believed, the increasing tendency for families to see land as a commodity like any other, capable of being bought and sold, helped create the conditions for the emergence of a ‘true market’ in land, which was thought to have occurred in England, and only in England, from the Middle Ages onwards (MacFarlane, 1978). These changes were believed to have encouraged a process of revolution and the end of feudalism, liberating the land from ideological constraints and facilitating the establishment of what used to be called ‘capitalism’ in the countryside. On the Continent, this change came only with the French Revolution and the agrarian reforms it prompted. More recently, in a far more thorough testing of these broad hypotheses, historians investigating the movement of property have looked at direct archival evidence on the land market. In order to understand the factors that encouraged and permitted the transfer of land in past societies they sought out the available sources and made the best use of surviving records of land transfers.

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Institutional changes and agricultural growth

In fact, there most certainly were legal measures for controlling the market and an arsenal of juridical arrangements that transformed it into an intricate mosaic (Fontaine, 1991). This was very far from the monolithic market made up essentially of consensual sales that is generally thought, not always correctly, to exist nowadays. We can easily draw up a catalogue of all the restrictions which long affected the circulation of land (van Bavel, 2008). Some of these were that ‘...the parties involved... often imposed direct restrictions on the buying and selling of land on the market’. They ‘could resist or withdraw the sale of land to a non-family member and had to approve its sale’ and ‘all neighbours or villagers possessed a right of withdrawal of a sale, in order to buy the land for the agreed price’. There were restrictions imposed by the lord (droit de retrait), by the community (right of pre-emption in German lands, droit de bourgeoisie in Switzerland), by the family (retrait lignanier almost everywhere, ÀGHLFRPPLV and majorat in Spain) and also all the methods used under customary law to limit the free circulation of land, to hinder the fragmentation of holdings and to protect great estates. Succession systems that limited property inheritance to the family line, as in Sweden, or that ensured the integrity of a holding by conferring it onto a single heir, as in Catalonia, were of this type, as were all the legal provisions deployed by the great families to guarantee the permanence of their estates (see Vanhaute, Devos & Lambrecht, 2010). The extent of the land market thus depended primarily on restrictions imposed by the structure of ownership rights as well as the extent to which people from outside the community participated in the market. Certain rights, such as the right to repurchase (réméré) or interest-bearing loans (rentes) that burdened property, restricted the circulation of landed property. But at the same time, a réméré or pacte de rachat, or a droit de retrait were actually part of the property. They were thus negotiable and gave rise to a muddle of atypical contracts in the market as soon as they could be traded on the same terms as the land on which they had been imposed (Béaur, 1991b). ‘The fact that several parties or persons had to agree before a sale could be concluded accommodated the initial aims of these different parties, but it hindered the closing of a rapid and clear deal’, says Bas van Bavel (2008). Is that really the FDVH",QIDFWWRVHOODSURSHUW\WKHUHZDVQRQHHGWRKDYHWKHFRQVHQWRIDOOWKRVHZKR had rights to it. Anyone who had rights to a property could sell them independently, without any reference to the other parties. In this way parallel markets developed : markets in seigneuries, in tenure, in land rents (rente foncière8) … We can even say that, far from handicapping the market, this fragmentation of ownership into a myriad RI VPDOO ULJKWV WHQGHG WR PDNH WKH FLUFXODWLRQ RI SURSHUW\ PRUH ÁXLG DQG WKHUHE\ invigorated the market. 8

Resulting from a so-called bail à rente foncière.

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Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

Market activity also depended on the amount of land ‘frozen’ by different provisions: communal land to a certain extent, Church land, Crown land, land subject to mayorazgos or ÀGHLFRPPLVVXPor strict settlement, or to restrictive customary law which gave an advantage to one heir. It was generally agreed that the so-called liberal reforms were a necessary prerequisite to freeing the land market and increasing the availability of unencumbered land, which could then be assigned a money value, subdivided among heirs, used as collateral (e.g. mortgages secured on the land), and integrated in a legal framework that allowed for free circulation. How true was this DVVHUWLRQ"'LGWKHODQGPDUNHWHPHUJHIXOO\DUPHGIURPUHIRUPVGHVLJQHGWRGHÀQH the rights of ownership and to abolish communal and Church land, as Athena emerged ZLWKKHOPHWDQGVZRUGIURPWKHKHDGRI=HXV" A clear relationship was sometimes established between the creation of the land market after legal changes and the evolution of the structures of ownership and/or landholding. Jose Miguel Lana Barasain and Joseba della Torre have shown what happened when the property market in southern Navarre was reformed during WKH ÀUVW KDOI RI WKH QLQHWHHQWK FHQWXU\ 7KH TXHVWLRQLQJ RI mayorazgo, the sale of FRPPXQDOODQGDQGWKHFRQÀVFDWLRQRIHFFOHVLDVWLFDOSURSHUWLHVKHOSHGWRRSHQXS the property market and push up prices (Bodinier, Congost & Luna, 2009). These three factors also gave new impetus to the credit market, which was closely linked WRWKHODQGPDUNHWDQGWRUHGLUHFWLQJWKHÁRZRIPRQH\DQGODQGEHWZHHQGLIIHUHQW social groups. The free circulation of land allowed mortgage loans to develop and these increased landed investment. The State responded to these developments by establishing the Contaduria de hipotecas and then the Registro de la Propiedad to guarantee these transactions. Sometimes the relationship was more ambiguous. Jose Vicente Serrao and Rui Santos have studied the social and economic upheavals which took place in southern Portugal following the legislative reforms of 1760-1770. They have shown the changes brought about, by leases and emphyteutic contracts, to the system of land devolution but also to the way in which social groups got access to the land and participated in the market. These certainly occurred. But they also showed that the land market ZDVYHU\DFWLYHORQJEHIRUHWKHUHIRUPVRIWKLVSHULRG7KHDFWRUVNQHZKRZWRSURÀW from investing in multiple markets where superimposed rights of ownership on the same property were bought and sold. In this sense the reforms only helped make the circulation of land easier, when they did not actually slow the process down, as their effect was sometimes contradictory. All in all, market activity depended not only on the reforming zeal of the state but also on social pressure on land in society and people’s appetite for land. The land market was embedded in society (Congost & 6DQWRV WRVXFKDQH[WHQWWKDWZHFDQMXVWLÀDEO\DVNLIWKHVHDUFKIRUSURÀWZDV

41

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not already an essential preoccupation of these societies as it is of ours, beyond moral considerations, which remained, despite what people claimed, rather secondary. Several contributors have made a strong case that the absence of absolute ownership rights over the land did not prevent a land property market, and indeed a strong market. It is in fact easy to argue that, very often, the existence of absolute ownership rights was not in any way a prerequisite for the circulation of landed property. There were many societies in which, despite their multiplicity, ownership rights were clearly GHÀQHGDQGGLGQRWKLQGHUWKHJURZWKRIWKHSURSHUW\PDUNHW$ÀUVWH[DPSOHFRPHV from Tuscany in the period from 1180 to 1220. Emmanuel Huertas has shown how ODQGUHQWLQWKLVSHULRGEHFDPHDQREMHFWRIDSSURSULDWLRQDFFXPXODWLRQDQGÀQDOO\ of transactions. This was made possible during the medieval period by the autonomy of the Italian cities and the separation between ownership and possession of the land (divided property). There was thus a land market in Italy long before the liberal revolution. In France also, it is clear that, from a very early period, tenants who did not have full rights of ownership of their parcels of land not only enjoyed their use and gathered their fruits, but also exchanged, handed on, and freely mortgaged them; that is they acted as true bourgeois owners and contributed to a very active market (Béaur, 2005; 2007). The property market did not necessarily owe its existence to the FODULÀFDWLRQRIRZQHUVKLSULJKWV The case of Poland at the end of the Middle Ages illustrates this situation. According to Piotr Guzowski, most peasants were able to dispose of their lands freely from that period, both bequeathing and selling them. The data brought together in this paper WHQGWRVKRZWKDWWKHPDUNHWZDVDOUHDG\YHU\RSHQLQWKHÀIWHHQWKFHQWXU\EXWWKDW land circulation gradually increased until the middle of the sixteenth century, while the price of land, which rose more slowly than grain prices, made it more and more accessible to peasants. Taking over deserted property instead of buying land would have damped down the rising price of property put on sale. The same phenomenon can be seen in east and central Europe. Markus Cerman has VWXGLHGVSHFLÀFDUHDVLQ*HUPDQDQG&]HFKWHUULWRULHVGXULQJWKH/DWH0LGGOH$JHV DQGWKHEHJLQQLQJRIWKHPRGHUQSHULRG7KHUHKHZDVDEOHWRÀQGHYLGHQFHRIWKH birth of a market in various categories of property: land held by the rural population and formerly in the hands of the lords (domain land), land that had not been colonised and was left uncultivated, and holdings deserted by their occupants. The relative dynamism of the property market was no doubt related to the breakup of seigneuries, the creation of leasehold on domain lands and the strengthening of tenants’ ownership rights. For, contrary to what traditional historiography says, tenants more and more often, though not always, enjoyed the right to transmit hereditary possession of their 42

Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

land. It is not even sure that the smaller peasants – smallholders and cottagers – had OHVVDFFHVVWRFRPPRQODQGVWKDQGLGWKRVHZKRIDUPHGRSHQÀHOGV,QDQ\HYHQWLW seems that, in that place and at that time, not all types of land circulated and we can describe it as a segmented market. It was said that bad land drove out the good; that LVWKDWODQGVZLWKGRXEWIXOWLWOHRUSRRUO\GHÀQHGERXQGDULHVZHUHPRUHHDVLO\DQG quickly put up for sale than others. This proposition can perhaps be extended; lands at the periphery may have been sold more often than lands at the heart of the settlement and recently acquired land sold more easily than inherited property. The owners got ULGRIRXWO\LQJSDUFHOVWKDWZHUHGLIÀFXOWWRFXOWLYDWHDQGODQGWKDWZDVQRWSDUWRI the ancestral patrimony, keeping the land closest to, and that which had been in the family for the longest time. From a structural viewpoint, it is clear that the systems of inheritance established by customary law and the legal codes drawn up from the nineteenth century onward played an important part in determining the intensity of property movement. One would expect that the egalitarian type of division which led to the dismantling of holdings and their reconstitution by way of the market was much more favourable to property exchanges than the unequal system that was destined to keep the holdings (maisons) intact and ensure their transmission (Chiva & Goy, 1981-1986; Bonnain, Bouchard & Goy, 1992; Bouchard, Goy & Head-Konig, 1998; Bouchard, Dickinson & Goy, 1998; Fauve-Chamoux, 1995). The mechanisms of succession also had an important place in early modern Catalonia, as well as in medieval and modern &DWDORQLDDV/ORUHQo)HUUHUKDVVKRZQDQG5RVD&RQJRVWKDVFRQÀUPHG7KH\ZHUH also an important piece of the Norwegian land system studied by John R. Myking, who set out to describe the long-term relations between economic growth, the inheritance systems and types of tenure. It seems that tenants had a right to considerable control over the transmission of their lands, at least since the crisis in the fourteenth and ÀIWHHQWKFHQWXULHVZKLFKKDGZHDNHQHGWKHSRZHURIWKHODQGORUGV7KH\PDGHIXOO use of it and did not hesitate to choose a successor from outside the family when they thought there was enough property available for their children to set themselves up elsewhere. On the other hand, owners of land in freehold tended to keep a tight hold RQWKHLUIDUPVDQGVDYHWKHPIRUWKHLUFKLOGUHQXQOHVVWKH\FRXOGH[SHFWDODUJHSURÀW from the sale of the property. Thus the land market, with a few exceptions, was very open for tenants, even more so because the capital of those receiving the land rent had ORQJEHHQPDLQO\FKDQQHOOHGLQPRUHSURÀWDEOHGLUHFWLRQVWKDQODQGHGLQYHVWPHQW Oddly, freeholders, with some exceptions, found the market more limited. There were thus two types of market relations, both closely dependent on local conditions and in each case largely independent of the extent of ownership rights. Thus the decline of tenants and the rise of freeholders - that is the reinforcement of ownership rights - had the paradoxical effect of slowing market activity.

43

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Church property aroused the reforming energy of states over the centuries and it is FOHDUWKDWSXWWLQJWKHVHODQGVRQVDOHLQÁXHQFHGWKHYROXPHRIWUDQVDFWLRQVDVZDVWKH case in England after Henry VIII and as was apparently the case in France after the sale of the biens nationaux in the Revolution. Proponents of individual ownership, in which property freely circulated among fully autonomous individuals, also attacked collective property. What happened with enclosures and all the attempts to end FRPPXQDOULJKWV":KDWLPSDFWGLGWKLVKDYHRQWKHSURSHUW\PDUNHW":HNQRZWKDW this movement that was so strong in preindustrial England was less noticeable and certainly later in other countries (Neeson, 1993). The controversies surrounding this kind of agrarian reform advocated by physiocrats and agronomists, the divergences within village communities, worries about the fate of the poor, deprived of access to land and communal rights, and the fear of social movements arising from them, certainly led the State to temporise to the utmost, in France and elsewhere. This ambiguous position brought the State face to face with its contradictions: how FRXOGLWHQVXUHWKHVWDELOLW\RIIDPLOLHVDQGWKHPRELOLW\RISURSHUW\"7KXVVRPHRI these restrictions were maintained for opposing reasons: stopping the expropriation of occupants or the breakup of tenures. Sometimes these limitations were thwarted by an unexpected boomerang effect. The Portuguese reforms, by trying to protect the tenant farmers, had the paradoxical effect of developing the colonia system, thus revitalising the emphyteutic model. The case of Alentejo is a good example of this. No one would maintain that the policies followed were consistent. There were frequent reversals in political choices. The Swedish state was very hesitant to put FRQÀVFDWHGSURSHUW\RQWKHPDUNHW+RZHYHURQFHWKHSDUWLWLRQZDVXQGHUZD\DQG the reorganisation of the land system was completed it does not appear that it led to a land rush. In Niels Grüne’s paper, which focuses on the difference between North Germany (Westphalia) and South Germany (Baden), it does not seem that the land market was any more active after some of the common lands had disappeared. Also, the selling of church lands, which was partly done to redistribute property, did not necessarily bring about many more changes in land ownership. This only happened when the greatest part of the land market was made up of church lands, common lands, and the like, which created a very narrow market, as in Navarre. However the decision belonged to the families, whether they had a choice or not. Family support and the strategies of the actors were important as well. When there were several competing types of landholding contracts on offer, some of the choices can be explained by the degree of risk acceptance, as contract theory teaches us. The quality of the information available to the contracting parties, and particularly to the buyers, also played a role. Family and social networks explain the intrusion

44

Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

and the strong position of some investors; and the case of Westphalia, described by Georg Fertig, illustrates the counterintuitive idea that those with the strongest and densest networks had less easy access to land than those with wider, weaker but more numerous networks (Fertig, 2007). In reality, whatever the system in place, families made decisions on the land market DFFRUGLQJWRWKHLUÀQDQFLDOQHHGVDQGWKHLUDELOLW\WRVDYH7KHVHFKRLFHVPDGHXSOLIH cycles or accumulation cycles (Smith, 1984), as Laurent Herment showed in his work on the small farmers of Milly-la-Forêt, near Paris (Herment, 2012a). Regardless of the variations imposed by circumstances, the heads of family invested more and more in land as they grew older. After the age of 55 there was a gradual sale of accumulated possessions in order to maintain a minimal or comfortable standard of living (Béaur, 1991c; Boudjaaba, 2008). They roughly adapted the size of their holdings to family needs and the labour available on the holding, according to Chayanov’s theory, while creating a reserve which they used when the time for retirement came (Chayanov, 1925). This adaptation could be achieved in other ways, for example by leasing land, but that would only be possible if there was accessible land to rent and if all the land available to rent was not in the hands of the big farmers. Though there is great scepticism about the impact of the process whereby land RZQHUVKLS ULJKWV ZHUH XQLÀHG LW FDQ EH DUJXHG WKDW WKH JXDUDQWHH RI WHQXUH DQG ownership rights by the central power, or even by the domain or seigneurial authority, helped to vitalise the market. Buyers took advantage of declining risk in order to acquire the property made available. Campbell notes how, in medieval England, Henry II’s legal reforms in the later twelfth century provided the needed security for a market in free land, which, by the thirteenth century, had encouraged a similar market in customary or unfree land. In this respect, as elsewhere, an adjustment of the lords’ policy clearly had an important impact on the ease of land transfers inter vivos (Smith, 1983). The actions taken by the political authorities to guarantee these transactions could, of course, have perverse effects. We have two examples of this here: the State’s intent to protect the tenant farmers of the Alentejo by consolidating the right to lease in fact reinforced the position of the ‘expropriators’; and the measures intended to keep the great estates of Castile intact cut off the owners from credit and SXWWKHPLQDGLIÀFXOWSRVLWLRQ 2QHFDQDOZD\VÀQGJRRGVRUULJKWVWKDWZHUHFHGHGE\YHQGRUVWREX\HUVDQGLW is thus always possible to talk about a ‘market’, meaning a great many exchanges of goods in return for money, or at least some type of compensation, for ceding the goods. Of course, this is obviously a long way from the market as it is frequently GHÀQHGE\HFRQRPLVWVZKRSLWLQGLYLGXDOIXOO\LQIRUPHGHFRQRPLFDJHQWVDJDLQVW

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Institutional changes and agricultural growth

each other, negotiating, free from external constraints, to construct a ‘market price’. We may ask if this theoretical ideal market ever existed in any form. We may also UDLVH RWKHU TXHVWLRQV :KHQ FRXOG WKLV PDUNHW EH WHUPHG DFWLYH" :KDW NLQGV RI SRVVHVVLRQVVKRXOGEHLQFOXGHGLQLW"2QHVFKRRORIWKRXJKWKROGVWKDWH[FHVVLYHO\ VORZURWDWLRQGLVTXDOLÀHVVDOHVRIODQGIURPEHLQJDSURSHUODQGPDUNHW$QGLQIDFW the turnover rate was always low, sometimes weaker, but never high. It was 1 per cent a year here, 2 per cent or a little more there, 3.6 per cent according to Rui Santos and Jose Vicente Serrao, higher in medieval England, but not 10 or 20 per cent, H[FHSWE\KLVWRULFDODFFLGHQW:KDWZRXOGEHKLJKHQRXJKWRPDNHDUHDOPDUNHW",W seems pointless to wait until half or all of the land changed hands every year before admitting the existence of a land market. Moreover we can see that the present-day rate of circulation of landed property is in no way greater than that observed in older societies. Is a land market a goal beyond a vanishing horizon in a market society like RXUV"+RZGRHVWKHTXDQWLW\RIJRRGVSXWRQWKHPDUNHWGHWHUPLQHZKHWKHURUQRW WKHUHLVDPDUNHW" A second line of criticism focuses on the nature of the transactions. This point RIYLHZH[SUHVVHGLQZRUNVLQÁXHQFHGE\DQWKURSRORJ\WHQGVIURPDQRWKHUDQJOH to deny the abundant archival evidence of this market. Many studies have been devoted to the intra-familial aspect of the market in pre-industrial societies and have concluded that intra-familial transactions dominated exchanges, were concluded at prices quite unrelated to market values and that this type of circulation of land makes it impossible to make any progress. But should we exclude land transfers among kin even if it seems that the price of land was not very different from the price among QRQNLQ9LUHW "(YHQLIZHGRH[FOXGHWKHPDWZKDWSRLQWGLGWKHUDWHRILQWHU² NLQVDOHVEHFRPHVRKLJKWKDWLWPDGHWKHODQGPDUNHWDERJXVRQH"+HUHDJDLQWKHUH seems no point in waiting for an answer. Perhaps some day there will be an irrefutable demonstration that there is a fundamental, essential, difference between exchanges made within the family and those concluded outside it. Unfortunately, the emphasis on the kin group, however attractive and moving it may be, absolutely does not, in itself, constitute an essential difference in the exchange. It is also easy to see that such an idea is, logically, likely to lead to error, given that there was such a concentration of lands in that period. Finally, is it not possible that the anthropological effects were VXSHULPSRVHGRQWKHHFRQRPLFHIIHFWVUDWKHUWKDQFRXQWHUDFWLQJWKHP":RXOGLWQRW EH SRVVLEOH WR ÀQG VXFK H[FKDQJHV LQ RXU SUHVHQWGD\ PDUNHWV" ,V LW QRW WKH FDVH today that the family may be favoured, by donations and transmissions, without the HFRQRPLFV\VWHPEHLQJWKUHDWHQHG"

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Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

IV. Did the land market drive economic growth? &RXOGDQDFWLYHODQGPDUNHWEHDIDFWRURIHFRQRPLFJURZWK"6KRXOGZHFRQFOXGH that an agricultural economy with a high rate of land exchange would be more HIÀFLHQWWKDQRQHZLWKDORZUDWH"6KRXOGZHDFFHSWWKDW¶LQVRPHSDUWVRIWKH/RZ Countries in the sixteenth century, the rise of land and lease markets constituted one of the most crucial elements in the transformation of a medieval peasant society into a modern, capitalist rural society’ and that ‘it can thus be surmised that the organization and functioning of land and lease markets formed a main element in the GHYHORSPHQWRIUXUDOHFRQRP\DQGVRFLHW\·YDQ%DYHO "7KHUHKDVEHHQPXFK less historical research into this question. However, while not denying this link, the contributions to this volume tend to put it into context. Though opening up the market FRXOGEHQHÀWDOOIRUPVRIPDUNHWDGDSWDWLRQPDUNHWJURZWKFRXOGKLQGHUWKHFUHDWLRQ of agrarian capitalism, or perhaps signify that producers were in trouble. It could follow on economic growth, or even be a consequence of that growth. Never the less, most governments clearly considered that an active land market could be an effective means to stimulate growth. This belief explains why some governments were bent on ‘opening’ the land market, though this same policy could be adopted for other reasons. The government policies should be judged according to the objectives they set themselves and not in the light of our own priorities. The ‘liberal monarchical’ State was frequently at the centre of these reforms and behind it were the economic theorists, physiocrats and agronomists, united against common lands, customary rights and entailed land (Demélas & Vivier, 2003). The reformers, like the Marquis of Pombal in Portugal, worked to speed up the rate of transactions in order to energize the economy. That is the reason why they wanted to reduce the extent of the property that was frozen. %XWDWWKHVDPHWLPHWKH\KDGRWKHUPRWLYHV,WZDVDOVRIRUÀVFDODQGVRFLDOUHDVRQV that they thought that property had to circulate more freely and less land be held under entail, as Rui Santos and Jose Vicente Serrao show. Finding extra tax revenue DQGKDOWLQJWKHFRQFHQWUDWLRQRISURSHUWLHVIRUWKHSURÀWRIDVPDOOQXPEHUZHUHWKH aims put forward. They did not necessarily succeed: the reforms undertaken in the Alentejo actually froze the circulation of landed property, which was appropriated and jealously held on to by the largest farmers, who were thus encouraged in their methods of extensive cultivation. 6RGLGWKHQHZYLWDOLW\RIWKHODQGPDUNHWUHDOO\KHOSVWLPXODWHWKHUXUDOHFRQRP\" There is no clear answer. Anne-Lise Head-König, looking at the suppression of feudal burdens and common lands in Switzerland, has shown the extraordinary diversity of the charges (tithes and cens), the place of collective rights, the methods of cultivating

47

Institutional changes and agricultural growth

land under the plough (three-year rotation) but also agrarian structures, rules for the transmission of farms and the types of regulation governing the sale of land. She shows that the last factor weighed heavily in the economic fortune of the cantons. Where there was free access to ownership and an open property market, outside capital, mainly urban, came in, which allowed tenant farming to develop and tenants from outside the region to introduce new methods. On the other hand, where the market was held in check by strong constraints, mainly the droit de bourgeoisie, which reserved property for members of the community, it was quite a different situation. When the advantage was given to those working the land themselves and outsiders excluded from the land market, thus keeping the holdings for local farmers, agriculture was deprived of the seeds of progress. These differences between the cantons led to different modernisation processes and explain why there were several types of transition to modernity in Switzerland, on different time-scales. Thus in certain regions the change to new types of ownership took place in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries while in others it did not occur until the middle of the nineteenth century, which meant that the real take-off of agriculture only took place around 1840 to 1850. Ricardo Robledo, in his work on nineteenth-century Spain, has pointed out the OLQNVEHWZHHQWKHHFRQRPLFGLIÀFXOWLHVRIWKHQRELOLW\LWVKLJKOHYHORIGHEWDQGWKH laws regulating the mayorazgo at the end of the old regime. This institution hindered access to market for a large proportion of properties and, consequently, increased the price of landed property while discouraging investments. It protected noble patrimony from the danger of mortgages but resulted in concentrating the land in the hands of the few families fortunate enough to have an unbroken male line. It became more complicated to manage estates, which became larger and larger and more scattered, and made the great landed proprietors dependent on their agents (the stewards), thus paving the way for the economic decline of the nobility and its ultimate extinction. This is curious considering that in England the same process of devolving estate management led to diametrically opposite results. By trying to block the sale of land, the great Spanish families left it to chance to decide whether their patrimony would survive and thus made possible the rise of a new social class. Above all, this system penalised them when they needed to raise money on credit, which could have helped them modernise their estates, if they had wanted to do so. ,W LV FOHDU WKDW DFFHVV WR ÀQDQFLQJ SOD\HG D NH\ UROH LQ JURZWK DQG ZDV FORVHO\ linked to free access to land. The arrival of a real land market was in fact linked to the growth of credit institutions. Jose Miguel Lana and Joseba de la Torre have looked at this question. After describing the structures of landed property in the Spanish part of Navarre during the nineteenth century and the evolution of land prices between 1818

48

Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

and 1862 they examined the development of the credit market over the long term, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and related it to land purchases in the ÀUVWGHFDGHVRIWKHQLQHWHHQWKFHQWXU\7KH\GHPRQVWUDWHFRQYLQFLQJO\WKDWJUHDWHU DFFHVVWRRXWVLGHÀQDQFHZDVDQLPSRUWDQWPHDQVRILQFUHDVLQJDFTXLVLWLRQV2QWKH other hand, it can be argued that land ownership and the free circulation of land made loans and investment possible. By contrast, in his study of England before the Black Death and of Ireland before the mid-nineteenth century crisis, Bruce Campbell has shown the harmful effects of a property market in a period of uncontrolled demographic growth. Though a property market can in theory favour the growth of large estates, it had an opposite effect in WKHVHVSHFLÀFFRQWH[WVDQGOHGWRSURSHUW\IUDJPHQWDWLRQ:KHQFRPELQHGZLWKWKH disastrous consequences of an egalitarian inheritance system, with encroachments on uncultivated land and the encouragement given to tenants to sublet part of their land, it led to a continual division of holdings and pauperisation of households. Though overworking the land could raise production, productivity was low. The excess labour force held down salaries and discouraged the big farmers or great landowners from substituting capital for labour. There was no temptation to slow down the market, which produced generous dues. As we can see, the premature arrival of a land market is a handicap and not an opportunity to concentrate holdings and install agrarian capitalism. Julie Marfany describes the same phenomenon in her piece on the region of Igualada (Catalonia) in the nineteenth century. She starts from the link between the rise of smallholders and landless peasants on the one hand, and proto-industrialisation on the other. The fragmentation of landholding and the active land market was much more a result of small proprietors’ poverty than of any systematic entrepreneurial activity. Despite the prevailing view in the literature, it does not seem to be the case that the peasants who took part in proto-industrialisation were more likely than others to consider their land as property and have no scruples about selling it. On the contrary it was the proliferation of peasants with very small parcels of land and the fragility of WKHLUÀQDQFLDOSRVLWLRQZKLFKG\QDPL]HGWKHPDUNHWDQGLQFUHDVHGWKHFLUFXODWLRQRI the parcels, whether in an informal way or through the method of rabassa morta. It is important to remember that, in this region, the landholding structure supported two activities normally considered incompatible, both of which employed a large labour force: winegrowing and cottage industry (Marfany, 2012). The division of land was a sign that smallholders could no longer live only from their land, or employ all farm labour cultivating their vineyards. It is clear that the the market was not such a lively one because the farmers were prosperous, but rather because they were economically vulnerable.

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The case of Sweden, examined in the two papers of Patrick Svensson and Mats Morell, also does not support the hypothesis that agriculture was transformed during WKHHLJKWHHQWKDQGQLQHWHHQWKFHQWXULHVVSHFLÀFDOO\E\FKDQJHVLQWKHODQGPDUNHW Whether we examine the long term (1680-1870), like Svensson, or, as with Morell, a much shorter period (the decades at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) the interpretation is the same. For Svensson agricultural development resulted from strengthening property rights through enclosure and lifting certain restrictions on the circulation of property but also, perhaps more important, from increased peasant LQFRPHDGHYHORSLQJODERXUPDUNHWQHZPHWKRGVRIPDQDJLQJKROGLQJVDQGÀQDOO\ DWDODWHUGDWHÁHGJOLQJFUHGLWLQVWLWXWLRQV7KHODQGPDUNHWZDVH[WUHPHO\QDUURZ until the seventeenth century and did not develop until it was stimulated by the sale of Crown lands and later of noble lands, at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. In other words its growth came after the country had already experienced its economic take-off. Thus agricultural growth and economic transformation could happen in the context of a small land market, without the rapid circulation of property. Morell heartily agrees with Svensson when he attributes demographic and economic growth to the rise, from at least the eighteenth century onwards, of a class of free peasants who managed to get access to middle-sized farms. These 6ZHGLVK IDUPHUV HPDQFLSDWHG DQG ÀQDQFLDOO\ PRUH VWDEOH VWDUWHG DQ DJULFXOWXUDO revolution of intensive labour, similar to that attributed to the yeomen in seventeenthcentury England (Allen, 1992; Chevet, 1997). However, Morell puts a damper on this institutionalist interpretation by showing that the adoption of new kinds of URWDWLRQ ZLWK DUWLÀFLDO PHDGRZV SUHFHGHG WKH HQFORVXUH PRYHPHQW WKXV UHYHUVLQJ the traditional perspective: it was not really institutional changes which contributed to agricultural progress but rather economic changes, such as price movements and market demand, which made it desirable to reinforce ownership rights and land circulation. It is clear from this that when the elements that had a real impact on what is commonly termed the ‘Agricultural Revolution’ are taken into account the theory of ownership rights is at odds with them. It is not evident that an active and open land market will necessarily lead to economic growth. Equally, it is not obvious that economic growth leads to a more active land market, as we have seen when proto-industrialisation occurs. In fact when there were many transactions, properties were threatened with fragmentation. But what is the PHDQLQJRIIUDJPHQWDWLRQ",VLWDVLJQRIHFRQRPLFVWDJQDWLRQ",VLWDZLWKGUDZDOIURP FDSLWDOLVWJURZWK"6RPHKLVWRULDQVFODLPWRVKRZWKDWDJULFXOWXUDOJURZWKFRXOGRFFXU with small producers and that their performance was not necessarily lower than that of the large farmers (Herment, 2012b). Specialisation and intensive agriculture often

50

Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

took place in small households where small landowners developed vineyards or grew fruits and vegetables for towns. But a high level of land transactions could mean that there was an agricultural crisis and that debt was forcing peasants to sell their land. There was some evidence of this with the wine growers of Maintenon at the end of the eighteenth century; they were very active in the land market when the price of wheat went up because of poor harvests, and when they were alarmed by disastrous economic conditions, unlike large farmers who, in such circumstances, withdrew from in the land market (Béaur, 1984). Market activity has always had an ambiguous aspect. Are there more transactions because of the pressure from euphoric buyers in a rising market or from distressed YHQGRUVLQDVORZLQJHFRQRP\"$UHWKHUHIHZHUWUDQVDFWLRQVEHFDXVHSRWHQWLDOEX\HUV KDYHEHFRPHPRUHFDXWLRXVRUDUHÀQDQFLDOO\VTXHH]HGRUEHFDXVHWKHUHDUHIHZHU VHOOHUV ZKHQ WKH ÀQDQFLDO FRQGLWLRQV DUH VDWLVIDFWRU\" &LUFXPVWDQFHV DIIHFW WKH evolution of law and the circulation of land. Finally, even if the land market is not responsible for growth, or at least does not have a clear relation to it, even if it is not an economic motor, it is still a short-term economic indicator and a good instrument for measuring the relation of forces within society and for understanding social change.

V. Institutionalist theory and historical evidence Now let us look back to our starting point. In searching for the origins of agricultural development, we decided to take seriously the theories that attribute growth to institutional changes. Agricultural growth may take several forms: increased cereal production, greater overall production, including production resulting from extending land under cultivation, growing participation in the market or more productivity of all kinds. In this volume ‘agricultural growth’ means an increase in production large enough to free the population from the characteristic restrictions imposed by food supply in pre-industrial societies. Historians who debated the role of agriculture in economic development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the end of the old landholding structures and the advent of complete private ownership as the indispensable prerequisites for setting off the virtuous circle of economic growth. The UHGHÀQLWLRQRIRZQHUVKLSULJKWVZDVVHHQDVVWDUWLQJDRQHZD\SURFHVVWKDWZRXOG lead to a capitalist society and economy in Western Europe. This is the hypothesis to be tested. The impact of institutions on property rights and land circulation, in a true market, has been re-examined in order to explore the conditions that allowed agriculture to progress in Europe and capitalism to emerge in the countryside. This book, however, brings nuances to the discussion of institutional constraints. The contributing authors

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have tried to avoid superimposing models on the diverse empirical situations they studied and to show how social, economic and political factors interacted over the long term. They have shown how property rights were ‘embedded’ in different contexts DQGSDUWLFXODUO\LQHDFKVSHFLÀFVRFLHW\&RQJRVW 6DQWRV )RU¶ODQGLVOLQNHG to all the institutions that structure society. It was, particularly in the medieval period, the foundation of political power and social prestige, as well as the basis for military institutions’ (Feller, 2004: 27). This embedded, special, link to the land (and very much later to buildings) was durable and there is no reason to think that it disappeared or to claim that it had to disappear before economic progress could take place. Some authors have emphasised the rational and positive character of the landholding forms they studied, or at least have shown that their inconveniences were minimal. Common lands, emphyteusis, bail à domaine congéable, uncultivated land held in reserve – these can all be seen as part of a reasonable, or even reasoned, idea of SURSHUW\UHODWLRQVDWWKHYHU\OHDVWWKH\GLGQRWGHWUDFWIURPWKHHFRQRPLFHIÀFLHQF\ of holdings. Other authors however, have described property systems which produced catastrophic effects. Noble entail (majorat) in Spain, which imposed an inalienable and indivisible estate, led to the unlimited extension of noble properties and made LWYHU\GLIÀFXOWWRDGPLQLVWHUHVWDWHVHIÀFLHQWO\,WPDGHOLTXLGLW\VFDUFHE\FKLOOLQJ FUHGLWPDUNHWVDQGWKHUHE\EULQJLQJUXLQWRLWVH[SHFWHGEHQHÀFLDULHV(PSK\WHXVLV could be either a brake or an advantage. Finally there was a third way. There could be a complete disconnect between the existence of rights or their extinction on the one hand, and delays or progress in the economy on the other. In Sweden, perfect ownership developed out of economic conditions, and not the reverse. The case of Spain provides even stronger proof that economic change can come about in a system of superimposed property rights, thereby suggesting that absolute property rights have no intrinsic superiority. The authors generally assume that imperfect property ULJKWVFRXOGLQVRPHZD\VSURYLGHPRUHÁH[LELOLW\WKDQSHUIHFWDEVROXWHULJKWV The link between the land market and economic growth has much to do with the reasons for buying land and the motivations of the actors. Among these, investing for SURÀWRUUHQWVHHNLQJEXONHGYHU\ODUJH%XWZHUHWKHVHWKHPRVWZLGHVSUHDGSXUSRVHV RI ODQG EX\HUV DQG IDUPHUV" 7KHVH SHRSOH PD\ KDYH LPSURYHG WKHLU ODQG EXW WKH reasons behind the purchase were often very different. There were cultural and social reasons: it was necessary to be a landowner to rise in the social hierarchy. There were economic reasons: land ownership gave access to credit. There were family reasons. Even the large farmers of the Île-de-France were more eager to acquire land to hand down to their heirs than to invest in production, and they gave priority to the education and settlement of their sons (Moriceau, 1994). The small winegrowers in the Beauce bought and sold tiny plots throughout their lives although their holdings

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Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

were so small (less than half a hectare) that they could not hope to assemble a viable IDUP IURP WKHP :KDW WKHQ ZHUH WKH UHDO DLPV RI WKH IDPLO\" :K\ ZHUH WKHUH VR PDQ\YHU\VPDOOWUDQVDFWLRQVWKDWGRQRWVHHPWRPDNHVHQVH":K\ZHUHWKHUHPRUH WKDQODQGVDOHVD\HDULQHLJKWHHQWKFHQWXU\)UDQFH"$IWHUDOOZHNQRZWKDW QRQHRIWKHOLWWOHKROGLQJVWKDWUHVXOWHGIURPWKHVHRSHUDWLRQVZHUH¶SURÀWDEOH·IURP an accounting point of view (Herment, 2012a and b), and we also know that the future of large holdings did not depend on purchasing land through the property market but rather on leasing it on the rental market. In the light of this, and even though the small holdings did depend partly for their survival on the land market, and even though tenant farmers kept an eye on the property market for opportunities, the importance for them of the return from investment in land was quite secondary. Finally, there is the question of legal innovation. In Spain the land market and the credit market interacted. Universal mortgage registers, introduced in Spain in 1769, and in France two years later, contained information about how much people could pay, about the purchaser’s ability to pay for the land and about the real value of the land according to the censos it supported. They are therefore valuable sources for historians, but they also may have had the practical result of stimulating both credit and land markets. Surely it must have been more hazardous to lend money or buy land before these mortgage registers existed. Their existence lowered risk and, it seems, reduced transaction costs, making the market more secure, and facilitating investment. We might then assume that land and credit markets grew at this time. But was WKLVUHDOO\WKHFDVH":DVWKLVWKHZD\WKHSUREOHPZDVVHHQ"$UHZHDEOHWRVD\WKDW SUHYLRXVO\WKHUHZDVLQVXIÀFLHQWLQIRUPDWLRQWRJXDUDQWHHSURSHUW\ULJKWV" The answers are not at all clear. We have already emphasised that uncertainty about the amount of debts was likely to weigh down the value of a property. However, SRWHQWLDOEX\HUVFRXOGXVHWKHLQIRUPDOQHWZRUNSURYLGHGE\QRWDULHVWRÀQGRXWDERXW these debts, and also about what property was available and the sort of guarantee of possession that sellers might provide. We know that Parisian notaries played a crucial role in access to information in the eighteenth century (Hoffman, Postel-Vinay & Rosenthal, 2001). Why would it have been any different in the countryside, although RQDVPDOOHUVFDOHVLQFHDOOPDUNHWVZHUHH[WUHPHO\ORFDOLVHG"6XUHO\HYHU\RQHLQ a village knew everyone else and had intimate knowledge of the intrinsic value of WKHSURSHUW\DVZHOODVWKHÀQDQFLDOVLWXDWLRQRISRWHQWLDOSDUWQHUVLQWKHSURSHUW\ PDUNHW" Why would this diffusion of information have been any less effective than WKDWSURYLGHGE\WKHUHJLVWULHVLQ)OHPLVKDQG'XWFKFLWLHVYDQ%DYHO "3HUKDSV EHIRUHWKHUHZDVDWUXO\FHQWUDOLVHGLQVWLWXWLRQLWZDVQHLWKHUEHWWHUQRUZRUVH"7KHUH

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Institutional changes and agricultural growth

were many records available for those who wanted to know: notarised documents, registers of enfeoffment and the administrative formalities put in place by the monarchy. Of course, these were not perfect but why would the registries have been DQ\EHWWHU"+RZFRXOGLQIRUPDWLRQRQLWVRZQEHDVXIÀFLHQWJXDUDQWHHIRUSURSHUW\ ULJKWV/HDGDP " $WWKLVSRLQWVRPHGLIÀFXOWLHVDULVH First of all, the entire victory of complete private ownership was, in some regions, D WRWDO LOOXVLRQ ,V QRW DEVROXWH SURSHUW\ ¶LPSRVVLEOH· &RPE\  " 7KH )UHQFK experience is a case in point; it was not completely typical but it was not a purely national exception either. Here, a seigneurie or estate consisted of a domain, held and managed by the lord in his own name, and tenures, which usually belonged to peasants. On the land which was not part of the seigneur’s direct domain, a quitrent (cens ZDVOHYLHGDQGLILWZDVVROGDVHLJQHXLDOWUDQVIHUGXW\RUHQWU\ÀQHlods et ventes) also had to be paid. Both of these went to the lord. If the seigneurie was sold, the tenures that paid cens did not change hands, and their holders could sell their property when they wished, as long as they paid the lods et ventes to the lord.9 The lord sold to the purchaser the right to levy dues attached to the seigneurie such as the cens and the champart, certain powers over the tenants (justice, for example) and also the right to intervene if the lands held in return for cens changed hands. Now let us move forward a few centuries to contemporary society. With the growth of regional governments has come an increase in local taxes levied, broadly speaking, on landed property, plus the hiving-off of certain state functions. With this in mind, we may well wonder whether some of these feudal dues cannot simply be considered as taxes. In what way were those privileges and advantages greater than WKRVHJUDQWHGWRWKH6WDWHRUWRORFDOJRYHUQPHQWXQGHUDV\VWHPRISULYDWHSURSHUW\" Consequently, in what way can ownership be considered to have been ‘imperfect’ EHIRUHWKH5HYROXWLRQ"7KHIDFWWKDWWKHVHSUHURJDWLYHVDQGGXHVZHUHH[HUFLVHGE\ DQGIRUWKHEHQHÀWRILQGLYLGXDOVDQGQRWWKHFRPPXQLW\LVEHVLGHWKHSRLQW7KRVH privileges were beyond doubt exorbitant, but that is a social and political question having little to do with the allocation of rights exercised over property. Now let us take this reversed interpretation a little further. If these feudal rights were abolished by the French Revolution, may we not consider the State as the holder RIHPLQHQWGRPDLQOLNHWKHVRYHUHLJQVDQGORUGVRIWKH2OG5HJLPH"$WWKHSUHVHQW our property can be expropriated when the common good requires it, in order to build From the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, transfer taxes – the land registry tax (contrôle des actes) and the hundredth penny (centième denier) – were also paid to the State.

9

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Gérard Béaur & Jean-Michel Chevet

roads, motorways or railways. Our property is thereby limited just as it was in the Middle Ages and during early modern times; it is not perfect ownership. It is shared with the State, which can dispose of our goods at any moment, in the name of the public good. Once again, consider that before the Revolution, a lord who gave up his property in use (propriété utile) by leasing land in return for a cens or emphyteusis, still retained eminent domain (propriété directe) over it. Even if the tenant had good title, the lord, naturally, might try to recover his alienated property to add it to his demesne; and that sometimes happened, by force or by agreement (Merle, 1958), especially if the tenant had been cheating on his dues to the lord. Why should he not KDYHGRQHVR",WZRXOGKDYHUXQFRXQWHUWRKLVRZQLQWHUHVW1HYHUWKHOHVVQRWDOOWKH lords were eager to grab the lands of their tenants (Bastier, 1975). True, there could still be no transmission of a tenure by sale without the lord’s consent. ‘Feudal lords wanted to retain some control over the transmission of their feudal land… [This right] reduced the attraction of buying feudal land. …The lord had to approve every sale of land on his manor, and he often blocked a sale completely. /RUGVZHUHHQWLWOHGWRFROOHFWDÀQHIURPWKHVHOOHUDQGDQHQWU\ÀQHIURPWKHEX\HU of the land’ (van Bavel, 2008). But when we say ‘consent’, we should understand that the lord’s agreement was presumed to have been granted in advance by the absence of any right of pre-emption, since censual repeal (retrait censuel) was prohibited by most customary law. Only certain particular conditions, such as attempts to escape the duties of transfer fees (lods et ventes), occasionally gave the lord the right to take back land (droit de retrait), that is, the right to substitute himself in place of the purchaser – as State or municipal governments do today in the name of the public interest. But, once again, why should a lord oppose sales or pre-empt them systematically, when they brought him transfer duties that represented a large share of his income and look VWUDQJHO\OLNHSUHVHQWGD\WUDQVIHUWD[HV":HKDYHVHHQKRZORUGVLQWKH%RUGHDX[ region complained about the high rates of transfer dues, which reduced the circulation of the lands on their censive, and thus deprived them of a lucrative source of income (Aubin, 1989: 338-343). This threat, like that of retrait lignager, was not then, and is not today, a major hindrance to transactions. What did it matter to the seller who the buyer was, as long as he could come up with the agreed price (Ourliac, 1952; Derouet,  "6XUHO\WKHEX\HUFRXOGWDNHDVPDOOULVNZLWKQRÀQDQFLDOFRQVHTXHQFHVLQWKH NQRZOHGJHWKDWWKHZDLWLQJWLPHZRXOGEHVKRUWXVXDOO\D\HDUDQGDGD\":K\ZRXOG it be in the interest of the pre-emptor to let the matter go to court when he would have WRSD\WKHVDPHSULFHSOXVFRVWV"1RGRXEWLWZDVEHFDXVHRIWKHFRPELQDWLRQRIWKHVH three considerations that pre-emption was relatively rare and more often a tactical play, made in order to gain a little income from ‘renouncing the right to claim’, rather than an everyday event.

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It is also undeniable that a leaseholder paying a quitrent (cens) could change the use to which his property was directed, even if he only changed the system of crop rotation, and that he could sell and transmit the land to whomever he wanted. Thus property rights had long been absolute in France, and, if we think of ownership as we know it today as ‘absolute’, it was just as absolute long before the Revolution. So it is hard to see why property rights constituted an obstacle in the early modern period and consequently why, if there was an Agricultural Revolution, property rights should have had anything to do with it. Indeed, if this Agricultural Revolution had to happen ZKHUHSHUIHFWRZQHUVKLSKDGÀUVWEHJXQVKRXOGLWQRWKDYHWDNHQSODFHLQ)UDQFH WKHFRXQWU\ZKLFKZDVWKHÀUVWWRVXSSUHVVIRUPVRIGLVVRFLDWHGSURSHUW\"6XUHO\WKH VXUYLYDORIIHXGDOOHYLHVLQ(QJODQGLVDVWURQJDUJXPHQWDJDLQVWWKLVWKHVLV"$VKDV been remarked ‘The lack of discussion about the evolution of the property rights of FRS\KROGHUVDQGRIWKHRZQHUVRIFRS\KROGLQ(QJODQGWKRXJKWWREHWKHÀUVWFRXQWU\ to have an Agricultural Revolution, is to say the least, surprising’ (Congost, 2003; Riddall 1977; Olivier-Martin 2005; Radcliffe 1933). It is known that there were still a large number of leaseholders10 and copyholders in some regions of England well into the nineteenth century (Turner & Beckett, 1998). By systematically linking economic JURZWKWRWKHVXSSRVHGHIÀFLHQF\RIDQRUJDQLVDWLRQDOV\VWHP¶ZKHWKHULQFODVVWHUPV or in those of property rights’ (Brenner, 1976), we become trapped in an ironclad syllogism: England experienced the most rapid economic growth; property rights are the essential factor in promoting agricultural capitalism; therefore the English V\VWHPRISURSHUW\ULJKWVZDVWKHEHVW$OWHUQDWLYHO\(QJODQGZDVWKHÀUVWFRXQWU\ to have an Agricultural Revolution; perfect property was introduced in England at an early date; therefore property rights are the cardinal virtue that promoted agricultural growth (Congost, 2003). Unfortunately, not one of these three propositions is certain. 5LFKDUG+R\OHLVWKHUHIRUHTXLWHMXVWLÀHGLQTXHU\LQJWKHUHODWLRQVKLSVRRIWHQDOOHJHG to exist between the coming of agricultural capitalism and the system of ownership or tenure, (Hoyle, 2003). Just as ending serfdom is said to have allowed tenants to start accumulating land (Whittle, 2000; 2004), it was much more the security of tenure, rather than the triumph of perfect property and expulsion of tenants by landlords, that favoured capitalist development and it was just as much growth in markets for products that guaranteed the consolidation of landholdings (Hoyle, 2003). Thus it appears that there was not a causal link between these factors; the land market had an ongoing element of autonomy. /HWXVVHWDVLGHWKH(QJOLVKFDVHHYHQWKRXJKLWVXIÀFHVWRFRQWUDGLFWWKLVWKHVLV 'LG WKH WULXPSK RI SHUIHFW RZQHUVKLS WDNH SODFH LQ WKH 1HWKHUODQGV" 7KRVH ZKR would like to believe this will be surprised to discover that elements of the seigneurial system survived so long in that other temple of progress, the United Provinces (van 10

Lease-holders on very long term rentals.

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%DYHO ZKLFKZRXOGVHHPWRVKRZWKDWSURSHUW\ULJKWVGHÀQLWHO\ZHUH¶GLYLGHG· since they were subject to feudal extraction. So there was no irresistible surge of perfect property in the place where the proponents of this hypothesis have the greatest need of evidence to convince their trusting readers. On the other hand we can see that Catalonia, which was a region of agricultural development in the eighteenth century, ZDVDOVRDSODFHZKHUHGLYLGHGSURSHUW\ÁRXULVKHGDQGZDVPDLQWDLQHGLQWRWKHQH[W century (Congost 2003). Hoppenbrouwers and van Zanden admit that ‘non-capitalist relations of agrarian production… were conducive to self-sustaining growth’ and that ‘capitalist relations, though differently structured from those in England, originated there with the same effect’ (2001: 22). Thus the link between economic development, FDSLWDOLVW SURSHUW\ UHODWLRQV DQG VSHFLÀF IRUPV RI SURSHUW\ ULJKWV HYDSRUDWHV DQG this leaves us wondering whether the classic Dutch and Flemish model was so exceptional, given that from early on there were populous cities and well-developed communication networks nearly everywhere in Europe (van Zanden, 2009).

VI.

Conclusion

,IZHQRZWXUQWRWKHODQGPDUNHWZHÀQGWKDWLWLVJHQHUDOO\FRQVLGHUHGWRKDYH favoured economic progress, but at the same time, it is thought that division of holdings through equal inheritance was a brake on it. Conversely the perpetuation of households from generation to generation by a system of unequal inheritance is believed to possess superlative merits (Le Play, 1871). But this same form of inheritance, which prevents the break-up of holdings, is by the very same token supposed to hold back the growth of a dynamic land market. Perhaps we should decide which view is correct. Indeed, understanding the system of inheritance would seem to be crucial to understanding the land market. The theory is that in regions of partible inheritance property became more and more subdivided among heirs and thus grew smaller and smaller, producing poverty and economic weakness. There is no evidence for this tendency. We assume that in such regions, the heirs, as soon as they received their share, began to trade the land amongst themselves on a vast scale. One or a few heirs would struggle all their lives to reassemble a holding; and we know that property, as a general rule, did not break up. Conversely, regions of impartible inheritance ought to have stayed as they were from generation to generation, and there ought not to have been a land market. This is rather too simple a view. In fact, we can assume that (a) the turnover of property in France in 1810 had little to do with the system of inheritance, because there were so many regions with active markets and both kinds

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of inheritance system, and so many others with inactive land markets, which were also endowed with both systems (Béaur, 2004). (b) that the regions with capitalist agriculture in northern France were regions with systems of partible inheritance, and conversely that, for whatever reason, economic or natural, traditional agriculture often goes well with impartible inheritance. Along the same line of thought, the expulsion of smallholders has sometimes been considered to favour the development of non-agricultural activity and the sacrosanct goal of productivity. No doubt this is the case. But what good did it do to send off FRXQWU\IRONWRWRZQVLIWKHUHZDVQRGHPDQGIRUWKHLUODERXUWKHUH":DVLWEHWWHUWR KDYHODERXUXQGHUHPSOR\HGLQWKHFRXQWU\VLGHRUXQHPSOR\HGLQWKHWRZQV":KDWZDV WKHSRLQWRILQFUHDVLQJSURGXFWLYLW\LIWKHUHZDVQRQHHGIRUODERXUHOVHZKHUH",VWKLV QRWWKHJUHDWGLOHPPDIDFLQJWKLUGZRUOGHFRQRPLHVWRGD\"/DERXUSURGXFWLYLW\LVD misleading indicator in a context of severe unemployment. It only becomes meaningful if there is a lack of labour for other productive activities (industry). Let us imagine that labour productivity rises by 50 percent; if underemployment or unemployment rises by the same amount it is clear that there is no gain and little point in achieving LW,WZRXOGEHYHU\SURÀWDEOHDWDPLFURHFRQRPLFOHYHOIRUWKHHPSOR\HUVRIODERXU who would reduce their costs, but not at all at the macro-economic level if the level of production is measured against the whole quantity of labour available. The texts in this book show how complex the real situation was and particularly the absence or weakness of a direct and causal relation between our three variables. Clarifying ownership rights was clearly not an indispensable precondition for the development of an ideal land market where land circulated freely like any other good. Even less was it the necessary precondition for a form of agricultural development combining increased production, specialised crops and improved productivity of land and, sometimes, of labour. Each of the three variables followed its own chronology and its own logic; the three combined in complex ways that cannot be reduced to a single model. For this reason, against the prominent role that some scholars assign to institutional change, it can be argued that such ‘institutional determinism’ fails to take full account of the variety within evolutionary processes – a variety that can be seen not only by comparing one nation to another but also by looking at differences between regions within a single nation or group of nations. These hypotheses have been the subject here of debate intended to reveal the intricacy and variety of concrete situations within this broad framework. In each case, researchers have laid bare the multiple contexts in which the land market operated and the complexity of the elements determining the function and nature of each. In every case, we see a heterogeneous market, divided into subsets which are themselves 58

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WKHUHVXOWRIVSHFLÀFFDXVHVDVDUHVXOWLWZDVWKRXJKWEHVWWRGLVFXVV¶ODQGPDUNHWV· rather than a ‘land market’. We should beware of contrasting a dazzlingly effective free market in contemporary societies to an imperfect market in older societies. As an Bavel and Hoppenbrouwers admit, (2004: 20-21) ‘...even now land markets of all sorts still suffer from certain imperfections in the sense that they never function as perfectly open, ‘liberalized’ markets with complete competition’; the idea of a market driven by large numbers of anonymous buyers and sellers is utopian; many non-economic IDFWRUVLQÁXHQFHLWVZRUNLQJ,QVRPHSODFHVV\VWHPVRIGLYLGHGSURSHUW\ULJKWVGLG not seem either to hinder agricultural expansion or to stimulate the land market, but in others they did function that way. Does this mean that the mix of factors was not the VDPHRUWKDWWKHFRQWH[WZDVWRRGLIIHUHQWWRSURGXFHLGHQWLFDOUHVXOWV" To emphasise institutional changes is by no means wrong in itself, but it is most unwise to remove these changes from the conditions in which they took place and to neglect the total range of factors at work which, acting systemically, all contributed in their way to agricultural change: technical progress, demographic pressure, social organisation and its system of representations, access to markets (Pinilla, 2009) and, last but not least, the weight of geography, so often neglected. No matter what we say or do, the nature of the soil, climate, and the natural means of communication LQHYLWDEO\GLVWRUWWKHFRQGLWLRQVLQZKLFKSHRSOHRSHUDWHDQGIRUFHWKHPWRÀQGLQ each case, forms of production appropriate to natural conditions and resources. The variety and richness of contractual arrangements used to allocate and redistribute land are testimony not only to the ingenuity of the people involved but also to their ability to adapt to their surrounding conditions (Béaur, Arnoux & Varet-Vitu, 2004b). The intrusion of private ownership, if indeed it happened, and the rise of the land market, if it really took place, were perhaps not neutral factors in the process of European economic takeoff, even though it is not totally certain that they were QHFHVVDU\FDXVHVKLJKO\GRXEWIXOWKDWWKH\ZHUHVXIÀFLHQWRQHVDQGYHU\XQOLNHO\ that their effects were one-way. Certain possession, and the guarantee of being able WRSURÀWIURPLQYHVWLQJLQWKHODQG\RXWLOOHGFRXOGHQFRXUDJHDJULFXOWXUDOSURJUHVV In this regard, security from arbitrary expropriation and the guarantee of a reward probably encouraged farmers to improve their holdings. But secure ownership, even if imperfect, and the freedom to sell and buy property, have been rights held by landholders for a very long time in a large part of Europe. Even if we accept the arguments of the neo-institutionalists, it is clear that the conditions for agricultural progress have been present for generations.  WUDQVODWLRQ-XGLWK/H*RII

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Bibliography ALLEN, Robert C. (1992), Enclosure and the Yeoman: The Agricultural Development of the South Midlands, 1450-1850, Oxford, Clarendon Press, New York, Oxford University Press. ARNOUX, Mathieu (1996), ‘Essor et déclin d’un type diplomatique : les actes passés coram parrochia en Normandie (XIIe-XIIIe siècles)’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, ParisGenève, Librairie Droz, t. 154, p. 323-357. AUBIN, Gérard (1989), La Seigneurie en Bordelais d‘après la pratique notariale (17151789), Rouen, Publications de l’Université de Rouen, 149. BASTIER, Jean (1975), La Féodalité au siècle des Lumières dans la région de Toulouse (vers 1670-1789), Paris, Bibl. Nat., Commission d’histoire économique et sociale de la Révolution, Mémoires et Documents, XXX. VAN BAVEL, Bas J. P. (2004), ‘Structures of Landownership, Mobility of Land and Farm Sizes. Diverging Developments in the Northern Part of the Low Countries, c. 1300-c. 1650’, in Bas J. P. VAN BAVEL & Peter HOPPENBROUWERS (eds) (2004), Landholding and Land Transfer in the North Sea Area (Late Middle Ages-19th century), Corn Publication series 5, Turnhout, Brepols, p. 131-148. VAN BAVEL, Bas J. P. (2008), ‘The Organization and Rise of Land and Lease Markets in Northwestern Europe and Italy, c. 1000-1800’, Continuity and Change, 23, 1, p. 13-53. VAN BAVEL, Bas J. P. (2011), ‘Markets for Land, Labor, and Capital in Northern Italy and the Low Countries, Twelfth to Seventeenth Centuries’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLI, 4, p. 503–531.

vAN BAVEL, Bas J. P. & HOPPENBROUWERS, Peter (eds) (2004), Landholding and Land Transfer in the North Sea area (Late Middle Ages-19th century), Corn Publication series 5, Turnhout, Brepols. VAN BAVEL, Bas J. P., HOYLE, Richard W. & alii (eds) (2010), Rural Economy and Society in North-Western Europe, 500-2000, vol. Social Relations: Powerty and Power, Turnhout, Brepols. VAN BAVEL, Bas J.P. & THOEN, Erik (eds) (1999), Land Productivity and Agro-systems in the North Sea Area, Middle Ages-20th century. Elements for Comparison, Corn Publication series 2, Turnhout, Brepols.

BÉAUR, Gérard (1984), Le Marché foncier à la veille de la Révolution. Les mouvements de propriété beaucerons dans les régions de Maintenon et de Janville de 1761 à 1790, Paris, Ed. EHESS. BÉAUR, Gérard (1991a), ‘L’Accession à la propriété en 1789’, in Un Droit inviolable et sacré. La Propriété, Publ. ADEF, Actes du colloque de 1989. BÉAUR, Gérard (1991b), ‘Le Marché foncier éclaté. Les modes de transmission du patrimoine sous l’Ancien Régime’, Annales ESC, janvier-février, p. 189-203.

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BECKETT, John V. & TURNER Michael E. (2010), ‘Land Reform and the English Land Market, 1880-1925’, in Matthew CRAGOE & Paul READMAN (eds), The Land Question in Britain 1750-1950, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 219-236. BECKETT, John V. & TURNER, M. (2011), ‘Agricultural Productivity in England, 1700-1914’, in Mats OLSSON & Patrick SVENSSON (eds), Growth and Stagnation in European Historical Agriculture, Rural History in Europe, 6, Turnhout, Brepols, p. 57-81. BLOCH, Marc (1930), ‘La Lutte pour l’individualisme agraire dans la France du XVIIIe siècle’, Annales d’Histoire Économique et Sociale, II, juillet, p. 329-381; octobre, p. 511-543. BODINIER, Bernard, CONGOST, Rosa & LUNA, Pablo F. (2009), De la Iglesia al Estado. Las desamortizaciones de bienes ecclesiásticos en Francia, España y America Latina, =DUDJR]D3UHQVDV8QLYHUVLWDULDVGH=DUDJR]D6(+$0RQRJUDÀDVGH+LVWRULD5XUDO BOIS, Guy (1989), La Mutation De l’an mil. Lournand, village mâconnais de l’Antiquité au féodalisme, Paris, Fayard. BONNAIN, Rolande, BOUCHARD, Gérard & GOY, Joseph (eds) (1992), Transmettre, hériter, succéder : la reproduction familiale en milieu rural : France-Québec 18e-20e siècles, Lyon, Presses Universitaires de Lyon. BOUCHARD, Gérard, GOY, Joseph & HEAD-KÖNIG, Anne-Lise (eds) (1998), Problèmes de la transmission des exploitations agricoles (XVIIIe-XXe siècles). Nécessités économiques et pratiques juridiques, Rome, École Française de Rome. BOUCHARD, Gérard, DICKINSON, John & GOY, Joseph (eds) (1998), Les Exclus de la terre en France et au Québec (XVII-XXe siècles). La reproduction sociale dans la différence, Sillery (Québec), Septentrion. BOUDJAABA, Fabrice (2008), Des Paysans attachés à la terre ? Familles, marchés et patrimoines dans la région de Vernon (1750-1830), Paris, Presses de l’Université ParisSorbonne. BRASSLEY, Paul, DYER, Christopher, HOYLE, Richard & TURNER, Michael, (2010), ‘Britain, 1500-1750’ and ‘Britain 1750-2000’, in Bas J. P. VAN BAVEL & Richard W. HOYLE, Rural Economy and Society in North-Western Europe, 500-2000, t. Social Relations. Property and Power, Turnhout, Brepols. BRENNER, Robert (1976), ‘Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Preindustrial Europe’, Past and Present, 70, p. 30-74. BRENNER, Robert (1982), ‘The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism’, Past & Present, 97, p. 16-113. CAMPBELL, Bruce & OVERTON, Mark, ‘Production et productivité dans l’agriculture anglaise, 1086-1871’, Histoire & Mesure, II-3/4, p. 255-297. CAMPBELL, Bruce (2000), English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1240-1450, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

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68

I. ‘Imperfect property rights’ and economic change

2.

Common land use in the Coutume de Bretagne IURPWKHÀIWHHQWKWRWKHHLJKWHHQWKFHQWXULHV Annie ANTOINE

In France, those who study the rural world, whether historians or geographers, whether students of the most remote past or of more recent times, assume that there is DIXQGDPHQWDORSSRVLWLRQEHWZHHQRSHQÀHOGDQGHQFORVHGFRXQWU\:KLOHWKHIRUPHU is thought to be the home of common agricultural practices up until the end of the HLJKWHHQWKFHQWXU\WKHODWWHULVDOZD\VGHSLFWHGDVDQDUHDRIDJUDULDQLQGLYLGXDOLVP Thus it might seem that anyone who wishes to discuss common ownership, or even FRPPRQ XVH VKRXOG DYRLG WKH :HVW RI )UDQFH 7KH XVXDOO\ DFFHSWHG LGHD LV WKDW FRPPRQRZQHUVKLSGLGQRWH[LVWLQ%ULWWDQ\RUHYHQLQWKH:HVWRI)UDQFHDVDZKROH But things are perhaps not so simple: ‘Here [in Brittany] there was no common land in the same sense as other places’ wrote Nadine Vivier in her work on common lands 9LYLHU ,QWKLVUHJLRQLWLVWKHUHIRUHQHFHVVDU\QRWWRORRNMXVWDWFRPPRQ ODQGEXWWRORRNDWDGLIIHUHQWZD\RIH[HUFLVLQJFRPPXQDOSURSHUW\

I.

Introduction

:H KDYH WR VWDUW E\ GHÀQLQJ H[DFWO\ ZKDW LV PHDQW E\ FRPPRQ SURSHUW\ DQG FRPPRQXVH8QWLOWKHHQGRIWKHAncien Régime, in Brittany, as in the rest of the NLQJGRP RI )UDQFH WKH RZQHUVKLS RI ODQG ZDV DOPRVW H[FOXVLYHO\ GHÀQHG LQ WKH FRQWH[WRIWKHORUGVKLS7KHODQGZDVHLWKHUGHPHVQH land, known as the domaine and belonging to the lord (seigneur); he had the dominium utile, or movables (mouvance) In the latter case the lord only had direct or eminent domain (dominium directum) and the land really belonged to those who had the dominium utile; these might be QREOHV FKXUFKPHQ ERXUJHRLV SHDVDQWV HWF 7R EH VWULFWO\ DFFXUDWH WKH\ VKRXOG be called tenants (tenanciers), because they paid the cens, which symbolised their subordination to the lord of the domain, but during the course of the old regime in France they came to be thought of more and more as owners (Béaur, 2000:17-21) EHFDXVHWKH\ZHUHQHYHUGLVWXUEHGLQWKHHQMR\PHQWRIWKHLUSRVVHVVLRQVWKH\FRXOG VHOODQGEHTXHDWKWKHPIUHHO\DVORQJDVWKHORUGUHFHLYHGWKHHQWU\ÀQHVdroits de mutation ,QWKHRU\WKHRZQHUFRXOGEHDVLQJOHSHUVRQKROGLQJLQGLYLGXDOSURSHUW\ or a group of individuals, all the inhabitants of a village for example, or some part RI WKHP DQG LQ WKLV FDVH ZH FDQ XVH WKH WHUP ¶FROOHFWLYH SURSHUW\· %XW LW ZLOO EH VHHQODWHULQWKLVFKDSWHUWKDWWKLVVHFRQGFDVHSUDFWLFDOO\QHYHUH[LVWHGLQWKH:HVW RI)UDQFHRURQO\LQYHU\H[FHSWLRQDOFDVHV2QWKHRWKHUKDQGWKHUHZHUHYDVWDUHDV

71

Common land use in the Coutume de BretagneIURPWKHÀIWHHQWKWRWKHHLJKWHHQWKFHQWXULHV

LQ WKHVH UHJLRQV PDLQO\ XQFXOWLYDWHG ODQGV ZKLFK ZHUH XVHG FROOHFWLYHO\ %UHWRQ customary law, the Coutume de Bretagne, recognised that the lords owned them; the local people who used them did not pay the censZKLFKIRUWKHMXULVWVZDVSURRI WKDWWKHVHDUHDVZHUHSDUWRIWKHGHPHVQHVDQGQRWRIWKHPRYDEOHV7KXVWKHORUGV KDGWKHULJKWWRUHVXPHXVLQJWKHPLIWKH\ZLVKHG7KDWZDVWKHOHJDOSRVLWLRQ,Q SUDFWLFHWKLQJVZHUHRIWHQPRUHGLIÀFXOW)URPWKHSRLQWRIYLHZRIWKHORFDOSHRSOH SDUWLFXODUO\WKHSHDVDQWVRZQHUVKLSZDVRQHWKLQJXVHDQRWKHU0DQ\XVHVFRQVLVWHQW with commoning took place on these uncultivated lands, and the local people resisted DQ\SURSRVDOVWRGHSULYHWKHPRIWKHVHSUDFWLFHVZKLFKWKH\IRXQGYHU\XVHIXO,Q western France, then, the question is not so much one of ownership as of the common XVHRIODQG For students of property rights therefore, Brittany is a somewhat special case: a region with no common ownership, but where the common uses of land were very LPSRUWDQW7KLVVLWXDWLRQZDVWKHUHVXOWRIDQHYROXWLRQVWUHWFKLQJIURPWKH0LGGOH $JHVWRWKHVHFRQGKDOIRIWKHQLQHWHHQWKFHQWXU\ :DV%ULWWDQ\DSURYLQFHZLWKQRFRPPRQODQG"$WWKHHQGRIWKHAncien Régime WKLVZDVLQIDFWDOPRVWWUXH$VLQDOOWKH:HVWRI)UDQFHWKHLVRODWHGIDUPVXUURXQGHG E\LWVRZQODQGSUHGRPLQDWHG6pH $SDUWIURPVPDOODUHDVFRPPRQ to the inhabitants of the bourgs (placîtres) and villages (issues)1, it is true to say that there was almost no land where the ownership of the inhabitants as a community was recognised; the Coutume de BretagneGLGQRWUHFRJQLVHWKLVW\SHRIODQGRZQHUVKLS This was not because there were no uncultivated lands; on the contrary, they were PDQ\DQGGLYHUVH7KH\PD\EHGLYLGHGLQWRWZRPDLQFDWHJRULHVVPDOOSDUFHOVRI uncultivated land (either temporary or permanent) which were integrated into holdings and were purely for individual use, and vast uncultivated expanses, the heaths, RXWVLGHWKHKROGLQJVZKLFKZHUHRIWHQXVHGFROOHFWLYHO\:KRZDVFRQVLGHUHGWRKDYH RZQHUVKLSRIWKHVHODQGV"7KHTXHVWLRQKDVEHHQGLVFXVVHGDERYH7KHCoutume de Bretagne was very favourable to the lords; all the large expanses of uncultivated land (apart from small parcels within individual holdings) were considered to belong to WKH ORUGV ,Q %ULWWDQ\ HYHU\WKLQJ WKDW ZDV QRW LQGLYLGXDO SURSHUW\ ZDV VHLJQHXULDO SURSHUW\WKHUHZDVQRURRPIRUFRPPRQRZQHUVKLS :DV %ULWWDQ\ D UHJLRQ ZKHUH H[SORLWDWLRQ RI WKH FRPPRQV ZDV W\SLFDO" 7KH answer to this second question may seem paradoxical: Brittany, which had no 1

In western France, the term bourg designated the main place of habitation in the parish, the one that FRQWDLQHGWKHFKXUFK7KHWHUPvillage was used to designate a smaller group of dwellings, which in the rest of France is generally termed a hameau,Q/RZHU%ULWWDQ\placître referred to a piece of ground VXUURXQGLQJWKHFKXUFKVRPHWLPHVXVHGDVDFHPHWHU\DQGDOVRDVSXEOLFVSDFH,QDYLOODJHissues were WKHFRPPRQVSDFHVVHUYLQJDVDFFHVVZD\VEXWZKLFKFRXOGDOVREHXVHGIRUOLYHVWRFN

72

Annie Antoine

FRPPRQ RZQHUVKLS ZDV LQ IDFW KRPH WR QXPHURXV FRPPRQ XVHV RI ODQG 7KHVH FRPPRQSUDFWLFHVXQOLNHWKRVHLQRSHQÀHOGUHJLRQVGLGQRWDSSO\WRFXOWLYDWHGEXWWR XQFXOWLYDWHGODQG,QRSHQÀHOGUHJLRQVFRPPRQSUDFWLFHVDIIHFWHGERWKXQFXOWLYDWHG DQGFXOWLYDWHGODQGZKLFKZDVRSHQHGWROLYHVWRFNDIWHUWKHFURSVZHUHKDUYHVWHG,Q %ULWWDQ\FXOWLYDWHGODQGZDVJUDGXDOO\FORVHGRIIWRFRPPRQXVH7KHSURJUHVVLYH introduction of hedges meant that farmlands were increasingly inaccessible for common uses (Antoine, 2002) but these continued on the uncultivated lands that were DFNQRZOHGJHGWREHWKHSURSHUW\RIWKHVHLJQHXU7KHVHXQFXOWLYDWHGODQGVZHUHYHU\ extensive; they made up at least ten per cent of the area of the province on the eve RI WKH 5HYROXWLRQ ,Q IDFW LQ VSLWH RI LQFUHDVLQJ SRSXODWLRQ GHQVLW\ DJULFXOWXUH LQ WKH:HVWRI)UDQFHZDVVWLOOWRVRPHGHJUHHH[WHQVLYHDWWKHHQGRIWKHROGUHJLPH The early, and lasting, specialisation in cattle rearing was made possible by common XVHRIWKHXQFXOWLYDWHGODQGV7KHbocage separated the area of farms, made up of parcels enclosed by hedges, from the area of seigneurial heaths on which common XVHVSHUVLVWHG Before the modern period, the question of whether land was common or private is QRWRQO\UHOHYDQWLQGLVFXVVLQJRZQHUVKLSLWLVHTXDOO\LPSRUWDQWFRQFHUQLQJXVH7KLV DIIHFWHGYDVWDUHDVDQGKDGFRQVLGHUDEOHHFRQRPLFLPSOLFDWLRQV7KHPDLQSXUSRVHRI WKLVFKDSWHUZLOOWKHUHIRUHEHWRVKRZWKDWEHIRUHWKHPRGHUQSHULRGDQGWKHGHÀQLWLRQ of ownership as entire and undivided, the question of common ownership cannot be GLVFXVVHG ZLWKRXW FRQVLGHULQJ FRPPRQ XVH RI WKH ODQG %ULWWDQ\ ZDV D FRXQWU\ RI commons before it was a region of bocage, and the common uses remained after WKHKHGJHURZVZHUHSXWLQSODFH$WWKHHQGRIWKHROGUHJLPHWKHIURQWLHUVEHWZHHQ common and private were very vague and the two types of right could be exercised DWWKHVDPHWLPHRQWKHVDPHODQG&RPPRQXVHVZHUHPRVWO\H[HUFLVHGRQODQGWKDW ZDVUHFRJQLVHGWREHWKHSURSHUW\RIWKHORUG%XWWKLVKDGQRWDOZD\VEHHQWKHFDVH

II. Common use in Brittany at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern period At the height of the medieval period, the landscape in Brittany would have EHHQPDGHXSRILVODQGVRIFXOWLYDWHGÀHOGVZLWKLQWKHKHDWKRUIRUHVWWUDYHUVHGE\ ZDQGHULQJOLYHVWRFNZKLFKZHUHVXSHUYLVHGWRDJUHDWHURUOHVVH[WHQW,QWKH5HGRQ cartulary (dating from the ninth and tenth centuries) the most common agrarian unit was the ran D EORFN RI ODQG LGHQWLÀHG E\ D SHUVRQ·V QDPH SDUWO\ VXUURXQGHG E\ GLWFKHV¶XQGRXEWHGO\WKHGRPLQDQWW\SHRIFXOWLYDWHGODQGZDVVWLOOWKHRSHQÀHOGWKH champagne·7DQJX\ %XWWKLVFKDPSLRQODQGVFDSHZDVQRWOLNHPRGHUQ RSHQÀHOGVLWGLGQRWFRQVLVWRIYDVWH[SDQVHVRIFXOWLYDWHGODQGEXWUDWKHURIFXOWLYDWHG clearings, standing out to a varying extent from the surrounding uncultivated areas,

73

Common land use in the Coutume de BretagneIURPWKHÀIWHHQWKWRWKHHLJKWHHQWKFHQWXULHV

KHDWKVXQFXOWLYDWHGODQGDQGZRRGHGDUHDV7KLVÀUVWÀHOGSDWWHUQGHYHORSHGIURP DIRUHVWODQGVFDSHDQGLWVKRZHGWKHVLJQVRILWIRUDORQJWLPH,WFDQVWLOOEHVHHQRQ FHUWDLQPDSVDWWKHHQGRIWKHHLJKWHHQWKFHQWXU\7KRXJKKHGJHVDSSHDUIURPWLPHWR WLPHLQGRFXPHQWVEHIRUHWKHIRXUWHHQWKRUÀIWHHQWKFHQWXULHVWKH\ZHUHQRWWKHUHWR PDUNRXWWKHÀHOGV,QWKHHOHYHQWKFHQWXU\LQWKHFKDUWHUVLQWKH5HGRQFDUWXODU\WKH KHGJHVZHUHQHYHURQDOOVLGHVRIDÀHOG'DYLHV 7KHVHKHGJHVPDUNHG WKH ERXQGDULHV RI VHLJQHXULDO ODQGV RU VHLJQHXULDO MXVWLFH RU WKH DUHDV FRYHUHG E\ customary uses (Pichot, 1995: 31 ss. 

II.1.

The mid-fourteenth century

The Très Ancienne Coutume de Bretagne LVWKHÀUVWGRFXPHQWWKDW gives an overall view of exploitation of the commons in Brittany (Planiol, 1896)2; In the mid-fourteenth century enclosed land was the exception; Brittany was not yet KHGJHURZFRXQWU\&RPPRQXVHVZHUHVLJQLÀFDQWDQGZHOOFRGLÀHG7KH\RFFXUUHG RQERWKFXOWLYDWHGODQGDQGXQFXOWLYDWHGVSDFHVKHDWKZRRGVDQGIRUHVWV Article 273 of the Trés Ancienne Coutume stated that the seigneurial domain was always defensable3 ‘toujours fust le domaine desclos’ [always even if it were XQHQFORVHG@ZKLFKVXJJHVWVWKDWWKHUHZHUHDOVRVRPHHQFORVHGÀHOGVDQG$UWLFOH treats of the situation of the ‘homme ou famme de basse condicion, ou cas que leurs terres seraient closes’ [man or woman of low estate, when their land is enclosed]; WKHVH DUH DOPRVW WKH RQO\ DOOXVLRQV WR KHGJHV WR EH IRXQG LQ LW 7KH IDFW WKDW WKH domain was said to be defensable suggests that there were animals wandering about ZKLFKZHUHIRUELGGHQWRHQWHUWKHVHLJQHXULDOGRPDLQ2QO\$UWLFOH¶Des gienz de basse condition qui voulent deffendre lours heritages’ [people of low estate, who wish to enclose their land]) envisages the possibility of enclosing land with hedges (‘ils povent bien clorre une pièce ou doux pour leurs menuz avairs pasturer et pour leurs bestes de cherrue·>WKH\PD\FHUWDLQO\HQFORVHRQHRUWZRÀHOGVWRSDVWXUHWKHLU small livestock and keep plough animals], but it appears that this was a marginal SUDFWLFH RQ RQH RU WZR ÀHOGV DQG WKDW WKH SXUSRVH ZDV WR FUHDWH DQ HQFORVXUH IRU WKHDQLPDOVDVWKHFURSVGLGQRW\HWQHHGWREHSURWHFWHGE\KHGJHV,QSUDFWLFHWKLV VLWXDWLRQFHDVHGWREHWHQDEOHRQFHODQGFDPHWREHXVHGPRUHLQWHQVLYHO\ All the common uses mentioned in this text concern animals, which shows the LPSRUWDQFH RI VWRFN UHDULQJ DW WKLV SHULRG 7KH \HDU ZDV GLYLGHG LQWR WZR SHULRGV guerb or yvenageDQGWKHUHVWRIWKHWLPHAller à guerb was for the animals to graze on cultivated land after the harvest; yvenage was the time when winter tasks, that is 2

7KLVWH[WZDVÀUVWSXEOLVKHGLQEDVHGRQWKUHHPDQXVFULSWVWZRGDWLQJIURPDQGRQHRI $UWLFOHVWRFRQFHUQWKHFRXQWU\VLGH$OOWKHTXRWDWLRQVWKDWIROORZDUHIURPWKLVHGLWLRQ 3 Défensable IRUELGGHQWRDQLPDOV

74

Annie Antoine

DXWXPQSORXJKLQJZHUHGRQH7KHVHWZRWHUPVGHVLJQDWHGWKHVDPHSHULRGZKLFK ODVWHGIURPPLG6HSWHPEHUWRWKHÀUVWZHHNRI'HFHPEHU'XULQJWKHWLPHRIguerb or yvenage all kinds of livestock could go anywhere, except on the noble domains, which were always forbidden to animals (en defens ,WZDVKRZHYHUQHFHVVDU\WRZDWFKWKH animals by night as well as by day, except in the time of yvenage7KXVLWFDQEHVHHQ WKDWDWWKHHQGRIWKH0LGGOH$JHVFRPPRQXVHVJUD]LQJ ZHUHFDUULHGRXWERWKRQ XQFXOWLYDWHGODQGDQGRQFXOWLYDWHGODQGZKLFKPLJKWEHWKRXJKWRIDVSULYDWHODQG Among the animals mentioned in the Très Ancienne Coutume there was a special place for plough animals (avairs de cherrue  7KRVH ZKR GUDIWHG WKH WH[W VKRZHG SDUWLFXODU FRQFHUQ IRU WKHP ,W LV H[SODLQHG LQ WKH Coutume that it is necessary to plough the land to survive, that it is necessary to have animals to work the land, and WKDWWKHSORXJKDQLPDOVPXVWEHIHG$VWKH\ZHUHZRUNLQJDOOGD\LQWKHSHULRGRI yvenage they could not aller à guerb$QGDVWKHRZQHUVRIWKHDQLPDOVGLGQRWKDYH HQRXJKÀHOGVRUPHDGRZVWRIHHGWKHPWKH\KDGWREHDEOHWRaller à guerbDWQLJKW They did not have to be watched; they could even go on the domain of nobles if WKH\ZHUHQRWHQFORVHG,IVRPHRQHIRXQGWKHPRQHQFORVHGODQGXQOHVVLWFRXOGEH proven that they had been put there intentionally, they were to chase them off, without PLVWUHDWLQJWKHP,WFDQEHVHHQIURPWKHVHLQGLFDWLRQVWKDWWKHDJUDULDQODQGVFDSH ZDV EHJLQQLQJ WR WDNH RQ VRPH RI WKH FKDUDFWHULVWLFV RI KHGJHURZ FRXQWU\ 7KHUH were probably private holdings with some hedges, seigneurial domains and also XQFXOWLYDWHG ODQG KHDWK IRUHVW DQG VFUXEODQG 7KH SORXJK DQLPDOV ZHUH HVVHQWLDO ZKLFKSURYHVWKDWWKHÀHOGVZHUHZRUNHGDQGXQGHUFXOWLYDWLRQ0HDGRZVDUHDOVR PHQWLRQHG7KHDQLPDOVZDQGHUHGRYHUDOOWKHXQFXOWLYDWHGDUHDVWRÀQGIRRG :LWKLQWKHJUD]LQJDUHDWKHFXOWLYDWHGÀHOGVIRUPHGHQFODYHVWKDWZHUHQRWQHFHVVDULO\ HQFORVHG7KH\ZHUHREYLRXVO\IRUELGGHQWRWKHDQLPDOV1RQHRIWKHDUWLFOHVPHQWLRQ the cultivated lands on the noble domains as they were always forbidden, whether or QRWWKH\ZHUHHQFORVHG2QWKHRWKHUKDQGWKHCoutume protected the crops of ‘people RIORZFRQGLWLRQ·,WGLVWLQJXLVKHGgaigneries, terres brandonnéesDQGPHDGRZV7KH gaigneries seem to be areas of temporary cultivation: they are only noticed when they are under plough and they are not mentioned unless they are bearing crops4 Their existence is recognised in the Trés Ancienne Coutume: Article 274 says that it is necessary to make gaigneriesWROLYH7KHÀHOGVWREHVRZQZHUHIRUELGGHQWR animals from the moment they were ploughed and during all the time they had crops on them (Article 276: ‘les gaigneries dès le temps que ils sont faits jusques au temps que ils sont en grain’ 7KHTrès Ancienne Coutume also talks of terres brandonnées 7KHVH VHHP WR KDYH EHHQ SHUPDQHQW ÀHOGV WKDW ZHUH QRW FXOWLYDWHG FRQWLQXRXVO\ 4

Some gaigneriesDUHVWLOOPHQWLRQHGDWWKHHQGRIWKHROGUHJLPHLQFHUWDLQUHJLRQVRI%ULWWDQ\See EHORZLQWKHGLVFXVVLRQRIWKHHQTXLU\

75

Common land use in the Coutume de BretagneIURPWKHÀIWHHQWKWRWKHHLJKWHHQWKFHQWXULHV

they were only brandonnées (that is, marked with a wisp of straw) when they were JRLQJWREHFXOWLYDWHG7KLVZDVDXWKRUL]HGE\WKHCoutume from mid-February on; DIWHUWKHKDUYHVWDQLPDOVFRXOGRQFHDJDLQZDQGHUDFURVVWKHP)LQDOO\WKHCoutume mentioned the meadows, which in principle were brandonnées as soon as the grass started growing again, and as long as it was produced, that is, from mid-February until the period of guerb  From the point of view of use of space the situation the Trés Ancienne Coutume describes is one in which the circulation of livestock is the general rule and exclusion WKH H[FHSWLRQ 7KLV VKRZV ERWK WKDW WKHUH ZDV YHU\ H[WHQVLYH XVH RI WKH ODQG DV cultivation took place in clearings, which were often temporary, and that there was a very restricted conception of private use of non-nobleODQG&RPPRQXVHVDSSOLHG to all uncultivated land and cultivated land was only private when bearing crops, or JURZLQJKD\

II.2.

The beginning of the sixteenth century

)URPWKHHQGRIWKHÀIWHHQWKFHQWXU\%ULWWDQ\H[SHULHQFHGYHU\VWURQJGHPRJUDSKLF JURZWK²DOOWKHSDULVKHVLQ8SSHU%ULWWDQ\IRUZKLFKGDWDH[LVWDQGZKLFKKDYHEHHQ studied, had growth rates from 70 to 100 per cent between 1500 and 1560 – and WKRXJKWKHUHZDVDVXGGHQGHFOLQHDWWKHHQGRIWKHFHQWXU\WKHUHFRYHU\ZDVMXVWDV UDSLGDQGJURZWKFRQWLQXHGWREHYLJRURXVXQWLORUHYHQRU&URL[  7KHQHHGWRSURGXFHPRUHFHUHDOVWRIHHGDJURZLQJSRSXODWLRQHYLGHQWO\ led to great pressure on the land, and all known sources show that the network of KHGJHVLQFUHDVHG7KH\DUHVKRZQLQWKHManuscrit de la Vilaine0DXJHU DQG mentioned in the Propos RustiqueRI1RsOGX)DLO'X)DLO 7KLVHYROXWLRQZDV FRQÀUPHGZKHQWKHCoutume de BretagneZDVUHYLVHGLQ$UJHQWUp  The text reproduces part of the 1380 version, but assumes that everyone is free to HQFORVH$UWLFOHRIWKHCoutume of 1580 is unambiguous: Si aucun veut clore ses terres, prés, landes ou autres terres décloses, où plusieurs aient accoutumé d’aller et venir, et faire pâturer, justice doit voir borner et diviser les chemins par le conseil des sages, au mieux que faire se pourra, pour l’utilité publique: et laisser au parsus clore lesdites terres; nonobstant longue tenue d’y aller et venir et pâturer durant quelles étaient décloses. [If anyone wishes to enclose his land, meadows, heaths or other unenclosed land, where other people are accustomed to come and go, and SDVWXUHWKHLUDQLPDOVMXVWLFHPXVWVHHWKDWWKHSDWKVDUHPDUNHGDQGGLYLGHGZLWKWKH advice of wise men, in the best way possible for public utility; and leave the said lands enclosed notwithstanding that it hath long been the custom to come and go and put to SDVWXUHWKHUHZKHQWKH\ZHUHQRWHQFORVHG@

76

Annie Antoine

This article clearly shows that that there were common uses (aller et venir, faire pâturer) on the unenclosed lands, but that the ancient practice of grazing animals DQG IUHHO\ PRYLQJ DERXW ÀHOGV ZKLFK ZHUH IRUPHUO\ RSHQ GLG QRW FRQVWLWXWH D EDU WR HQFORVXUH ,W FDQ EH VHHQ WKDW WKH ODZV HYROYHG DW WKH VDPH WLPH DV WKH QHWZRUN RI KHGJHV FRPPRQ XVHV ZHUH QRZ VWULFWO\ OLPLWHG WR ODQG QRW HQFORVHG E\ KHGJHV (TXDOO\FRPPRQXVHRIFHUWDLQÀHOGVIURPWLPHLPPHPRULDOFRXOGQRWEHFRQVLGHUHG DQREVWDFOHWRHQFORVLQJWKHVHODQGV7KLVLVFOHDUO\H[SODLQHGLQWKHFRPPHQWDULHVRQ the Coutume written in the eighteenth century by Poullain du Parc (Poullain du Parc,  ZKRDGGHGDQRWHWR$UWLFOHWRH[SODLQKRZFRPPRQXVHVVKRXOGEHVHHQ This possession is considered precarious and a matter of simple tolerance when there are no titles or signs to characterise true servitude; it cannot give cause for an action of FRPSODLQWDQGUHSRVVHVVLRQDJDLQVWHQFORVXUHE\WKHSURSULHWRU

The great difference between the texts of the fourteenth and the sixteenth century is that in the Coutume of 1580 anyone may put up hedges (hayer) on his land as he wishes — this article replaces the one in the Trés Ancienne Coutume which allowed him to mark (brandonner KLVÀHOGV³DQGQRORQJHUPDNHVDQ\GLVWLQFWLRQEHWZHHQ noble and non-nobleODQG$UWLFOHGRHVKRZHYHUDOORZÀHOGVWREHIRUELGGHQ WR DQLPDOV 7KLV VXJJHVWV WKDW QRW DOO WKH ÀHOGV ZHUH HQFORVHG DQG WKDW FRPPRQ XVHVVWLOOWRRNSODFHRQWKHXQHQFORVHGÀHOGV%XWWKHVHZHUHRQO\YHU\VPDOODUHDV that could be removed from common use without being enclosed: some gaigneries DQGYLQHVZKLOHWKH\ZHUHLQOHDI$UWLFOH 7KHEXONRIXQHQFORVHGODQGZDV QR ORQJHU FRPSRVHG RI FXOWLYDWHG RU FXOWLYDEOH ÀHOGV EXW RI KHDWKV ZKLFK DUH VR DEXQGDQWLQ%ULWWDQ\ In conclusion, it can be seen that the growth of hedgerows from the fourteenth century RQZDVDFFRPSDQLHGE\DUHGXFWLRQRIWKHDUHDVXQGHUFRPPRQXVH7KHDJULFXOWXUDO KROGLQJ PDGH XS RI ÀHOGV PHDGRZV DQG JDUGHQV VXUURXQGLQJ WKH EXLOGLQJV ZDV FRPSOHWHO\IUHHIURPWKHPDQGWKHVLWXDWLRQZDVFODULÀHGHQFORVHGÀHOGVZHUHVWULFWO\ IRULQGLYLGXDOXVHDQGRSHQÀHOGVZHUHDYDLODEOHIRUFRPPRQXVHV

III.

Common use in the 1768 enquiry

In the years from 1760 to 1770 physiocrats and agronomists succeeded in imposing the idea that the economic development of the country necessitated modernising DJULFXOWXUHDQGGHYHORSLQJXQFXOWLYDWHGODQG7KLVPHDQWUHPRYLQJLWIURPFRPPRQ use, and the question of how to divide common land became the order of the day %RXUGH9LYLHU +RZHYHULQSUDFWLFHWKHUHZDVPXFKUHVLVWDQFHERWK EHFDXVHSHRSOHZHUHDWWDFKHGWRFRPPRQXVHDQGEHFDXVHWKHGHÀQLWLRQRIFRPPRQ

77

Common land use in the Coutume de BretagneIURPWKHÀIWHHQWKWRWKHHLJKWHHQWKFHQWXULHV

ODQGZDVQRWDVVLPSOHDVWKHDXWKRULWLHVDQGIROORZLQJWKHPWKHKLVWRULDQVWKRXJKW :KDWZDVWREHGRQHLQ%ULWWDQ\ZKHUHWKHUHZDVQRFRPPRQODQGEXWDJUHDWPDQ\ FRPPRQXVHVRQXQFXOWLYDWHGODQG" In July 1768, Secretary of State Bertin, a strong supporter of physiocratic ideas LQWKHJRYHUQPHQWVHQWDQHQTXLU\WRWKHLQWHQGDQWVRQWKHVXEMHFWRIWKHdroit de parcours and the existence of vaine pâture7KHULJKWWRvaine pâture allowed all the inhabitants of a given area (generally the territory of the parish) to put their animals RQDOOXQHQFORVHGÀHOGVDIWHUWKHJUDVVRUWKHFURSKDGEHHQKDUYHVWHGparcours was PXFKWKHVDPHEXWWRRNSODFHIURPRQHSDULVKWRDQRWKHU0RULFHDX  2Q-XO\%HUWLQVHQWRXWDFLUFXODUWRWKHLQWHQGDQWVDQQRXQFLQJWKDWWKHNLQJ KDGGHFLGHGWRJLYHSHRSOHWKHULJKWWRHQFORVHWKHLUSHUVRQDOSURSHUW\7KHLQWHQGDQW of Brittany then put two questions to his subdélégués (Sée, 1928-1929: 752-767)5: :KDWLVWKHVWDWHRIWKHdroit de parcours"+RZDUHDQLPDOVIHGLQWKLVSURYLQFH"7KH texts of the answers sent by the subdélégués – sixty-three answers, that is, almost all RIWKHP²DUHSUHVHUYHGLQWKH$UFKLYHV'pSDUWHPHQWDOHVRI,OOHHW9LODLQH:KLOH some of them replied curtly that these questions were not relevant in their area6 and others paid lip service to physiocratic discourse on agricultural progress, so as not WR EH VHHQ DV EDG DGPLQLVWUDWRUV QRW DOO GLG VR 7KH FROOHFWLRQ DV D ZKROH LV YHU\ rich and contains a great deal of information on matters of private and common use of land, food for livestock, seigneurial division and enfeoffement of land, the UHVSHFWLYHULJKWVRIORUGVDQGRWKHULQKDELWDQWVRQXQFXOWLYDWHGODQGDQGWKHOLNH7R WKH ÀUVW TXHVWLRQ WKH UHSOLHV ZHUH XQDQLPRXV DQG XQDPELJXRXV 7KH subdélégués ZRQGHUHGZK\DQ\RQHZRXOGERWKHUWRDVNWKHPDERXWLW 6.4

3

0

3.2-6.4

9

0

1.6-3.2

24

12

0.8-1.6

18

17

< 0.8

47

71

Mean size (hectares)

1.3

0.7

Source. CAMPBELL 105).

The change in the distribution of villein land on this manor produced by the combination of inter vivos and post mortem land transfers can be charted by comparing the sizes of the 34 holdings recorded by obituaries during the quartercentury 1275-1299 with the 86 holdings recorded by obituaries in the plague year of 1349-1350. As Table 9.3 shows, the mean amount of villein land owned at death was roughly halved during the 50 years or so prior to the Black Death. By the time the latter struck, the privileged minority of tenants who had once held at least 3¼ hectares had vanished, while the proportion holding ¾ hectare or less had grown by over 50 per cent. Undoubtedly, many of these tenants held additional land from other lords and by other tenures, nevertheless, since that too must have been subject to similar processes of attrition, there is no escaping the fact that a clear majority of tenant households were becoming depressed into the ranks of the semi-landless. In IDFW LW LV GLIÀFXOW WR LPDJLQH KRZ PXFK IXUWKHU WKH SURFHVV RI PRUFHOODWLRQ FRXOG have progressed. Efforts by a few enterprising individuals to engross land were not 207

Land markets and the morcellation of holdings in Pre-Plague England and Pre-Famine Ireland

unknown but did not endure beyond their lifetimes. As holdings were steadily eroded in size so, too, plots were further subdivided in order to supply the market with the small parcels that were most in demand and with which owners could most afford to part. Fields, therefore, became as fragmented as holdings, which did little to enhance WKHHIÀFLHQF\DQGSURGXFWLYLW\RIWKHODERXUDSSOLHGWRWKHP These trends were general phenomena and may be observed on most other Norfolk manors for which relevant records are extant. On the nearby manor of Hevingham between 1274 and 1299, three-quarters of all obituaries recorded ¾ hectare or less of land, and a detailed extent of the prior of Norwich’s manor of Martham in 1292 records 376 property owners where a century or more before there had been 107, 63 per cent of whom held less than ¾ hectare and only 5 per cent 3¼ hectares or more (Campbell, 1981). Since active peasant land markets existed on both these manors, it seems almost certain further morcellation occurred over the next half century. Elsewhere in the county, at Gressenhall and Sedgeford, land markets had a similarly IUDJPHQWLQJ HIIHFW XSRQ KROGLQJV :LOOLDPVRQ   DQG WKH VDPH WHQGHQF\ KDV been observed on the Suffolk manors of Redgrave and Hinderclay (Smith, 1984a; 6PLWK6FKRÀHOG %\VXVWDLQLQJWKHPXOWLSOLFDWLRQRIKROGLQJVRSHUDWLRQ of these markets served to underpin Norfolk’s status as England’s most densely populated county, supporting an average of at least 170 people per square mile (66 per km2) at the close of the thirteenth century and probably double that density in LWVPRVWFRQJHVWHGGLVWULFWV&DPSEHOO&RUQIRUG 6RPHôFHQWXULHV later — by which time Norfolk had become synonymous with agrarian capitalism — WKHFRXQW\·VSRSXODWLRQZDVVRPHSHUFHQWVPDOOHU&DPSEHOO  /RUGVRIFRXUVHSURÀWHGLQDPRGHVWZD\IURPWKHODQGPDUNHWYLDWKHHQWU\ÀQHV that it generated and from penalties imposed upon those who sold or leased land without the court’s sanction (on small manors with limited jurisdiction, like that of Hakeford Hall, these revenues might, however, be offset by the costs of holding the courts and hiring a clerk to record their business). Lords may also have gained from the growing numbers of rent-paying tenants on their manors, provided that the latter did not become so impoverished that they fell into rental arrears. For lords with demesnes to cultivate, however, there was a real economic advantage in the expanding supply of an ever-cheaper source of labour so desperate for work. Increasingly, demesne managers substituted hired for servile labour and adopted such labour-intensive tasks as marling, manuring, weeding, fodder cropping, and multiple ploughings (Campbell, 1983; 2010). By these methods they sometimes raised grain yields to levels that would not be surpassed until the eighteenth century (Campbell, 1983; 1991). They therefore had a vested interest in perpetuating the symbiosis that had come about between

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large demesne farms producing surpluses for sale and small peasant holdings selling surplus labour to demesnes (and anyone else who would employ it). :LWKRXW DFWLYH PDUNHWV LQ ODQG ODERXU DQG FUHGLW 1RUIRON·V PXOWLWXGH RI VPDOO holders and near-landless agricultural labourers could not have survived. Yet unrestrained working of these markets was also responsible for progressive erosion of that population’s material conditions of life. Rural poverty was patently more acute and more general by 1315 than it had been in 1270. Since the 1290s good and bad harvests had elicited increasingly exaggerated surges of land purchases and sales due to their differential impact upon the capacity of small holders to feed themselves, pay their rents, and meet their credit obligations (Hudson, 1921; Campbell, 1984). In KDUGWLPHVSHDVDQWVVDFULÀFHGWKHYHU\PHDQVRIWKHLUOLYHOLKRRGV6LPLODUVWUHVVHV DQGVWUDLQVDUHUHÁHFWHGLQWKHSD\PHQWRIKHULRWVRQWKHELVKRSULFRI:LQFKHVWHU·V HVWDWH LQ VRXWKHUQ (QJODQG 3RVWDQ  +DUYH\    'XULQJ WKH DJUDULDQ crises of 1315-1322 and 1346 seigniorial and Crown courts were swamped with business. Norfolk peasants may have been ‘rampant individualists, highly mobile both geographically and socially, economically ‘rational’, market–oriented and DFTXLVLWLYHHJR²FHQWUHGLQNLQVKLSDQGVRFLDOOLIH·0DFIDUODQH EXWWKLV KDGQRWUHVXOWHGLQWKHFUHDWLRQRIDJUDULDQFDSLWDOLVP&DPSEHOO )DFWRU markets had colluded in thwarting such an outcome. Instead, the land had become congested with a smallholding tenantry whose existence it was beyond the power, inclination, and imagination of lords to remove. Nor would the occupying peasantry have brooked any change in the status quo, for any attempt to consolidate holdings would have struck at their very livelihoods and deprived them of the one resource – land – most essential for their subsistence and survival.

IV.

Remedies to morcellation

:KDWUHPHGLHVZHUHWKHUHRQFHPRUFHOODWLRQRQWKLVVFDOHKDGVHWLQ"3UREDEO\WKH most extreme measure was eviction and consolidation by improving landlords bent upon raising the rental yield of their estates. Yet landlords in Pre-Plague England had no such concept of ‘improvement’ and in practice never evicted, while those PreFamine Irish landlords who did subscribe to the concept found it imprudent to act for fear of the potentially violent opposition of the occupying tenantry (Beames, 1983). In both situations, the political and humanitarian obstacles to consolidation were too great to be overcome. Governments might have succeeded where individual landlords hesitated to act, but direct political intervention in agriculture was also alien to these two societies. Not until the 1880s did Ireland, via a succession of land acts and establishment of the Congested Districts Board, became the object of a pioneering and far-reaching government policy of land reform aimed at rationalising holdings

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and plots, reforming rents and tenures, transforming proprietorship, and improving agrarian infrastructure (Solow, 1971). Such initiatives were, however, inconceivable EHIRUH WKH ODWH QLQHWHHQWK FHQWXU\ DQG DOZD\V SROLWLFDOO\ GLIÀFXOW WR LPSOHPHQW because of the many vested landed interests. Prevention rather than cure was, in fact, generally the more practicable strategy. In Pre-Black Death England such major landlords as the abbots of Ramsey and Glastonbury successfully deterred morcellation of villein holdings by outlawing VXEGLYLVLRQRSSRVLQJVXEOHWWLQJDQGLPSRVLQJKLJKHQWU\ÀQHVLQWHQGHGWRH[FOXGH those with little capital or credit from acquiring land (Fox, 1996; Raftis, 1997). Their motive for doing so seems to have been to maintain a capital-rich class of substantial tenants who had a vested interest in preserving the manorial status quo. Nevertheless, as the warden and fellows of Merton College Oxford discovered on their manor of Thorncroft in Surrey, this was not a policy enforcable upon tenants holding by free WHQXUH (YDQV    1RU RQFH PRUFHOODWLRQ KDG VHW LQ ZDV WKHUH PXFK prospect of ever retrieving the situation. In practice, most Pre-Plague landlords acquiesced with the operation of a land market and made the most of the revenuemaking opportunities that monitoring, recording, and policing post mortem and inter vivos transfers of villein land offered them. Tenurial reform may have been acutely needed but its social cost was too high, as yet there was no clear concept of what was required or how to bring it about, and in the absence of a dynamic urban sector there was almost nowhere for displaced tenants to go2. Pre-Famine Irish landlords had access to more ideas and knowledge about what kinds of action might prove effective and consequently were less impotent. Many attempted to retrieve, if not entirely remedy the deteriorating tenurial situation, by taking a more active interest in management of their estates and recruiting experienced and professional agents to assist them. For instance, in 1821 the Earl of Gosford employed WKH6FRWWLVKODQGVXUYH\RU:LOOLDP*UHLJWRVXUYH\KLVHVWDWHDQGUHFRPPHQGKRZLW might be got to yield a higher and more reliable rental income (Crawford, 1976). Greig advised Gosford to oppose and outlaw all further subdivision and subletting; enter, whenever possible, into direct tenurial relations with the occupying tenants; embark upon a programme of piecemeal consolidation as and when the opportunities arose; and give active encouragement to the most promising tenants. Gosford chose to ignore PRVWRIWKLVDGYLFHÀQGLQJDQDGYDQWDJHRXVPDUULDJHHDVLHUWRQHJRWLDWHDQGPRUH ÀQDQFLDOO\UHZDUGLQJWKDQUHIRUPRIWKHGHJHQHUDWHWHQXUHVRQKLVFRQJHVWHGHVWDWH Besides, Greig’s advice was designed to contain rather than resolve the fundamental problem of rural overcrowding. 2

For the Pre-Plague stagnation of London’s economy see KEENE (1984); for the strain placed by impoverished migrants upon Norwich’s economy see RUTLEDGE (1988 and 2004).

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Nor was promotion of proto-industry more than a palliative to the scourge of rural un- and under-employment and low household incomes, for it actually facilitated and fed off the morcellation of holdings. Lord Gosford’s estate lay in the heart of Ireland’s linen-producing countryside where farmer-weavers had bid up rents and driven down holding sizes to levels uneconomic for commercial agriculture. By the 1840s barely a holding in the linen counties was larger than 12½ hectares and almost half were KHFWDUHVRUOHVV)UHHPDQ $Q\IDLOXUHRILQGXVWULDOHPSOR\PHQWDV RFFXUUHG IURP  ZLWK WKH DGYHQW RI PHFKDQLVHG ÁD[ VSLQQLQJ  RU UHGXFWLRQ LQ industrial wages (as unemployed spinners turned en masse to weaving) therefore spelled ruin for those attempting to derive a subsistence from these inadequate holdings. The lesson is clear, only for as long as industry prospered could such smallholdings remain viable, yet the more prosperous proto-industry became and the greater the subsidy it provided to rural incomes, the smaller that holdings shrank (cf. WKH)OHPLVKOLQHQWH[WLOHDUHD9DQKDXWH  Insofar as a panacea to morcellation existed, it lay in a far-reaching transformation of the entire socio-economic status quo, since alteration of the context within which factor markets operated changed their outcomes. The catalyst in both fourteenthcentury England and nineteenth-century Ireland was a massive and biologically induced reduction of population levels precipitated, respectively, by plague and potato blight (Herlihy, 1997; Solar, 1989). England’s population was cut back by about half between 1315 and 1375 and Ireland’s by almost as much between 1841 and 1901. In both cases, further demographic decline and stagnation persisted for some time thereafter, allowing holdings to shrink in number and grow in size. The more opportunistic tenants began to make strategic use of the land market, marriage, and LQKHULWDQFHWRDFFXPXODWHODQGRQDVLJQLÀFDQWVFDOHSDYLQJWKHZD\IRUWKHHPHUJHQFH RIVXEVWDQWLDOFRPPHUFLDOIDUPVVHYHUDOJHQHUDWLRQVODWHU&DPSEHOO:KLWWOH 6SXIIRUG 3DUWO\EHFDXVHLWZDVWKHODERXUHUVDQGFRWWLHUVZKR had been most vulnerable and who therefore perished in greatest numbers, the myriad of petty holdings soon became a thing of the past. In Ireland between 1847 and 1852 the number of holdings of 2 hectares or less fell by 40 per cent; over the same period total holdings fell by 25 per cent (Kennedy et al.  Such trends are unsurprising given the massive alteration in the ratios of population to land and the ongoing demographic malaise in both societies, and merely highlight how much the outcome of inheritance practices and land markets depended upon the context and circumstances within which they operated. Much more to the point is whether processes of engrossment, once initiated, persisted when population growth ZDVHYHQWXDOO\UHVXPHGDVVHHPVWRKDYHEHHQWKHFDVHLQVL[WHHQWKFHQWXU\1RUIRON :KLWWOH RUZKHWKHUKROGLQJVEXLOWXSGXULQJHUDVRIGHPRJUDSKLFUHFHVVLRQ

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in turn fragmented as morcellation became again predominant (as was the case of PXFKRIWKHSURWRLQGXVWULDOLVLQJQRUWKDQGZHVWRI(QJODQG2XWKZDLWH  Exactly what combination of factors tipped the balance in favour of continued agglomeration or renewed morcellation remains one of the greatest enigmas in British agrarian history and is critical to understanding what caused factor markets to promote agrarian capitalism with its large farms and proletarianised labour force rather than commercialised subsistence production rooted in an entrenched class of petty occupiers.

V. From morcellation to agglomeration and ‘peasants’ to ‘capitalists’ Pre-Plague England and Pre-Famine Ireland exemplify the capacity of land markets, in combination with credit and labour markets, to engender a progressive morcellation of holdings and build up of population pressure on the land, with all the adverse implications this then had for living standards and economic growth. Large commercial farms existed and thrived in both situations but their co-existence with a multiplying mass of petty holdings ensured that there could be no general breakthrough to agrarian capitalism and rising total factor productivity in agriculture and no lasting resolution of the Ricardian and Malthusian dilemmas that haunted these and RWKHUVLPLODUO\FRQVWLWXWHGDJUDULDQHFRQRPLHV7KHODWHHPHUJHQFHRIIXOO\ÁHGJHG agrarian capitalism in so much of Europe implies that this type of scenario was by no means unusual. Certainly, it is an issue that awaits more systematic investigation. In the interim it is possible to suggest four pre-conditions which needed to be in place EHIRUHIDFWRUPDUNHWVZHUHDEOHWRSURPRWHWKHNLQGVRIHIÀFLHQWHFRQRPLFRXWFRPHV that economists believe they should. )LUVWWKHUHZHUHLPSURYHPHQWVWRWKHOHJDOGHÀQLWLRQRISURSHUW\ULJKWVDQGUXOHV governing their transfer. Examples include the protection of lessees against the thirdparty interests of lessors, development of entail to exclude females from inheriting, and establishment of the legal right to bequeath land as well as chattels by will so that less and less land was subject to the application of customary rules of inheritance. Separating personal status from tenure also served to de-partition land markets, enabling free tenants to acquire and hold former villein land by copyhold tenure without incurring the taint of servility. Of related importance were developments that lowered the transactions costs of buying, selling, and leasing land. These included the availability of cheaper and better legal services, quicker and easier resolution of disputes, effective enforcement of contracts (such as clauses in leases which forbade subletting), and, especially, lower interest rates.

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Second, the rent-seeking opportunities so conducive to subdivision and subletting needed to be eliminated. Here, relevant measures included closer supervision of tenures by proprietors and their agents, replacement of customary with contractual tenancies, WKHFKDUJLQJRIFRPSHWLWLYHPDUNHWUHQWVDQGKLJKHQWU\ÀQHVDQGLQWURGXFWLRQDQG enforcement of legal clauses in lease contracts forbidding subletting. Introducing and implementing such measures depended upon landlords and their agents getting tougher and adopting a more commercial approach towards estate management and they needed to be equipped with better information about how to do this. Third, the returns to commercial agriculture had to get better. Since markets were WKH PRWKHU RI SURÀWVHHNLQJ EHKDYLRXU WKH JURZWK RI FRQFHQWUDWHG XUEDQ GHPDQG SURYLGHGIDUPHUVZLWKDPDMRULQFHQWLYHWRLQYHVWLQQRYDWHVSHFLDOLVHSXUVXHSURÀWV and expand their enterprises. Equally importantly, large cities drove up the economic rent for commercial relative to subsistence production and, by raising the costs of subsistence, discouraged proto-industrialisation within their immediate hinterlands. The early breakthrough to agrarian capitalism in the south and east of England owed much to the precocious growth of London; at a slightly later date the rise of Dublin KDGDVLPLODULQÁXHQFHXSRQPXFKRI/HLQVWHUDQGWKHVDPHXQGRXEWHGO\KHOGWUXH of highly urbanised Holland). Part of this process necessarily involved structural economic change so that population growth was increasingly absorbed by expansion of employment outside of rather than within agriculture. Dynamic cities also provided a destination for those dispossessed of land and displaced from the countryside. Fourth, rampant population growth needed to be curbed by adoption of preventative demographic measures. Increased emigration overseas and rural to urban migration both helped relieve pressure upon the land, provided that suitable opportunities H[LVWHG:LWKLQWKHFRXQWU\VLGHDUHODWLYHVKLIWIURPELRORJLFDOWRHFRQRPLFPDUULDJH – nowhere taken further than in Post-Famine Ireland – helped to restrain rates of natural increase. Introduction of institutionalised welfare likewise served to reduce the overwhelming dependence of the poor upon large families as the best and often only insurance against hard times (Solar, 1997). Much, therefore, had to change across a broad front before agglomeration rather than morcellation became the predominant outcome of land markets. Moreover, the experience of Pre-Plague England and Pre-Famine Ireland indicates that what determined which of these alternatives prevailed was less the precise rights and rules governing land markets (for these were very different in Pre-Plague England and Pre-Famine Ireland) than the general economic context within which those markets RSHUDWHG7KHQDWXUHRIWKDWFRQWH[WWKURXJKRXWWKHJUHDWHUSDUWRI:HVWHUQ(XURSH during the pre-industrial period suggests that on balance land markets were probably

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more a hindrance than a help to economic growth until the nineteenth century and sometimes even later.

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VAN

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218

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In Polish historiography the subject of peasant landholding and the land market KDVPDLQO\EHHQDSSURDFKHGIURPWKHOHJDOVLGH/HJDOKLVWRULDQVKDYHGHÀQHGWKH character of late-medieval peasant landholdings in the Polish rent economy, in which peasants’ economic independence increased while their personal dependence on their lords diminished, as ‘hereditary holding which took the form of customary property, similar to feudal property on the level of an inferior vassal’ (Bardach, 1964: 198). Also in the early modern period Polish peasants, according to legal historians, ‘[…] were generally free to dispose of their holdings which were, in practice, their KHUHGLWDU\ FXVWRPDU\ SURSHUW\· ,KQDWRZLF] 0ćF]DN  =LHQWDUD    7KH legal aspects of the transfer of land rights and land use have also been studied in detail %RUWNLHZLF] 7KHHFRQRPLFDVSHFWVRIWKHVHSKHQRPHQDKRZHYHUKDYHQRW VRIDUEHHQUHVHDUFKHGHYHQWKRXJK$QGU]HM:\F]DĸVNLKDVVHYHUDOWLPHVFDOOHGIRU VXFKDVWXG\LQKLVZRUNV:\F]DĸVNL  7KHDLPRIWKLVSDSHULVWRÀQGRXWZKHWKHUWKHUHZDVDSHDVDQWODQGPDUNHWLQ Poland in the Late Middle Ages and at the beginning of the early modern period, KRZ ZHOO GHYHORSHG LW ZDV DQG ZKDW LWV UROH ZDV LQ WKH SHDVDQW HFRQRP\ 7KH PDWHULDOIRUWKHSDSHUFRPHVIURPWKHROGHVW3ROLVKYLOODJHFRXUWUROOV7KHRULJLQV of village court rolls go back to the time when so-called German law was introduced LQ 3RODQG UHVXOWLQJ LQ WKH GHYHORSPHQW RI SHDVDQW VHOIJRYHUQPHQW 7KH 6RãW\V (Lat. DGYRFDWXV) was the village head and, together with the aldermen (VFDELQL), he FDUULHGRXWLWVOHJDOIXQFWLRQV7KHUROOVLQTXHVWLRQGRFXPHQWYLOODJHFRXUWVHVVLRQV and contain records of land transactions made by local peasants, which constitute DERXW  SHU FHQW RI DOO UHFRUGHG WUDQVDFWLRQV 6ãRZLĸVNL    $OWKRXJK similar village courts functioned all over the country, the only existing records of ÀIWHHQWKDQGVL[WHHQWKFHQWXU\SURFHHGLQJVDUHIRU/LWWOH3RODQG*URG]LVNL  â\VLDN  :LŋOLF]   DQG WKHUH DUH YHU\ IHZ RI WKHP Village court rolls survive for only about two hundred villages between the end of WKHIRXUWHHQWKDQGWKHHQGRIWKHHLJKWHHQWKFHQWXULHV7KHUROOVDUHWKHEDVLFDQG

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The peasant land market in late medieval and early modern Poland

often the only, sources of our knowledge of Polish peasants’ everyday life from the Middle Ages onwards. )LJXUH3ODFHVRIRULJLQRIYLOODJHFRXUWUROOV

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A historian studying village court rolls often faces problems arising from the ZD\ HQWULHV LQ WKH UROOV ZHUH PDGH ,WHPV DUH IUHTXHQWO\ HQFRXQWHUHG LQ ZKLFK the transferral of money from one person to another was recorded, but with no LQGLFDWLRQ HLWKHU RI WKH DPRXQW RU WKH REMHFW RI WKH WUDQVDFWLRQ 6RPH HQWULHV QRWH the exact amount of money paid by one peasant to another, but not whether these were full payments or instalments. Moreover, phrases such as WRWDOHVROXFLR, ÀQDOH VROXFLR or DQQXDOLVVROXFLR were used interchangeably, which is why data obtained



Piotr Guzowski

from statistical analysis of the rolls is not totally accurate. When the object of the transaction, the land, was directly mentioned in the rolls, a wide variety of names was used to denote it, for example: DJUXP, RUWXODQXP, KHUHGLWDULXP, SDWULRPRQLXP and PDWULPRQLXP. However, the size of the land was very rarely indicated. In many cases, a piece of land that was sold or pledged was only a part of a bigger holding. 1LQHYLOODJHFRXUWUROOVKDYHEHHQDQDO\VHGIRUWKLVSDSHU6L[RIWKHPWKHUROOVRI YLOODJHFRXUWVLQ1RZD:LHŋâRE]RZVND5DMEURW%LHOF]D%U]H]yZND7U]HŋQLRZD DQG:DU\DUHFRPSOHWHPDQXVFULSWVRUKDQGZULWWHQRUSULQWHGFRSLHV7KHUROOVIURP .URŋFLHQNR :\ŧQH 0DV]NLHQLFH DQG :ROD .RPERUVND DUH DYDLODEOH RQO\ LQ WKH IRUPRILQFRPSOHWHSULQWHGFRSLHV7KHUROOVGLIIHULQWKHSHULRGVFRYHUHGDOWKRXJK DOODUHIURPWKHÀIWHHQWKDQGVL[WHHQWKFHQWXULHVDQGDOOZHUHNHSWRQDFRQWLQXRXV EDVLVIRUDWOHDVWÀIW\\HDUV$QRWKHUGLIIHUHQFHLVWKHQXPEHURIWKHUHFRUGVUDQJLQJ IURPWRDQGWKHLUTXDOLW\9LOODJHVIURPZKLFKHYLGHQFHKDVEHHQJDWKHUHG ZHUHLQWZRGLIIHUHQWWKRXJKQHLJKERXULQJUHJLRQV%U]H]yZND.RPERUVND:ROD .URŋFLHQNR7U]HŋQLRZDDQG:DU\ZHUHLQWKHUHJLRQRI6DQRNZKLOH0DV]NLHQLFH 1RZD:LHŋâRE]RZVNDDQG5DMEURWZHUHLQWKHUHJLRQRI.UDNyZDQG%LHOF]DZDV LQWKHYRLYRGVKLSRI6DQGRPLHU]DOVRLQ/LWWOH3RODQG 

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It is not easy to say how often land transactions took place. Only a few of the rolls XVHGLQWKLVVWXG\SURYLGHVXIÀFLHQWHYLGHQFHWRGUDZVRPHFRQFOXVLRQV7KHVHDUHWKH %LHOF]D%U]H]yZND5DMEURW7U]HŋQLRZDDQG:DU\YLOODJHFRXUWUROOVZKLFKKDYH the advantage of being complete and containing relatively detailed entries. Entries which do not deal with land transactions, or in which the object of the transaction is not clear, or which concern money that was secured against land, have been excluded IURPWKHDQDO\VLV7KHFDVHVZKHQODQGZDVWDNHQDVVHFXULW\KRZHYHUKDYHEHHQ LQFOXGHG7DEOH  7KHWDEOHVKRZVWKDWWKHQXPEHURIODQGWUDQVDFWLRQVLQFUHDVHGLQWKHVL[WHHQWK century, compared to the earlier period. It was possible to carry out a detailed analysis RIDYDLODEOHGDWDIRUWZRYLOODJHV²7U]HŋQLRZDDQG%U]H]yZND²ZKRVHFRXUWUROOV contain the largest number of recorded land transactions.

221

The peasant land market in late medieval and early modern Poland

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