The Golden Age of State Enquiries: Rural Enquiries in the Nineteenth Century. From Fact Gathering to Political Instrument (Rural History in Europe) 9782503552842, 2503552846

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Rural History in Europe 14





The Golden Age of State Enquiries Rural Enquiries in the Nineteenth Century. From Fact Gathering to Political Instrument Edited by Nadine Vivier

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EDITORIAL BOARD Gerard Béaur, director Bas J.P. van Bavel Rosa Congost Anne-Lise Head-König Socrates Petmezas Vicente Pinilla Jürgen Schlumbohm

Cover: Casimir Perier, élu à la Chambre des députés de 1817 à 1832, président du conseil en 1831-32. Louis Hersent (1777-1860), Casimir Perier (1777-1832) et ses fils Auguste (1811-1876) et Paul (18121897) – détail, © Coll. Musée de la Révolution française / Domaine de Vizille, MRF 1983-10. D/2014/0095/140 ISBN 978-2-503-55284-2 © 2014, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium and Cost All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Printed on acid-free paper



Contents List of Contributors

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List of Figures & Tables

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Acknowledgements9   1.  The Age of monumental investigations Nadine Vivier

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 2. Inquiries or statistics? Agricultural surveys and methodological considerations in the nineteenth century Ute Schneider

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 3. The development of official knowledge about Irish rural society in the nineteenth century Peter Gray

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 4. Searching for economic and administrative reforms: the enquiry of 1863 in the Ottoman Empire Alp Yücel K aya

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 5. The 1866 agricultural enquiry in France. Economic enquiry or political manoeuvre? Nadine Vivier

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  6.  The Jacini Enquiry in Italy, 1877–1885 Giuliana Biagioli

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 7. Agricultural change and politics in late nineteenth-century Britain: the enquiries of two Royal Commissions, 1879–1897 Robert M. Schwartz

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 8. The state of the rural poor. The agricultural labourer and the Royal Commission on Labour in 1890s England Nicola Verdon

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  9.  The French parliamentary inquiry of 1884: a response to multiple crises Jonathan J. Liebowitz

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10.  The 1879–1880 enquiries on agriculture in Hungary András Vári

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11. Spanish agriculture and the government enquiry. La crisis agricola y pecuaria, 1887– 1889 Juan Carmona & James Simpson

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12.  The 1896 parliamentary enquiry report in Denmark Ingrid Henriksen 13.  The agricultural enquiry of 1890 in the Netherlands. Bringing the state back in Anton Schuurman 14.  Seeing modern agriculture: Ontario’s agricultural commission of 1880 Daniel Samson 15.  Agricultural statistics in modern Mexico: a real world or an imagined reality? Alejandro Tortolero

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239 255

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Giuliana Biagioli

University of Pisa Italy

Juan Carmona

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Spain

Peter Gray

Queen’s University Belfast Ireland

Ingrid Henriksen

University of Southern Denmark Denmark

Alp Yücel Kaya

Ege University Turkey

Jonathan Liebowitz

University of Massachussets USA

Daniel Samson

Brock University Canada

Ute Schneider

Universität Duisburg-Essen Germany

Anton Schuurman

Wageningen University the Netherlands

Robert M. Schwarz

Mount Holyoke College USA

James Simpson

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Spain

Alejandro Tortolero

Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa Mexico

András Vári (†)

University of Miskolc Hungary

Nicola Verdon

Sheffield Hallam University United Kingdom

Nadine Vivier

Université du Maine France

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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 7.1. Decline of Wheat Production and Expansion of Cattle and Dairy Farming Figure 11.1. Imports and exports of wheat and flour (in millions of pesetas) Figure 12.1. Real wages and workforce in agriculture, 1887–1900

LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1. Some benchmarks of the production of statistics and enquiries Table 1.2. Methods applied in the inquiries presented in the book Table 8.1. The Agricultural Labourer: Reports and Commissioners Table 8.2. English Commissioners and the Poor Law Unions they investigated Table 10.1. Participants of 1879–1880 enquetes according to their social group and their membership in the National Agricultural Association Table 11.1. Wheat prices and answers to the Enquiry Table 12.1. Indices for the growth in cattle herds by size Table 12.2. Holdings by size and ownership in the groups of municipalities defined by Jensen that emphasised respectively lack of labour for landowners, lack of land for the landless. Table 12.3. Smallholdings by size and their owners by age. A summary result from the laws of 1899, 1904 and 1909 Table 13.1. Growth accounting agriculture, 1815–1910 (per cent) Table 13.2. Land users, 1883–1910 (thousands) Table  13.3. Distribution of the agricultural area according to size of land users in 1910 Table 13.4. Members of the Agricultural Commission of 1886 Table 13.5. Overview of the number of questions in order of major themes of the Questionnaire Table 13.6. Reporters for the Agricultural Commission 1886 Table 15.1. Taxes levied on the sugar plantations of Morelos between 1874 and 1911 8



Acknowledgments The idea of this book was born at a European Social Science Conference in Lisbon (2008), during one of those fruitful informal conversations on the fringe of the sessions. A few months later, a brainstorming meeting in Paris defined the subject (Carmona, Samson, Schuurman, Simpson, Vari and Vivier). The project then progressed, attracting new scholars and further discussion, thanks to sessions at the Rural History conference organised in Brighton (September 2010), the SSHA conference in Chicago (November 2010), and the mobilisation of networks of rural history (COST programme PROGRESSORE; with links to the British Agricultural History Society and the Arbeitskreis für Agrargeschichte). The contributors were encouraged to write in both substantive and historiographic vein, to convey a sense of both the subject-matter and the conceptual orientation of rural enquiries in their own specialist research and geographic areas. I would like to record my thanks to the native English speakers of our team who accepted to revise the language of the other contributors; and beyond to express my thanks to all the contributors for this team work and to Gérard Béaur for his ongoing support to this project. The research and publication was supported by the GDR (International Research Network) 2912 of the CNRS ‘Histoire des Campagnes Européennes’ (France) and by the institutions of each participant.

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1.

The Age of monumental investigations* Nadine Vivier To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. (Proudhon, 1851: 341)

Any substantial and effective state intervention in society requires an important degree of knowledge, commensurate with the scale of the intervention. It was precisely this phenomenon, which had reached full tide by the middle of the nineteenth century, which Proudhon had in mind when he wrote his essay in 1851. We see from the comprehensive nature of his critique how controversial a state’s search for information through enquiries could potentially be. Proudhon, fearing a well-informed, prying and mighty state declared himself an anarchist, i.e. an advocate of mutualism and a federal structure instead of a central state. His criticism was radical and carried to extremes; however there were also many moderate people concerned with state surveys, and many debates took place in the parliaments and among European and American elites about the role of the state in using surveys and enquiries to gather information on a large scale. Such surveys can be traced back at least 2,000 years and probably much further. As early as the Roman Empire the enquiry was a tool of the State apparatus. During the Carolingian period of Charlemagne and his successors in the ninth and tenth centuries, the enquiry was one of the functions of the government. It had a clear political mission, to join the ruled and rulers; and to provide a means of dialogue. The twelfth to the fourteenth centuries saw a new increase of the number of enquiries with the aim of supporting the existing social order of subjection in feudalism (Gauvard, 2010). A further development took place in the seventeenth century when kings wanted to know the people’s capacity to pay taxes. This was particularly the case during the reign of Louis XIV of France to finance his program of war and glory: a huge army, great fortifications, and a majestic court. Peter the Great of Russia did the same, emulating what he found in the Netherlands and Prussia and lavished money on the army, built a new capital in Saint Petersburg, and expanded the administration of the state. Resistance to this state activity was mostly muted across Europe, with *  I want to thank all the contributors of this book for providing data for this introduction, and for reading and adding to the text. My thanks go also to John Broad, Jean-Pierre Jessenne and Corinne Marache who made very helpful comments.

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the notable exception of England where such state intrusion was seen in more odious ways. While a royal committee had established the Domesday book in 1066, royal surveys became unpopular in the seventeenth century when the Stuart monarchy expanded efforts at intervention and fiscal extraction were defeated, and thereafter the active exercise of power by the Crown declined. It could be argued that a kind of statistical excitement took hold of national administrations from the 1720s onwards. States began to be concerned with economic development and the promotion of prosperity for everyone, which was in keeping with enlightenment thinking. The question became very acute in the nineteenth century. Seen from this long term perspective, the nineteenth-century enquiries prove to be different from their predecessors. The nature of the state changed in the nineteenth century, even if some continuity remained. The scientific and financial means to investigate had progressed and could provide states with the knowledge they needed to prepare bills and intervene in order to improve production, hygiene and education. Moreover, positivism grew in influence after 1830s: endeavours in investigation were reinforced by Auguste Comte’s assertion that the only authentic knowledge was that which was based on sense, experience and positive verification. As a result enquiries were on the increase. Factories and their labourers, the state of the poor and the means to assist them were the main matters of concern in the early part of the nineteenth century. This initial focus was linked to wider economic and social changes, in particular the use of female and child labour during early industrialisation and the growth of state expenditure on paupers. In Great Britain and some other countries, the landed bias of Parliament meant that it was easier to start major enquiries on the condition of workers in factories because the mill owners and industrial interest had less a voice. However, the rural world was certainly not forgotten, and governments began to take an interest in appraising the changes that were taking place in the countryside as well as the towns. All through Europe and North America, new technologies began to influence farm production and agricultural organisation. Farm labour became increasingly scarce in some economies, driving the development of mechanisation, slower in Europe than in the United States; urban development changed the demand for food; the railways and the telegraph integrated national markets and the sharp decline in shipping costs contributed to the globalisation of foodstuffs on a scale and intensity never known before. Finally changes in political institutions (including universal or widening male suffrage) and the distribution of political influence had major consequences. This new context prompted states to launch large enquiries to assess changes in the rural world. 12

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Enquiries flourished everywhere in the Western world. They were local, regional or national in scale, sometimes investigating a general question, sometimes more focused on a specialist issue.1 It is not possible to study all of these investigations here. This research project only considers those major enquiries defined as followed: enquiries concerning rural society that offered a systematic collection of data at first hand regarding a range of questions about the rural population (peasants, craftsmen, labourers), or about agricultural and economic infrastructures. Their answers were given either by people with precise knowledge of local conditions, by experts like agronomists or by farmers themselves. The data was collected by an investigator and the investigations did not rely upon pre-existing data. These enquiries could be national in scope, or within part of a federal state. They attempted to achieve systematic rather than haphazard coverage. The initiative came from the government, the parliament or from agricultural associations. Most of those enquiries about the countryside are well known by historians who have built their work on the vast data collections. The present research, however, does not focus on the content of those investigations. Instead, it examines the origins and functioning of the enquiries as new and important objects of historical research. This approach has been neglected by historians, with the exception of England, where nonetheless rural investigations are left behind wider studies. We started out with the observation of an acme of agricultural enquiries at the end of the nineteenth century, in all the western countries, in a context of crisis, and were interested in a number of questions. Was there a model, and did those enquiries all follow the same methods? Who were the actors in charge of the investigation? Proudhon’s judgement reminds us how important the choice of the appointed experts was. Who responded to the enquiry, and to what extent were they able to influence the results? In what ways were they means of management and negotiation in an era of great political and economic change? If they were a means of acquiring knowledge, we ask the extent to which governments applied that knowledge to shape or reshape rural populations and their activities. This is at the heart of debates: James C. Scott showed the state becoming knowledgeable and intrusive. Unlike Norbert Elias who described this process as a ‘civilising process’, Scott preferred to see it as an attempt at domestication, a kind of social gardening devised to make the countryside, its products and its inhabitants more readily identifiable and accessible to the center (Scott, 1998: 184).

  Another part of the research programme, in cooperation with Corinne Marache, has dealt with local enquiries. Papers are published (Marache & Vivier, 2013).

1

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To answer these questions, a comprehensive collection of studies on countries of the Atlantic world and through the nineteenth-century is necessary. However, given the restraints on space and resources, this book gathers 14 studies from across 12 countries. There are countries that have had to be omitted from this volume, particularly those in central Europe, where scholarship on this issue is still in its infancy. So the main focus is on Western Europe, with broadening perspectives to the East (Ottoman Empire) and West (Canada and Mexico). All those countries experienced intense intellectual exchanges during the nineteenth century, and implemented similar measures (for example: cadastre, private property). The International comparative perspectives and transnational history are key elements of our project. It gives the opportunity to question the cultural transfers in the management of information required by a modern state. The second half of the century witnessed a peak in the production of enquiries. The 1880s deserve the main focus since changes in international trade, agricultural techniques, production and labour forces were broadly investigated on both sides of Atlantic. Each chapter could not provide a national coverage of rural enquiries. It only gives a brief historical perspective on the experiences that preceded the specific enquiry studied. Because each study focuses on only one enquiry – chosen as a representative one at that time, and because each study depends upon the existing literature for a given country, the picture that emerges is often sketchy and incomplete. We are fully aware of those limits. Nonetheless, it offers new and suggestive comparative perspectives on developments typically viewed from narrower vantage points. In sum, it provides a sound foundation on which to build in a heretofore neglected domain of transnational research. The introduction aims at providing a framework for the following chapters. Insofar our knowledge is incomplete; it offers more assumptions than certainties. After a review of the state of current research on enquiries this introduction attempts a synthesis of the achievements given in the fourteen chapters of the book and it aims to set them back together in a general context. It refers to those papers unless other references are mentioned.

I.  Review of current historiography Nineteenth-century enquiries have caught the attention of historians. In the 1960s they were looked at as raw materials and inventories were compiled (Gille, 1964). They were extensively used in many regional case studies and in every country they were generally considered absolutely reliable and objective when data were collected

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and written by members of the state administration. In France, the prefects who built or at least checked the enquiries were trusted because of their well-known seriousness and attention to detail. New assessments of the reliability of those state enquiries emerged in the trend of the ‘linguistic turn’; with it came a more critical assessment of the documents and the nature of the information they contained in newly designed analyses. The state administration’s reports were no more regarded as providing objective truth because of the varied influences at work in the creation of the information. Thus, new attention was given to the writers’ origins, training, career and opinion as well as to the influence of the context during the questioning of the witnesses. Many works discussed the reliability of the enquiries, and none of them can now look value-free. Samuel published in 1975 an important book in which he stated: Parliamentary Blue Books, a major source for nineteenth-century history, are nevertheless insidious, because they encourage historians to rely on second – and third-hand opinion – heavily class biased – whose worth he cannot begin to assess unless he has primarily material to use as a yardstick. Poverty inquiries […] are in many ways the most treacherous to use: their question and answer form and the fact that the witnesses were outsiders – sanitary reformers, temperance advocates, chief constables, chairmen of boards of guardians, philanthropists, clergymen, ‘lady’ visitors – make it questionable whether they should be treated as primary sources at all (except for the appendices) (Samuel, 1975:xvi).

In the case of enquiries about rural societies, reliability is even more in question because peasants were considered crude and ignorant or suspicious and liars by those observing them. I.1.  Investigations on the making of enquiries Following this awareness many studies investigated the making of those enquiries and their construction of knowledge. Two influential books in France were those by Jean-Claude Perrot (1977) and Marie-Noëlle Bourget (1988). While descriptive regional statistics had existed for the long time, the practice of their making was codified in the period 1790–1814. Bourguet, for example, showed how this practice was shaped by a new methodology during that period. In studying the way data were collected, she discovered that, when administrative staffs were not sufficient, the prefect relied on local elites whose information might have been partial and biased. Michel Demonet (1990) in a very precise study of the agricultural enquiry of 1852

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demonstrated the good quality of the figures through maps that give a coherent picture of French agriculture of the time. Then Alp Yücel Kaya studied in a comparative perspective the making of French agricultural enquiries of 1836 and 1852 and their reception by rural population (Kaya, 2005). He focused on local commissions and compared methods in France and Ottoman Empire (Kaya, 2008). In the 1990s and 2000s, the Turkish State Institute of Statistics collected and published official statistical data from economic enquiries dating to the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including agricultural ones. This launched research by Güran (1997), and a single critical work was published on the late nineteenth-century enquiries by Inalcik & Pamuk (2001). This critical position has been maintained to the present, as the following chapters demonstrate: they highlight both the richness of the documentation and the biases that are contained within them. It can also be viewed as inherently value-laden, a product of and servant to politics and the State. Beyond this history of capture and subversion, the question is: what were the goals of such an initiative? And what were the benefits? Charles Tilly (1984) claimed that the survey emerged not as a tool of scientific research but as a mechanism used by the elite to explain and contain social disorder. I.2.  ‘The historiography of the official inquiry remains deficient’ This is what Mark Freeman wrote in 2003, speaking of enquiries about rural world (Freeman, 2003). Yet in England major academic books about nineteenthcentury inquiries have been published whereas there is almost nothing in other countries, as far as I know; only separate studies on one enquiry are to be found, for example on the Italian Jacini Enquiry (Biagioli, this volume). While most of the literature deals with investigations on the urban working classes, few studies are devoted to rural England. Why has this subject received so little attention? Three reasons might explain the current position. Firstly many books have focused specifically on the personalities who carried out the surveys. Secondly, statistical enquiries have been much more studied than social investigations, and thirdly, thinking about official investigations is closely related with the role of the state. Many books have been devoted to the personalities who carried out the first surveys and to the range of methodologies that they employed. Nineteenth-century investigators including Mayhew, Booth, Le Play, Quételet, Seebohm Rowntree, and Weber mainly worked on urban poverty. The investigators went out and talked to ordinary people about their lives, the nature of their work and also visited the homes that they lived in (Englander & O’Day, 1995). Within this growing body of 16

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investigation, rural communities and rural poverty was not completely forgotten. Booth and Rowntree both carried out studies of rural life: Booth, The aged poor in England and Wales (1894); and Rowntree: Land and Labour: lessons from Belgium (1910) and How the Labourer Lives (1913) with considerable rural material. Frédéric Le Play first published in 1855 Ouvriers européens. Études sur les travaux, la vie domestique et la condition morale des populations ouvrières de l’Europe, This included some rural families, and one year later he went to Pyrénées for a direct investigation and collected data from peasants: Paysans en communauté du Lavedan (Hautes-Pyrénées, France). Propriétaires-ouvriers dans le système du travail sans engagements (1857). Weber and the Verein für Socialpolitik in the 1880s carried out rural ‘enquêtes’. Nonetheless, this part of their work has remained in the background. Hitherto the history of social investigation has tended to focus almost solely on the urban inquiries that were produced in the nineteenth century. We now have a comprehensive knowledge of the methodology and the construction of knowledge in the urban enquiries. Scholarship has also highlighted the important exchanges between those precursors, for example Le Play was in sympathy with British statistical societies which combined scientific investigations and aims of social betterment. The second reason explaining the lack of interest in enquiries is that historians have paid great attention to quantitative social surveys but have held literary investigations in some contempt. The nineteenth-century enquêtes intended to be in-depth insights covering lots of items that could not be quantified. Although historians frequently used their data uncritically, qualitative investigations were generally believed to be unreliable and their construction not been thoroughly examined. Mayhew for example was criticised by a historian, A. F. Welles, in 1935 because his method was essentially non-statistical: ‘it is rather the concrete descriptive method of a journalist or a novelist. His spiritual relatives are Dickens and Defoe’ (Freeman, 2003: 3). However the making of the statistical science was considered worthy of study by historians of science. It is a well-researched area. Over the past two decades, publications have addressed epistemological concerns. Ute Schneider (this volume) quotes the main bibliographical references: Desrosières, Poovey, Porter, Stigler and Wise. Another strand of research by historians, sociologists and others, focused on surveys and the use of the compiled knowledge. Several studies led to convergent results showing the main differences between England, France and Germany (Behrisch, 2006). In seventeenth-century England Political Arithmetic was born, providing theoretical calculations especially for vital statistics, intended to influence policy (Hoppit, 1993). The English state was reluctant to make any practical intervention in the lives of citizens for fear of infringing freedom. But the late eighteenth century saw a significant shift; Sir John Sinclair gave descriptive accounts of each Scottish 17

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locality obtained from local parsons and school masters. Meanwhile, German states moved towards empirical statistics. Cameralists prompted governments to collect information and adapt their policies to the specific needs of their territory (Sandl, 1999; Laborier & Audren, 2011). In addition, they supported the idea that the state could possibly and even must intervene in economic development. The vehicles for this intervention were ‘descriptive statistics’. The French case was a half-way house between the two. The physiocrats based their theories on calculations and deductive formulas. However, at the same time, the state was trying to get reliable empirical data and had engaged in population enumerations. A third component was added: the scholarly investigations by geographers and doctors, such as abbé Expilly’s Tableaux de la population. Hence, links between state and statistical survey were quite different in the three countries and depended on the idea of the role of the state and prevailing ideas and legislation on individual freedom within the country. The nineteenth century was the time of internationalisation of statistics; nonetheless national traditions could survive (Beaud & Prévost, 2000 and 2012; Brian, 1989 and 2002). The third reason explaining the sparse historiography about official investigations is that they are closely related with the role of the state. Adrian Wilson suggests that the character of social history is defined by its particular academic and political relationships: ‘relationships of closure towards state historiography, openness to progressive politics and asymmetrical openness towards the social sciences’ (Wilson, 1993: 7). Nonetheless, this varies greatly from one country to the other. For the periods and the countries where the nature and the powers of the state are a major subject of investigation, state enquiries are studied: for example the western European middle-ages and ancien regime (Gauvard, 2010; Minard, 2000). In nineteenthcentury England, there was a growth, at least for some issues such as the poor laws, towards a unitary British state whose powers changed after the 1830s reforms. This enhanced the production of scholarship and there has been ‘a continuing interest in the machinery and methods of government inquiry’. MacLeod (1988: 3–9, 259) presents this historiography of the formation of the British state from the influential works of Dicey (1905) and Oliver MacDonagh (1958). Surveys were investigated as instruments of this new kind of state. Bulmer, Bales and Kish (1991) went further in the investigation of the methods, asking the question what did those who conducted surveys think they were doing? In the Germany, the states and their servants have been a theme of research since the 1980s (Brakensiek, 2007; Chatriot & Gosewinkel, 2006). In the Reich unified in 1871, reflexions on the role of investigations began immediately. The Verein für Socialpolitik wanted to help build the Reich, but in the 1880s, a new generation (around Weber, Sombart, Tönnies) no longer had the same faith in the state and withdrew from the role of government advisor.

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However, interrogations on the nature of the nineteenth-century state were almost absent in Austrian Empire or France. In France many studies were published on the essence of the King’s power in the Ancien Régime; but the new state born with the Revolution and the Napoleonic period was considered well-defined, with its constitution. The first masterly work was by Richard Kuisel (1981). Then it was neglected again before a current recrudescence. Pierre Rosanvallon’s work in 1990 was intended to initiate a research programme but it had no immediate effect. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, for example, gave lectures ‘about the State’ in the College de France in the same period (1990–91) which were only published in 2011. Since then, scholarly interest in the State has increased. Scholars have now completed works in new and very fruitful fields: the gendarmerie, police and administration. The political history of the state, history of expertise and history of knowledge creation to justify state intervention are today new research fields, according to pioneer English language studies. International cooperation on this issue is particularly relevant. International congresses such as Social Science History Association and European Social Science give it a significant place. SSHA has a network on State and societies, presentations about the sources and nature of state power are encouraged, the main themes have been Power and Politics (2010), or Organizing Powers (2013). Our previous book about State and rural Societies (Vivier, 2008) prepared thanks to the European Social Science networks is another example (COST programme PROGRESSORE 2006–2009). I.3.  Statistics or enquiries? Back to a definition Statistics, enquiries, surveys, etc. were all carried out. Why focus on enquiries? Surveys induce the idea of an eagle eye, a top-down observation on populace whereas enquiries suppose participation, even a small one. As previously said historians make a clear distinction between the statistical data and the literary evidence of the enquiries. Often it is not so simple for most of the investigations included both. Chapter i (Schneider) shows the debates on this point. As early as 1846 Johannes Fallati (1809–55), a German lawyer who was also a foreign member of the Statistical Society of London, contrasted enquiries with statistics in terms of frequency, methods, and in terms of personnel and form (Chapter 2). Over the nineteenth century, methodologies improved and completely separated these statistics and the science of numbers, from social enquiries and sociology. In spite of this clear definition and the fact that the present study deals with enquiries, statistical surveys cannot be totally ignored. Their existence or their absence can partly explain the launch of an enquiry. Table 1.1 therefore gives an overview of benchmark enquiries, whilst also including the creation of statistical offices.

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1894 Land commission

1872 public inquiry on farm labour

1849: creation of Det Statistiske Bureau

1838 agricultural statistics

Vital census

1769 & 1788

Denmark

(Cartwright, 1975:13)

Parliament committees

Departmental committees

1872 Verein für  Socialpolitik: development of non-governmental inquiries

Governmental Statistical  social surveys in some states = Prussia, Baden

Germany

Inquiries on specific questions

1880–1914 royal  inquiries on specific points and professional statistics

data on agricultural  production

From 1870

1848 Estimation of   tithes, corvee

1840, 1845, 1850,   1860, 1863: general inquiries by imperial inspectors

1900, Paris and 1904, Saint Louis

Expositions inquiries of

1882 creation of the   Department of statistics

1879 agricultural  production

Attempts to create   national statistics

1833 Ortiz de la Torre

1882 creation of Canada’s first statistical bureau

1880 Commission on agriculture

1820s: ‘historical &   statistical accounts’

Canada Ontario

1900s Andalucía  and unemployment

1887 Crisis agricola y pecuaria

1859: Municipal and   common lands - published

Inquiries

1752 tax based census

Ancien regime: wheat prices

Spain

1825 statistics of   one district by Ortega

Mexico

Parliamentary  inquiries

Ottoman Empire

Published state inquiries

1860s onwards

1850s-1875 provincial   private inquiries

1830–1870 Provincial private  inquiries

1880 onwards

1801–1810 cadastre, vital   census, agrarian statistics

Italy

1800 agricultural state inquiry   (252 questions) - unpublished

The Netherlands

1767 cadastral survey

Hungary

yearly and decennial agricultural statistics

1835: creation of “Statistique   de la France” 

 many ‘enquêtes statistiques’

1790–1815: cadastre

Ancien regime: inquiries  be­coming national in scope in the 18th c.

As far back as 11  c. royal   commissions existed

Their number peaked in  mid-19th c.

France

United Kingdom

th

Table 1.1. Some benchmarks of the production of statistics and enquiries (data provided by the authors of the volume) The Age of monumental investigations

Nadine Vivier

Most of the current studies of social surveys begin in 1880 (Bulmer, Bales and Kish, 1991), or in 1870 (Freeman, 2003, although his first chapter deals with the previous century). We have chosen to begin earlier in the present book. A majority of the contributions address the end of the nineteenth century, the high point of rural enquiries. But they have been placed in a longer-term context because the basic question was about the existence of a model. Had they common roots? Was there a seminal method?

II. British or French model? An approach of cultural transfers The name ‘enquête’ given in Germany and Hungary suggests a French model; and the studies on Spain and Italy also refer to a French model. All the contributors agree on the idea that British and French states had the earliest and greatest experience in carrying out enquiries. The methods for both seem to have followed a progressive development, specific to each enquiry. The French Enquête agricole in 1866 had common features with the Poor Inquiry in Ireland in 1833: investigation across the whole territory and not just samples, written questionnaires dispatched to notables, the collection of oral evidence, public depositions precisely written up. Does this mean that Napoleon III drew his inspiration from the United Kingdom? This would be credible since the English model was highly praised in nineteenth-century France and especially by Napoleon who knew it very well. Two decades later, Clemenceau, advocating a parliamentary enquiry in 1884, wanted the English model to be followed (Liebowitz, this volume). This was a way to present the process of investigation as a break from the previous enquiries of the Second Empire he hated. However differentiation between English and French models is not so simple and the question requires a review of previous achievements and a comparison of methods. II.1.  Previous enquiries in England and France Although it was not merely an agricultural survey, an important milestone can be mentioned: l’enquête du Régent in 1716–18. The French Royal Academy of Sciences nurtured an encyclopaedic project: an inventory of all mineral and natural resources in the country. The intendant (higher administrator of a province) had to answer a questionnaire either touring himself in his province or asking informants for the material. Reaumur, acting as secretary, received the data, checked it and asked for clarification. Here can be seen the birth of ‘scientific’ methods that will continue. For the first time the concept of a national

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economy prevailed over regional economies. Born on the initiative of the Academy of Sciences, the project was supported by the Regent and this explains its twofold aim: an encyclopaedic inventory of high scientific accuracy, and a government decision to support the improvement of the economic and social condition of French population. This national survey included an additional comparative part: an inquiry in neighbouring countries (Demeulenaere-Douyère & Sturdy, 2008). Some similar features are to be found in agricultural enquiries at the end of Ancien Régime. Bertin, in charge of a kind of ministry of agriculture, asked for an investigation of collective property in each province in order to help decide whether they should be shared out and enclosed (1768). The insurmountable difficulty of mapping and surveying commons hindered any scientific processing but there was the same concern of knowing the situation in other countries such as England and the German states. Just as in the enquête du Régent that only described the technical aspects, there was no moral aspect. There was no comment on the fact that enclosures threw the poor off the land; it was feared because of the consequences to urban peace. During the revolutionary period in France, enthusiasm for statistics increased further. François de Neufchâteau, home secretary in 1797, asked for both annual statistics of production and specific descriptive enquiries. His successor Chaptal created a Bureau de statistiques in 1800. They wanted to combine large literary descriptions and the efforts of mathematicians to substitute calculation for description. Meanwhile enquiries also evolved on the other side of the Channel. Joanna Innes (2009) considers that interest in collecting data about poverty never died away entirely, though it did stagnate and decline c. 1720–40. The widespread belief that population and economy were both growing rapidly contributed to the renewal of interest in both data collection and analysis from the 1760s. Official, especially parliamentary data, played an important part in the developing field and led to an enquiry into the poor law in the 1770s. The form of this enquiry was compatible with other contemporary private and local forms of enquiries, such as Arthur Young’s first book, A six months tour through the north of England (1770). Young gained rapid popularity all over Europe by the translation of his books, and he has been identified as an early forerunner of the social-scientific inquirer. Similarly David Davies’s inquiry into agricultural domestic budgets was considered an important development. Frederick Morton Eden, in 1797, also collected domestic budgets for The State of the poor. He employed an interviewer to gather the data; this meant that much of the information was collected at first hand from the working-class subjects of the inquiry. This method was similar to Le Play’s half a century later (Freeman, 2003: 14–16). Eden also sent queries to trustworthy correspondents, mainly clergymen. Actually he followed the

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baconian tradition of heads of enquiry, used in the 17th c. enquiry about Ireland. And this also reminds us of the French method. Common characteristics found in French and British enquiries around 1800 are: their inscription in a long tradition of data collecting, a renewed interest in economy, especially agricultural production, a tentative methodology aiming at scientific accuracy, and documentation for a better knowledge and an improvement of rural condition. This thinking was in keeping with the existence of a highly active European agricultural network (Vivier, 2009). The most notable difference between Britain and France during the eighteenth century was in the source of the initiative for investigations. For the period 1750–1815 the process differed on both sides of the Channel, reflecting opposing conceptions of statistical method mentioned earlier. On the French side emphasis was placed on official enquiries. Undeniably the king and his government were at the origin of the projects, either launching them or supporting the royal Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society of Agriculture. Nonetheless they called on agronomists to do the work. Two examples can be used to illustrate this. Count d’Essuiles, an agricultural advisor to the ministry, investigated the management of commons in 1768. Members of the Royal agricultural Society of Paris produced reports setting out the arguments about major rural questions. Private initiative usually looked for an official approbation, at least by those societies. On the British side emphasis was placed on private initiative. Arthur Young and his contemporary William Marshall began work as independent investigators, but both were associated with the Board of Agriculture. The Board was created due to the influence of Sir John Sinclair; ‘it had a semi-official status, supported by governmental funds but operating essentially as a closed corporation’, and Arthur Young acted as secretary (1793–1820) (Freeman, 2003: 15). The Board commissioned a series of reports on agriculture in each English country known as the ‘General Views’ of agriculture. Those reports were essentially based on consultation with elites. The very different British and French processes may have been exaggerated by historians in the light of the subsequent developments. The revolutionary and Napoleonic period increased French centralisation. More and more, every initiative came from the state. This can be illustrated by one example. In 1797 François de Neufchâteau had asked for data from agricultural societies which he encouraged. In contrast, in 1800 Napoleon organised a powerful administration that had to function alone, without any external help in order to keep the collected figures secret. From this time onwards, members of those academic societies (sociétés savantes) went

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on producing lots of ‘descriptive statistics’, mainly within a local scope; but their works were held in low esteem. In contrast, Britain had a decentralised state. Many officers in the counties, hundreds or villages had all kinds of precise data. This was an intrusive system at a local level.

II.2. The development of investigations in a context of transnational cultural exchange War and bad harvests fuelled the need for accurate data. In 1800–1801, every English parish was required to send in details of the acreage under different crops. The regions ruled by Napoleon (1800–1814) had to implement the same measures as in France. Italy undertook regular census, a land survey and agricultural statistics. So did also the Kingdom of the Netherlands after 1806, but the previous state enquiry in 1800 was an initiative of the Dutch government, inspired by Sinclair’s practice. This is an example of crossed influence, while Italy and Spain kept French model. In most countries, including France, conservative governments after 1815 put aside their statistical services or even suppressed them. A revival of agricultural inquiries occurred after 1830. In all countries the need for precise knowledge on agriculture and rural population became apparent: there was a need for statistics and also a growing concern for the conditions of the rural, as well as the urban, poor. Table 1.1 shows the blooming of the enquiries either by private initiative or by state decision from Ireland to Ottoman Empire, from Denmark to Spain. In France, the ministry of Trade and Agriculture launched the large agricultural enquiry (1836–40) but this did not dissuade local initiatives. Some had been launched by the prefects in the 1830s, for example in Périgord (Marache, 2013). At the same time, the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques asked for social enquiries, most of them about urban workers but some about rural areas like Adolphe Blanqui’s Tableau des populations rurales de la France, 1850. In Britain four responses met the need for data. English national newspapers appointed their own self-styled ‘Commissioners’ to make fact-finding tours and then published their findings. At the time of Mayhew’s visit to the London poor, another journalist, James Caird, carried out an agricultural tour for the Times, reprinted in 1852 as English agriculture in 1850–51. There were also enquiries on rural housing conditions in the 1840s. The Royal Agricultural Society of England, established in 1838, was involved in a series of enquiries. The passion for statistical data eventually resulted in the collection of data on a regular basis: from 1841, an Irish population

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census gave data on rural life and rural housing, and from 1866, agricultural returns were collected annually by the Board of Trade in Britain (Freeman, 2003: 30; Afton & Turner, 2000: 1760). Last but not least, the number of state enquiries developed gradually. They were carried out by Royal Commissions, by departmental committees or Parliamentary committees (respectively on decision of the government, a ministry or the House of Commons). Indeed the nineteenth century was a golden age of Royal Commissions (Cartwright, 1975: 13–37). August von Miaskowski who studied enquiries in Germany, France and England, considered British royal commissions more impartial, less tied to political parties; the nomination of a new government rarely disturbed the commissions’ work (Miaskowski, 1885: 189). In the other European countries enquiries flourished as well. Some private or public enquiries around the middle of the century were achieved in a provincial scope. Lombardy for example was scrutinised by Karl Czoernig (1835–39) and by Stefano Jacini (1855). The Spanish state launched in 1902 an enquiry to help resolve the social problem of Andalucía; its achievements gave a better understanding of the difficulties induced by latifundia (Carmona & Simpson, 2013). Everywhere the states demanded general investigations, for example in the German states and Denmark; they also sought data on specific questions like common lands in Spain. An estimation of tithe in Hungary was also carried out, as it was done in England by the Tithe Commission in the years 1836–44. Our case studies of Mexico and Ontario are highly interesting; they show the importance of transnational cultural transfers in the fields of statistics, and of search for knowledge and administrative practices by states. This importance was obvious within European countries; it is also evident throughout the Atlantic world. The United States are an absentee from the volume; it is regrettable because comparison with Canada and Mexico would have been fruitful. Nonetheless, existing works give a comprehensive state of the art (Bulmer, Bales and Kish 1991: 26–31; Converse, 1987: 20–28). Both Mexico and Ontario were late comers to the use of statistics, in spite of their long-term efforts. Mexico had tried to undertake them since 1822 but a statistical service was born only in 1882, as in Ontario. The United States began using social surveys in the 1860s with inquiries about public health made by a municipal reform group of New York. They were also late comers to agricultural enquiry, since the first one, the Country Life Commission occurred only in 1908–09. As former colonies, did they follow the model used in the mother country? The link of Ontario with the British model seems to be alive in the 1820s when Haliburton and Gourley, who had direct experience of surveys in England as a young man, offered narrative descriptions

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modelled on the techniques of Sir John Sinclair and the British Board of Agriculture (Samson, this volume). The surveys in the United States were influenced by Le Play for the family budget method widely used in their country from 1869 and that had a strong impact on government statistics; later then they were also deeply influenced by Booth and Rowntree. By the end of the century, what really matters was global cultural transfer. Two major places of transnational exchange are visible in this volume: statistical congresses and international exhibitions. Statistical congresses between 1853 and 1876 played a major role as agricultural inquiries were often the subject of intensive debates there (Schneider, this volume). In the following decades a steady stream of publications reflected on statistical inquiries, focusing on methods and ways of obtaining comparative data. The other point of cultural transfer was the international exhibitions, attracting increasing numbers of visitors: London, 1851 and 1862, Paris in 1855 and 1867, Vienna in 1873, Paris in 1878, 1889, 1900, Philadelphia in 1876, Chicago in 1893 and Saint Louis in 1904. Alejandro Tortolero highlights their importance and outcomes on the inner politics of Mexico. General Porfiriato wanted to show the modernity of Mexico and to draw in foreign capital. According to the French author Paul Gers narrating the exposition (En 1900, 1901: 185–189), the Mexico pavilion in Paris in 1900 was very wide-ranging, gathering around 3000 exhibitors; its architecture reflected the modernist attitude of the country. An important place was devoted to agriculture. Gers concluded: ‘It was clear from these [agricultural] shows that significant resources are offered in this country, not only to the workforce but also to capital, which will find excellent and productive use there’. Mexico’s participation was undeniably a great success. The agricultural enquiry was part of an offensive aimed at forging the image of a modern state and it helped generate a fuller knowledge of the country (Tortolero, this volume). The second half of the nineteenth century was the time of the wide rural enquiries instigated either by the government or the Parliament; as far as we can see, state initiative took the major place in all the countries studied. But it does not mean similar methods were employed. This can be seen in Table 1.2 and will be explored further in the next section.

26

Yes

Oral evidence:

1834–35

Report

Period of data collection

Synthesis by a  central commission

5 volumes, over 5000   pages of text and figures

2 vol. of verbatim testimony

190 witnesses

Feb 1880 to  March 1882

Three volumes

Denounced by O’Connell

3500 pages

Report submitted to Report for Parliament Feb 1845  Ireland 1881–2

1844

In 90 towns, 1,100 of all classes

Yes

Dispatched  to clergymen and poor law boards

Yes

Chair: Richmond (Tory)

Royal commission

Disraeli’s inquiry into   agricultural distress

1879–82

United Kingdom

4 volumes, 2300 pages

2000 pages

Reports in 1895, 96   and 1897

Total 191 witnesses

34 representatives of agricultural societies

Shaw-Lefevre (Lib.) then   1895 Cobham (Tory)

Royal Commission

Inquiry on the   Agricultural Depression

1893–1897

United Kingdom

2 volumes,

Report 1881

700 witnesses in Ireland

Written circulars

Chair:Bessborough

Royal commission

Gladstone’s inquiry into   agricultural distress

1880

Ireland

Note. 1. Typology: Inquiry decided by the Parliament, by a royal or governmental commission, by high civil servants, by private interests. 2. Written answers by associations, unions, by experts, by notables, by farmers

Publication of reports

Support of Catholic  clergy

Selected witnesses

(Vocal criticism by the  secretary)

Different classes.

Oral evidence:

 Open and public

Dispatched to notables and  clergy of the 2000 parishes

Written answers (2)

Yes

Chair: Earl of Devon

Yes

Royal commission

Irish rural conditions

Poor Inquiry Commission

Chair:Whately

1843

1833–36

Royal commission

Ireland

Ireland

Questionnaire   Nbre questions

Initiative (1)

Motivation

Part 1

Table 1.2. Methods applied in the inquiries presented in the book

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27

28

1863

Regional reports by the commissioners

Summaries of the  reports published in the Official Journal

Period of data  collection

Synthesis by a central commission

Publication of  reports

Selected witnesses

Oral evidence:

22 tomes Over 12,000 pages

20,000 pages

Report by Jacini

Mainly 1879–81

8 years

none

none

By comizi and many notables +Monographs by country notables

Over 380  questions

38 volumes

 + final report =

Reports for each region

Autumn 1866

By departmental commissions

4,000 in 270 localities

Yes: 2nd s emester 1866

A great number  of petitions sent by local population

Oral evidence:

Open and public

5,000 to 6,000  collective answers by agricultural associations

Written answers

Nbre questions

No. Self-investigations 161 questions  of the commissioners

1/3 Government

+departmental commissions

Questionnaire

1/3 Senate 1/3 Deputies

Parliament

Jacini enquiry

1877–85

Italy

By the government   40 members

By the Prime Minister

Selection of the  Commission

Enquête agricole

Inspection Government

1866

1863

Sultan and  Government

France

Ottoman Empire

Initiative

Table 1.2, part 2

By the parliament 47 members

418 received

11,000 questionnaires sent in August 1887 to the ­municipalities

130 questions

1 volume, 100 pages

Final report   March 1889

Only given by September 1887 members of commission In Madrid

Yes

Yes

Parliamentary inquiry

By national  economic organisation

Chair Conde de Toreno

Royal Decree

Five parts in the enquiry

Inquiry on the agrarian crisis

1887

Spain

Ministers

Agriculture enquete

1879–80

Hungary

The Age of monumental investigations

For agriculture:  12 special assistant commissioners

Yes + information from  Poor Law guardians and local elites

Yes

Selection of the  Commission

Questionnaire

Written answers

Oral evidence:

General Report by William  Little

For the whole  commission = 49 vol. of reports

Synthesis by a   central commission

Publication of  reports

Open and public

Parliament

Report by Spüller to the  Parliament

None for agriculture

Answers written by  mayors helped by farmers

Treatment of data by an   appointed statistician

75 farmers associations

143 questions

4 volumes 1890: Results of  Research +1 vol recommendations 1891

95 selected municipalities

11 questions Sent to and answered by   1,100 local councils

196 questions Sent to each of 30,000  communes. Returns = 5000

For agriculture:   44 commissioners

27 members

the Dutch Agricultural   Committee and the Minister   Chair: Sickesz

What should be done to  improve Dutch agriculture in the international competition

Agricultural Commission

1886–90

The Netherlands

22 members 12 by minister 5 by Folketinget 5 by Landstinget

Chair: Spüller

Parliament

On the situation of   agricultural workers

Royal commission

On the situation of   workers in industry and agriculture

Labour commission

1894–96

Denmark

Initiative

1884

1891–94

To prepare a bill to  provide rural labourers with plots of land

France

United Kingdom

Motivation

Table 1.2, part 3

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Table 1.2, part 4 Ontario – Canada Commission on agriculture  1880

Mexico Enquiries for international   exhibitions, 1900 & 1904

Legislative enquiry Chair: Wood

Ministerial enquiry 1902 chair Alberto Nuncio

Selection of the Commission

Sixteen members

Six members

Questionnaire

21 topics

13 questions

Written answers

Sent to every township and  village of the province. ­Written according to the meeting of leading ratepayers and agriculturalists of the municipality

Sent to every district  The local commissions received information from villages and haciendas

Oral evidence:

None

None

Initiative

Synthesis by a central  commission Publication of reports

Over 2000 pages in 5 volumes

III.  Methodology of enquiries III.1.  Membership of the committees2 Who appointed the committees members, and according to what criteria? Roughly, three types existed: 1. Investigation supervised by civil servants; 2. Nominations of political personalities by the government; 3. Enquiries entrusted to associations. The first case was the usual one in France prior to 1848. The government heavily relied upon the administration. Civil servants at every level had to collect data which was checked by the prefect and then the ministry. So was it also in the Ottoman Empire where the inspection was conducted by high civil servants and even by the sultan Mahmud II in 1830. During the second half of the century, this method remained. Nonetheless it was presented as more participative. Ontario and Mexico sent the questionnaire to municipal councils, or districts and the local commissions had to provide all the data. The answers were written according to what was said in the meeting   The following development quotes the results of the studies gathered in the chapters of the present book. The authors’ names in brackets, without date, refer to the chapters of this volume.

2

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of leading ratepayers and agriculturalists of the municipality (Samson, this volume) or after consultation of notables of villages and hacienda (Tortolero, this volume). The second case, appointment of a commission ad hoc, was considered an essential specificity of an enquiry in the middle of the century. Fallati’s definition of inquiries was: ‘temporary statistical surveys of certain circumstances carried out by special commissions’ (Schneider, this volume). This was the model of the Royal commissions in the United Kingdom. The Irish Poor Inquiry in 1833 had its ten commissioners chosen by the government; so was it again in 1843 (Gray, this volume). In France Napoleon created in 1852 a permanent committee in each department, in charge of collecting agricultural returns for regular statistics. Members were civil servants and notables, supporters of the regime. Their figures were checked by the agricultural consultative chambers. For the enquête agricole in 1866, Napoleon appointed forty members. Later, parliamentary bodies and the ministry shared appointments in Denmark, and in Italy (Henriksen, Biagioli, this volume). The Royal commission of 1897 was also composed of members of the House of Lords, Commons and professions (Schwartz, this volume). In the third case, representatives of the professions were in the majority. This became frequent in the 1880s. 52% of the 1886 Netherlands commission were board members of regional organisations (Schuurman, this volume). A national institution could be entrusted with the enquiry; that was the case in Hungary with the National Agricultural Association (Vári, this volume) and also in France in 1879 when the ministry asked the national Society of Agriculture to carry out the enquiry about trade and tariffs. The choice of members brings up several questions: who were they, were they paid, what were the criteria? Appointments by the government or parliament were guided by political concerns because these inquiries ‘were heavily politicised exercises […] usually established in response to specific political crises’ (Gray, this volume). The membership of the Irish Poor Inquiry (1833) ‘was structured in such a way as to combine the appearance of bipartisanship with the reality of a loaded majority known to favour a particular policy outcome – namely that Ireland could support the most limited of poor laws’. The reception of the investigators was sometimes difficult in this context of intense political divisions during the discussion of the poor law. The following commission (1843) which took place with the Irish poor law in force had the appearance of non-partisanship; the six members were of varied political tendencies. The wide French enquête agricole, like the Spanish one in 1887 addressed the very controversial subject of tariffs; members were appointed to reflect the expected outcome (Vivier; Carmona & Simpson, this volume).

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Beyond their political position, the appointed members belonged to the upper middle class, the elite. Nonetheless some small farmers emerged in 1896 in Denmark (Henriksen). In the mid-nineteenth century many had a legal background and the vast majority had a marked interest in agriculture, either large estate owners or men involved in agricultural business. From the 1880s an increasing place was given to experts (Macleod, 1988). Ontario’s case is representative of this evolution; members of the commission were ‘a group of men who blended some levels of scientific expertise, political prominence, and business interests’ (Samson, this volume). Noticeably all members were men. Women were virtually excluded (Samuel, 1975: xvii). The first appointment of women mentioned in the volume was in the 1891 British Labour commission: four Special Lady Assistant Commissioners were nominated to examine female-dominated trades such as shop work (Verdon, this volume). In the United States where middle-class women had an earlier access to University, the social settlement movement gave women the opportunity to engage in collective study of working-class life and to take collective action to change them (Bulmer, Bales & Kish, 1991: 36). But they were not appointed by the state, and did not study the rural world! How could the state be sure that the commissioners would do the job seriously? That was a point of the International Congress of statistics in 1853. Participants reached an agreement in terms of necessary qualifications but the question of pay divided them. Some of them thought paying surveyors was the only way to guarantee reliable results, the others feared the immense costs (Schneider, this volume). Usually members really did their task, the Spanish case alone mentions absenteeism (Carmona & Simpson, this volume). III.2.  How was the data collected? Sending a questionnaire prepared by the commission was the most traditional way, traditional because it was used in the eighteenth century by Sir John Sinclair for his statistical account of Scotland and by Bertin in France who sent it to experts such as members of agricultural societies and landowners. It can also be traced back as far as the seventeenth century in France and England (Georgical Enquiries of the Royal Society in the 1660s, and the Académie des Sciences). The questionnaire was the most usual method. Its preparation was the first task of the commission. Nonetheless this was not considered sufficient. Commissioners wanted to see for themselves but this was often impossible because of the transport

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conditions, unless the inspection could last some months as in the Ottoman Empire (Kaya, this volume). So assistant commissioners were appointed in the United Kingdom; they had to visit villages and collect evidence which was then printed verbatim in the reports but they played no part in the drawing of the final reports. From the Whately commission to the Labour commission of 1890, the methodology was unchanged. ‘Assistant began their investigation by writing to notable local officials. These local spokesmen would then introduce the commissioner to other prominent individuals including farmers and landowners’ (Verdon, this volume). These roving informants obviously relied on large landowners and the well-read rural clergy. To reach all segments of population, even illiterate people and those reluctant to write, oral evidence could be heard. That was a major innovation of the Irish Poor Inquiry in 1833. It was then a constant feature of Royal commissions and was also used in France for the first time in 1848 for the ‘enquête parlementaire sur le travail agricole et industriel’. Twenty-nine questions were sent to the 2847 local districts and the answers were written by the Justice of the Peace. A commission including employers and workers in a range of activities expressed their views on the possible remedies to economic difficulties and the judge of the peace recorded a summary. The use of oral evidence was intensely debated. Fallati drawing on the Belgium, British and French experiences underlined the stakes involved in taking oral evidence. ‘Orality and publicness as well as civil participation as central principles were an expression and consequence of the principle of the constitutional state’ (Schneider, this volume). Indeed in 1850 only the three liberal states dared to use public hearings. Who was allowed to give evidence? Could anyone come on his own authority? Was intervention limited to the set questions or was expression free? John Revans the secretary of the 1833–6 Poor Inquiry Commission gave answers and his method was seminal. He may be regarded as the pioneer of this form of social inquiry in Ireland and perhaps a model for following inquiries (Gray, this volume). The roving commissioners sat in many small towns in order to reach rural people. The venue of the hearing was a public building whose doors remained open to prove the openness of the event. Immediately after the oral deposition, it was written down and the witness signed it. This was for both sides a guarantee of non-modification; a reliable scientific process that also reveals the importance of political issues (Vivier, this volume). While members of the commissions were very carefully selected, it was hazardous to control oral evidence and avoid critical outbursts. Moreover it consumed time and money. This explains why such a process seems to have been used only in the United Kingdom and in France. After the 1870s, most of

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The Age of monumental investigations

the commissions preferred few selected interviews, mainly of professionals as in Denmark (Henriksen, this volume). In such a context what can be said of the reliability of the enquiries? Their shortcomings are well known and the case studies of the present volume can only confirm that they mainly expressed elites’ view. Nonetheless, the enquiries wanted to gather an objective knowledge and tried to investigate close to the source of the problem through oral enquiries; they therefore took labourers in account. These studies stress the contradiction between the two goals of scientific aspiration and political need. The primacy of politics induced the choice of evidence and above all the recommendations of the final report. There might be a gap between the many and divergent published testimonies and the final report. Historians have to be alert to this discordance that is so indicative of the political aims of the enquiries. III.3.  The enquiries: why and what for? Through the case studies presented in the book, we see that enquiries were aimed at answering the need for knowledge about the situation of the agricultural and rural populations, or a need for negotiation between state and population. Most often it was a means of resolving a tough question in a context of crisis and the preparation of legislation. The need for knowledge seemed to be basic to early ‘statistical enquiries’, i.e. during the first half of the century in north-western Europe. It was also the case at the end of the century in Ontario and Mexico, all the more because they were experiencing agricultural prosperity; the crisis in Europe gave them the opportunity to develop their production, like cattle breeding in Ontario (Samson, this volume). Four major nineteenth-century challenges triggered enquiries in Europe: poverty, employment, agricultural development and international trade. Poverty was a major concern in the United Kingdom because of the Poor Law system and rapid large-scale industrialisation. How to help the poor was at the heart of philanthropic thought in the first half of the century. From the general survey of Poor Inquiry (1833 and 1843), the title moved into a narrower focus, the Employment of Children and Women in Agriculture (Royal commission of 1867–71) or labour commission in United Kingdom in 1891, in France 1884 and Denmark in 1896. Most of the enquiries of the 1880s were generated by the general crisis. Besides those specific investigations on labour, others encompassed a large range of questions including landownership, credit, agricultural progress, international trade and tariffs,

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professional organisation. What for? In a crisis situation, the Commission’s role was to offer the necessary precise knowledge and to provide solutions, especially drawing up a bill. The actual results of the commissions offered a very wide spectrum of outcomes, from efficiency to inefficiency. The Royal commission for Ireland in 1833 proved politically impotent; the next one (1843) had its report denounced and resulted in a weak and permissive land bill in 1845. Some Royal commissions on working conditions in mines and textile factories in the 1830s and 1840s led to a series of laws. Other Commissions however are convened mainly to placate public opinion and their work was side-lined or ignored by government (Verdon, this volume). An historian, H. J. Hanham, stated that ‘the era of Royal Commissions during the last years of the nineteenth century was fertile in ideas but deficient in achievements’ (Cartwright, 1975: 39). Or as Schwartz puts it ‘English landed elite forestalled any legislative measures that would seriously undermine the concentration of wealth and political power under their command’ (Schwartz, this volume). The most successful seem to have been Danish and Dutch enquiries. The outcomes of the Dutch commission have been disputed by the historians, but Anton Schuurman proposes a new appraisal, stressing the role it played for framing agriculture as a national interest. The resulting legislation of 1899 in Denmark was in accordance with the Commission’s proposal. Nonetheless it gave rise to political criticism and Ingrid Henriksen concludes: ‘It would seem the 1894 enquiry had a legitimising function vis à vis the ensuing legislation rather than a function of gathering precise and objective information on the question of agricultural land and labour’. And this highlights the ultimate goals of enquiries. They appear to be a technique of government as a legislative activity: a means of negotiation or means of legitimation of a bill. As early as the 1830s, the Ottoman Empire used the inquiry and touring inspection as a means of negotiation with the population (Kaya, this volume). In the 1880s liberal governments in North Western Europe needed this form of negotiation before legal agrarian institutions could take over. A stimulating insight of the evolution of enquiries in the 1880s is given by the comparison of Nicola Verdon’s and Jonathan Liebowitz’s studies on Labour commissions in United Kingdom and France. In both cases a huge enquiry was given a wide remit of producing an account of the condition of labourers in every profession, including agriculture. The collected data look defective: questions were mainly answered by farmers and not by day-labourers; above all little or no attempt was made to analyse the material in a systematic manner. At the same period, working through the International Statistical Institute founded after the international Congress of statistics, Booth, Rowntree, Weber and other sociologists devised precise and painstaking methods. The two kinds of enquiries, academic

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The Age of monumental investigations

and politically engaged, now obviously diverged. While the previous enquiries attempted to improve scientific methods, both labour commissions were mostly concerned with political issues. ‘Those leading the government sought to use the inquiry as a way of holding onto the political support that was endangered by economic problems they did not know how to handle’ (Liebowitz, this volume). This is why they lacked any firm conclusions and recommendations (Verdon, this volume). Canada and Mexico give another insight. Both states did not possess a statistical service and really lacked information in spite of some attempts in Mexico. So the primary goal was to collect knowledge. It resulted in Ontario in speeding up the creation of the statistical office. On the other hand the intended result was to give a positive image of a modern country abroad. Ontario wanted to advertise its possibilities as a location for immigrants (Samson, this volume). Mexico wanted to show the high potential of agriculture that can attract foreign labourers and investors (Tortolero, this volume).

IV. Conclusion Ultimately what appears to be the main goal of those enquiries? Were they part of a ‘civilising process’ as stated Norbert Elias? We can ask whether questioning the rural dwellers contributed to their evolution, to their awareness and their challenging some of their practices. Unfortunately, this is not yet documented. But if we understand ‘civilising process’ in the sense of an improvement of administrative efficiency, it is sure that French and British methods were considered models of progress and of a civilised state. The present volume highlights the importance of transnational cultural transfers in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. Statistical methods and the needs of the Administration were discussed and adapted in each state according to their conception of state’s power, in a context of construction of the nation state. Further research should question the link of the nation states and the practice of enquiries. Were they an attempt of domestication of rural population, as stated by James Scott (Scott, 1998), or a mechanism used by the elite to explain and contain social disorder, as Charles Tilly argues? (Tilly, 1984) The case studies gathered here lead to a qualification of both these statements. The goals were multiple and varied from period to period. However, if we take the French and British cases it is possible to present a 3-stage model of the rural state enquiry. The eighteenth century saw the birth of statistical enquiries with a twofold concern: on the one hand a concern about the links between state and statistics, how 36

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to conciliate the state power and civil liberties, and on the other hand a thought on the methodology of the collection and the recording of the documentation. By the turn of the century there were still uncertainty between the old idea of secret data used by the government for fiscal and police purposes and a new conception of a knowledge that should be accessible to every citizen. The middle of the nineteenth century, 1830–1870, was the time when social concerns became overwhelming and induced the need for ‘moral statistics’. Every government felt this need, be it representative or not (as we saw the Ottoman Empire). Enquiries were a means of a government; they had to enlighten government and parliament in their task of drawing up legislation. They also fulfilled the dream of providing a reliable, neutral and encyclopaedic knowledge in the context of scientific developments such as positivist philosophy, sociological investigation, and the improvement of statistical methodology. The international congress of statistics intensely debated methodologies and ethical aspects. The collected data had to be useful to everyone: the publication of thousands of pages proves it. Enquiries were to contribute to the progress of humanity through education and economic development, in the line with Bentham or Saint Simon’s ideas. Gradually as statistical documentation grew better, as governments used an increasing number of experts, enquiries became a kind of opinion poll, a means for politicians to prove their interest to citizens. At the end of the century the enlarged franchise enabled citizens to voice their opinion. So enquiries became purely a means of management, of negotiation between government and professionals, until the moment the trade unions became legal interlocutors. State inquiries now diverged from sociological enquiries. In spite of cooperation in the international congress, the methodologies used in different countries did not standardise. The heart of the nineteenth century was the golden age of state enquiries. Inspired by the nascent sociology, they fulfilled the desire for scientific knowledge accessible to everyone and the search for innovative solutions for the improvement of agriculture and rural life. Beyond all doubt they succeeded on the first point and they have left the modern-day historian with a great body of evidence to investigate.

Bibliography Afton, Bethanie & Turner, Michael (2000), ‘The statistical base of agricultural performance in England and Wales’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. VII, Cambridge University Press, p. 1757–2139. Beaud, Jean-Pierre & Prévost, Jean-Guy (dir.) (2000), L’Ère du chiffre/ The Age of Numbers. Systèmes statistiques et traditions nationales/ Statistical Systems and National Traditions, Sainte Foy, Presses de l’Université du Québec. 37

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Desrosières, Alain (1993), La Politique des grands nombres: histoire de la raison statistique, Paris, La Découverte. Dicey, Albert Venn (1905), Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century, London, Macmillan and Co. Englander, David & O’Day, Rosemary (eds) (1995), Retrieved Riches: Social Investigation in Britain 1840–1914, Aldershot, Scolar press, Brookfield (Vt.), Ashgate. Freeman, Mark (2003), Social Investigation and Rural England, 1870–1914, Woodbridge, The Royal Historical Society, The Boydell Press. Gauvard, Claude (ed.) (2010), Quand gouverner c’est enquêter. Les pratiques politiques de l’enquête princière, Occident, xiiie-xive siècles, actes du colloque international d’Aix en Provence, 2009, Paris, De Boccard. Gille, Bertrand (1964), Sources statistiques de l’histoire de France, Genève, Droz. Güran, Tevfik (ed.) (1997), Agricultural Statistics of Turkey during the Ottoman Period 1909, 1913 and 1914, Ankara, State Institute of Statistics. Hoppit, Julian (1993), ‘Political Arithmetic in Eighteenth-Century England’, Economic History Review, 49, 3, p. 516–540. Inalcik, Halil & Pamuk, Şevket (eds.) (2001), Data and Statistics in the Ottoman Empire, Ankara, State Institute of Statistics. Innes, Joanna (2009), ‘Power and Happiness: empirical social enquiry in Britain, from “political arithmetic” to “moral statistics”’, in Joanna Innes, Inferior Politics: Social Problems and Social Policies in eighteenth-century Britain, Oxford – New York, Oxford University Press. K aya, Alp Yücel (2008), ‘Politique de l’enregistrement de la richesse économique: opposition et négociation dans l’Empire ottoman et en France (1830–1860)’, in Jean-Claude Caron et al. (eds), Entre violence et conciliation, la résolution des conflits socio-politiques en Europe au xixe siècle, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, p. 151–159 Kaya, Alp Yücel (2005), Politique de l’enregistrement de la richesse économique: les enquêtes fiscales et agricoles de l’Empire ottoman et de la France au milieu du xixe siècle, Thèse EHESS, Paris, 537 p. Kuisel, Richard F. (1981), Capitalism and the State in Modern France: Renovation and Economic Management in the Twentieth Century, London – New York – Melbourne, Cambridge University Press. Laborier, Pascale & Frédéric Audren (eds) (2011), Les Sciences camérales: activités pratiques et histoire des dispositifs publics, colloque, Amiens, 2004, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France.

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Le Play, Frédéric (1855), Ouvriers européens. Études sur les travaux, la vie domestique et la condition morale des populations ouvrières de l’Europe, Paris, Imprimerie impériale. Le Play, Frédéric (1857), Paysans en communauté du Lavedan (Hautes-Pyrénées, France). Propriétaires-ouvriers dans le système du travail sans engagements, Paris, Société internationale. Leclerc, Gérard (1979), L’Observation de l’homme: une histoire des enquêtes sociales, Paris, Éditions du Seuil. MacDonagh, Oliver (1958), ‘The Nineteenth Century Revolution in Government: A Reappraisal’, Historical Journal, 1, p. 52–67. MacLeod, Roy (ed.) (1988), Government and Expertise: Specialists, Administrators and Professionals: 1860–1919, Cambridge – New York – New Rochelle [etc.], Cambridge University Press. Marache, Corinne & Vivier, Nadine (eds) (2013), ‘L’État et les sociétés rurales: enquêtes agricoles, enquêteurs et enquêtés en Europe du Sud aux xixe et xxe siècles’, Annales du Midi, oct-déc 2013, t. 125, n° 284, p. 5–82. Marache, Corinne (2013), ‘L’enquête Brard. Un état des lieux sur la vie dans les campagnes périgourdines dans les années 1830’, Annales du Midi, oct-déc. 2013, t. 125, n° 284, p.23–36. Miaskowski, Alexander von (1885), ‘Über die landwirtschaftlichen Enquêten der Neuzeit und ihre Resultate’, Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltungs und Volkswirthschaft im Deutschen Reich 9, p 179–270. Minard, Philippe (2000), ‘Volonté de savoir et emprise de l’Etat. Aux origines de la statistique industrielle dans la France d’Ancien Régime’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, n°133, p. 63–72. Perrot, Jean-Claude (1977), L’Âge d’or de la statistique régionale française (an IV-1804), Paris, Société des Études Robespierristes. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (1851), Idée générale de la Révolution au xixe siècle, Paris, Garnier frères, Translated by John Beverly Robinson, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, London, Freedom Press, 1923. Rosanvallon, Pierre (1990), L’État en France. De 1789 à nos jours, Paris, Seuil. Rowntree, Seebohm B. (1910), Land and Labour: lessons from Belgium, London, Macmillan and Co. Rowntree, Seebohm B. & K endall, May (1913), How the Labourer Lives. A Study of the rural Labour Problem, London – Edinburgh – New York, Thomas Nelson and sons.

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Samuel, Raphael (ed.) (1975), Village Life and Labour, London – Boston, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Sandl, M. (1999), Ökonomie des Raumes: der kamerwissenschaftliche Entwurf der Staatswirtschaft im 18. Jahrhundert, Cologne, Böhlau. Scott, James (1998), Seeing like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven – London, Yale University Press. Tilly, Charles (1984), Big structures, Large Processes, Huge comparisons, New York, Russel Sage Foundation. Vivier, Nadine (2009), ‘European Agricultural Networks, 1750–1750’, in John Broad (ed.), A Common Agricultural Heritage? Revisiting French and British Rural Divergence, British Agricultural History Society, p. 23–35. Vivier, Nadine (ed.) (2008), State and Rural Societies, Turnhout, Brepols. Wilson, Adrian (ed.) (1993), Rethinking Social History: English Society, 1570–1920 and its Interpretation, Manchester – New York, Manchester University Press.

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2.

Inquiries or statistics? Agricultural surveys and methodological considerations in the nineteenth century Ute Schneider

In 1902 the Plenary Assembly of the German Council of Agriculture (Deutscher Landwirtschaftsrat) spoke out in favor of keeping ongoing statistics on agrarian properties: changes in possession, debts, and land prices. This decision moved F.W. Rudolph Zimmermann, the President of the Agricultural Chamber in Brunswick, to thoroughly examine statistical surveys in the Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft (Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, the modern English title since 1986; the journal’s focus has, however, by far transcended mere economic issues). Zimmermann’s account had a broad temporal and geographical scope and in it he dealt intensively with the type of statistics required by the assembly (he viewed these as a particular aspect of agricultural statistics), their development and distinct forms in the German Empire. Zimmermann first exhaustively appraised the information requested by the Council of Agriculture and the specific opportunities and results of statistical surveys as well as the particular methodological difficulties agricultural statistics poses. He then came to the conclusion that the ‘depiction of the situation’ that the Council expected represented a ‘transition to the inquiry’ (Zimmermann, 1904b: 295). Accordingly, he addressed the particularities of agricultural inquiries in Germany and abroad in the fourth and final section of his treatise. Even though he emphasised that there were overlaps between statistics and inquiries (section 1), he still attempted to establish formal and methodological distinctions between the two types of surveys. One of the central differences he pointed out was temporal scope; he thought that statistical surveys could only provide insights over long periods of time, whereas inquiries allowed instantaneous insight into a situation, albeit spatially and thematically limited (Zimmermann, 1905). Twenty years later Friedrich Zahn, President of the Bavarian Statistical Office, also addressed these two types of surveys in a speech and said that statistical surveys gathered information on a ‘subject area in its entirety, generally and numerically’ and that inquiries examined a subject area ‘partly and in manner that individualises’ (Miaskowski, 1885; Zahn, 1927: 1). A further significant distinction in the survey methods for both Zimmermann and Zahn was that they were convinced that only the inquiry allowed for political ‘regulatory correctives’ (Zimmermann, 1905: 667).

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Even if both statistics and inquiries appeared to have common roots, Great Britain and France had the most experience in carrying out inquiries. During the course of the nineteenth century, other European states adopted the British and French variants of this model and Zimmermann concluded that it was ascertainable that inquiries were subject to a continuous process of development. This development was not based on practical experience alone, but rather to a great extent on numerous scientific debates, not least of which was Zimmermann’s response to the demands of the Council of Agriculture. As in Germany, many other European countries were addressing similar considerations that were taking place in a variety of places and institutions, in academic journals and statistical societies, institutes, and government agencies, to name but a few. Interest in statistical data was not limited to agricultural issues, however. The thirst for knowledge covered nearly all aspects of life, from health issues to the dwelling and working situation including income all the way to industry and business. The background for this ‘scientification of the social’, a term Lutz Raphael coined for this process, was formed by the political and economic changes in the wake of the French Revolution and of Industrialisation, and coming to terms with these called for knowledge of both the population and the respective problematic situations. On the one hand, statistical methods made categorising possible, on the other hand, they created comparable information as a basis for political action. For a great number of institutions, including since 1873 the Verein für Socialpolitik [Association for Social Politics], whose surveys induced Max Weber to perform his intensive methodological reflections, aimed at political action based on the knowledge gained (Weber, 1984; Weber, 1993; Scott, 1998: 25–32; Joyce, 2002). A remarkable characteristic of these debates was the extent to which they were international, not merely limited to academic references and quotations. Rather, there was a great deal of personal communication and many international meetings. To the current day, little research has been done on the International Statistical Congresses, which were ‘traveling congresses’ held in different European capitals between 1853 and 1876, and which were extraordinarily important in their time (Ficker, Toggenburg-Sargans et al., 1858: 4). These were not merely events of knowledge transfer where surveys and their results were reviewed, but also meetings where resolutions on methodology and norms were drafted in order to facilitate and simplify international comparisons. The ability to compare results, internationally and nationally over time, was one of the characteristics and expectations of these survey methods, whether statistical studies or fuller inquiries. For the initiators and participants of these congresses, it was self-evident that creating and ultimately establishing criteria for comparison was the central purpose of the meetings (Heintz, 2007; Heintz and Werron, 2011). 44

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Methodological debates on categorisations and norms to distinguish between agricultural inquiries and agricultural statistics were on the agenda of these congresses from the very beginning. Because it was precisely these inquiries, based on qualitative survey methods and characterised by a nearly narrative structure, which presented scientists with different and in part completely new problems regarding their validity and credibility. The debates, will be argued, were embedded in an area of tension between politics and the sciences and were the expression of theoretical, academic considerations of varying methods of surveying in terms of their scientific legitimacy and ‘objectivity’.

I.  Statistics and inquiries in the light of research In contradistinction to the Statistical Congresses on agriculture, the history of statistics is a well-researched area in the history of science. Counting, measuring and quantifying as methods of attaining knowledge have received considerable attention in historical enquiry since the second half of the twentieth century, surpassing sparse earlier research in the field. One strand of research focuses on the history of statistics as a science. Apart from key persons, the issues in the foreground here are theoretical questions and methodological debates about probability and representativeness, not least in terms of collecting social data. Recent publications in this field address epistemological concerns and the acquisition and processing of knowledge (Porter, 1986; Stigler, 1986; Porter, 1995; Wise, 1995; Poovey, 1998; Stigler, 1999; Desrosières, 2000). The other strand of research focuses primarily on the surveys themselves and the use of knowledge gleaned for national and imperial organisation and formation in economic and socio-political terms (Joyce, 2002; Hirschhausen, 2011). Zimmermann’s initial distinctions between statistics and inquiries and the resultant intensive debates and scientific studies are rarely accounted for in this recent research. In several studies, inquiries are simply subsumed into statistics but are largely ignored in a majority of studies.1 In his accounts, Zimmermann himself offered a possible explanation for the fact that these distinctions have been ignored. Zimmermann wrote that the results of statistics are ‘always completely objective [sic!] and absolutely fixed, because they are based on direct counting and measurement and the gathering of specific information in its totality.’ In contrast, the selection procedure used for inquiries ‘always [led to] subjective [sic!] judgment.’ (Zimmermann, 1905: 667–668). He said further that inquiries had been ‘written off as an unscientific accessory’ with the scientific advance of statistics in the   A History of Inquiries has, as far as I know, yet to be written. For medieval developments, see: Claude Gauvard, 2010.

1

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eighteenth century, but that they had still continued to develop in the nineteenth century, particularly in England and France. However, according to Zimmermann, German scientists, no less, had been attempting ‘to assert the predominance of objectivity’ since the second half of the nineteenth century. Thus they had succeeded in ‘elevating inquiries from an empirical to a scientific form of exploring existing conditions’ and had ‘brought [them] closer to statistics.’ The inquiry was on the verge of ‘establishing, for the first time, a sense of scientific legitimacy equivalent to that of statistics.’ (Zimmermann, 1905: 673). In other words, the nineteenth century was evidently marked by considerable attempts to heighten the scientific status of inquiries and thus also the status of their results. This heighten status took place to no small extent through the development and standardisation of categories and classification systems in order to facilitate commensurable results. The development of classifications provides a link of sorts to the two strands of research mentioned above and has been a subject of research since the 1970’, especially on industrial, social, and health-related classifications and their national particularities (Guibert, Laganier et al., 1971; Desrosières, 2000: 264–309; Ciosáin, 2010). One of the central insights today is the knowledge that all classification systems are dependent on the perceptions and experiences of their time, which at the same time are reinforced through categorisations. Debates about classification systems and categorical changes also mirror the perceptions and experiences of historically-located participants. This is how disputes about forms of surveying (statistics or inquiries) and also about categories and norms can provide insight into perceptions, problems and means of dealing with agriculture and historically located attempts to describe the agricultural world. Indeed in the nineteenth century there were diverse places and opportunities to develop the terminology necessary to carry out methodological debates. In terms of the inquiry, the Statistical Congresses took on a significant role, and agricultural inquiries were the subject of particularly intensive debates at the first congresses.

II.  The Statistical Congresses In 1853, the first Statistical Congress took place in Brussels on the initiative of the Belgian Central Committee for Statistics. Adolphe Quetélet had held exploratory talks in London in 1851, but the initial date for the first congress (spring 1852) had to be postponed one year for political reasons. Apart from the Belgians, delegations from 25 primarily European nations took part; the United States also sent a delegation made up of academics and representatives from national statistical bureaus.

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To name just a few who were in attendance: Robert von Mohl, C.F. Wilhelm Dieterici, Ernst Engel, Leopold Ranke and Johannes Fallati were members of the German delegation, while Edwin Chadwick, William Farr and William Whewell represented Great Britain; Alfred Legoyt was part of the French delegation (Congress, 1853: 7–15; Meitzen, 1886: 54; Menges, 1960: 41–44). Eight further conferences followed this first event and took place primarily in European capitals in two to four year cycles. The final conference took place in Pest in 1876. The international meetings lost significance as attention shifted to national and sub-disciplinary conferences as a result of advancing scientific professionalism and the concomitant institutional expansion in European states. Furthermore, one of the demands that had been repeatedly voiced earlier was met in 1885: the founding of the International Statistical Institute in London, a permanent international institution with its own publication dedicated to international knowledge transfer (Nixon, 1960). At the very first congress, Quetélet had already clearly stated that the goals of the congress included the advancement of statistics in general and the personal exchange of views among scientists. However, the most significant of his concerns was standardising statistical methods to facilitate international comparison. To do so, standardising terms and improving and creating common categorisations were necessary ‘so as to comprise the largest number of ideas, and to bring together a greater multitude of facts from which to deduce relations and laws. […] Without this power of comparison, there could in fact, be no progress expected in the science of observation’ (Congress, 1853: 21; Brown, 1854: 104, 106). This demand to standardise the language, categories and methods of statistics to facilitate international exchange was to remain a key issue at the following congresses, in opening speeches, and in an increasing number of discussions and special committees. At the first congresses heated debates were held particularly in the committee on economic and agricultural issues. The problem of methodology and categorisation followed from debates about the differences between inquiries and statistics; arguments about these issues were quite emotional and were often based on structural differences in national political and economic systems.

III.  ‘Statistical Inquiries’ Johannes Fallati (1809–1855), a lawyer from Tübingen and Professor of Political History and Statistics, was one of the German participants at the congress in Brussels. He was well-respected internationally as an expert in the field and had been admitted as a foreign member of the Statistical Society of London in 1841, which

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regularly supplied him information and reports from principal statistical publications and Parliamentary Documents (1841: 74). He entered the political stage in 1848 as a member of the Frankfurt Assembly and served briefly (until the government stepped down) as von Gagern’s Under-Secretary in the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Fallati traveled extensively in Europe and fell prey to a cholera epidemic and died in 1855 (Mohl, 1855; Weigel, 1988).2 As Fallati’s colleague and friend Robert von Mohl (1799–1875) emphasised in his eulogy, Fallati’s great achievements were his contributions to statistical methodology, his ‘heartfelt preoccupation with establishing a central statistical bureau for all of Germany’, and finally, his ‘conviction that the inquiry system was better suited to legislative procedures in Germany’. During his time in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, he had fought to establish inquiries in German politics (Mohl, 1855: 682–683). Through his keen observations and readings of international (European) publications and his memberships in several organisations, Fallati had great experience and broad knowledge. As early as 1846, he had already taken a comparative approach to the state of ‘practical statistics’ in a series of essays which suggested ways to improve the use of practical statistics in Germany (Fallati, 1846a and 1846b). He took up the subject of ‘statistical inquiries’ and characterised them as ‘temporary statistical surveys of certain circumstances carried out by special commissions’(Fallati, 1846b: 724). Inquiries, argued Fallati, could be distinguished from statistical surveys in terms of their frequency and methods and also in terms of personnel and form. In this regard, he placed particular focus on the survey commission. For Fallati, the composition of an inquiry commission was a significant distinguishing feature in contrast to conventional statistics; he felt it was important to staff such commissions with people who were not ‘state officials for statistics’. He spoke out in favor of carefully selecting the members of these commissions and based his considerations on the model common in England, where, starting in the 1830s, specific ‘Commissions of inquiry’ began to replace standing Parliamentary committees. As in England, so in Germany, ‘The selection of these men’, thought Fallati, should be ‘carried out according to the particular demands of the investigations at hand without being limited by public servants and political agendas’ (Fallati, 1846b: 727–730; Fallati, 1846a: 516–517). It was not at all his intention to deprive officials of their skills in the field of statistical surveying, but rather the potential of inquiries, he believed, were essentially their utilisation of ‘independent workers’, meaning ‘experts’ with a decent background in statistics, of whom there were few in Germany, he thought. By covering statistics in political 2

 

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science courses, Fallati believed, the interest of young men in this topic could be increased and, in the long term, could be ‘lured’ into joining a statistical society. Seeing that only few of the then existing societies were sufficiently ‘active’, he suggested founding a ‘Society of German Statistics’ that would meet regularly, as Germanist societies did at the time (Fallati, 1846a: 524, 545–555). Fallati’s linking of state and private commitment to the field of statistics, and inquiries in particular, was not only the result of his fascination with England but was also strongly connected to his political ideas and ultimately reflected in the survey methods he championed. For Fallati, the purpose of all statistics was the acquisition of information and knowledge in order to ‘build a stabile foundation for administrating and reforming social conditions’ (Fallati, 1846a: 500). However, he was convinced that obtaining information and producing knowledge were dependent upon oral testimony and transparency. These two conditions were, in Fallati’s view, the basic methodological principles of inquiries. He stated that ‘visual inspection, traveling, and interviews used extensively’ were of ‘utmost importance to the credibility’ of statistical surveys. In order to prevent the risk that citizens lie or refuse to take part in surveys, Fallati suggested that they be treated in ‘the most mild, unobtrusive and least offensive manner’ during interviews; only the public nature of this procedure was appropriate in order to build trust and eliminate mistrust in surveys (Fallati, 1846a: 525). In contrast to legal proceedings, however, documenting the results of the interviews was indispensable because only documented information facilitated ‘comparability of knowledge’(Fallati, 1846a: 519–520). Under no circumstances should this knowledge disappear in the files and archives of government agencies. While the process of obtaining information orally created a sense of public accountability in itself, Fallati also adamantly championed the publication of statistical results and open access to an inquiry’s archives. For, in his opinion, knowledge of the ‘facts’ of a state investigation alone gives the populace the opportunity to understand political and legislative decision making (Fallati, 1846a: 539–540; Fallati, 1846b: 727, 735, 752). As central rules of inquiries, oral testimony conducted in an open, fair manner were in keeping with ‘the principle of the constitutional state’, which Fallati advocated and which he sought to enact politically in 1848. In addition to this constitutional concern, his thought was primarily focused on methodological concerns, because the fundamental difference between inquiries and statistics was the inclusion of independent, non-governmental experts. Beyond this, he largely ignored questions regarding subject matter and categorisation. One reason for this 49

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was a lack of practical experience; in comparison to England, France, and Belgium, the German states had been remarkably uninterested in inquiries before the 1848 revolution. Germany’s European neighbors had already acquired experience with several forms of inquiries, including first approaches to carrying out agricultural inquiries. France (1840) and Belgium (1846) had led the way by conducting initial agricultural inquiries, which were not published or published only in parts because of their ‘inaccuracies’, but which formed the basis for the methodological debates of the 1850s (Congress, 1853: 400). In 1846 Fallati’s practical experience prompted his wish to meet and talk to experts, and in 1853 the opportunity to do so came to pass at the first congress in Brussels where the international effort to establish common standards got underway.

IV.  ‘Recensements agricoles’ (Agricultural Censuses) The problems of the different survey forms, statistical compilations and inquiries, were discussed in several committees at the first Statistical Congress in Brussels, and were well documented in individual reports and in the voluminous proceedings published after the congress (Congress, 1853; Fallati, 1853; Brown, 1854). In the second committee that addressed economic statistics those problems received particular attention. Moreover, heated debates took place on the issues of survey forms and personnel, raised earlier by Fallati had already addressed, and around how to specify the content in questionnaires, define categorisations, and treat the interrelationship of qualitative and quantitative methods. The debates about agricultural surveys became particularly controversial for two reasons. For one, even statistics experts had little experience in this field. As emphasised by the Belgian delegate, this specific form of statistical investigation, used for the first time in France in 1840, was something completely new and characterized by ‘gradual development’ and gathering experience (Congress, 1853: 400). Implementing this form internationally would be particularly difficult because it would require individual states to make substantial changes in the questionnaire and administrative procedure to eliminate international differences and local particularities. Further, a majority of the questions could not be answered in numbers and as one of the delegates emphasised in a lengthy statement, statistics are based on numbers (Congress, 1853: 400). These difficulties were mirrored in the terminological differences. The organising committee had suggested the term ‘recensements agricoles’ (agricultural censuses) as distinct from ‘statistique industrielle’ and ‘statistique commerciale’, which were both also negotiated in this committee. In the first plenary session all three concepts 50

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were subsumed into the term ‘statistics’, while the term ‘inquiry’ was used with increasing regularity in the course of the debates. The establishment of the term agricultural inquiry or some type of standardisation, however, cannot be assumed, since these problems were debated two years later at the congress in Paris, where all three of the terms above were used (Congress, 1853: 4, 24, 395–403; Legoyt, 1856: IX, 69–75). The methodological debates on carrying out agricultural surveys continued in a similar fashion. Controversial debates about a few critical questions erupted again, and a consensus could not be established in the voting process on these questions. Reflecting a lack of experience with agricultural surveys, there was no extant information to draw on as in criminal and trade statistics, that were based on verdicts and customs data respectively. Several states did not even have reliable land registries, which then became one of the fundamental demands on the statistical congresses (Congress, 1853: 389–390, 400). Yet another problem was presented by the form of the surveys. The planning commission of the congress had suggested following the Belgian model in carrying out agricultural surveys that required widely distributed questionnaires to farmers. The committee spoke out against this procedure because the extent of returns was unpredictable and the validity of answers could not be checked. In sum, this approach was deemed scientifically flawed and unsatisfactory for international comparison.3 With ‘reliable’ results in mind, the congress participants advocated that in the surveys the principle of using commissions made up of appropriate personnel was absolutely vital. Still, questions about what was meant by qualified personnel and how these people would be chosen led to heated debates rooted in experience and differing concepts of national administrative organisation. Several ideas and conflicts that had less to do with politics and national boundaries overlapped in regard to these questions. Thus, the fundamental problem was whether government officials, office-holders, or private persons should be appointed to this task. Several French delegates viewed the state as a guarantor of continuous, scientific surveys, and one Spanish delegate underlined the level and validity of data officials had been able to collect in areas he administrated (Congress, 1853: 399). Others spoke out in favor of voluntary, civic participation (élément civique) based on their experience in France (Congress, 1853: 402). For those in favor of civic participation, however, the question of competencies and pay arose. While the participants reached an agreement in terms of necessary qualifications in statistics, agriculture and administration, the question of pay led to a clear divide within the committee, which was confirmed in the voting records.   Even the Belgian deputy was convinced that ‘il est certain qu’on n’a pas obtenu la vérité’. (International Statistical Congress Belgium, 1853).

3

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A narrow majority of nineteen voted in favor of paying surveyors. Their argument was that pay alone could guarantee reliable results and that it facilitated access to and supervision of staff. On the other hand, the fifteen who voted against paying staff were concerned about immense costs and excessive strain on European budgets (Congress, 1853: 389, 395). Both advocates and opponents of the two sides argued that the populace presented a problem, because the people would never trust the state and would assume the surveys concealed ulterior fiscal motives. Opponents argued that the people were generally wary of strangers and that these private surveyors, unable to communicate confidentially (communications confidentielles) with local farmers and thus would hardly be able to find out ‘the truth’ (Congress, 1853: 394–397). The entire debate was coloured by a general mistrust of the rural population and worries about getting ‘true’ results. For a majority of the participants, the general difficulty facing agricultural inquiries was interacting with the agricultural population and their willingness to participate, a problem not encountered in industrial statistical surveys. Industrialists, they believed, were generally enlightened (éclairés) men who were willing to disclose information, not least because they relied on the state’s cooperation (Congress, 1853: 401). In the following years, debates about agricultural surveys were coloured by mistrust and the fear that inquiries could lead to unrest in rural areas. After the revolution of 1848 in the German states, many participants viewed Fallati’s desired transparency in inquiries with a more critical eye. Some even emphasised the danger that surveys could pose to the government in combination with crop failures (Congress, 1853: 398). Ultimately, the question of personnel remained unresolved in terms of a unified resolution and plan; in 1855, the participants in Paris were merely able to agree on surveys carried out by ‘commissaires enquêteurs’ (International Statistical Congress and Semenow, 1872: 70). At the London congress in 1860, the delegates added national differences in survey forms to their agreements, but nevertheless explained that unnecessary questions should not kindle the fears and sensitivities of farmers (Maestri, 1866: 10–11). Above and beyond the concessions made to acknowledge national difference, the scale and content of the questionnaires also remained a bone of contention and was a volatile point on the agenda in London. In essence, two fundamental issues were subject to debate. Despite the fact that there was no consensus on a common questionnaire (it had even been rejected in a previous resolution), Graf August

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Cieszkowski, an economist from Poznan, was able to push through his demand for a basic catalog of questions. This catalog included surveying land area, types of fertilisers, product values, and the number of agricultural workers. ‘If we do not define this bare minimum’, he added, ‘every country will ask whatever they want, and we won’t have any comparable statistics’. In this respect, he deemed agricultural inquiries in particular as extremely important (Congress, 1853: 403; Fallati, 1853: 50). While he practically used the terms ‘inquiries’ and ‘statistics’ as synonyms, others felt that the questionnaire raised a further serious difficulty in meeting the demand for comparability. Since the surveys aimed at collecting ‘complete information about agricultural conditions, work forms, and yields’, it was vital that the questionnaires included an appropriately broad ‘nomenclature’. The committee members did not want to reduce the proposals of the preparatory committee to the aforementioned ‘minimum’; these proposals included soil quality, natural phenomena, and tools. Among the reasons for this were significant national agricultural differences and the fact that the catalog of questions did not allow for ‘a uniform approach’. The committee determined that the majority of these questions were not of a statistical nature, since they were ‘impossible to denote numerically’; ‘Ils sont plutôt du domaine de la science’ (‘They were rather in the realm of general knowledge’). The congress participants, however, were in no way of the opinion that statistics was unscientific. Especially Quetélet was particularly devoted to improving the reputation of statistics as a science, and the goal of the 1853 congress was to establish statistics as such (Meitzen, 1886: 58–60, 75–76; Menges, 1960: 38–40; Porter, 1986: 7). However, for him and many of his colleagues, it was mathematical statistics that was ‘une statistique vraie, une statistique exacte’ and thus worthy of being called a science; his opinion was that quantification was one of the objectifying methods which defined an ‘exact’ science (Congress, 1853: 100, 104; Heintz, 2007: 67–68). The ambiguous nature of unquantifiable results could not be reconciled with this view of statistics and with the goal of the congress: comparability. The term inquiry to describe agricultural surveys and its classification as an ‘empirical science’ were partly consequences of this dilemma, since all participants were convinced that agricultural surveys were necessary. The first statistical congress in Brussels thus raised questions (already raised in contemporary discussions) that not only concerned the importance of agriculture and its changes in the nineteenth century, but also stimulated discussions of the best survey procedures in the years following the first congress. Survey methods and the

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realisation that there needs to be a distinction between qualitative and quantitative approaches were the focus of attention. This was reflected in the search for appropriate terms like census and demography and statistics and inquiry. Its clearest expression, however, was in categorisation, because quantifiable categories facilitated direct comparison in contrast to other categories which required further analytical steps to achieve comparability. These steps did not live up to the demands of scientific objectivity as it was viewed in the nineteenth century. The starting point of debates on statistics at the congresses was that this was self-evident. However, statistics was not an end in itself for representatives from the worlds of politics and economics, but rather remained connected to social conditions and problems; they did not lose sight of the inquiry as a survey form, and by exchanging their experiences and through their debates they helped contribute to its scientific image and standardisation. Even the debates at the first congresses indicate that all congress participants, by virtue of their experiences and scientific exchanges, were aware that an inquiry – provided that reasonable categories were established – was suitable, in contrast to mere statistics alone, for collecting information in the short term and applying it to political action. For the experts, political action did not on principle mean immediate intervention into individual areas of the agricultural sector, but rather – and this figure of argumentation has been around since the 1880s – the development of political concepts based on reliable information purged of contradictions (Miaskowski, 1885).

Sources International Statistical Congress Belgium. Commission générale de statistique (1853), Compte rendu des travaux du Congrès général de statistique: réuni à Bruxelles les 19, 20, 21, et 22 Septembre 1853, Bruxelles, M. Hayez. International Statistical Congress / P. de Semenow (1872), Compte-rendu général des travaux du Congrès International de Statistique: aus sessions de Bruxelles 1853, Paris 1855, Vienne 1857, Londres 1860, Berlin 1863, Florence 1867 et La Haye 1869, St.-Pétersbourg, Impr. de L’Académie Impériale des Sciences.

Bibliography Brown, Samuel (1854), ‘Report of the Proceedings at the Statistical Congress, held at Brussels, 19th to 22nd September, 1853’, The Assurance Magazine, and Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, 4 (2), p. 93–107. Desrosières, Alain (2000), La Politique des grands nombres. Histoire de la raison statistique, Paris, la Découverte. (German: Die Politik der großen Zahlen. Eine Geschichte der statistischen Denkweise, Berlin 2005, page numbers from German edition).

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Fallati, Johannes (1846a), ‘Gedanken über Mittel und Wege zu Hebung der praktischen Statistik, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Deutschland’, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 3(3), p. 496–557. Fallati, Johannes (1846b), ‘Einige Mittheilungen über die Einrichtung statistischer Enquêten in England, Frankreich und Belgien, mit einer Schlussanwendung auf den deutschen Zollverein’, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 3(4), p. 724–752. Fallati, Johannes (1853), ‘Der statistische Congress in Brüssel’, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft / Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 9 (3/4), p. 626–710 (offprint edition with varying page numeration). Ficker, Adolf, von Toggenburg-Sargans, Georg et al. (1858), Rechenschafts-Bericht über die dritte Versammlung des internationalen Congresses für Statistik, abgehalten zu Wien vom 31. August bis 5. September 1857 veröffentlicht über Anordnung … des Ministers für Handel, Gewerbe und öffentliche Bauten Georg Ritter von Toggenburg unter Leitung des Congress-Präsidenten Karl Freiherrn von Czoernig: mit 2 Tafeln, Wien. Gauvard, Claude (ed.) (2010), Quand gouverner c’est enquêter. Les pratiques politiques de l’enquête princière, Occident, xiiie-xive siècles, Actes du colloque international d’Aix en Provence, 2009, Paris, De Boccard. Guibert, Bernard, Laganier, Jean et al. (1971), ‘Essai sur les nomenclatures industrielles’, Économie et statistique, 20, p. 23–36. Heintz, Bettina (2007), Zahlen, Wissen, Objektivität: Wissenschaftssoziologische Perspektiven. Zahlenwerk Kalkulation, Organisation und Gesellschaft, A. Mennicken and H. Vollmer. Wiesbaden, VS, Verl. für Sozialwiss., p. 65–85. Heintz, Bettina & Werron, Tobias (2011), ‘Wie ist Globalisierung möglich? Zur Entstehung globaler Vergleichshorizonte am Beispiel von Wissenschaft und Sport’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 63, p. 359–394. Hirschhausen, Ulrike von (2011), ‘People that Count – The Imperial Census in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth Century Europe and India’, in J. Leonhard & U. v. Hirschhausen, Comparing Empires. Encounters and Transfers in the Long Nineteenth Century, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, p. 145–170. Joyce, Patrick, (ed.) (2002), The Social in Question. New Bearings in History and the Social Sciences, London, Routledge. Legoyt, A. (1856), Compte rendu de la deuxième session du Congrès International de Statistique réuni à Paris les 10, 12, 13, 14 et 15 septembre 1855, Impr. de Mme veuve Bouchard-Huzard. Maestri, P. (1866), Compte-rendu général des travaux du Congrès international de statistique dans ses sessions de Bruxelles, Impr. de G. Barbèra. Meitzen, A. (1886), Geschichte, Theorie und Technik der Statistik, J. G. Cotta.

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Menges, Günter (1960), ‘Versuch einer Geschichte der internationalen Statistik von ihren Vorläufern im Altertum bis zur Entstehung des Völkerbundes’, Statistical Papers, 1 (1), p. 22–64. Miaskowski, A. von (1885), ‘Über die landwirtschaftlichen Enquêten der Neuzeit und ihre Resultate’, Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltungs und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reich, 9, p. 179–270. Mohl, R. (1855), ‘Johannes Fallati’, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 11 (3/4), p. 669–686. Nixon, James W. (1960), A History of the International Statistical Institute: 1885–1960, The Hague, International Statistic Inst. Ó Ciosáin, Niall (2010), ‘The Poor Inquiry and Irish Society? A Consensus Theory of Truth’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Sixth Series), 20, p. 127–139. Poovey, Mary (1998), A History of the Modern Fact. Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society, Chicago-London, University of Chicago Press. Porter, Theodore M. (1986), The Rise of Statistical Thinking. 1820–1900, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Porter, Theodore M. (1995), Trust in Numbers: the Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Scott, James C. (1998), Seeing like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven u.a., Yale University Press. ‘Seventh Annual Report of the Council of the Statistical Society of London’ (1841), Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 4 (1), p. 69–75. Stigler, Stephen M. (1986), The History of Statistics. The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900, Cambridge, Mass., Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Stigler, Stephen M. (1999), Statistics on the Table. The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. Weber, Max (1984), Gesamtausgabe Abt. 1 Schriften und Reden Bd. 3 Die Lage der Landarbeiter im ostelbischen Deutschland: 1892 Halbbd. 1 […], Tübingen, Mohr. Weber, Max (1993), Gesamtausgabe Abt. 1 Schriften und Reden Bd. 4 Landarbeiterfrage, Nationalstaat und Volkswirtschaftspolitik: Schriften und Reden 1892–1899 Halbbd. 1 […], Tübingen, Mohr. Weigel, Harald (1988), Adelbert Keller und Johannes Fallati als Leiter der Tübinger Universitätsbibliothek (1844–1855), Tübingen, Mohr. Wise, M. Norton (1995), The Values of Precision, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Zahn, Friedrich (1927), Statistik und Enquête, Le Caire.

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Zimmermann, F. W. Rudolf (1904a), ‘Zur Frage der Besitzwechsel-, Hypothekar-, sowie Bodenpreis- und Bodenwertstatistik. i. Der derzeitige Stand der fraglichen Statistiken im Deutschen Reich’, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 60, p. 37–102. Zimmermann, F. W. Rudolf (1904b), ‘Zur Frage der Besitzwechsel-, Hypothekar-, sowie Bodenpreis- und Bodenwertstatistik. ii. Die besonderen Schwierigkeiten für die fraglichen Statistiken’, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 60, p. 269–328. Zimmermann, F. W. Rudolf (1904c), ‘Zur Frage der Besitzwechsel-, Hypothekar-, sowie Bodenpreis- und Bodenwertstatistik. iii. Die objektive Möglichkeit einer Berücksichtiigung der Einzelmomente in den fraglichen Statistiken’, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 60, p. 666–727. Zimmermann, F. W. Rudolf (1905), ‘Zur Frage der Besitzwechsel-, Hypothekar-, sowie Bodenpreis- und Bodenwertstatistik. iv. Verwendbarkeit der Enquete als Ersatz oder neben der Statistik auf den fraglichen Gebieten’, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 61, p. 659–706.

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The development of official knowledge about Irish rural society in the nineteenth century Peter Gray

Official inquiries into the state of rural society began early in the case of Ireland, reflecting both the growing centralisation and interventionism of the colonial state in the nineteenth century, and the widespread perception (at least after 1829) that the problems of underdeveloped agriculture and strained tenurial relationships were the root causes of the agrarian, political and religious agitations that preoccupied British government in Ireland for much of the century. With the exception of the north-east corner of the island, Ireland remained a predominantly rural society throughout the century, with high dependency on agricultural production for both subsistence and export. The risks of overdependence on a single subsistence crop, the potato, were cruelly exposed during the Great Famine of 1845–51, and although a social catastrophe on this scale was rarely envisaged before 1845, strong connections between endemic poverty and Irish agricultural structures and practices had been posited in the previous decades and motivated the commissioning of two major social inquiries in the 1830s and 1840s. The related politicisation of the ‘land question’ in Ireland, which took shape amidst the O’Connellite agitations of those decades, intensified in the post-Famine decades of the 1860–80s, giving rise to further major inquiries on the eve and in the early years of the Irish ‘Land War’ of 1879–82. This paper investigates the motivations, methodologies and outcomes of the four principal Irish social inquiries of this era, the Poor Inquiry Commission (1833–6), the Devon Commission (1843–5), the Richmond Commission (1879–81) and the Bessborough Commission (1880–81). This paper will argue that each of these enquiries embodied as series of tensions – between political expediency and social-scientific objectivity; between pre-determined and often ideologically moulded conclusions and social revelation; between the interests of a state that was both liberal and colonial, and the conflicting interests of the colonial landed elite, and an increasingly homogenous (if never uniform) rural population.

I.  The Poor Inquiry Commission of 1833–36 Although ostensibly established to investigate the desirability of a poor law for Ireland, the Poor Inquiry Commission of 1833–36 was given an extremely wide remit

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to uncover the causes of Irish poverty, and significant attention was given to land lord-tenant relations, agricultural practices and wages and related matters. It became, in effect, a general and large-scale official inquiry into the social state of the island, and its masses of published evidence – filling five volumes of parliamentary ‘blue books’ comprising over 5000 pages of text and figures – remain a treasure for social and economic historians of modern Ireland. I.1.  The genesis of the commission The genesis of the commission arose from a combination of longer-term institutional and shorter-term political considerations. Following the Anglo-Irish Act of Union in 1800, which formally absorbed Ireland into the United Kingdom, but retained a colonial form of executive for the island at Dublin Castle, British politicians became increasingly conscious of the problems of Ireland. While the political and security issues associated with the development of Irish nationalism always took priority, these were frequently related to the perceived socio-economic underdevelopment of the island; a tendency that became more marked in the wake of the end of the French wars in 1815, the subsequent economic crisis in lreland, and a perception of growing divergence in the developmental pathways of Ireland and Great Britain. Increasingly distrustful of the Irish landed elite, from 1815 (and especially from 1830), British governments oversaw the expansion of the central state in Ireland into a much wider range of fields than in Great Britain – including elementary education, public works, policing and law enforcement and public welfare. Accompanying this extension of interventionist state activity was the development of intelligence gathering by Dublin Castle agencies into Irish social and economic conditions. Some of the mechanisms adopted, such as the census (introduced to Ireland in 1821) and the Ordnance Survey mapping (1824) paralleled British developments, but acquired specific Irish remits and agendas. Others – such as the use of the national Irish Constabulary (1836) for reporting socioeconomic data as well as crime figures, and the introduction of annual returns on agricultural crops and livestock (from 1847 – compiled by the Inquiry Commission) were pioneering, at least in an insular context. Alongside these systematic surveys, government also periodically initiated ad hoc inquiries into specific social questions, commonly in the form of Royal Commissions. These, as we shall see, were much more heavily politicised exercises which, while often producing large quantities of useful social information, were usually established in response to specific political crises and constructed in such a way as to produce a desired set of policy recommendations (although this was not always successful). 60

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The Poor Inquiry Commission, sometimes styled the ‘Whately Commission’ after its chair, Archbishop Richard Whately of Dublin, is a case in point. In the early 1830s British government came under increased pressure to address the ‘crisis of poverty’ in Ireland. This pressure had multiple causes: the concession of Catholic emancipation in 1829 had failed to produce the anticipated effect of dampening agitation in Ireland – instead the country was racked from 1831 by new ‘tithe war’ agitation that drew attention not only to continuing Catholic grievances but the distressed social conditions of the Irish countryside. A combination of a western mini-famine in 1831 and the cholera epidemic of 1832 focused attention on how little the country had progressed since the last major famine-fever crisis of 1822. The heavy increase of Irish rural migration to Great Britain (especially to lowland Scotland and Lancashire) from the mid-1820s provoked a noisy labour-protectionist reaction in Great Britain that demanded a poor law for Ireland to maintain the country’s paupers at home. Equally significant, a domestic campaign for an Irish poor law was gathering steam, having attracted the support (and petitioning energies) of large sections of the Catholic clergy and a number of popular politicians (for the context, Gray, 2009). Faced with the hostility of most political economists, and the bulk of Irish landowners and their political representatives, towards the creation of anything more than a minimalist poor law for Ireland, the Whig government in power in 1833 sought to avoid any legislative commitment. Although the administration had established a national education system and a national board of works for Ireland in 1831, senior ministers were generally skeptical towards extending welfare provision in a society deemed to be both materially and morally impoverished. At the same time, political expediency (especially at a time when Daniel O’Connell’s movement for Repeal of the Act of Union had made an electoral breakthrough in 1832) dictated that something must be seen to be done on the question. I.2.  The constitution of the Whately commission – May 1833 It was in this political context that the decision was taken in spring 1833 to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry ‘into the condition of the poorer classes in Ireland’. The announcement of its formation in May 1833, and its lengthy proceedings (drawn out over nearly three full years) bought political time for the administration – albeit at the cost of growing expressions of frustrations over its constantly delayed summative report. Indeed one newspaper had cynically warned in 1833 that ‘if skillfully managed, [such an inquiry] may last until the millennium’ (The Times, 4 May 1833). Its membership was also structured in such as way as to combine the appearance of bipartisanship with the reality of a loaded majority known to favour a particular policy outcome – namely that Ireland could only support the most limited 61

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of poor laws and that a combination of charitable voluntarism and state-assisted emigration and land improvement were preferable. The Commission’s chair Richard Whately, formerly professor of political economy at Oxford before his appointment to the Anglican see of Dublin and chairmanship of the new national education board in 1831, was reassured that the ‘working’ commissioners (John Corrie, William Battie Wrightson and later J.E. Bicheno and Anthony Blake) were ‘orthodox’ on the poor law question. Of the remaining six commissioners, two were ‘ornamental’ (representing the Catholic and Presbyterian churches), one – Fenton Hort – was a personal friend of Whately, and another, the Tory landowner James Naper, adopted the Whately line in return for the inclusion of (mostly cosmetic) recommendations on state assistance to land improvement. The remaining two commissioners (Lord Killeen and Charles Vignoles) dissented from the final report, although this made little impact. Whately, who was endowed with a domineering, if slightly eccentric personality, was determined from the start to stamp his personal vision on the project (Gray, 2009: 92–100). As part of a strategy of deflecting attention away from the narrow issue of whether or not Ireland should have an English-style poor law, the responsible ministers agreed with Whately that the scope of the Poor Inquiry should be as wide as possible, extending to the entire social condition of the island and its underlying causes. As a convinced Malthusian, Whately was anxious to accumulate sufficient evidence to demonstrate the overwhelming extent of Irish poverty and the causative role of rural population growth and the consequent low productivity of Irish agriculture in bringing this about. The remit of the inquiry was national, but in a country as overwhelmingly rural as Ireland it was inevitable that agricultural conditions should attract the bulk of the commission’s attention. Under the increasingly effective organisation of the Commission’s secretary, John Revans, written questionnaires were dispatched to notables and clergy in the 2000 or so parishes of lreland, and teams of assistant commissioners recruited to carry out public examinations of witnesses in a representative sample of localities. As replies to these missives began to come in, a fifty-one page booklet of instructions to the assistant commissioners was drawn up to direct their follow-up activities in the localities. The main sources are the First Report from His Majesty’s Commissioners for inquiring into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland, PP 1835 (369), xxxii. 1: viii; BL, Althorp Papers, Add MS 76,419A, Corrie to Drummond, 14 Nov. 1833; Instructions given by the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the State of the Poor in Ireland, to the Assistant Commissioners (n.d. [1833]) and Commission and Instructions, PP 1834 (175), xliii: 3–13. 62

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The great majority of the assistant commissioners were allocated the task of touring the localities of Ireland to expand on the written returns made in response to the commissioners’ queries. The methodology of investigation was to be socialscientific: assistant commissioners were to sample popular feeling through public meetings in one parish in each barony. They were instructed to be strictly impartial in collecting evidence, to avoid giving offence or endorsing any personal opinion, to encourage persons of opposite opinions to state their cases, and to record all proceedings in ‘a regular and minute journal’, abstracts from which would be regularly forwarded to Dublin. The categories for investigation were prescribed in some detail in the document, although the assistant commissioners were accorded flexibility in pursuing topics of local interest. Assistants were to review firstly the ‘circumstances which must have a general influence on the condition of the poorer classes’, including education, charitable institutions and almsgiving, benefit societies, loan funds, emigration, combinations, alcoholic consumption, pawnbroking, land lord-tenant relations and landholding, absenteeism, the judicial and penal system, local taxes and levies, and public works. Having done this, they were, secondly, to report on the actual condition of the poorer classes, both the ‘impotent poor’ and the ‘able-bodied’ (the latter sub-divided into five classes). Finally, the existing institutions for the relief of the poor were to be investigated (Commission and Instructions, PP 1834 (175), xliii: 2–10). These categories in themselves give an indication of the limitations of the ‘neutrality’ of the inquiry, and the predetermined palette in which it would depict Irish poverty. Nevertheless, within its own discursive parameters it did seek to prioritise the collection of not only the largest possible volume of material, but also the widest range of opinions about the problem under review, and record these with a relatively light degree of editorial intervention. This was to be an information-gathering exercise with a significantly wider remit than the English commission of 1832–33, or indeed any previous Irish inquiry. While the final policy recommendations may have been largely in the leading commissioners’ minds from the outset, they felt it important that the data collected should be as far as possible above public criticism; an authoritative body of evidence was likely to cast a glowing empirical aura around any proposals associated with it. I.3.  The innovative methodology of the Irish inquiry Revans subsequently promoted the Irish inquiry as a model for future investigations of the physical and moral conditions of the poor. A ‘ balanced’ set of questions had been attained by denying any commissioner the power of veto in preparing them. The obligation on assistant commissioners to report verbatim the evidence given, 63

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and insistence that all present be allowed to speak, was an advance on the English commission’s methodology. Most importantly of all, the poor themselves had been the focus of consultation; Revans commented that the best evidence came either from the poor themselves, or from those who are most near to them in circumstances, the small farmers; the farmers of six or eight acres; but so difficult is it for the persons of one class to know the circumstances of those of other classes, that even the small farmers were in many cases incapable of answering questions closely connected with the state of the labourers.

Such information, he concluded, was the only sound basis for any legislation affecting the working classes (Select Committee on the Education, Appendix, PP 1835 (465), vii. 763: 47–51). This commitment to both scale and depth was to ensure that the Whately Commission’s collection of evidence ultimately confounded those critics who argued that it could not add anything to what had previously been presented to parliament or ‘what could be furnished by any MP or peer of Ireland’ (BL, Althorp Papers, Add MS 76,419A, Thomas Conroy to Althorp, 18 May 1833). Other observers had, more reasonably, questioned whether, given the existing powerrelationships in the Irish countryside; any reliable information would be proffered by those in the lower rungs of the social pyramid. One Armagh correspondent warned: The knowledge you derive from public investigations is defective as the poor farmers are so much under the controul [sic] of their land lords that they dare not tell the truth, and the facts generally communicated through private channels are distorted by party feelings and interests. Unfortunately there are very few residents in Ireland whose motives are not governed by interest of party. They are connected with the oppressors, the oppressed, or are designing knaves who live by discord […] (SRO, Hatherton Papers, D/260/M/OI/2364, Daniel Dowling to Littleton, 16 Oct. 1833).

Given the fractured social, religious, and political nature of the country, this was a fair comment, and questions have subsequently been raised about both the balance and reliability of the Poor Inquiry Commission’s evidence. As one historian has noted, both the issue of the transcription (and often also the translation from Irish) of interview statements into ‘official’ English, and the public character of testimony, have to be taken into account in assessing the recorded evidence. However, these constraints were to some considerable degree counteracted by the ‘variety of opinions

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recorded, the extent of disagreement between witnesses, and the clear expression of different types of conflict within rural society’ (Ó Ciosain, 1996). One examination of witnesses, chosen at random, might serve to illustrate the range of persons whose voices were recorded. At Ballina in Co. Mayo, twenty-five witnesses appeared before the duo of assistant commissioners in public session. They comprised two gentlemen, seven men drawn from the middle classes (a merchant, two doctors, a constabulary officer, the Catholic and Protestant clergymen and a ‘classical teacher’), two farmers, nine labourers and a labourer’s widow, two beggars and two men described as ‘broken down’, presumably labourers afflicted by chronic ill health. Only three, the two beggars and the widow, were female, but the lion’s share of the recorded evidence on this occasion was given by the agricultural labourers Thady Carnan, James Browne and Pat Cooper. It seems that most assistant commissioners took seriously the view that the value of their returns would be enhanced by the range of perspectives recorded, and it is this that gives the Whately report evidence its particular character and historical value. The authority thus awarded to the voice of individuals from the lower classes caused some unease among Irish elites, especially when they criticised their social superiors in public ([Anon], 1836: 358). Assistant commissioners, working usually in pairs, began to arrive in the provinces from early 1834. In the interests of political balance, where possible, an Englishman was to be accompanied by one Catholic and one Protestant Irishman, although the latter was not always possible. Two assistants had the power to co-opt a third (also non-resident) member of each local team if they thought this appropriate, but were not to allow any local resident to participate in the interrogations. They were instructed to seek out and give equal attention to the testimony of individuals from all classes and creeds, which was to be given ‘in open court’ (First Report, 1835 (369), xxxii, 1). The local press in this instance gave the work its full support, expressing its ‘perfect confidence that everything will be investigated by the commissioners to the very source, so as to give satisfaction to all parties’ (Limerick Chronicle, 22 Feb. 1834). The reception of investigators elsewhere must have been to some extent dependent on the attitudes of local elites and their readiness to mediate between the officials and the populace. However, the support of most of the clergy of all denominations for the exercise (as manifested by the inclusion of their senior representatives on the commission’s board) must have smoothed the way in many localities. However, the particular deference shown by some assistant commissioners to the Catholic clergy aroused the ire of some Protestant commentators, and the commissioners were acutely aware that the intense political divisions dividing

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the clergy and resident proprietors, and the suspicion with which the constabulary was regarded by much of the populace, rendered reliance on such intermediary agents problematic ([Anon], 1836: 362; First Report: 1835 (369), xxxii, 1).1 The political outcome of the Whately commission will not detain us here. Sufficient to say that the Commission’s final third report was sabotaged by vocal criticism from its secretary John Revans, whose more interventionist interpretation of the evidence was relayed privately to ministers. An incoming government in 1835, with a significant change in personnel, took a different policy position from its predecessor and rejected Whately’s recommendations in favour of newly commissioned policy-focused reports from pro-poor law administrators including George Nicholls and George Cornewall Lewis. Thus the Poor Inquiry Commission proved politically impotent, but left a legacy of vast quantities of social data on Ireland, published in the ‘blue books’ and reaching a wider audience through shorter digests and press extracts.

II.  The Devon Commission, 1843–1845 A decade later, 1843, a second large-scale Royal Commission into Irish rural conditions was initiated, under the chairmanship of the 10th earl of Devon, an Irish landowner politically close to the Conservative PM, Sir Robert Peel. This Devon Commission, into the ‘law and practice in respect to the occupation of land in Ireland’, was more focused on the ‘land question’, but also took large amounts of evidence on the relationship between landholding and farming practice. II.1.  O’Connell demanding land reform Again, the principal stimulus behind the official inquiry was a combination of outdoors agitation in Ireland and parliamentary pressure at Westminster. In 1843 O’Connell’s Repeal Association initiated a mass participatory movement, drawing hundreds of thousands from town and country to outdoor ‘monster meetings’. Although the ostensible purpose of this was to extract Repeal of the Union from a hostile government by the manifest weight of ‘moral force’ (and the implicit threat of unrest should it be denied), O’Connell’s platform in 1843 incorporated a prominent (if not entirely coherent) demand for land reform in the shape of ‘fixity of tenure’, as part of his strategy to incorporate the rural masses into the movement. Other activists had sought to harness praedial unrest before (with some success in the 1790s), but the   However, c.f. the claim of a chief constable in Listowel, Co. Kerry, that the intermediary role played by the stipendiary magistrates and constabulary had ensured that accurate local information which would otherwise have been missed by the commissioners had been made available, (W. E. Brady, 1835: 11–12).

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bonding of agrarian reformism with constitutional nationalism that so characterised nineteenth-century Ireland effectively dates from the ‘Repeal Year’ agitation. This in turn was stimulated by a period of acute agricultural distress in 1839–43, structural immiseration in many parts of the country, and deteriorating landlord-tenant relations marked by a number of high-profile evictions and retaliatory violence on the part of peasant secret societies (Gray, 1999: 41–94). Peel’s government was aware of the agrarian underpinnings of the latest manifestation of O’Connellism and the threat it posed to the established order in Ireland; it was also firmly attached to the principle of upholding landed property rights and to a laissez-faire stance on Irish economic development. However, growing parliamentary pressure for some action on land legislation, from the opposition Whigs as well as Irish reformers such as William Sharman Crawford and William Smith O’Brien, and the political expediency of accompanying any coercion in Ireland with at least the appearance of remedial action, informed government thinking. Consequently, the home secretary James Graham concluded that a public inquiry would be desirable in the short term, to ‘open a distinct view of the causes of discontent in Ireland’ and express sympathy ‘for the sorrow of an entire people’, even though ‘the remedies are beyond the power of legislative power’ (Graham to Peel, 17 Oct. 1843, Peel papers Add Ms 40,449, fols 91–3). This desire that the commission have the appearance of non-partisanship and be seen to be fully concerned with social realities dictated (as in 1833) that its public character be above criticism. Devon himself was deemed sound on economic fundamentals, and indeed believed that ‘proper conduct on the part of individuals’ was the remedy for Irish agrarian ills; however he agreed that ‘a prudent commission’ could expose malpractice and ‘dissipate many errors, and perhaps assist you towards some little amendment of the law’ (Devon to Peel, 1 Sept. 1843, Peel Papers., Add Ms 40,533, fols 1–3; Devon to Eliot, 8 Sept. 1843, Graham, Papers, 5IR). Landowners were reassured by the appointment to the commission of G.A. Hamilton, a staunch Orangeman, and John Wynne, the owner of 28,000 acres in counties Sligo and Leitrim. Whig-Liberals were appeased by the addition of the liberal Protestant MP Sir Robert Ferguson, and the Catholic landowner (and later Irish under-secretary) Thomas Redington. The professional role of secretary went to John Pitt Kennedy, a political radical, expert on public works, progressive farmer and educator and later agent on Devon’s Co. Limerick estates. The commission was to inquire into the state of the law and practice of the occupation of land in Ireland, into local taxation, and to suggest any legal amendments, ‘which, having due regard to the due rights of property, may be calculated to encourage the cultivation of the soil, to extend a better system of agriculture, and to improve the relation 67

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between land lord and tenant in that part of our UK’ (Devon commission, part 1, HC 1845 [605], xix, 3). This order of priorities, implying the subordination of tenurial adjustment to the greater good of agricultural development, revealed the true intentions of government policy. The central problem of the commission in attracting public confidence in Ireland was soon identified by O’Connell: ‘[it] can be nothing more than a bubble. It is perfectly one-sided – all landlords and no tenants’ (O’Connell to FitzPatrick, 13 Dec. 1843, in O’Connell,1972: vii, 228). Yet, while attacking the commissioners as ‘a board of foxes deliberating gravely over a flock of geese’, he was still prepared to correspond with Lord Devon and give evidence before him (O’Connell to Mahony, 17 Dec. 1843, O’Connell to Ray, 15 Dec. 1843, in O’Connell, 1972: 231–2; Devon Commission, part 3, HC 1845 [657] xxi, 939–48). Where O’Connell led, the bulk of his supporters and clerical and lay allies followed, and the commission was thus accorded a limited degree of legitimacy in the Irish countryside, albeit with the establishment of a Repeal Association committee to shadow and criticise its operations and findings. (Report, 1845: ii, 296–9, 319–27) Ministers were pleasantly surprised by what they saw as the generally benign popular response and willingness to testify. II.2.  Results of the Devon Commission While O’Connell may have aspired to embody a ‘popular’ survey to subvert the official inquiry, he lacked the resources to do so. Meanwhile, the Devon commissioners undertook their investigations, spending much of 1844 amassing evidence. General information on the administration of landed estates was first taken by examination of assistant barristers, land agents and owners, and other ‘experts’ resident in Dublin. As in 1833, a series of questionnaires were then dispatched to clergymen and (an innovation) members of the new poor law boards of guardians. The queries thus issued to the localities included the state of local agriculture, the size and condition of farms, the levels and types of rent, the forms of tenure and prevalence of ‘tenant right’, the state of land improvement and ‘consolidation’, the condition of the farming population, and the charges on the land (Devon commission, part 1, p. 46–7. Letter no. 4). The commissioners then proceeded in summer-autumn 1844 to tour the country, travelling 3,126 miles, sitting in public session in 90 towns and examining 1,100 witnesses of all classes (although labourers, cottiers and smallholding farmers were poorly represented). Witnesses were chosen mostly by the corresponding guardians and clergy, but the commissioners insisted (as on the Poor Inquiry Commission model) of hearing all who tendered evidence, and

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published all that was recorded on oath at length in the blue books, ‘to avoid the dangers of a partial selection’ (Devon commission, part 5, Index, HC 1845 [673], xxii, p. 225–8). The Commission finally submitted its report to parliament in February 1845, supported by three massive volumes of evidence; as expected it pointed to the ‘unequivocal symptoms of improvement’ evident throughout the country (Devon commission, part 1, p. 12). The chief problem lay, they observed, in an absence of any corresponding advance in the comforts and conditions of the agricultural labourers, who remained dependent on casual and precarious employment, and who patiently endured sufferings worse than any similar class in Europe. A number of causes for this state of affairs was noticed: there were too few land lords, and many were heavily encumbered and hence unable to take responsibility for their tenantry’s welfare. Leases were rare and the country still suffered from the consequences of excessive subdivision by middlemen. Above all, the mutual distrust separating land lord and tenant prevented all classes from uniting their exertions for their cornmon benefit. The report suggested that the sweeping charges levelled by many against the land lord class were exaggerated, and that exposure to the censure of public opinion was the best check to the abuse of property rights. Farm consolidation was declared to be an economic imperative, although the clearances that such reorganisation required should be made in a ‘humane’ fashion, assisted by subsidised emigration and waste-land reclamation. Remedial legislation should be limited to facilitation of sales of encumbered estates (a measure realised in 1849); ‘fixity of tenure’ was rejected, although some mode of allowing ‘compensation for improvements’ mildly recommended. In general, the Devon report offered little to cottiers and labourers beyond appeals to landlord paternalism. Its defence of the institution of conacre (payment for labour through the grant of small plots for a single potato crop), albeit in an improved and regularised form, reflected an assumption that mass dependence on potato cultivation would continue to underlie Ireland’s economic structure for the foreseeable future. Made seven months before the first manifestation of the potato blight prefaced Ireland’s descent into the Great Famine, these assumptions, however understandable, were extraordinarily complacent. Predictably, the Devon report was denounced by O’Connell and his supporters for its landlordist bias and weakness of any recommendations on behalf of the occupying tenantry and labourers. Perhaps more surprisingly, element of English opinion were equally dismissive of the ‘cartload of cross-examinations’ produced, and the Times

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newspaper sent its own ‘commissioner’, Thomas Campbell Foster, to investigate the social condition of Ireland (Times, 21 Aug. 1845). The government’s failure to produce anything more than a weak and permissive land bill in the 1845 session further increased the negative fallout. Nevertheless, similar to the Poor Inquiry Commission, the principal significance of the Devon Commission lies not in its report, but in the masses of evidence it generated on the social condition of rural Ireland on the brink of the Great famine. Pitt Kennedy, who edited a popular ‘digest’ of the evidence for publication in 1847 (one that promoted the idea of land reclamation for small plots in a much more pronounced way than Devon himself), was appointed secretary of the first Famine relief commission in 1846 on the strength of the unparalleled knowledge of the Irish countryside he had acquired in 1843–5 (Kennedy, 1847–48). He was, however, no more successful than any other official in preserving the society captured by the Devon inquiry but swept away by the potato blight between 1845 and 1850.

III.  Two later Royal Commissions, 1879 and 1880 I will turn now, briefly, to consider two later Royal Commissions into rural Irish society. Despite, or perhaps even because of, the ravages of the Great Famine, no major inquiry into Irish rural conditions was conducted for the following thirty years, although from 1847 annual reports on agricultural production were published in the blue books (Returns, 1847: lvii, 1). Again, it took a major socio-political crisis to provoke not one, but two, major inquiries, established by successive governments. The Europe-wide downturn in agriculture, produced by poor harvests and growing American competition, began to affect the British Isles from 1877 and by 1879 was having an acute effect on farming incomes. As is weIl known, the consequence in Ireland was to provide the impetus for the outbreak of the first ‘Land War’, a mass agitation uniting tenant farmers, labourers, constitutional and revolutionary nationalists, and Irish-American fund-raisers under the banner of the Irish National Land League, led by Charles Stewart Parnell. III.1.  Disraeli’s inquiry into agricultural distress, 1879 The first response to the crisis was, however, not specific to Ireland. In 1879 Benjamin Disraeli’s Conservative administration instituted a general inquiry into agricultural distress throughout the UK, under the chairmanship of the ‘farmer’s friend’, the sixth duke of Richmond. The recommendations of this commission, made in 1881–2, were insubstantial, its principal purpose having been to mollify 70

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the English agricultural interest in a period of uncertainty (Thompson in Oxford Dictionnnary, 2004). Recognising the distinct social and political character of Ireland, the Commission instituted a specific inquiry under two nominated assistant commissioners, who issued a preliminary report confirming that parts of Ireland were approaching famine conditions in early 1880 (Royal Commission on Agriculture). The Commission’s report on Ireland, issued in January 1881 when the Land War was reaching its peak of intensity, was divisive. The majority report, signed by the Conservative members and the political economist Bonamy Price, cited its predecessor Lord Devon in observing that no legislation could accommodate differing situations in the various regions of Ireland. Although acknowledging that some (ill-defined) remedial legislation was desirable, they rejected the ‘3Fs’ of the Land League manifesto (Fair rent, Fixity of tenure, Free sale) and echoed Richard Whately’s Malthusian recommendation of assisted emigration to address what was seen as a fundamentally demographic problem.2 The six Liberal commissioners, headed by the former Irish secretary Lord Carlingford, issued a minority report, highlighting the cases of predatory landlordism found by the assistant commissioners and urging a modified enactment of the 3Fs. III.2.  Gladstone Royal Commission chaired by Bessborough Anticipating such an outcome and in the context of growing rural unrest in Ireland, the incoming Liberal government of William Gladstone had, in June 1880 instituted a second Royal Commission, ostensibly into the working of the 1870 Irish Land Act, under the chairmanship of the sixth earl of Bessborough (Matthew, 1995). Although better known as a cricketer and literary figure, Bessborough was the son of a popular Whig lord lieutenant, a Liberal, and had recently inherited one of the best run estates in Ireland (Pole, 2010). Although broadly-based, this Commission had a Liberal majority and was thus likely to produce a majority report more conducive for the government. Being a much more focused inquiry, the Bessborough commission did not use assistant commissioners, but a combination of written circulars and personal tours of localities to acquire evidence in open sessions; 700 witnesses were heard-including 80 landlords, 70 agents and 500 tenant farmers, along with assorted professionals (Bessborough Report) HC 1881 [C.2779], xviii: 1). Nearly 2000 pages of evidence in two volumes were produced in just over four months work – a much more speedy outcome than its predecessors. Simultaneously with the publication of the Richmond Commission’s Irish report, Lord Bessborough produced his conclusions at the start of the parliamentary session of January 1881. Not surprisingly, the majority report recommended further land legislation, but even Gladstone appears   Preliminary report from Her Majesty’s Commissioners on Agriculture, HC 1881 (C.2778). Price added a separate memorandum critiquing the ‘3Fs’ on orthodox laissez-faire grounds.

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to have been taken back by the enthusiasm with which they recommended the adoption into law of the Land League’s 3Fs (Matthew, 1995: 189, 192–3).3 In this case the prime minister, who had been hoping for more cautious recommendations, found his hand forced by the report he had commissioned, and the subsequent 1881 Irish Land Act was based squarely on the Bessborough recommendations and their historicist justification for further state intervention (Bull, 1996: 88–90; Dewey, 1974: 61–3). The issuing of a minority report critical of this significant assault on the rights of landed property, by the Co. Carlow landlord Arthur Kavanagh, and of a supplementary report by the Catholic Liberal land lord the O’Conor Don pressing for land purchase by the tenants in place of the unstable ‘joint-ownership’ proposed in 1881, made limited impact (Bessborough Report: 38–52, 55–64; Geoghegan & Kleinman, 2010).4 Irish landlord protests over what they regarded as the unfair treatment of improving landlords, and the neglect of the interests of agricultural labourers, lacked political leverage in the fevered context of that session, as Gladstone cited the minority report of the Richmond Commission, and the majority report of the Bessborough Commission, as his principal guides ([Anon], 1881; Gladstone, 1881). This paper has argued for the primacy of politics in instigating and shaping the recommendations of the principal Royal Commissions of Inquiry into the state of Irish rural society in the nineteenth century. This was perhaps inevitable, as the high political profiles of Royal Commissions – instituted by governments to address specific social problems that might attract legislative attention – marked them off from the more routine administrative surveys carried out on an annual or decadal cycle (although, as I have argued elsewhere, the Irish census reports were also not immune from the play of political agendas, and ideology could never be fully disassociated from intelligence gathering by a state in a colonial or quasi-colonial context) (Gray, 2010: 50–66). A criticism levelled more tellingly, by neo-liberal historians as much as by many nineteenth-century political economists, was that the political preoccupation with land tenure detracted from the more important issues of agricultural productivity and efficiency. More recent commentators however, such as Philip Bull and Cormac Ó Grada, have tended to reassert the significant relationship between tenure and productivity (Bull: 91, 183–7; Ó Grada, 1994: 255–64). Despite these limitations, the Royal Commissions nevertheless manifested two faces: the political, as represented in the reports of recommendations, and the   Matthew suggests that the ‘unexpectedly radical’ Bessborough report alarmed the Prime Minister, who looked (vainly) to the Richmond recommendations to countervail it. 4   An attempt to condense and compare the seven reports, minority reports and supplementary reports produced by the two commissions was published as Howard Hodgkin, 1881. 3

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sociological, comprising the thousands of pages of evidence, much of it transcripts of verbatim evidence of witnesses, drawn from a remarkably wide spectrum of Irish rural society. John Revans, the rather neglected secretary of the 1833–6 Poor Inquiry Commission, may be regarded as the pioneer of this form of social inquiry in Ireland. Without the rich legacy of the voluminous minutes of evidence produced by the inquiries, the history of Irish rural society in the nineteenth-century would be immeasurably the poorer.

Sources Bessborough Report, Report of HM Commissioners of Inquiry into the working of the landlord and tenant (lreland) act, 1870, HC 1881 [C. 2779]. BL, A1thorp Papers, Add MS 76, 419A. Classes in Ireland, PP 1835 (369), xxxii. 1. Commission and Instructions, PP 1834 (175). Devon Commission, part 1, HC 1845 [605], xix, 3. Devon Commission, part 3, HC 1845 [657] xxi, 939–48. Devon Commission, part 5, Index, HC 1845 [673], xxii, p. 225–8. First Report from His Majesty’s Commissioners for inquiring into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland, PP 1835 (369), xxxii, 1. Graham papers, 141R and 51R. Instructions given by the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the State of the Poor in Ireland, to the Assistant Commissioners (n.d. [1833]). Peel papers Add Ms 40, 449; Add Ms 40, 533. Preliminary Report from Her Majesty’s Commissioners on Agriculture, HC 1881 [C. 2778). Report of the Parliamentary Committee of the Loyal National Repeal Association of Ireland (2 vols, Dublin, 1845). Returns of agricultural produce in Ireland in the year 1847, HC 1847–48 [923], lvii, 1. Royal Commission on Agriculture. Preliminary Report of the Assistant Commissioners for Ireland HC 1881 [C.2951). Select Committee on the Education of the People of England and Wales, and Grants in Aid: Report, Minutes of Evidence. Appendix, PP 1835 (465). SRO, Hatherton Papers, D/260/M/OI/2364. 73

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Bibliography [Anon], (1836), ‘The State of the Irish Poor’, DUM, vii (April). [Anon], (1881), The Land Question, Ireland, No. Bessborough Commission, Dublin.

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Foregone Conclusions: the

Brady, W. E. (1835), A Letter and Suggestions for the Employment of the People, and the Amelioration of the Poor in Ireland, addressed to the Right Hon. Lord Morpeth, London. Bull, Philip (1996), Land, Politics and Nationalism: a Study of the Irish Land Question, Dublin, Gill & Macmillan. Dewey, Clive (1974), ‘Agrarian Legislation and the Celtic Revival: Historicist Implications of Gladstone’s Irish and Scottish Land Acts 1870–86’, Past & Present, 64, p. 61–3. Geoghegan, Patrick M. & K leinman, Sylvie (2010), ‘Kavanagh, Arthur Macmorrough’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Gladstone, W.E. (1881), The Irish Land Bill: Speech Delivered by the Rt. Hon. W.E. Gladstone in the House of Commons on his Motion Introducing the Land Law (lreland) Bill, April 7th 1881, London. Gray, Peter (1999), Famine, Land and Politics: British Government and Irish Society, 1843–50, Dublin, Irish Academic Press. Gray, Peter (2009), The Making of the Irish Poor Law, 1815–43, Manchester, Manchester University Press. Gray, Peter (2010), ‘Accounting for Catastrophe: William Wilde, the 1851 Irish Census and the Great Famine’, in Michael de Nie & Sean Farrell (eds), Power and Popular Culture in Modern Ireland, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, p. 50–66. Hodgkin, Howard (1881), Irish Land Legislation and the Royal Commissioners: a Summary of the Reports of the Royal Commissioners, London, W. Ridgway. Kennedy, John Pitt (ed.) (1847–48), Digest of Evidence token before HM Commissioners of Inquiry …, 2 vols, Dublin. Matthew, H.C.G (1995), Gladstone 1875–1898, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Ó Ciosain, Niall (1996), ‘Introduction’, in Maureen Comber (ed.), Poverty Before the Famine: County Clare 1835, First report from His Majesty’s Commissioners into the Condition of the Poor Classes in Ireland, Ennis, Clasp Press, p. iii-vii. Ó Connell, M.R. (ed.) (1972–80), Correspondence of Daniel Ó Connell, Irish Manuscripts Commission, Shannon, Irish University Press, 7 vols. Ó Grada, Cormac (1994), Ireland: a New Economic History 1780–1939, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Pole, Adam (2010), ‘Ponsonby, Frederiek George Brabazon’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Thompson, F.M.L. (2004), ‘Lennox, Charles Henry Gordon, sixth Duke of Richmond’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, Oxford University Press. 74

4.

Searching for economic and administrative reforms: the enquiry of 1863 in the Ottoman Empire Alp Yücel Kaya

I. Introduction The Tanzimat (reform) period introduced forms of administrative inspection as tools of social enquiry to the Ottoman Empire. The central government sought both to observe and assess already existing reforms and to gather information for the formulation of new administrative and economic measures. Clearly aimed at better understanding local issues in the provinces, general enquiries in 1840, 1845, 1850, 1860, and 1863 saw high-level imperial bureaucrats touring the countryside, gathering information, and thus communicating with and negotiating between local notables, provincial peasants, and the central government. This paper examines the inspection of 1863 which resulted in the reformulation of laws on provincial administration in 1864 and 1867. Four high-level inspectors – Ahmed Cevdet, Abdüllatif Subhi, Ahmed Vefik, and Ali Riza – examined economic and social conditions, and the practices of local administrators across the Ottoman provincial countryside (Bosnia, Bulgaria, Northwestern Anatolia, and Northeastern Anatolia). They also advised on measures to improve communications, agricultural practices, and the conduct of local councils and administrators. The inspections produced significant suggestions for administrative and economic improvement, most notably a reformed configuration of the local councils as well as various other measures aimed at regulating credit market, agricultural credit cooperatives, property taxation, rent contracts, and provincial agricultural bureaucracy. This paper analyses the enquiry of 1863. It questions the forms of interaction among peasants, local elites, and the central government, examining in particular reforms on the credit market and agricultural credit cooperatives. The first section discusses older practices of inspection, prior to 1863. The second section focuses on the 1863 inspection in general, and on inspection reports on local credit markets in particular. The third section examines the translation of these reports into legislation, and the article concludes by answering the question of whether the inspection served to articulate the interests of the small peasantry.

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II.  Inspection as enquiry: inspections from the 1830s to 1864 The ‘great transformation’ of the nineteenth century brought about radical economic and social change in the rural world (Polanyi, 2001 [1944]). As elsewhere, the emergence of market societies, enlarged state apparatuses, and the shift from communal to individual property regimes caused a sustained period of restlessness throughout the Ottoman Empire during this period. The Ottoman state entered into a period of economic and administrative reforms beginning in the 1830s. Most of the reforms attempted to negotiate a delicate balance between the massive changes experienced by the peasantry and the need for legitimatising the state’s place as a ‘disinterested mediator’. Thus, enquiries became a way to be seen to be negotiating between the peasantry and local elites, and thus maintaining the grip of the central government on an increasingly restive population. The central government developed two methods to assist local populations in the introduction of reforms: pilot projects and inspections. Pilot projects assisted in the design of the reforms, correcting theoretical errors as applied, and serving to mediate conflicts in the final forms (Kaya 2012). Inspections (teftiş in Ottoman Turkish, meaning policing and surveying) sought sound information on the social and economic dynamics of the Ottoman countryside, but also served as a forum for mediation and negotiation between different social groups on how those reforms would be implemented. Thus, both pilot projects and inspections were forms of negotiation between the population and the state in the application of reforms. As an administrative practice, inspection was first introduced in the 1830s by Sultan Mahmud II, who himself headed several inspections. During these tours, the Sultan delivered gifts to the local population, ordered the repair or construction of public edifices, inspected local administration, and listened to people’s problems and demands. Such first-hand inspection had more than symbolic meaning. In the ancien régime, the dominance of local elites meant that the Sultans were invisible to the population, and thus most people were invisible to the Sultans. Such visibility implied a transformation in government rationality (Kırlı, 2010: 26–37). The central administration was in search of methods first to replace collective responsibilities with individual ones, and second to eliminate the semi-autonomous intermediaries who had to that point undertaken local administration of fiscal, judicial, and security affairs. The Administration’s collection of economic and social data to delineate local and rural dynamics, combined with its efforts to negotiate direct ties to local populations, constituted thereafter the sine qua non of the coming new regime. In 1840, following the administrative changes of the 1830s, the government introduced fiscal reforms to property and income taxation, as well as administrative

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reforms that created new provincial councils composed of property-holders. Two inspectors, one in Anatolia (Çerkeş Mehmed Efendi), the other in the Balkans (Arif Hikmet Beyefendi), from the Supreme Council of Judicial Ordinances [SCJO] (Meclis-i Vala-i Akham-i Adliye) assessed both the effectiveness and reception of the new measures. Their reports surveyed the on-going reforms, and described social and economic conditions in the countryside. Noting areas of industrial and commercial potential in each locality they visited, each report also estimated the amount of capital necessary to improve economic life. These reports would guide the central administration in the design of subsequent reforms (Aydin, 1992; Çakir, 2001: 101–30). This first reform movement was short-lived. It met much opposition from both long-established elite groups and popular resistance and was stopped in 1842. A renewed push from the SCJO three years later established provincial councils of public improvement (imar meclisleri). Much in the same vein as the earlier ones, the new councils assessed taxation policy, and recommended specific requirements for investment in public works; perhaps most importantly given the past failures, the councils also investigated the workings of local councils. These local ‘councils of public improvements’ presented village-level economic data (occupations, agricultural lands, animals, agricultural production, and property and income taxation figures) as economic reports for the central administration. These reports summarised figures on soil fertility, population density, conditions of settlement, occupational structure (numbers of cultivators, craftsmen), agricultural products of the cultivators, goods produced by craftsmen, and goods traded by merchants. Finally, the reports noted periods of harvest and sale of crops, local and distant markets, the distance to these markets, the means of transportation, and the most successful products and occupations. Thus, after this economic and demographic sketch, the reports noted suggestions to improve economic and social conditions (for example, improved agricultural credits, improved roads and bridges, Güran 1998a: 49–50; Kaya, 2005: 368–74; Seyitdanlioğlu, 1992). Economic and social reforms accelerated after the fiscal survey of 1845 and the establishment of councils of public improvement. The SJCO issued regulations on property certificates in 1847, on lease contracts in 1848, and on local councils, courts and judiciary procedures in 1849. They also fixed the interest rate at 8% in the credit market in 1848, and codified the commercial code in 1850 and the penal code between 1850 and 1854 (OA, Divan-ı Hümayun Nizamat Defteri 44/42; Bingöl, 2004). After such a short period full of reforms, in 1850 a third inspection tour started in the Balkans and Anatolia. One imperial inspector was appointed for each (İsmet and Sami Pashas) in order to not only police the application of new regulations but also

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to check their deficiency in the Ottoman provinces. According to the regulations, inspectors should supervise tax apportionment and collection, the application of regulations on lease contracts and on property certificates, the management of pious foundations, the use of meadows and pastures, and the working of local councils, officials and security forces (gendarmerie) in general, while also reporting economic and social dynamics of each locality (OA, I.MVL. 193/5863, 1850). Reports were rich in their observation on the credit markets and high level of interest rates applied to agricultural credits. It seems therefore very possible that such observations from the inspection tour resulted in the fixation of the official interest rate at 12% by means of a regulation on credit market issued in 1852 (Güran, 1998b). In 1860, provincial administration continued to be a major problem. The Ottoman provinces were in constant agitation, especially sharecropping regions in the Balkans. Prime Minister Kıbrıslı Mehmet Pasha, instead of sending commissioners on inspection, himself left Istanbul on an inspection tour as a head of a commission composed of some of the most important bureaucrats of the Empire (Cevdet Efendi, Afif Bey, Besim Bey, Artin Dadian, Gabriel Efendi, Musurus, Photiades). The commission’s tour lasted four months, including the cities of Ruschuk (Ruse), Shumla, Vidin, Nish, Prishtina, Scopia, Monastir (Bitola) and Salonica. Prime minister received petitions in person and dispensed justice on the spot through mixed courts. The number of individual petitions received was very high. In the province of Nish, for example, where sharecropping dominated over four thousand petitions were received. Most dealt with disputes between individuals over issues related to land, labour or money-lending, or, between individuals and the administration on taxation. Both types were indicative of failures in the working of local administration. Some economic conclusions were reached after the inspection: taxation and unjust distribution of fiscal burden among the population continued to be a major problem in spite of new regulations on property and income taxation issued in 1860; land disputes were abundant in an environment where the land code of 1858 searched for more secure property rights; a tax-farming system resulted in the oppression of the peasant population by the local notables (and poor revenue for the state); local roads also needed improvement for commercial activity and commercialisation of agricultural production (Davison, 1963: 105–106; Köksal & Erkan, 2007).

III.  Inspection of 1863 The Ottoman government, acting through the SCJO, often sought ways of reforming provincial administration in the Balkans and Anatolia, especially to restore calm in the regions where sharecropping dominated. The government planned

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a bigger inspection tour in 1863. Four inspection commissions headed by high level bureaucrats were instructed to report on local administration in general (local courts, police, prisons and waqf [pious foundation] administration, finance and immigration) and the working of the fiscal system in particular. Their work included however not only surveys on dynamics of local economies but also advice on measures to improve communications, agriculture and working of local councils. Special attention was to be given if new codes (Land Code of 1858, Penal Code of 1858, Commercial Code of 1850, Property Certificate Regulation 1860, Property and Income Taxation Regulation of 1860 and Lease Contract Regulation of 1848) were working well. According to the Supreme Council’s decision Ahmet Vefik Efendi (future prime minister in the 1870s) would cover north-western Anatolia, Ali Rıza Efendi (future deputy in the Ottoman parliament in 1876) northeastern Anatolia, Abdüllatif Subhi Bey (future minister in the council in the 1860s) Bulgaria, Cevdet Efendi (future minister of justice and president of High Council in the 1870s) Bosnia and Herzegovina (OA, I.MMS 26/1150, 1863; Davison, 1963: 107–108). Though bureaucrats, as their future careers indicate, they were talented men who had already achieved a high level of success. The inspectors gathered information either by self-investigation, by collecting petitions from local population. While self-investigation brought these men directly into contact with peasant populations, individual or collective petitioning became the most common form of communications between the commissions and the local population (OA, I.DH 511/34796, 1863; A.MKT.MHM 313/29, 1864; İ nalcık, 2000). These petitions were transferred to Istanbul. Additionally inspectors and inspection commissions established often special commissions gathering different interest groups in order to negotiate local disputes or problems directly and on-the-spot. After establishing such communication channels with the local population, inspectors sent from each locality detailed regional reports consisting of information on economic and social conditions and workings of inspection commissions. The reports were published regularly in a summary form but reflecting particularities of localities in the Official Journal (Takvim-i Vakayi) (Kırlı, 2010: 13–43). Subjects included construction and organisation of roads and other transportation facilities, indebtedness of peasants, conditions of the local credit market, measures applied or to be applied for agricultural funding, incentives for cultivators to increase agricultural and industrial production, measures for land clearance, oppression of peasants who were under sharecropping regime, unjust taxation, corruption of local officials, functioning of local courts, urban planning, settlement planning, and local finance (Öntuğ, 2009; Tural, 2007a; Tural 2007b; Cevdet Paşa, 1991, vol. 2–3; Tural 2004; Wassa Efendi, 1999 [1864]).

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Petitions were the most successful means of negotiation between the local population and the central government. Nevertheless, we should underline that petitions were typically written by professional petition writers (arzuhalci) on official petition paper costing 3 guruş. Petitions also reflected complex local power coalitions and configurations among a heterogeneous local population (from landless peasants or sharecroppers to the big landlords or tax farmers who also held chairs in the local administrative bodies, such as village headmen, mayors). In such a context, petitions filtered the complexities of local relationships. Depending on the degree of filtration the communication between the inspection commissions and local population could thus reveal or hide representation of the reality of rural life (Chalcraft, 2005). The government’s effort to publish the reports in the Official journal was part of an effort to calm down alarming situation in the provinces by constituting a popular base for future reforms. In fact, given the information and negotiation gathered out of the inspection tour in 1863 and thereafter the SCJO introduced a series of regulations and legislation concerning especially local administration. Reforms in 1864 and 1867 reorganised local administrative councils and courts, differentiating the executive and judiciary. The official interest rate in local credit markets was fixed at 12%. A trial program of credit cooperatives was passed, creating agricultural funds for investment and credit in the Danube Provinces (1863). New regulations were passed for agricultural directors to coordinate rural economic development (1864) and to better regulate the agricultural funds (1867). Finally, new regulations were implemented on property taxation (1866) and lease contracts (1867) that were to facilitate property transactions and improve property taxation (Güran 1998a; Davison 1963; Quataert, 1973). In all of this, we can see attention to the different interests of rural society, providing the state with better tax collection, large landholders a better opportunity to buy and sell land, while also affording some additional protections for the smallholding peasantry.

IV.  1863 Inspection on the credit market Existing research on Ottoman rural reforms of the 1860s emphasises provincial reorganisation of local courts and councils and in the transformation of local politics (Davison, 1963). It was very important in the reconfiguration of provincial political culture in the provinces and the emergence of a new provincial elite (Saraçoğlu, 2007). We should however also question the economic basis of this new elite and their relationship with the central authority. Inspection reports detailing information on local credit markets can open a new perspective. We will focus therefore on examinations of the working and regulation of local credit markets in the 1863

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inspection reports and the legal reforms that followed. Such an analysis will lead us to better understand first the role of inspections in policy formulation of the central government and secondly the relationship between agrarian interests and policy formation. Reports prepared during the inspection tour of 1863 contain numerous petitions and observations on the high level of interest rates applied in money lending and peasant indebtedness, as well as land dispossession resulting from indebtedness. We see a common pattern. In most regions, it was common to observe peasant indebtedness and dispossession. We will concentrate here only on the examples given in the inspection of Ahmed Vefik Efendi in the northwestern Anatolia. As for his approach on agriculture and economic development, we should underline that his reasoning was in the line of the physiocratic argument: economic policies should privilege increase in the agricultural productivity and production, which would in turn increase state revenues. British liberal economist Nassau Senior communicated in his travel book some of Ahmed Vefik Pasha’s thoughts on the relationship between agricultural development and state finance. Ahmed Vefik Efendi said to Senior that: Reschid Pasha’s reforms, the direct collection of the property tax, which before his time was farmed, and the abolition of monopolies, and of the internal customs and octrois, gave a great impulse to agriculture, the strongest proof of which is their effect on the revenue. The revenue, when he began his reforms, was about five million sterling. It fell at once two and a half, but the next year it rose to six, then to six, then to seven, and now it is between eight and nine (Senior, 1859: 134). After his tour, Ahmed Vefik Efendi reported that in Gevye (Adapazarı), two members from the local council cooperating with four creditors advanced money with high interest rates to needy peasants but appropriated many lands, vineyards and magazines from who could not reimburse them (OA, I.DH 511/34785, 1863; Öntuğ, 2009: 86). While the official interest rate was 12%, in the districts of Kocaeli, Bolu and Kastamonu, the rate was as high as 25% (Tural, 2007a: 100; Öntuğ, 2009: 80). Notables from Bilecik engaged in money lending with a capital of 15000 guruş and appropriated indebted peasant’s holdings (OA, I.DH 34848, 1863; Öntuğ, 2009, 92); in Gölpazarı two silk manufacturers engaged not only in silk commerce but also in money lending to cultivators in the form of usury (Öntuğ, 2009: 103–104); in Bergama members of local council cooperated with creditors and appropriated annual produce of the waqf’s administration (Öntuğ, 2009: 117).

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In Lefke (Osmaneli) peasants sent more than 700 petitions to the imperial inspector forcing him to acknowledge that creditors and religious leaders appropriated annual produce and money held by peasants (Öntuğ, 2009: 100). In İnegöl, nearly 1400 petitions complained about the very high rate of interest on money loaned by members of local council to peasants who could not pay their taxes (Öntuğ, 2009: 105–106). In Bursa, where the commercial agriculture and agricultural industry dominated the local economy, Ahmed Vefik Efendi reported that there were more than 3000 cases resulting from the excessive interest rates. He observed also that a sum of 3000 guruş could accumulate in time an interest payment amounting to 29000 guruş. In Yenişehir, a fertile plain near Bursa, creditors appropriated almost 1000 hectares of land from indebted peasants, and in 20 years most of the peasants living in the vicinity became dispossessed and transformed into either sharecroppers or workers (OA, I.MVL 492/22265, 1863). In the absence of local or agricultural banks, cultivators obtained short-term credit from landlords and moneylenders by engaging to pay high interest rates. In general average interest rate was above 20–25%. In the Edirne region interest was 2% a month or higher; near Istanbul the average was 20–30% a year; at Enez interest was 20–25% a year and at Gelibolu 20%; in Salonica loans were usually on personal security and interest was seldom below 20%; in Cyprus rates were 12–20%, in Acre 24–40%, and in Jerusalem 24–36% per annum; in Baghdad they were 15–20%, the cultivator undertaking to deliver produce at 15–20% below market price. In Rhodes money was usually advanced on land at 18–24% (Issawi, 1980: 341). In most of localities the lender, instead of taking interest, made an arrangement with the farmer to take his crop at a lower price than market value at harvest time, thus leading him into debt called selem or salam (Cuno, 2006; Doumani, 2006; Güran, 1998b: 136). When crops were sold in advance below market value, in general the lender was giving himself a very large margin to secure himself against bad harvest and other eventualities. Once poor peasants got into debt they often fell still deeper and ended by having to sell their land. British consular reports from 1863 confirm distress of the peasant population: Conditions in the Anatolian provinces were somewhat worse. In the Dardanelles farmers borrowed 3–4 months before harvest and delivered the crop at 5–10% below the market price, which at harvest time is usually lower than at other times; in some parts interest was 15% or even 25% for a few months; although the borrower is occasionally in arrears with the delivery of part of the produce, the lender very seldom incurs any losses. The people more rarely borrow on the security of title deeds of their landed property though almost everyone in the country is a landowner;

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such loans were seldom for less than a year and carried 12–20% interest. In Izmir the normal rate was 1.5–2% a month, but in fact more was paid; loans were usually for 2 pound to 10 pound but when sums of 200 pound to 300 pound were needed the title deeds were transferred to the lender in the Turkish court under the title of Istillal [istiğlal] mortgage (Issawi, 1980: 341). The combination of different factors brought about such heavy indebtedness. First, the Ottoman administration was in constant financial crisis; it could not give up tax-farming and introduce a direct tax collection scheme. The traditional economic structure was heavily based on tax-farming and dominated by groups consisting of tax-farmers, bankers, large property holders and tradesmen. In fact, beside tax farmers and bankers, tradesmen and large property holders acting as local agents were a vital element of the fiscal and economic circuit especially in collection, storing, transporting the taxes in kind (Genç, 2000; Salzmann, 1993). Most were typically lending money to peasants to pay their taxes or they were buying peasants’ products in advance who, in return, paid their tax obligations with the money they got from them (Faroqhi, 1991). In fact in this context tax-farming, trading, money lending, agricultural production as economic activities could not be separated from each other, and often one figure might be doing all these tasks. This strengthened and deepened the informal credit market in the Ottoman countryside (Kaya, 2010: 53–59). Second, in regions where sharecropping dominated the regional economy, big farms also produced indebtedness. When labour was scarce, as was the case through much of the nineteenth-century Ottoman countryside, indebtedness was an effective tool to keep sharecroppers on the land. As observed in Thessaly, in addition to the network described above, farm managers and even prosperous sharecroppers who had animals to till the land loaned money or goods to sharecroppers who had nothing. Sharecropping regions where social layers were more differentiated became therefore richer in cases of indebtedness and thus increased peasant restlessness (OA, HR.MKT 92/5, 1854; Ionesco, 1851; Güran 1998b: 138–139).

V.  Law on credit market and regulation of agricultural funds Ottoman governments were not indifferent to peasant market and debt conditions. In 1845 when the second inspection movement started, the central government granted agricultural loans based on the demands of councils of public improvement established in each province (Güran, 1998b: 149–150). Three years later, observing high interest rates in the informal market, the government fixed an

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official rate at 8%; in 1852 this rate was raised to 12% by a new regulation on credit market (Güran, 1998b: 146–147). During the 1863 tour, this official rate should have been in force, but petitions and reports show the actual rate was much higher and causing much hardship for the small peasantry and sharecroppers. In response to this information, the central government prepared new regulation on credit markets in order to ease tension in the countryside, especially in the sharecropping regions. The new regulations kept the official interest rate at 12%, but created new commercial courts to handle litigation cases on money lending. If the borrower could prove a usurious rate in the court, this rate would be reduced to 12% and the debt would thereafter be paid under the official rate. It was strictly forbidden for farm managers to lend money to sharecroppers at a higher rate than the official one (OA, I.MMS 28/1208, 1864). The Ottoman state also experimented with state-led agricultural funds. These were tested in 1863 in Danube province, and found much wider application in other provinces of the Empire. The funds were to be organised by the provincial administrations, but they were basically working as cooperatives with an administrative council of four members. The capital invested by member cultivators consisted of mostly collective agricultural production engaged on common lands of villages or districts. Contributing members could receive loans at 12% interest per year for a term of three to twelve months. From the point of view of the central government funds could enlarge application of the official rate and weaken the abuses of the informal credit market (OA, I.MVL, 536/24064, 1864; Quataert, 1973: 129–143; Güran, 1998b: 150–152). Despite such measures, selem contracts continued to be employed in the countryside. Ottoman legislators thus also codified selem contracts in the first chapter of the Civil Code of 1869. According to the Code, purchase by payment in advance would be possible only if the quantity and quality of the sold item could be fixed. This meant fixing the interest rate to be paid when the contract was first made, and therefore offered some protection for the peasantry (Akgündüz, 1986: 425). Agricultural funds also fell short of expectations. They continued to function until 1883 under the authority of provincial administrations, but because local notables controlled these councils they were subject to corruption. Thus, in 1883, they were placed under the central control and administration of the Ministry of Commerce and Public Works. In 1887, the official interest rate was lowered from 12% to 9% owing to the fact that actual rate was still higher in the credit market. In 1888, the Agricultural Bank (Ziraat Bankasi) was founded on the basis of already existing agricultural funds in the provinces in order to regulate the credit market and provide

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a boost in the agricultural production by the injection of cheap capital to the needy rural population (Quataert, 1973: 129–154; Issawi, 1980: 341–342). In 1889, the Bank had 331 branches and would grow to 483 by 1910. The Bank charged 6% interest rate on loans on the condition of providing an immovable property as collateral, such as land, vineyard, garden, building, house and deposition of their official certificates; those who had not any property, as sharecroppers or tenants, could only borrow to a certain limit (500 guruş) (Güran, 1998b: 152–154).

VI. Conclusion: did inspections serve to articulate interests of small peasantry to the policy design? The inspection of economic and social conditions, the collection of petitions from different social classes, the publication of inspection reports including voices of local populations, and the introduction of popular measures to improve economic conditions, all indicate that Ottoman governments were receptive to local and popular grievances. Moreover, from this perspective, inspections could be interpreted as the way in which the small peasantry could articulate their demands to the central government and as the way the central government could establish a sound political base to pursue its policies. The 1863 inspection and measures that followed it to control and regulate credit markets that depressed rural population could be therefore an example of such an articulation of small peasantry’s interests to policy design of the central government and formation of a political basis in return. Nevertheless, the most important social policy to protect the small peasantry – that is, the regulation of credit markets – would mean nothing if it was not accompanied by a new regulations on the property market. Rural credit markets were in fact highly correlated with the land market. In both the official and non-official credit markets creditors always demanded collateral consisting of an immovable property. Therefore, in addition to instituting an environment to ease the credit channels for the small peasantry, the central government also needed to establish measures that hindered dispossession, at least during a transition period when credit and property markets might start to function properly. This was however not the case in the Ottoman Empire, as the property market became institutionalised faster than the credit market. The Land Law of 1858, which regulated property rights on the state lands on which most of the peasantry have hereditary usufruct rights, despite its tendency to establish individual ownership protected small peasantry by prohibiting the

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alienation and transfer of land for payment of debts (İslamoğlu, 2007: 200–201). Such a social protection was however relaxed in 1862, just before the inspection tour of 1863; if any holder of immovable property had any debt to the Treasury, that is non-paid taxes, the state would appropriate his/her immovable property (Düstur, 1872: 244; Padel & Steeg, 1904: 144). The rupture came into being in 1869 when forced sale of immovable properties were extended to cases in which the indebted property holder died (Düstur, 1872: 242; İslamoğlu: 2007: 204); finally as legislation in 1871 (Düstur, 1872: 238) and 1873 (articles 998 and 999 of the Civil Code, Akgündüz, 1986: 553–554) allowed forced sale on immovable properties for unpaid debts, small-holding peasants lost their traditional safety net in the property market (Barkan, 1980: 347–348; Padel & Steeg, 1904: 143–148). This kind of legislation was however essential in the creation of a market society based on individual property regime and as such it served not to the interests of small peasantry but to those of big landlords who were engaged in agriculture–tax–credit–commerce networks. Ottoman central administration inspections served as an institutionalised tool of negotiation between small peasantry and central government. They were however only partly effective in articulating the peasantry’s grievance and interests. Because in the competition of articulation of interest, landlords, tax-farmers, money lenders and big merchants were in a more advantageous situation than small peasantry. Political representation was based property holding, as codified also in the Ottoman law of provincial administration of 1864, 1867 and 1871 (Saraçoğlu, 2007). Property holding notables were therefore represented directly in the policy making agencies at the provincial and central level. Small-holding and indebted peasants could represent themselves only indirectly through enquiries: either the inspector or his commission would see and hear them during the tour and report their requests, or they could sign an individual or collective petition. In this biased social and political representation, the major political question of nineteenthcentury governments was based on their capacity to administer social tension felt heavily in the countryside. Communication and negotiation with conflicting interests, in some way or another, among the population became fundamental. The enquiries and inspections in such a context constituted therefore not only an economic and social tool, but also a major political tool of the nineteenth-century Ottoman governments. The 1863 inspection was the last general inspection covering most of the Ottoman geography. Subsequent provincial inspections and statistical surveys were conducted by provincial and central councils or administrative bodies as long as they could embody more representative power among the rural population.

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Sources Ottoman Archives of Prime Ministry in Istanbul (OA): Divan-ı Hümayun Nizamat Defteri 44/42; I.MVL. 193/5863, 1850; HR.MKT 92/5, 1854; I.MMS 26/1150, 1863; I.DH 511/34796, 1863; I.DH 511/34785/1863; I.MVL 492/22265, 1863; A.MKT.MHM 313/29, 1864. Düstur, 1st edition, 1st volume (1872), Istanbul, Matbaa-ı Amire.

Bibliography Akgündüz, Ahmet (1986), Mukayeseli Islam ve Osmanli Hukuku Külliyati, Diyarbakır, Dicle Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Yayınları. Aydın, Mahir (1992), ‘Ahmed Arif Hikmet Beyefendi’nin Rumeli Tanzimat Müfettişliği ve Teftiş Defteri’, Belleten, 56 (215), p. 69–175. Barkan, Ömer Lüfti (1980), ‘Türk Toprak Hukuku Tarihinde Tanzimat ve 1274 (1858) Tarihli Arazi Kanunnamesi’, Türkiye’de Toprak Meselesi, Istanbul, Gözlem Yayınları. Bingöl, Sedat (2004), Tanzimat Devrinde Osmanlı’da Yargı Reformu: (Nizamiyye Mahkemeleri’nin Kuruluşu ve İşleyişi 1840–1876), Eskişehir, Anadolu Üniversitesi Yayınları. Cevdet Paşa (1991), Tezakir (4 volumes), Ankara, Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları. Chalcraft, John (2005), ‘Engaging the State: Peasants and Petitions in Egypt on the Eve of Colonial Rule’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 37 (3), p. 303–325. Cuno, Kenneth M. (2006), ‘Contrat salam et transformations agricoles en basse Égypte à l’époque ottomane’, Annales HSS, 61 (4), p. 925–940. Çakır, Coşkun (2001), Tanzimat Dönemi Osmanlı Maliyesi, Istanbul, Küre Yayınları. Davison, Roderic H. (1963), Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press. Doumani, Beshara (2006), ‘Le Contrat salam et les relations ville-campagne dans la Palestine ottomane’, Annales HSS, 61 (4), p. 901–924. Faroqhi, Suraiya (1991), ‘Wealth and Power in the Land of Olives: Economic and Political Activities of Müridzade Hacı Mehmed Agha, Notable of Edremit’, in Çağlar K eyder & Faruk Tabak (eds.) Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East, Albany, State University of New York Press. Genç, Mehmet (2000), ‘Osmanlı Maliyesinde Malikane Sistemi”, Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Devlet ve Ekonomi, Istanbul, Ötüken Yayınları, p. 99–152.

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Güran, Tevfik (1998a), ‘Zirai Politika ve Ziraatte Gelişmeler, 1839–1876’, 19. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Tarımı, Istanbul, Eren Yayınevi, p. 45–59. Güran, Tevfik (1998b), ‘Zirai Kredi Politikasının Gelişmesi, 1840–1910’, 19. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Tarımı, Istanbul, Eren Yayınevi, p. 131–159. Inalcik, Halil (2000), ‘Şikayet Hakkı: Arz-ı Hal ve Arz-ı Mahzar’lar’, Osmanlı’da Devlet, Hukuk, Adalet, Istanbul, Eren Yayinevi, p. 49–71. Ionesco, Ion (1851), ‘La Dette’, Journal de Constantinople, no 312 (29 June 1851). Islamoğlu, Huri (2007), ‘Property as a Contested Domain: A Re-Evaluation of the Ottoman Land Code of 1858’, Ottoman History as World History, Istanbul, The Isis Press, p. 171–210. Issawi, Charles (1980), The Economic History of Turkey 1800–1914, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press. Kaya, Alp Yücel (2005), Politique de l’enregistrement de la richesse économique: les enquêtes fiscales et agricoles de l’Empire ottoman et de la France au milieu du xix e siècle, unpublished PhD thesis, Paris, EHESS. Kaya, Alp Yücel (2010), ‘19. Yüzyıldan 20. Yüzyila Izmir Ekonomisinde Süreklilik ve Kirilmalar’, in Deniz Yildirim and Evren Haspolat (eds), Değişen Izmir’i Anlamak, Ankara, Phoenix Yayinevi. Kaya, Alp Yücel (2012), ‘Les Villes ottomanes sous tension fiscale: les enjeux de l’évaluation cadastrale au xixe siecle’, in Florence Bourillon & Nadine Vivier (eds), La mesure cadastrale, Estimer la valeur du foncier en Europe aux xix e et xx e siécles, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, p. 43–60. Kırlı, Cengiz (2010), Sultan ve Kamuoyu, Osmanlı Modernleşme Sürecinde ‘Havadis Jurnalleri’ (1840–1844), Istanbul, Türkiye İş Bankası Yayınları. Köksal, Yonca & Erkan, Davut (2007), Sadrazam Kıbrıslı Mehmet Emin Paşa’nın Rumeli Teftişi, Istanbul, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi. Öntuğ, M. Murat (2009), Ahmed Vefik Paşa’nın Anadolu Sağ Kol Müfettişliği, Istanbul, Palet Yayınları. Özcan, Abdülkadir (1991), ‘II. Mahmud’un Memleket Gezileri’, Prof. Dr. Bekir Kütükoğlu’na Armağan, Istanbul, Istanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Basımevi, p. 361–379. Padel, W. & Steeg, L. (1904), De la législation foncière ottomane, Paris, Editeur A. Pédone. Polanyi, Karl (2001 [1944]), The Great Transformation: the Political and Economic Origins of our Time, Boston, MA, Beacon Press. Quataert, Donald (1973), Ottoman Reform and Agriculture in Anatolia, 1876–1909, unpublished PhD dissertation, Los Angeles, University of California.

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5.

The 1866 agricultural enquiry in France. Economic enquiry or political manoeuvre? Nadine Vivier

In 1866 a crisis in agriculture developed in France, and more generally in all Europe. The degradation in cereals price struck Italy and Germany – especially Württemberg and Bayern – as much as France. The agricultural problems were due to the fall in the price of wheat. According to some observers, very attractive wheat prices during the previous years have led to an increase of wheat production.1 But according to others the fall in the price was due to the free-trade, the development of trade induced by the treaty signed between France and the United Kingdom in January 1860, and other treaties with neighbouring countries that had lowered the tariffs. With the decree of 28 March 1866 Emperor Napoleon III launched a ministerial enquiry into the agricultural situation in France in order to better understand the changes that had taken place in rural areas. The aim of the enquiry was to discover what was required to ensure the efficiency of these changes so as to promote real progress. What was the purpose of launching such a vast enquiry? Did the government not already have at its disposal enough data? The purpose of this paper is first of all to establish the context in which the enquiry took place – the statistical knowledge available, the transformations in the agricultural world and those of political forces in the Empire – so as to better understand why this enquiry took place. We shall then examine the work that the enquiry carried out on both a national and regional level. We shall also examine the choice of the different parties called upon to take part in enquiry in the first place. This is important as the participants ultimately determined the form that the results of the enquiry took.

I.  The French context I.1.  An efficient statistics service During the last thirty years of the eighteenth century, France had sought to compile agricultural statistics. Louis XV’s Agricultural Minister, Henri-Léonard Bertin, was   According to the letters of the French consul in Stuttgart, 18 March 1866, and the consul in Turin, 5 April 1866, (A.N.) F/11/2728.

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influenced by the theories of the Physiocrats and the development of rural economy was one of his goals. He thus decided to try and obtain an overview of the situation to better establish the means of amelioration. In 1760, he carried out a general enquiry amongst the intendants, and then proceeded to gather data on some of the more vital issues: fences (1766 and 1787) common land (1768), the grain trade, etc. The answers came in the form of extensive written statements, and were more literary and qualitative in nature than statistical. These responses however, managed to provide not only an idea of the economy of each province, but also gave a voice to those concerned. This became the basis for what was to follow – an enquiry which would provide the information necessary to bring about improvement in agriculture and trade. Moreover the enquiry would also pay attention to the examples being set by other countries abroad (Vivier, 2009b). Inspired by the Physiocratic ideal, the revolutionary assemblies proceeded to ask the newly created departmental directories to carry out enquiries on various topics. In 1797, the Minister of the Interior, François de Neufchâteau, had not been able to carry out systematic enquiries on the harvests on a regular basis because of strong resistance from local authorities. In 1802 Chaptal, Bonaparte’s Minister of the Interior, set up a Bureau of Statistics to carry out a census of the population and to record the industrial and agricultural production (Perrot, 1977). The latter were, for the most part, statistics on specific goods (i.e. olive trees, silk, hemp, etc.). Starting from 1811, statistics were to be issued annually. Historians agree that it was only when fear of a tax increase subsided that reliable data slowly became available. This really only became the case when the Central Statistics Service (CSS) was re-established in 1833 under the direction of Moreau de Jonnès. It was from this date that the CSS took on considerable importance. The first truly successful agricultural enquiry was carried out from 1836–1840. It was followed by two important ones, each carried out at ten-year intervals, one in 1852 (845 questions to which each arrondissement was required to answer), and then again in 1862 (15 pages of data containing figures that each commune was required to provide on the vegetable and animal produce as well as the configuration of the land and how it was farmed). During the Second Empire, a permanent committee was set up (Kaya, 2009). Its job was to see to it that the annual statistics and the ten-year enquiries were carried out in each canton, that the results were made public and that they were submitted following the correct conventions. The aim of the Minister of the Interior, Persigny, who set them up on 1 July 1852, was also political; he maintained that those 92

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‘who were thus associated with the administrative action would also indirectly be interested in maintaining the stability of the government, because they were involved in it, to a certain extent.’ (Demonet, 1990, 23–30; Gille, 1964). In an era where positivism was becoming a prominent influence, the government sought reliable decision-making tools, to prove its efficiency and to prove to farmers that the state was interested in their lives. These enquiries, which had been carried out since 1836, enabled the government to become well acquainted with the changes taking place in farming. I.2.  Agricultural change From 1852–1860, in spite of some bad years due to poor weather conditions, the general picture is one of accelerated transformation and prosperity marked by a high growth rate in both industry and agriculture. This was due to an increase in cultivated land thanks to reclamation of land on the one hand and to further improvements on the other, such as new crop rotations, fodder crops, to no longer letting the land go fallow, soil conditioners and fertilisers, and the selection of animal and vegetal species. Improved living standards increased the urban demand for a greater variety of products. Demand increased thus for not only cereals, but also for wine, dairy and meat products, vegetables, fruit and flowers. Thanks to the development of the railways, regions began to specialise in specific goods, such as cauliflower and strawberries in Brittany, dairy products in Normandy and cattle breeding in the Limousin, etc. (Price, 1983; Vivier, 2009a). Peasant-farmers also saw an improvement in their consumer spending power. According to estimated figures drawn up by historians, the consumer index grew from 30 for the 1845–54 period, to 52 for that of 1855–64 (Toutain, 1993, the index base 100 = 1914). Proof of these figures can be found not only in the depositions made for the 1866 enquiry, but in previous statistics and various documents such as the reports drawn up by the Prefects, or literature.2 Peasants began enjoying better food and began to carry out various home improvements (i.e. individual bedrooms, solid floors). Another transformation was the diminishing trend of working at home and its logical counterpart – the increase of rural migration to urban industries. Though this was a slow process throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, the rural exodus reached a high point during the 1850s. For these transformations to take place investment was needed. At the beginning of the process human investment prevailed. But the increasing need of a workforce 2   See for example Emile Guillaumin’s novel, La vie d’un simple, 1897. The author was also an authentic peasant.

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went hand-in-hand with rural migration and the demand for higher wages. Thus, along with this human investment, capital investment became essential. However, the creation in 1852 of the Crédit foncier, and the Crédit agricole did not meet these demands. Financing agriculture became a primary concern (Postel-Vinay, 1997). In order to stimulate economic growth, Napoleon III took steps to favour free trade. The 1860 British-French treaty limited customs duties and suppressed all prohibition. Many manufacturers (in textile and metallurgy) were against this and saw it as a reason for all their difficulties. How did the rural world react to this? In the political context of the years 1863–66, the opinion of the peasants was of the utmost importance to Napoleon III and his government. In 1860 Napoleon III had already lost the support of the Catholics because of the role he had played in Italian unification and the reduction of the Papal State. To counterbalance the loss of his most conservative supporters, the Emperor undertook liberal reforms and, in order to please the bourgeoisie, proceeded to change many of his Ministers. He also attempted reconciliation with urban workers. A Home Secretary’s circular in February 1866 recommended tolerance for strikers and unions. These efforts failed. There was increasing debate and a growing anxiety towards the support that the political opposition was gaining. Rural populations had faithfully supported Napoleon III since 1848, but now the possibility of them becoming influenced by the opposition was very much at issue. From Paris, they were seen as easily influenced by aristocrats and clergymen. We may therefore surmise that finding out rural opinion could very well be looked upon as an important incentive to this enquiry; all the more so as this population was beginning to feel the brunt of the agrarian crisis, which grew from the mid-1860s (Price, 1997; Milza, 2007; Anceau, 2008). I.3.  Agricultural difficulties of 1865–66 Starting from the 1864 harvest, French farmers loudly voiced their disapproval of the low wheat prices. Several articles and essays were published on this issue. ‘The matter was taken before every authority imaginable and was worked to the bone. The Corps legislatif,3 the Central Agricultural Society, and the Society of Political Economics had to debate on this issue’ (Journal des Economistes, April 1866). There   During the Second Empire, the legislative power was attributed to three institutions: the Conseil d’Etat carried out important legislative functions: its members were jurists appointed by the Emperor to prepare the bills; the Corps législatif elected by universal suffrage, voted the bills and the budget, and the Sénat composed of notables appointed for life by the Emperor. Gradually, the Corps législatif gained an increasing audience and power.

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were two main and opposing lines of thought. On the one hand there were those who blamed the fall in prices on the decrease of customs duties and on the 15 June 1861 law on the price of cereal. And on the other, there were those who believed in free trade and who analysed the crisis as being the result of the fall in the price of wheat due to increased production being concomitant with increasing production costs, especially those linked with the workforce. Their suggested solution was to diversify production and expand exports (Michel Chevalier in Journal des Economistes, 13 May 1857). For the Corps legislatif, this was a burning issue. For the entire month of March 1866 the deputies discussed the speech before the throne. This was known as the Adresse, when the deputies had the right to address before the Emperor once a year in response to his speech from the throne. It was the perfect opportunity to contest the government’s general policy. The protectionists did indeed seize the occasion to propose the inclusion of a paragraph requesting the introduction of a tax on all foreign grain imports. Their text was rejected. The Emperor, however, preferred to pacify the debate by ordering that an enquiry be carried out. The discussion ended with the following paragraph from the Address adopted by the Corps législatif: The enquiry, the design of which is to throw light on the needs and wishes of the agricultural world, shall be acclaimed with the utmost gratitude in the countryside as well as amongst each and every one of us. We are certain to answer to Your Majesty’s intention in expressing our hope that this enquiry, carried out promptly, shall be achieved throughout each and every department in such a manner as to enable the various interests to make themselves manifest in complete freedom. It will bring to the foreground the conditions of inferiority which until now have paralysed progress in agriculture, while at the same time throw light on the solutions necessary for its improvement” (Enquête agricole, 1e série, Documents généraux, tome I, 76). The Minister Rouher thus concluded, ‘The Enquiry itself, the Great Enquiry, shall bring the truth to light. In the name of public interest, it is with the utmost trust that the government awaits the declarations’ (Enquête: i, 102).

II.  The 1866 agricultural enquiry At the heart of the project there was a reflexion on the crisis, its causes and its solutions. At the same time however there was a desire to work towards ‘Progress’ – progress for the rural population on a material as well as a moral level. In the 95

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summer of 1848, in the context of industrial and agricultural crisis, the Constituent Assembly had taken similar steps – each canton had been required to answer to a questionnaire made up of 29 questions. If, in 1866 there was the same desire to obtain a maximum number of results in a short amount of time, the endeavour had a much more ambitious aspect to it. The enquiry was therefore set up on two levels – a national level with the Superior Commission, and a regional one in the 28 districts. The easiest way to go about understanding this complex process is to follow its work agenda. II.1.  Who was in charge? The decree of 28 March 1866 set up a Superior Commission made up initially of 28 members and extended to 40 members on 5 August 1866. At its first meeting on 18 June 1866, a sub-commission was set up to establish the rules of the questionnaire. Both the procedure and the calendar had been determined by the 28 March decree and were not modified at any subsequent date. The Commission, in fact modified only three articles of the questionnaire set up by the Administration. The questionnaire was made up of 161 questions divided up into five different chapters: 1. The general conditions of agricultural production (the condition of the land, farming methods and the way the land was passed on, leasing conditions, capital and credit, wages and manpower, fertilisers and land improvement); 2. Special conditions (crop rotation, clearing and drying; draining and irrigation, the various types of animal and vegetal production); 3. circulation and investment of agricultural goods, in other words, market functions; 4. Legislations and regulations, trade treaties, 5. General questions (on the means of improving agriculture). It was clearly a ministerial enquiry in spirit in that it was the ministry that had set up the questionnaire and it was the Emperor who had named the Commission members. It is also noteworthy in respect of how much it differed in procedure from the enquiries of 1852 and 1862. Neither the Statistics of France nor the cantonal commissions took part. Innovative in structure, it was not only concerned with collecting statistical data but also with finding out the opinions of the parties involved as well. II.2.  An enquiry for the whole empire Regional enquiries were first carried out throughout all of the French territory and Algeria. They were directed by the members of the Superior Commission […] with the aid of a General Inspector of Agriculture and another superior functionary from the Ministry of

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Agriculture, and an auditor from the Conseil d’Etat whose role would be that of secretary. (Enquête: i, Decree).

France was divided up into 28 circumscriptions (each made up of 3 or 4 departments). The chairman was assisted by his two aides and by a local commission made up of 6 to 15 members, named by the Prefect and in accordance with him. They were chosen during the summer of 1866. The questionnaire, made up of 161 questions, was sent out by the Prefecture to consultative Chambers of Agriculture, agricultural societies and agricultural associations. The deposition, written up by each one of them, ‘must be collective so as to thus resume the opinions of each of its members.’ Moreover, the elected members of the conseils generaux4 and other ‘particularly competent’ public figures could also fill out the questionnaire individually. There were, on the average, 60 questionnaires completed per department. This meant a total of between 5,000 and 6,000 were submitted in all. (Enquête: 1, 138, rapport du 7 mars 1867). Each commission had to next carry out a verbal Enquiry to complete the information and ‘serve to some extent as a means of control’ (Enquête: 1, 138). There was a great deal of advertising done to encourage participants. Notices were posted in each commune notifying people of the dates of the enquiry, and the Prefect spoke of it in each of his speeches to the agricultural associations. If ever there weren’t enough candidates, the chairman and the Prefect met to decide who should be summoned to take part. The commissions were held in 270 localities, each for an average of 10 days and gathered nearly 4,000 statements over the second half of 1866. The first part of the enquiry ended 15 December 1866. II.3.  The work of the Superior Commission Right from the beginning of 1867, the Superior Commission began sorting out the results. It summed up the main ideas expressed therein and then, in December 1867, presented a résumé to the Emperor. At the same time, it collected the questionnaires filled out in several countries abroad–Western Europe of course, where conditions were comparable to those in France, but also in countries such as Guatemala, China or Egypt. The year 1868 was devoted to consulting various experts who had knowledge on a national level – economists, directors of agricultural journals, those in charge   Conseils généraux = department council, were elected councils in each department. They decided on, with the prefect, the budget allocation in the department: roads, schools, social measures, etc.

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of the Crédit foncier, those from the forestry industry, notaries and large landowners. Last but not least, the sub-commissions worked on the main topics and their reports were discussed throughout 1869. The conclusions were drawn up in a report and presented to the Emperor on 19 May 1870. The speed with which the first stage was carried out is worthy of note. It took six months for the opinions to be collected and a résumé on the situation in the districts to be drawn up by the chairman. As early as 1867, 20 of the 28 districts had a printed volume made of the resume drawn up by the chairmen as well as the oral depositions. The work of the Superior Commission however, took another three years. Why was this case? Was it because the 40 members could not cope with the sheer amount of documentation? Or is the answer to be found in the different parties chosen to take part?

III.  The participants III.1.  The Superior Commission The 40 members of the Superior Commission were named by the Emperor. There were 22 deputies, 5 senators, and 7 state councillors. They were joined by 7 prominent figures who were members of Central Agricultural Society of France. Besides Chevreul, chairman of the Society every other year, were named 6 members, past or future presidents: three large landowners: De Behague, Dailly and Darblay; Eugène Tisserand, who was a young General Inspector of the Domains of the Crown; and two well-known chemists: Dumas and Boussingault, working together and both authors of major discoveries in the field of plants nutrition and chemical fertilisers. All the members of the Superior Commission or nearly all had a marked interest in agriculture. Fourteen of them were landowners well known for their investments in farming modernisation; others had technical knowledge on land credit, agricultural laws and trade. Among them can be quoted the Duke of Albuféra, large landowner in Eure –West of Paris; Lafond de Saint Mür who runs a 120 ha model farm near Tulle; du Miral and de Veauce who are also involved in irrigation, plantations on their estate and stimulate the activites of the regional agricultural society. Others had technical knowledge on land credit, agricultural laws and trade, like the three MP Gressier, Guillaumin and Josseau (Anceau, 1999; Yvert, 1990). Their political and economic opinions undoubtedly played a role in the Emperor’s choice. They were all more or less ‘Bonapartists’ in 1866, but their opinions differed

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progressively when the Emperor confirmed a more liberal orientation for the Empire, and some of their support more or less waned in 1868–69. Though it is difficult to ascertain how the state councillors stood on these matters, the deputies for their part, did voice their position. Fifteen of them agreed with the way the regime was evolving (centre), three had very conservative tendencies (right), and seven were centre left and wanted a parliamentary regime. The other essential criterion for selection of members was in regard to free trade. Both liberals and protectionists were represented. On the one side stood the partisans of free trade – Fourcade la Rocquette, and especially Michel Chevalier, the negotiator of the 1860 customs treaty with England. On the other, stood those in favour of protectionism such as Darblay and especially the industrialist, PouyerQuertier. The presence of Chevalier and Pouyer-Quertier is a very clear indication of the importance accorded to the grain trade (the possible influence of the 1861 grain trade law on the crisis), and the composition of the departmental commissions confirms this idea. III.2.  Departmental commissions The Prefect, in agreement with the chairman of the commission chose the members so that there would be at least two members per arrondissment, for a total of ten to twelve people, and then submitted his choice to the Minister. Though we have not found any directive quite so explicit, the Prefect of the Manche mentions, ‘the instructions recommend that I should select those understanding the liberal ideas of the government in matters of trade’ (F11 /2723,1e circonscription). The correspondence between the Prefects and the Ministers prove that the choice of members was guided by two criteria – their political stance and their opinions regarding free trade. If some Prefects carefully handpicked ‘Bonapartists’ in favour of free trade, others, such as the Prefect of the Aisne, preferred opening up the group to include those of other tendencies. His list was divided into two groups; the first was made up solely of those in favour of commercial freedom, the other was made up of candidates whose opinions were more or less moderately protectionist: I thought it my duty to include the latter on my list so that all opinions could thus be represented. I was guided in this choice by the philosophy behind the organisation of the central commission (Enquête, 5e circonscription).

The Prefect of the Saône and Loire proposed to the Minister his list on 19 September 1866. He tried to choose people in favour of free trade:

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Your Excellence shall see, that in spite of the ideas which directed my choice, it was not possible for me to make up the list with a majority of the purist partisans of free trade […] Perfectly honourable of character, and absolutely impartial, the members are incapable of using their position to sway the enquiry in any direction other than that desired by the government in regards to its search for the exact truth. (Enquête, 14e circonscription).

It was the legitimists who were especially called on when they played a role in agricultural societies. This was the case in Ille-et-Vilaine, where the Prefect appointed two legitimists, Dezerseul, chairman of the Departmental Society of Agriculture and de Lorgeril, chairman of the agricultural association so that ‘there will be no reservation about the impartiality with which this assembly has been made up.’ (Enquête, 3e circonscription). The republicans, on the other hand, were cause for serious concern. Some were able to get appointed if they managed to maintain discretion in terms of their beliefs and if the Prefect and the chairman of the commission were both in agreement. The Prefect of the Yonne proposed Mr. Guichard, in spite of the latter’s republican beliefs. ‘His position as chairman of the Central Society of Agriculture of the Yonne makes him particularly suitable for this commission. As far as the economy is concerned, I believe him to be a partisan of protectionist rights.’ (Enquête, 11e circonscription). The Minister accepted in this case, but more often than not, he would refuse. He was opposed to Mr De Haut in Seine et Marne in spite of the go-ahead by the chairman, Josseau and of the Prefect: “It is my very firm principle to admit to this commission no one committed to extreme doctrine.” (Enquête, 6e circonscription). In the Loir-et-Cher, the chairman Guillaumin wanted to include Ménard, the winner of the 1858 agricultural regional award. But the Prefect, with the support of the Minister, was opposed to the idea: ‘though he is a distinguished farmer, it is of common knowledge that he is a member of the Republican Party.’ (Enquête, 8e circonscription). In October 1866, when someone else stepped down, however, he was finally appointed. Because of inadequate sources, it is difficult to know for sure the part played by the Prefect in the decision. It was perhaps due to the clever way in which he presented his list, enhanced by his very firm conviction and his good relations with the chairman that ministerial intervention was avoided. Globally, the departmental commissions were made up of prominent figures (especially mayors and members of the department councils) who were competent in the domain of farming and food production. Special attention was often paid to winners of awards and those active in the agricultural associations.

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Some chairmen of the commissions wanted the chairmen of the agricultural associations to be appointed; others remained wary, for the administration had no hold on those who were freely elected. So that there would be no conflict of interest, no government official was allowed an appointment even if he were a professor of agriculture.

III.3.  The witnesses The same prerogatives were held in the selection of the deponents. Whether administrators or citizens, everyone was aware of the political importance of the enquiry. In Haute Garonne, where farmers particularly felt the brunt of the fall in cereal prices, as none of the notables were unaware of the ideological trend voiced via more or less vociferous recriminations, and as the enquiry was patiently awaited for as an efficient means of ensuring the triumph of ideas which went against the grain of government policy, it became extremely difficult if not impossible to find a certain number of candidates who would entirely meet up with the required standards. (Enquête, 18e circonscription).

How were these witnesses selected? In order to attract people, a widespread publicity campaign was launched which included newspaper ads, placards, and the Prefect’s speeches during the agricultural fairs (Enquête, 2e circ.Orne). Those who wished to be heard, had to address an official request to the chairman, who with the help of the Prefect, made his choice. Prominent figures could be directly solicited. Auditions were held in 270 cities so as to assure proximity with those who were to be interviewed. Very often the interviews took place behind closed doors. Larrabure, who had a mind of his own decided that in the Pyrenees the auditions would be open to the public, which was a source of worry to the officials working for the ministry. For, even though there was no specific text to the effect, when asked the Minister stated that he preferred the public not be present. And there is yet another point to be considered. As soon as the deposition was made, the secretary would write it up and the deponent would sign. Certainly this was in keeping with the concern for precision: because they could revise what they had said, there must be no interval during which there might be suspicion that they were being swayed one way or another. What we want is the sincerity of the first deposition. (Circulaire aux préfets, 20 août 1866).

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Upon examining all these elements, it is clear that the administration, rightly or wrongly, feared any hostile expression towards the Empire and tried at all times to suppress it. About 4,000 depositions were made and registered–about 40 per department. They represented every profession in relation to agriculture-producers, merchants, millers, bakers, and other craftsmen, notaries and bankers and various administrators of the rural world. Were they notables? Most of them were of course, for it was the wealthier people who were the most at ease in expressing themselves. But if we take, for example, figures who were considered to be notables, like the baker in Briançon (Hautes Alpes) or Jean-René Busson in Château-du-Loir (Sarthe), an illiterate farmer who owned no land but who was a member of the agricultural society and had been awarded a bonus for the care he took in tending the land, it is obvious that not all the rural notables belonged to the privileged classes. The depositors did not always show up in great numbers, and there were three reasons for this. First, it was autumn, the sowing season. A farmer from Lagny (Seine-et-Marne) mentioned this and made up for it by sending his statement. Some chairmen also noted the lack of interest in regions where farming was prosperous, that is in the cattle breeding regions of the Orne, Mayenne, Allier etc. Lastly, in some cases, political divergence blocked participation. It would seem that there were very few incidents, but there were three events that are worthy of mention. First, here is how the Baron de Veauce recounts his commission in the Puy de Dôme: Unfortunately, as the agitation of the last elections in this country led to the choice of some members of this commission who knew nothing about agriculture, the commission was considered to be for the most part political, and word spread throughout the various agricultural societies advising members not to attend, especially during the first few days. (Enquête, 9e circonscription).

This was an exceptional case however, for generally speaking, it was competent people who were appointed to these commissions. And some of the public figures felt insulted if they were not appointed. Two of them, the Marquis de Voguë and the Count de Falloux, both legitimists, made a big hullabaloo and the uproar they caused was greatly publicised. The Minister refused Voguë’s appointment into the commission in the Cher on the grounds of the latter’s militant protectionist stance and because he considered him to be ‘one of those men who wanted to turn the agricultural question into a war machine.’ (Enquête, 8e circonscription). Subsequently, the members of the agricultural society in the Cher where Voguë presided, all refused to take part. 102

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In Segré (Mayenne), the chairman Migneret, a conservative Bonapartist, did not extend an invitation to the legitimist, the Count de Falloux. Falloux was a former Minister who had written up the law on the freedom of educational choice (1850) which had given rise to Catholic schools. The Count, who was himself a landlord who had set up a model farm, attended the audience in company of his friend the Duke of Fitz-James. Migneret gave them the floor but had to interrupt them because they did not answer the questions properly, and choose instead to read out a general indictment of the government (Falloux, 1866). Both Voguë and Falloux were auditioned in 1867 by the Superior Commission. There is very little trace of the lists of the candidates applying as the lists were very rarely conserved. The study of the selected witnesses in the Sarthe indicates that the authors were mainly either Bonapartists, or people who had no known political affiliation. Opponents to the Empire were either rejected, or, as in the case of Falloux, simply did not apply.

IV.  The results We must now examine how the population reacted to the enquiry. There is no doubt that people were interested in it. The important number of statements proposing solutions to the agricultural situation addressed to the Minister in 1866–67 is ample sign of this. (F11 2726 et 2727) The general impression was a favourable one, as seen in the rural areas voting overwhelmingly in favour of the Emperor during the May 1870 elections. IV.1.  A media push in the departments Most of the Prefects maintained that their populations were satisfied with the enquiries carried out in their departments. The desired goal – the rural populations being convinced of the Emperor’s concern for their well-being – was certainly attained. However, people were wary and dissatisfied with the ways the active members and the deponents had been selected. Examples are rare, but two noteworthy cases stand out. On Wednesday 21 November 1866, the following comment was made in The Journal de la Meurthe et des Vosges by a man named A. Lemarchois: It does not suffice to simply want to take part, to be deemed worthy to be heard by the chairman of the Commission. It is the administration which designates the farmers who are to be consulted […] Since it is to be an enquiry of the most extraordinary kind, whose goal is to portray an accurate picture of the situation 103

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of French agriculture, we do not see why the commission should not grant admission to whomever wishes to be heard. The most humble of farmers, with his practical frame of mind and being exempt from any consideration other than those concerned with working the land, is able to give excellent advice. Far be it from us to think that the way it had been set up is not all well and good; but we believe that it would have been even better if the official designations could be extended to others. (F/11/2724, 12e circonscription).

The chairman of the commission answered two days later saying that anyone who wished to make a deposition could do so. The agricultural associations from the Côte d’Or drew up a long petition to which the agricultural association of Lille connected itself. They were disappointed by the March 1866 decree setting up the enquiry by nominations of people whom they considered to be knowledgeable only in theory. What can be the real authority of those called to office? From whom will they have received the mission to voice the complaints and suffering of agriculture and to propose efficient solutions? From no one.

And they further suggested that the agricultural associations play a more prominent role: Everyone can find their place in these peaceful assemblies. Through a simple and modest subscription, the landlord and the farmer, the master and worker, the government officer can all have their place, and often the Prefects and Sub-Prefects bestow the honour upon them of presiding in the agricultural associations. The agricultural associations are, on the one hand, the guarantee of local knowledge, be it specific or practical, and on the other, the most serious guarantee against the invasion of political zeal or political party spirit. (F11 2727, 22 June 1866).

Thus, the appraisal of the enquiry itself was of a political nature. What they wanted was a democratic functioning and the rejection of any bureaucratic appropriation. IV.2.  Disappointing global results The second step – the task of the Superior Commission – would last for three years. New depositions were collected amongst national and foreign public figures. The 40 members worked in seven sub-commission (tax legislation, credit, agricultural modernisation, commons, etc.), and their results were published 104

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in three volumes, each over 500 pages long which for the most part was very unsatisfactory. The conclusions were so general that they threw no new light on what had already been shown in previous reports. For example the in-depth analysis of the report written by the sub-commission dealing with the lands in common use is very puzzling. It repeats the conclusions of a project carried out at the end of the July monarchy (January 1848), and it proposes a similar project without paying any attention to the work that had been carried out since 1863 by an ad hoc parliamentary commission. While the publicly stated aim of the enquiry was to propose new agricultural policy, the report was sadly lacking in imagination. The same can be said about the report on the much debated issue of agricultural credit, which took into no consideration whatsoever the work of the existing parliamentary commission. In these two cases the general impression is one of a very prudent and conservative stance. Why would this be so? Was it simply because the Superior Commission was overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of data? Or did they feel paralysed by the political concerns that were obviously at stake? From 1867–69 the liberalisation policies of the Empire continued to progress. Opinions between conservative and liberal Bonapartists diverged more and more and we might presume that it was in seeking a consensus that the texts were thus so cautious. IV.3.  ‘A fabulous source of information’ The enquiry is remarkable in its constant concern for rigour, in the collection of interviews as well as the meticulous nature of the enquiries conducted outside France; this shows the great influence of positivism. The synthetic reports written up by the chairman of each circumscription indicate both the seriousness and the sincerity displayed in the presentation of the results. In his conclusion to his 1869 report to the Emperor, the Minister of Agriculture had this to say: ‘This vast enquiry shall for a long time remain an extraordinary source of knowledge for all those concerned with the study of the interest of agriculture which is so intricately linked with the prosperity of the country.’ (Enquête, 1e série, t. 4, p. 547). The Minister hit the nail on the head. The enquiry, published in 38 volumes in 4° (20,000 pages), do indeed provide a wealth of knowledge to historians.

V. Conclusion Was the Empereur awaiting clear results from the Enquête? No documentation proves it. And eventually its true utility was to prove the Emperor’s concern for rural population. The political aim of the Enquête was reached. 105

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No sooner was the enquiry completed than it was forgotten. There are three reasons for this. The first reason is the context of the fall of the Second Empire in 1870 and France’s defeat to Germany in 1871. Those who had newly arrived in power had greater preoccupations than those concerning agriculture; they had to rebuild the country amidst an atmosphere of hate of anything that had to do with the Empire, and thus proceeded to ignore anything that had taken root there. The second reason is linked with how quickly things changed. The agricultural crisis began in 1879 and the results of 1866 were already out of date. It is for this reason that all subsequent enquiries in the 1880s limited their questionnaires to one specific issue, and abandoned all pretence of being exhaustive (e.g. the enquiry on free trade, and that on the workforce (Barral, 1879: 1, 2). Perhaps the main reason for the futility of this enquiry can be found in the inspiration behind the policy leading to the enquiry. From the very start, what had guided the Prefects was the fear of any opinion too far removed from the Emperor’s political choice of the period. If the chairmen of the commissions were indeed able to express some innovating idea on an individual basis, once they became part of the central commission, all innovation was cast aside.

Sources France. Ministère de l’agriculture, du commerce et des travaux publics, Enquête agricole. Première série, Documents généraux. Décrets, rapports, etc. Séances de la commission supérieure, 4 volumes, Paris, Imprimerie impériale, 1869–1871. Enquête agricole. 2e série, Enquêtes départementales, Paris, Imprimerie impériale, 1867–1873, 28 volumes. Archives nationales F/11/2723 to 2735 Documents de l’enquête agricole de 1866.

Bibliography Anceau, Éric (1999), Dictionnaire des députés du Second Empire, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Anceau, Éric (2008), Napoléon mois.

iii :

un Saint-Simon à cheval, Paris, Le Grand livre du

Barral, Jean-Augustin (1879–1880), Enquête sur la situation de l’agriculture en 1879, faite à la demande de M. le Ministre de l’agriculture et du commerce par la Société nationale d’agriculture, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 2 vol. in-8. Demonet, Michel (1990), Tableau de l’agriculture française au milieu du 19ème siècle: l’enquête de 1852, Paris, Ed. de l’Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.

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Falloux, Alfred de (1866), L’Enquête agricole, Paris, C. Douniol. Gille, Bertrand (1964, 2e ed. 1980), Les Sources statistiques de l’histoire de France, des enquêtes du xviii e siècle à 1870, Genève-Paris, Droz. Hazareesingh, Sudhir (1998), From Subject to Citizen: the Second Empire and the Emergence of Modern French Democracy, Princeton (N.J.), Princeton University Press. Kaya, Alp Yücel (2009), ‘Les Commissions cantonales de statistique sous le Second Empire’, in Yann Lagadec, Jean Lebihan & Jean-François Tanguy (eds), Le Canton- Un territoire du quotidien dans la France contemporaine (1790–2006), Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, p. 89–102. Milza, Pierre (2007), Napoléon iii, Paris, Perrin. Perrot, Jean-Claude (1977), L’Âge d’or de la statistique régionale française, an IV-1804, Paris, Société des études robespierristes. Postel-Vinay, Gilles (1997), La Terre et l’argent: l’agriculture et le crédit en France du 18e s. au début du 20e siècle, Paris, A. Michel. Price, Roger (1997), Napoléon III and the Second Empire, London-New York, Routledge. Price , Roger (1983), The Modernization of Rural France: Communication Networks and Agricultural Market Structures in Nineteenth-Century France, London-Melbourne-Sydney, Hutchinson. Toutain, Jean-Claude (1993), La Production agricole de la France de 1810 à 1990. Grenoble, Cahiers de l’ISMEA. Vivier, Nadine (2009a), ‘France, 1870–1939’, in Pedro Lains & Vicente Pinilla, (eds), Agriculture and Economic Development in Europe since 1870, London & New York, Routledge, p. 210–233. Vivier, Nadine (2009b), ‘European Agricultural Networks, 1750–1850: a view from France’, in John Broad (ed.), A Common Agricultural Heritage? Revisiting French and British Divergence. Agricultural History Review, Supplement 5, p. 23–34. Yvert, Benoît (1990), Dictionnaire des ministres de 1789 à 1989, Paris, Perrin.

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6.

The Jacini Enquiry in Italy, 1877–1885 Giuliana Biagioli

The ‘Agrarian Enquiry on agriculture and the conditions of the agricultural class’ was approved by the Chamber of Deputies on the 15th of March 1877. The Agrarian Enquiry is one of a number of Enquiries conducted in the second part of the nineteenth century in Europe, particularly in the agricultural sector which was still the most important in terms of income produced and labour occupied. It produced an impressive quantity of documentation on Italy’s agriculture in the last decades of the nineteenth century: fifteen printed volumes, five of which were published in two tomes, one in three, plus a special Archive of the ‘Giunta for the Agrarian Enquiry’ in 24 folders, containing many unpublished monographs, at the ‘Archivio Centrale dello Stato’ in Rome. Nevertheless, neither the contemporary actors on the political and social scene nor historians have made relevant use of its results as they should have. To begin with, access to and circulation of the documents have been limited. The volumes were printed in a small quantity and few people subscribed to the series. It is difficult to find them in public libraries, except for the final Report of Stefano Jacini, the only document to be re-printed several times. Italian historiography, too, has scarcely used it. Apart from the essay by Novacco in the History of the Italian Parliament (Novacco, 1963) and the pioneering work of Caracciolo (Caracciolo, 1973) focused on the preparatory phases of the Enquiry in Parliament, we could cite Giacomina Nenci’s Introduction to the final report by Stefano Jacini (Jacini, 1976: I – XXXI) and the more recent contribution from Guidi (Guidi, 2002). For the rest, the Enquiry has been used only partially, in some regional studies (by Caracciolo on Umbria and Lazzerini on the Veneto) and, above all, in studies on some aspects regarding the vital conditions of farmers, such as housing and food supplies. The first aim of this paper is to reconstruct the Parliamentary Enquiry from its origins through the discussions surrounding the Enquiry, both inside and outside the Italian Parliament, and the motivations put forward for its creation following Italian unification. The reason why we analyse the preparatory processes which led to the institution of the controversial Agrarian Enquiry is twofold. Firstly, to show that ever since the creation of the unified nation, two different approaches were used in addressing economic and social issues: the first guided by the interests of landed property and the conditions of the landowners, the second by the ‘social question’ involving the working class, which was also emerging in this period in other European countries and which principally considered the conditions of the agricultural working

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class. These two approaches, already present for nearly a decade before the beginning of the Enquiry, sometimes coexisted in attempts to reconcile them, and sometimes remained in clear conflict. The final solution decided on consisted in unifying, what had become over the years two different Enquiries, into one with a double objective: the first regarding landowners and the economic and political interests of the landed property, the second referring mainly to the conditions of the working class in the countryside. As the representatives of the landed interests were the majority in the Italian Parliament both during the ‘Historical Right’ government from 1861 to 1876 and in the Left Government period which followed, it is easy to understand why the landowners were able to impose their point of view on the agrarian question for the whole of the second half of the nineteenth century. The second reason for considering the pre-Agrarian Enquiry period is to show a continuity in the various discussions that took place, of some important protagonists among whom were Agostino Bertani and Emilio Morpurgo, the rapporteurs of the future Investigations in the Italian Regions of Liguria and the Veneto. The motivations at the root of the Enquiry were the economic changes underway at that moment which were rapidly transforming the relations between the landed property owners and farm workers. The owners, on the one hand, were putting forward to Governments in which they were still dominant requests of a political nature in contrast to those made by a growing industrial sector which was also well represented in Parliament. On the other hand, heavy pressure also came from some categories of agricultural labour forces nearer to the industrial workers with whom they shared the same demands and social battles. The Enquiries of a general nature like the one presented here, were preceded or accompanied by enquiries promoted at a ministerial level into the conditions in agriculture and also by discussions on agrarian contracts, in particular the mezzadrile (sharecropping) system which appeared to offer a refuge from the social divisions which plagued the countryside, and the towns as well, in the years 1870–80 (Biagioli, 2002: 65–66). This Enquiry, backed by the big land holders, was conducted on the pages of the Georgofili, the oldest Italian Agrarian Academy and is almost coeval to a similar initiative undertaken in France by the Société des Agriculteurs de France which advanced the same interests voiced in Italy (see the final results in Tourdonnet, 1879–80). Understanding the long course of the Enquiry at the Parliamentary level and its complexities is necessary to appreciate not only the great variety of information it offers to historians, but also the contradictions and contrasts between different 110

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intents. The interests of the land owners prevailed, and this greatly limited the impact the results could have on the policies followed in Parliament in the years to come. As the Enquiry was implemented, its Commissioners were nominated, their roles were set out and their collaborators were selected, but no information about these is known. The collaborators were responsible for a great part of the information available in the Enquiry and they also fulfilled the role of authors of the Monographs, which often constitute the most interesting contents of the volumes.

I.  A unique history for ‘two’ Enquiries A few days after the law establishing the Commission for an ‘Agrarian Enquiry on agriculture and the conditions of the agricultural class’, the King nominated the twelve members of the ‘Giunta’ (Commission). The President was Stefano Jacini, from whom the Enquiry derived its commonly used name, the ‘Jacini Enquiry’. Jacini belonged to a rich bourgeois family (he received the title of Count only in 1880) owning a large farm and a prosperous flax and silk spinning factory in Lombardy. He frequented, in his youth, the Fellenberg agricultural institute at Hofwyl, graduated in law and continued his studies in Vienna. Like many other members of the wealthy landed gentry, he then undertook the traditional Grand Tour through Europe, which led him to include the social problems of the agricultural working class in his sphere of economic, social and cultural interests. In 1854 Jacini published a book on the economic and moral conditions of the Lombard agricultural population (Jacini, 1854). Its second edition in 1856 was translated in German and made him very well known in Europe (Betri, 1998). In 1859–60 Cavour called him to be Minister of Public Works of the Kingdom of Sardinia; he had the same charge after the unification of Italy in the Lamarmora and Ricasoli cabinets, promoting road and railway development. He became a Deputy and then from 1870 Senator of the Kingdom (Raponi, 2004). His nomination as President of the ‘Giunta’ for the Agrarian Enquiry, is most probably related to his experience on both sides of the Enquiry, which, as we will see, had the aim of combining the interests of Italian landowners and the rural working class. The Enquiry was preceded by a long political debate, within and outside Parliament, not on the necessity of the Enquiry (everybody was convinced of it) but on its execution. Behind the law there was in fact a long period of preparation and discussions, officially starting in 1869. A few years had passed since the unification of the country, 111

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with the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in March 1861. In 1866, the third war of independence brought into the new State the territories of Veneto and Friuli, previously under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1870, Rome and Latium were also conquered, thus nearly completing the patriotic Risorgimento project. A decade after the unification process, and following the bloody war against brigandage in the Southern regions and the complicated administrative, financial and political problems that the new State had to face, the Italian Government and the political parties had to deal with the awakening of public opinion on many subjects, among which was the desire for economic growth. It also had to respond to the rising so-called ‘social issue’ in the newly formed nation. In the first years after the unification of the country, the agrarian interests had refused any involvement in the economic policy of the government. The ‘Historical Right (wing)’ in charge of the government was principally involved in the balancing of the State budget through strong fiscal pressure, based more on indirect than direct taxation. There was no consideration of the effects of such a taxation policy neither on the already marked regional economic and social inequalities nor on the different classes in society. However, from the late 1860s, the landowners began to change their attitude. Through their newly organised associations, they raised their voice to claim strong help from the Government in favour of agricultural interests and identified the Ministry of Agriculture as the institution which should provide mediation between their interests and those who were claiming more intervention on the ‘social issue’. The leading political party and the government – many of whose ministers were landowners – could not ignore the requests of the landowners and more generally of the agrarian associations and interests. At the same time, there was increasing awareness that no serious action could be undertaken without a wide enquiry, covering the whole Italian territory, into agricultural conditions: social questions on one side, agricultural (mainly landowners’) interests on the other. Here are the origins of the duality of the agrarian enquiries leading, in the end, to the Jacini Enquiry. Up to then, very few studies had been realised, and on a local or a regional basis they were mainly the result of private initiatives, as in the case of Jacini for Lombardy. The Minister of Agriculture tried on many occasions to collect statistics and information on local economic conditions, but a good result was obtained only in 1868 when a circular posing twelve questions and based on the example of many foreign enquiries was sent to all the Agrarian Comizi. The Comizi, officially set up by the Ricasoli Government in 1865, were: […] voluntary associations of landowners, under the authority of both the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce and the Prefect and had 112

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the task of spreading the best agricultural practices and of passing on to the Ministry information or requests which would be useful for the good management of the national agriculture (Banti, 1996: 83).

The questions included issues concerning land mobility, disposable capital, movements of day labourers, and the quantity and quality of agricultural production.1 On this occasion the Minister collected a consistent number of answers, even though rough and incomplete, from the Comizi. All the collected documents were analysed by an expert in the field named Gaetano Cantoni, a medical doctor and patriot of the Italian Risorgimento who later went on to become a famous agronomist (Pazzagli 2008). Cantoni had been a lieutenant of Carlo Cattaneo during the Five days of insurgency of Milan in 1848 against the Austrian Empire. At the end of the insurrection he emigrated from Italy to Switzerland. In 1859 he was back in Milan where, two years later, he was appointed by the corporation ‘Agrarian Association of Corte del Palasio’ Director of the Agrarian High School. In his ‘Report to the Minister’, he grouped the answers received into eleven agrarian regions, defined according to either the topographical conditions or to the moral and civil traditions: Alto Po, Lombardy, Venice, Liguria, Emilia, the Marches, Etruria, Adriatic Southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia. The results of this report, considered as the first serious enquiry into Italian agricultural conditions, provided the foundations for the famous ‘Report on the condition of agriculture 1870–1874’, the very first attempt at a general analysis of the conditions of Italian agriculture, published in 1876. In 1869, the Agricultural Council, created in the previous year to support the institutional tasks of the Ministry of Agriculture, discussed a project of the new Minister, Marco Minghetti, for the establishment of an Enquiry on the conditions of agricultural production and producers. A Commission was formed within the Council; one of its members was Emilio Morpurgo, whose name and actions will strongly emerge later on during the Jacini Enquiry. A year later, the Commission presented to the Council a very detailed Questionnaire, which focused on the economic conditions of agrarian production and landholders (Caracciolo, 1973: 6), while leaving aside the problems concerning peasants and agricultural workers. It was, therefore, not a social enquiry, but had a political and economic character, promoted by the interests of land owners, which were also expressed by newly constituted organisations of private stakeholders such as the Italian Agricultural Society, the Agrarian Comizi (from the Roman Comitia, Assemblies), and the wine-growers or wheat and rice producers’ associations.  

1

‘Annali di Agricoltura’, 1867–69, part i, pag. 3.

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While the agrarian enquiry, as intended and proposed by the powerful class of landowners, was being prepared, a second idea of enquiry again came on the scene. In the country social unrest was growing, socialist ideas were spreading among the working classes, the agricultural day labourers formed their unions, and strikes and protests mounted. In 1869 a series of riots exploded in the whole country against the unpopular indirect tax imposed on milled cereals and other flours. It was the first united protest of the Italian rural masses. The disorders were repressed by the Army, but on the left wing as well as among moderates, concern over the ‘social issue’ remained. The European and Italian events of the following year, 1870, widened the perception of the problems posed by the condition of the working class. In June 1870 a Commission was created to study the possibility and terms of an enquiry into this question and a report was published at the end of 1871. In this document the rapporteur, Giuseppe Guerzoni, an Italian patriot, follower, biographer and secretary of Giuseppe Garibaldi, started from the existence in the country of a questione sociale, particularly in agriculture, which had to be solved in order to safeguard social cohesion. The Commission had prepared a detailed plan for the enquiry, going from the demographic, economic, physical and sanitary conditions (dwellings, food, salaries, contracts, strikes) to those involving intellectual and moral issues (level of instruction, relationship with the landowners). Special attention was to be given to the agricultural working class, and particularly to women and child labour. The Guerzoni report was the starting point of a bill presented by the Left, which represented the opposition in Parliament. The initiative was taken in December 1871 by Agostino Bertani. Bertani, a medical doctor, was one of the leaders of the Italian Risorgimento, a friend of Giuseppe Mazzini and of Carlo Cattaneo. He joined the 1848 insurrection of the Five Days of Milan against Austrian domination and from then on organised assistance to the wounded volunteers and soldiers in nearly all the wars of independence on the peninsula. He was one of the Garibaldi Mille and was elected in 1861 to the Italian Parliament from the Left party. After 1870 and the conquest of Rome he became the leader of the extreme parliamentary Left. Besides his intervention in the Agrarian Enquiry, he backed the abolition of the tax on milled cereals and universal suffrage, and as a deputy always paid special attention to public hygiene and education. His introduction of the bill calling for an Enquiry into the conditions of the agricultural working class was joined by fifty members of parliament, among whom were very famous politicians such as Cairoli and Francesco Crispi, who later on became an important Prime Minister, as well as a few landowners (Caracciolo, 1973: 16–17). The concern about the ‘social issue’ was not, however, an exclusive patrimony of the Left. The ‘southernist’ Pasquale Villari, belonging to the Right, in his intervention in Parliament invited the Assembly to put

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the social and moral conditions of the peasants at the core of the enquiry. Villari, a Neapolitan historian and liberal deputy, in his ‘Southern Letters’ written in 1875 contributed to create the ‘southernist’ school of thought that from the end of the nineteenth century denounced the Italian economic dualism between an advanced North and a backward South as a problem of lack of cohesion into the national state and as a possible cause of the state’s dissolution. Some of the most influential writers and politicians believed that this dualism originated in an economic ‘robbery’ by the Italian government of Southern resources to the advantage of the Northern regions (Nitti, 1900). But it was the position of a minority in the conservative camp. On many occasions in the Parliamentary debates what emerged was the preoccupation that an enquiry into the conditions of the working class would produce a rise in expectations for social reforms, which, if unfulfilled, would have very dangerous consequences in terms of social unrest and political instability. The same argument was, on many occasions, repeated in official speeches during the whole period of the Jacini Enquiry. From 1871 to 1873 the preparation of the first enquiry, based on the landowners’ point of view, continued, but in the end, the two Commissions at work agreed on a unified report and a single bill. After further discussions and changes aimed to weaken its social character, the ‘Agrarian Enquiry on the conditions of the agricultural class’ was approved by the Chamber of Deputies on the 15th of March 1877, some months after the defeat of the Right following the elections of 1876 and the formation of a government by the Left.

II.  The ‘Giunta’ for the Agrarian Enquiry A Royal Decree, a few days after the decision of the Chamber of Deputies, nominated 12 members of the ‘Giunta’ (the Committee), one-third elected by the Senate, one-third by the Chamber of Deputies and one-third appointed by the Government. All drawn from the Italian Parliament, they were Giuseppe Angeloni, Agostino Bertani, Carlo Berti Pichat, Ascanio Branca, Abele Damiani, Fedele De Siervo, Pietro Fossa, Stefano Jacini, Emilio Morpurgo, Francesco Salaris, Giuseppe Toscanelli, Francesco Nobili Vitelleschi. After the death of Fossa and Berti Pichat, Francesco Meardi and Luigi Tanari took their place. For this reason, we should not refer to this initiative as one taken by Parliament, but as a mixed governmental and parliamentary enquiry. The composition of the Giunta reveals a majority of the parliamentary Left, but three members of the Right were among the most important figures, particularly Stefano Jacini who had been the President of the Agricultural Council and became President of the Giunta, Emilio Morpurgo and Nobili Vitelleschi; moreover, not only the members of the Right, but also the majority of those from the 115

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Left in the Giunta were rich landowners. This is why the ‘social issue’ did not become a central theme. All the members, except Bertani and the Sicilian Damiani, were in favour of an agrarian enquiry into the situation of landed property and agricultural production; in other words, a political and technical enquiry rather than a social one. An attempt was made by Bertani to split the tasks among the members, in accordance with their background and studies, by creating a series of sub-commissions, but the majority of the Giunta and President Jacini declared that all the problems should be considered together for a better analysis of their complexity. It was only by resigning that Bertani eventually gained a compromise: all the sectors of the Enquiry were to be treated by each commissioner, but the medical doctor – deputy was assigned an investigation with considerable freedom of action into the hygienic conditions of the Italian peasant. This was nearly the only surviving official approach to the ‘social issue’, even though some social problems of the agricultural working class were shifted into the Bertani enquiry. The work of the Commissioners was supposed to have been completed in two years. In fact, the time span was eventually much longer, that is, from April 1877 to April 1885. It was the first and only general Parliamentary Enquiry for the whole of Italy in the second half of the nineteenth century. According to Jacini’s suggestion, the Italian territory was divided into twelve Districts, chosen more in accordance with political than agrarian criteria. Each District was assigned to one of the members of the Giunta, many of whom had already had experience with regional studies within the borders of the pre-unified States. Moreover, the President, Jacini, had been a promoter, as part of the activities of the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade, of a series of reports regarding agricultural conditions in Italy, including the above-mentioned ‘Report on the period 1870–75’, already organised by Districts. Each District was assigned to the Commissioner coming from its territory; this meant that the choice of the members of the Giunta had been made in expectation of the future steps of the Enquiry. In May 1877 a Programme-questionnaire was also published to guide the work of the Commissioners. Its structure had two initial preliminary titles, the first on soil and climate and the second on population, followed by core headings: on agriculture and agrarian products (with 220 subheadings), on land property (with 95 subheadings), on the relationship between landowners and peasants (26 subheadings) and, finally, on the conditions of the agricultural workers (46 subheadings). The accent was therefore mostly on the problems of landed property. In December 1877, the Depretis-Crispi left wing government cabinet decided on the abolition of the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade. This event produced a sort of earthquake among landowners and

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their representatives in Parliament, and in their organisations, the Agrarian Comitia, and the Giunta for the agrarian enquiry. President Jacini resigned as a protest against the government’s decision. In 1878 the Ministry was re-established, the Giunta returned to work after a prolonged interruption and obtained more time and money to bring its tasks to an end. The following years, the second half of 1879, 1880 and 1881 represented the central and determining period for the activity of the Giunta. Up to then many Commissioners had paid very little or no attention to their duties, which attracted protests from Jacini and criticism from the political press. Only two years after the approval of the Enquiry did some results arrive in the form of documents from the District Committees and local monographs of the winners of the competitions which assigned them this task. In the meantime, Agostino Bertani tried to organise a counter-enquiry into the issues he still had in mind on the conditions of agricultural workers. Counting on the support of the head of the government cabinet, Depretis, his old companion in arms during the Risorgimento period, he defied his colleagues in the Giunta (Caracciolo, 1973: 56–57) but his attempts in the end failed to assure him a thematic and financial autonomy. He was finally forced to return, with humiliating letters, under the official umbrella of Jacini to get some urgently needed money.

III. Between the State and private citizens: the interlocutors of the enquiry for collecting information The instruments adopted for the enquiry were different, eclectic and, on the whole, without an adequate methodological base. For instance, in the first sitting of the Giunta Giuseppe Toscanelli, a Tuscan landlord who had been appointed Commissioner for the Ninth District, suggested the adoption, for the Enquiry, of the criteria of homogeneous agrarian zones instead of administrative districts, the second criteria being simpler but of less significance from a methodological point of view (Atti della Giunta, 1883: 145 segg.). It is important to underline that Toscanelli and Jacini were the only two members in the Giunta to have also been authors of a private enquiry into the conditions of the agricultural sector and of the peasants in their regions. Toscanelli’s book (Toscanelli, 1861) which he presented at the first national exposition of 1861 in Florence, is an important document of the Pisan rural world, especially regarding owner income and the life of the peasants, with the tools of their work designated in the appendix (Barsanti, 2005). Jacini and a few other members of the Commission were in favour of Toscanelli’s proposal, but they did not succeed in getting it adopted. Toscanelli resigned. Only in the following century, after some

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further enquiries and progress in the national and international methodological tools used, was Toscanelli’s suggestion adopted by the National Institute of agrarian economy (Tolaini, 2005: 65). The Giunta tried, at the beginning of its work, to get what, especially in terms of statistics, could already be found, as worked out by public bodies, especially the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce. Thanks to this procedure, many volumes of the Proceedings have statistical tables: one for Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta, the Veneto, the Marches, Sicily. Other data, like those on the distribution of land ownership, were provided by the Revenue Office but are very scant. In many preunification States, in fact, especially in the South, geometric parcel cadastral mapping had never been carried out and there was no possibility of correctly establishing either the size or the income of landed property in the names of individual taxpayers. In addition, the organisation of State statistical services was still scant, given the recent unification of the country and a very disparate history in this area in the pre-unification States. Thus, in some cases, such as the Veneto, the Commissioner decided not to use some official statistics, like those regarding agricultural production, considering them too uncertain. A second approach, undertaken by the rapporteur Stefano Jacini to overcome the poor training of his collaborators, was that of a competition, with prize money, which called upon all individuals interested in the initiative to submit monographs. There was no specific reference to figures and categories eligible for the initiative. Another attempt to gather information was that of sending out detailed questionnaires – they were different according to the category to which they were directed – in order to obtain first-hand information. The addressees were the Agrarian Comizi, the other agricultural associations, the mayors, the magistrates, district doctors, chambers of commerce, the prefectures, revenue offices, and the relevant committees created in the different administrative divisions (districts, provinces). For example, the questionnaire sent to the magistrates’ courts contained twenty questions concerning the moral and material conditions of the rural classes and social relations in the country areas. The subjects covered by the questions included the strength of family ties, of religious feeling, deviant behaviour (illegitimate births, prostitution), respect for other people’s property and the tenant farmers’ obligations towards the landowner, as well as the possible behavioural differences between sharecroppers and farm labourers. The last of the instruments employed by some commissioners was that of personal inspections. Stefano Jacini in Lombardy, like Abele Damiani in Sicily, 118

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used similar methods for their work in the areas entrusted to them. In fact, Jacini went to all the provincial capitals in Lombardy, contacting the prefects, the Agrarian ‘Comizi’, the local authorities and some private citizens. He achieved notable success with the submission, at the competition announced by the Giunta, of many provincial monographs. In Sicily, Commissioner Damiani carried out personal inspections himself in all the Sicilian provincial capitals. However, he did not succeed in setting up provincial commissions to collect data. Therefore, he also decided, like Jacini, to rely upon the competition organized by the Giunta in order to obtain monographs which offered a starting point for preparing reports. The data from the monographs were assembled by seeking the help of the local offices of the State administration, although there is no trace of their responses. Damiani also sent out the detailed questionnaires, already referred to, like the one for the mayors about agricultural conditions and the one to the magistrates. Many of the replies have remained in the archives of the Enquiry. The same procedure was used by Francesco Meardi, the Commissioner for Piedmont: instead of setting up local committees, Meardi personally went to the various districts, directly contacting the Agrarian Comizi and private citizens, whose replies he then utilised in his report.

IV.  The results of the Agrarian Enquiry: the printed documents At the end of the Enquiry, as already said, fifteen volumes in twenty-two tomes were printed. The first volume was dedicated to an introduction by the President on the agrarian problem in Italy and to the Enquiry; the last, again by Jacini, was the most famous and well-known document of the Enquiry, the ‘Final Report’ of the President and a Synoptic-Analytical Index of all the documents of the Enquiry.2 The first results were printed in 1882, the last in 1885. On May 1, 1885, President Jacini communicated to Parliament the dissolution of the Commission nominated eight years earlier. The Enquiry, after so many doubts not only among its opponents, but also among its supporters, was finished, leaving as a heritage a library of research on agrarian Italy. Omitting the various introductions, the printed documents surpassed 12,000 pages. The most consistent blocks of pages and documents were related to Lombardy (Commissioner Stefano Jacini, vol. vi, 2 tomes, 1,528 p.), Sicily (Commissioner Abele Damiani, vol. xiii, 2 tomes, 1,456 p.), Piedmont (Commissioner Francesco Meardi, vol. viii, 2 tomes, 1,405 p.) and the three regions Lazio, Umbria and the Marches with Tuscan Grosseto included (Commissioner Marchese Francesco Nobili Vitelleschi, vol. xi, 2 tomes, 2,022 p.). The non-agrarian   All the documents are now in the Archivio centrale dello Stato of Rome. See Ministero Beni e Attività Culturali, L’ archivio della Giunta per l’inchiesta agraria e sulle condizioni della classe agricola in Italia (inchiesta Jacini) 1877–1885. Inventario.

2

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but historical and political reasons which were sometimes behind the organisation of the ‘Circoscrizioni’ (Districts) is particularly evident in the case of the Lazio, Umbria and Marches districts. Among the three regions, there were very different situations between Lazio on one hand, and Marche and Umbria on the other, in terms of property structure, agrarian systems organisation, agrarian contracts, going from the Latium absentee latifundium based on an extensive agriculture and sheep breeding to the prevailing sharecropping intensive system based on family farms of Umbria and Marche. The only reason to keep them together seems to have been their belonging together, until 1861, to the Pontifical State. Each volume begins with a Report by the nominated Commissioner, with the exception of Volume 3 for Tuscany. In the case of Tuscany, after the resignation of Giuseppe Toscanelli, his place was taken by another Tuscan Deputy, Carlo Massimiliano Mazzini, the secretary of Jacini in the Enquiry. In many cases the Commissioners made two reports, either on the general conditions of land property and productions or on the conditions of the peasants. The two reports were more frequent in the different parts of the Districts which were organised into groups of provinces or circondari (sub-districts). The Reports were followed by a series of Monographs chosen from those entered in the competitions held by the Giunta to collect and analyse data on a regional and sub-district level, or based on special issues (viti-viniculture, drainage, emigration and so on). Many of the prepared Monographs were not published and are still in the Archives of the Giunta; some have been published in the last decades, as in the case of the Veneto Region (Lazzarini, 1983).

V. The informants of the Commissioners and the authors of the Monographs To evaluate the reliability of the Agrarian Enquiry as a documentary source we must not only know the Commissioners, their background and competence, but also their informants and the authors of the monographs, collected documents, and statistical compilations. Sometimes their scientific background is absolutely clear, as in the case of the famous agrarian entrepreneur and agronomist Domenico Lampertico (Fumian, 1984: 118–141) who reported the systems of cultivation and production in the Vicenza province, or Enrico Paglia (Caleffi, 2006: 169–175), agronomist and naturalist, author of a Monograph on the Mantua province, or in the health field with the information provided to Bertani by many medical doctors. Generally speaking, in any case, the informants and those who participated in the competitions were not

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scientists; they were local representatives of the middle class at the head of the local administration and economic life, or members of the Agrarian Comitia; some were technicians or government officials, like the prefects. The monographs presented varied in number and comprehensiveness depending upon the region, but in many cases they prove to be an important source of information and detailed knowledge of local conditions, which were so diverse in a young nation like Italy, with so many ‘agricultural Italys’, as appropriately defined by Jacini himself in his Final Report. As has already been said, the competition was open to everyone; and the range of the authors of the monographs was not uniformly restricted to landed property, even if the landowners, more or less well-off, constituted the largest group whose family origin and total assets could be traced. Generally, they were not ordinary landowners, but ‘enlightened landowners’, ‘notables’ of the country as many of them are defined, for the Veneto, by Lazzarini. Even if some of them were nobles, they did not belong to the great land-owning class, which had its representatives in Parliament. They were country ‘notables’, belonging to what could be defined, in the second half of the nineteenth century, as a middling bourgeoisie, originating from agricultural, merchant or professional backgrounds, which, in any case, had a knowledge of the agricultural world. For many of the writers of the monographs this knowledge did not reach a professional level. Twelve of the authors of the monographs are known as experts in agronomy, three as agricultural economists. In this last category, on closer inspection, one can also find two other figures, who, however, did not present monographs, but who concerned themselves with drawing up the reports, and subsequently became much more famous than they had been at the time of the Agricultural Enquiry. The first was Ghino Valenti, who at that time was President of the Agrarian Comizio of Macerata and, as such, drew up the report on the Marches. In the Introduction to his ‘Studies of Agrarian Politics’ Valenti presents his collaboration with Jacini as a decisive step in his career both for the field of his studies, which then turned to the agrarian economy, and for the adoption of the positivist method. At the death of his father, a magistrate, he devoted himself to managing his inherited lands which he tried to make more profitable through investing in important improvements, but with scant financial success, so much so that he was forced to seek another source of income by taking up a university career (Guidi, 2001: 327–356). Subsequently he opened a school of agricultural economics and was also in charge of the office of agricultural statistics, from 1911 to 1914, in the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce. The other agricultural economist destined to become famous was Vittorio Stringher, a physician, collaborator of Commissioner Abele Damiani in drawing up the excellent and complex report on Sicily.

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Among the agronomists we find names which present, as in other cases, professional expertise intertwined with interests and behaviour inspired by liberal or democratic political ideas. Among them was Attilio Magri, the son of a capitalist tenant farmer and a tenant farmer himself, who had taken part in the uprising of 1848 in Mantua; he had travelled for a long time in the Europe of the Industrial Revolution, which he saw as an example for Italy. At the time of the Enquiry he was in charge of the Agrarian Comizio of Mantua, to whose environs his monograph is dedicated. The author of a farmer’s catechism and of many works about agricultural credit, he was also a man of letters and a writer. Another interesting figure is Baron Giuseppe Andrea Angeloni, from Abruzzo, who, following the family tradition, devoted himself to studying economics, agronomy and social sciences. In his youth he had joined the movement for Italian Unity at the side of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Among the authors of monographs who practiced a profession there were eight engineers, as well as the entire body of engineers of Latium and nine lawyers. However, the most important figures among the professional men, besides the agronomists, were the physicians, who were also the most ‘dissenting’ in relation to the documentation provided by the enquiry and by its official conclusions: not only, therefore, in regard to what can justifiably be called Bertani’s ‘counter-enquiry’. Besides the official rapporteurs, we find in the Records thirteen other authors or co-authors of monographs; they were mainly district doctors, to whom questionnaires were often sent, or were part of health districts in the Veneto, Tuscany, Latium, Campania, Abruzzo and Calabria. Some were also concerned with agronomy or agriculture and were in the Agrarian Comizi. Among them we find Antonio Bottoni, a democrat from Ferrara, who in 1870 enrolled, with the rank of Captain doctor, in Garibaldi’s expedition to France. In Paris he offered his services to the Commune, collecting notes and documents for an account of those events, which however he never wrote. He was the doctor on board a ship heading to the Dutch East Indies, an experience he described in a book in which he disapproved of the methods of Dutch imperialism, which he thought were destined to provoke anti-European reaction in the subject peoples. After having also taken a journey to America, he won a place as a doctor in the Province of Siena, writing a monograph about the area in which he was practicing. A third interesting figure was Alfonso Ademollo, the author of a prize-winning monograph about the Province of Grosseto. The son of a famous painter, he took part in the 1848 uprising in Tuscany. A writer and eclectic scholar of medicine and the sciences, the author of notes on cholera in the Maremma in 1855 and of a Maremma Ornithology, he ended his career as Royal Inspector of excavations and monuments. 122

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Among the replies to the detailed questionnaires, those from the Agrarian Comizi were particularly important. These associations were extremely useful in several ways: from among their members, they provided the authors of many of the monographs, and they assisted in the gathering of the information requested, sometimes on the occasion of the direct visits by some Commissioners. The Agrarian Comizi proved to be particularly important for the Centre-North of Italy, while they do not appear to have played any role in Apulia, the rest of the South of Italy and the islands. On the whole, the perspective of those who participated in producing the monographs and of the Agrarian Comizi was quite accurate in illustrating local systems of cultivation or agrarian contracts, as well as, to a certain extent, the living conditions of the working class. The information on the number of landowners, the land distribution and the quantity of production is, on the contrary, very dubious. In this last case the landowners were definitely not interested in giving information: from the beginning they feared the Enquiry was a fiscal tool to increase the land tax and were hostile to letting Parliament and the Government know the real land income. But, above all, their vision was strictly conditioned by their social status which was very biased and ‘partisan’ in relation to the social issues. Of course, this was not always the case. We have already mentioned Bertani’s attitude in this field and his contrast with Jacini, which lasted up to the official final documents of the Enquiry. But even the report on the peasants and agricultural day labourers in the Veneto, signed by Emilio Morpurgo,3 was so blunt that the local landowners and Agrarian Comitia overwhelmed it with protests; as Lazzarini wrote, ‘that very meek moderate […] was assaulted by the press and even in Parliament as if he were the most extreme socialist.’ To the attacks, Morpurgo replied: […] go, see and then report on the beauty of the rural houses, on the sufficient salaries, tell us that the complaints of the victims of pellagra, of the emigrants, of the day labourers are untrue, that the lack of food is untrue, the lack of water untrue. (Lazzarini, 1983: 12–13).

In fact, the Veneto was the poorest part of Northern Italy up to the middle of the twentieth century. One of the Italian Regions nowadays politically dominated by the Lega Nord, with its anti-immigration programme, it was for centuries a land of poor, mass migrants.

 

3

See Vol. IV, Circoscrizione XI.

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VI. The complicated history of a freshly unified territory. Was there already a North–South difference? As has been said before, the Enquiry was an extraordinary opportunity to understand the complexity of the Italian peninsula, which was unified for the first time since the Roman Empire and not even at the same time for the whole of the territory. The Veneto entered after the Third War of Independence in 1866; Rome in 1870; the region of Trentino-Alto Adige in 1918, having previously been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Italy as a nation even within the 1861 boundaries was a very new State, after centuries of separation between regional States sometimes independent, but in many cases, from the Early Modern Era to the nineteenth century, dominated by Spain, France, or Austria. The economic and social history of unified Italy must therefore deal with a history of separation among the different local administrations, different economic systems, etc., and their effects after unification. The results of the Enquiry and the words used by Stefano Jacini in his definition of the peninsula as a collection of many agricultural Italys offer the best evaluation possible of nineteenth-century reality. There are profound differences between regions in post-unified Italy, in terms of local agriculture as well as in more general terms of economic growth. The classical dichotomy between North-South is inadequate; there were underdeveloped areas and poverty in the North, particularly in the Veneto, just as there was an advanced and well-structured agriculture in the South, for instance, in some areas of Puglia and Sicily. Nevertheless, the great part of the South as it emerges from the Enquiry seemed to suffer from greater structural deficiencies, endogenous to the agricultural sector and production as a whole, with respect to the Centre-North of the country. The system of agriculture in the South was often based on the precarious and mobile labour of peasants who had established their abode far from the countryside and moved from place to place in search of work. This was the case not only in areas dedicated to cereals, as it happened in the North, where resort was made to hired labour for sowing and reaping, but also in the specialised vine and citrus growing areas. Bevilacqua introduced the definition ‘migrant agricultures’ (Bevilacqua, 1985: 199) for Calabria where there existed a reality in which the landowners, in the majority of cases, were unable to organise their property in unique farming enterprises, but always hired a temporary labour force. The intermediation between the owners and the workers seeking work took various forms. Whereas in Lombardy’s high farming the tenant invested capital in the productive cycle, in the Sicilian latifundia in which the name ‘feudo’ still survived long after the abolishment of the feudal régime, the gabellotto was a simple intermediary who did not make 124

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any investment himself and who obtained his profit from the difference between the rent he had to pay for the land and the returns he obtained from the hired workers, sharecroppers or very small sub-tenants. The conditions of the farmers without their own land or with too little land to serve family needs were worse in the South then in the Centre-North and it is this geographical difference which was the most egregious. One example will suffice to illustrate this: The Tuscan mezzadro and the Sicilian metatiere were both sharecroppers with little or no working capital of their own. The mezzadro received from the landowner without any payment, a farming enterprise which was ready to cultivate, a house for himself and his family who worked the whole year on the farm, an advance on the seeds to be sowed, which was then recovered from the following harvest, and the draft cattle as well as pigs and a small flock of sheep. No interest was asked by the landowner for all these advances. The products were divided in half (Biagioli, 2002: 54–58). The infrastructure (mostly roads, later on railways) was considerable and a great part of the population, agricultural and not, was occupied in a circuit of protoindustrial activities or modern industry which created additional family income. In contrast, the metatiere received one third of the production, with two-thirds going to the gabellotto or land owner. From the one-third he received, the metatiere had to deduct the payment for seeds as well as other advances, like those received by the mezzadro, on which he had to pay an interest rate as high as 20–25% (Ierardi, 2002). Inevitably, this kind of Sicilian small farmer was forced to incur substantial debts. His family’s income was also reduced as a result of the fact that women were not allowed to work in most of the Sicilian countryside. The crisis of sericulture and the absence of manufacturing of any scale on the island meant that employment depended almost entirely on agriculture and the sulphur mines. This situation was aggravated by the presence of a multitude of intermediaries above the producer, which led to a further limitation of the revenue of the gabellotto or of the landowner himself, despite the production of a fertile and specialised agriculture. From what has been reported above, it is no surprise that the first waves of emigration from Italy in the last decades of the nineteenth century, shortly after the end of the Enquiry, came from the Veneto in the North and Calabria and Sicily in the South. The Enquiry expressed the most advanced orientations of the Italian Parliament either in the field of the agrarian world gravitating around the landlord’s interests, or among the supporters of the political world that from Unification onwards neglected the most important issues in favour of agrarian development. The opinions expressed by Stefano Jacini in his final report singled out the main critical points in the Italian 125

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agrarian situation at that time: the relative decline of Italian agriculture in the last 30–40 years before the Enquiry as compared with other Northern European countries, the consciousness of the peasants of their miserable conditions, particularly if compared to other European peasants; the necessity to improve the peasants’ economic and social situation; the errors in the new State’s agrarian politics (inefficient system for the sale of common land, too heavy taxation, the necessity of adopting for all Italian agriculture a more intensive, capitalist culture based on the example of the Northern Italy). Unfortunately, when Jacini published his Report, there was another dominating issue at the heart of the political debates, inside and outside the Italian Parliament, the agrarian crisis, mostly caused by the well-known international fall in the price of cereals. In reaction to this, the Parliamentary majority adopted an agrarian protectionism whose aim was to satisfy the interests of all the grain producing areas, both from the North and from the South of the country, and of all their representatives in the Italian Parliament. The industrial interests were not neglected either by the new protectionist legislation. This North–South deal marked the end of any possibility of changing by Parliament Italian agrarian history.

Sources AA. VV., Atti della Giunta Parlamentare per l’inchiesta agraria e sulle condizioni della classe agricola, Roma, Forzani, (1881–1886), 15 vol. (reprint Bologna, Forni, 1978). Jacini, S. (1854), La proprietà fondiaria e le popolazioni agricole in Lombardia, Milano. Jacini, S. (1976), I risultati della inchiesta agraria: relazione pubblicata negli Atti delle Giunta per la Inchiesta Agraria, introduzione di G. Nenci, Torino, Einaudi. Jacini, S. (1926), L’inchiesta agraria: proemio, relazione finale, conclusione dell’inchiesta sulla Lombardia, interpellanza al Senato, Introduzione di Francesco Coletti, Piacenza. Panizza, M. (1890), Risultati dell’inchiesta istituita da Agostino Bertani sulle condizioni sanitarie dei lavoratori della terra in Italia. Riassunto e considerazioni, Roma, Stabilimento Tipografico Italiano. Paoloni, G. & Ricci, S. (eds) (1998), L’archivio della Giunta per l’Inchiesta agraria e sulle condizioni della classe agricola in Italia (Inchiesta Jacini) 1877–1885: Inventario, Roma, Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali. (Quaderni della Rassegna degli archivi di Stato, 84). 126

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For further information on the work of the Giunta and many unpublished monographs, see the documentary material in the Archivio di Stato in Rome: the 24 folders of the relevant Archivio della Giunta for the agrarian enquiry, and the ‘Carte del Ministero dell’agricoltura, industria e commercio’ (sezione IV, buste 373 and 374; sezione VI, busta 385). See also the University of Cagliari degree thesis, Academic Year 1995–1996, on the site http://web.gioder.altervista.org/jacini/index.php

Bibliography Anselmi, S. (1986), ‘Le condizioni fisiche dei contadini marchigiani nella Inchiesta Jacini, 1877–1884’, Proposte e ricerche 16, p. 62–68 Banti, A. (1996), Storia della borghesia italiana. L’età liberale, Rome, Donzelli. Barsanti, D. (2005), I Toscanelli di Pisa: una famiglia nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, Pisa, Plus-Pisa University Press. Bernardi, U. (1985), ‘La Civiltà rurale lombarda all’epoca dell’inchiesta Jacini’, in AA.VA., Tra Manzoni e Jacini: la cultura rurale lombarda dell’ottocento, Milan, Insor-Franco Angeli Editore. Betri, M.L. (1998), La giovinezza di Stefano Jacini: la formazione, i viaggi, la proprietà fondiaria (1826–1857), Milan, Franco Angeli. Bevilacqua, P. (1985), ‘Uomini, terre, economie’, in P. Bevilacqua (ed.), Storia d’Italia. Le regioni dall’Unità a oggi. La Calabria, A Placanica, Turin, Einaudi, p. 117–362. Biagioli, G. (2002), ‘La mezzadria poderale nell’Italia centro-settentrionale in età moderna e contemporanea’, Rivista di Storia dell’agricoltura 2, a. xlii, p. 53–101. Biagioni, P.L. (ed.) (1984), La Garfagnana 1883–1983. Aspetti economici, agricoli, urbanistici e socio-culturali, Atti della Giunta per l’Inchiesta Agraria Monografia di Carlo De Stefani sul Circondario di Castelnuovo Garfagnana, Edizioni W. Ciapetti, Castelnuovo Garfagnana. Caleffi, A. (2006), ‘La cattedra ambulante di agricoltura di Mantova’, in O. Failla, G. Fumi (eds), Gli agronomi in Lombardia dalle cattedre ambulanti a oggi, Milan, Franco Angeli, p. 169–182. Caracciolo, A. (1973), L’inchiesta agraria Jacini, Turin, Einaudi. Fumian, C. (1984), ‘Proprietari, imprenditori, agronomi’, in S. Lanaro (ed.), Il Veneto, Turin, Einaudi, p. 99–162. Guidi, M.E.L. (2001), ‘Cooperazione, socialismo ed economia agraria. Nota su Ghino Valenti’, in M. E. L. Guidi & L. Michelini (eds.), Marginalismo e socialismo nell’Italia liberale 1870–1925, Turin, Feltrinelli. 127

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Guidi, M. E. L. (2002), ‘“Il sapere e l’esperienza che l’Italia contemporanea è in grado di fornire.” L’inchiesta agraria Jacini tra statistica ed economia agraria’, in M. Augello & M. E. L. Guidi (eds); La scienza economica in Parlamento. Una storia dell’economia politica dell’Italia liberale, vol. i, Milan, Franco Angeli. Ierardi, S. (2002), La Sicilia rurale nell’inchiesta agraria di Abele Damiani, Associazione socioculturale Mothia, Marsala. Lampertico, D. (1888), Studio sulla concimazione con speciale riflesso agli ingrassi chimici, Vicenza, Galla. Lazzarini, A. (ed.) (1983), Contadini e agricoltura: l’inchiesta Jacini nel Veneto, Milan, Franco Angeli. Missaggia, M.G. (2003), Stefano Jacini e la classe politica liberale, Florence, Olschki. Nitti, F.S. (1900), Il bilancio dello Stato dal 1862 al 1896–97. Prime linee di un’inchiesta sulla ripartizione territoriale delle entrate e delle spese pubbliche in Italia, Naples, Reale Istituto di incoraggiamento di Napoli. Novacco, D. (ed.) (1963), ‘L’inchiesta Jacini’, in AA. VV., Storia del Parlamento italiano, vol. xvii, Palermo, Flaccovio. Passaro, A. R. (2005), Il Cilento nell’Inchiesta agraria Jacini (1882), Casal velino calo, Galzerano. Pazzagli, R. (2008), Il sapere dell’agricoltura. Istruzione, cultura, economia nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, Milan, Franco Angeli. Raponi, N. (2004), ‘Jacini, Stefano’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 61. Rinaldi, M.A. (1981), ‘La povertà in Basilicata dall’ Inchiesta Jacini all’inchiesta Ambrico’, in Ricerche di storia sociale e religiosa, nn. 19–20. Tolaini, R. (ed.) (2005), Contadini toscani negli anni Trenta. Le monografie di famiglie agricole dell’INEA (1931–1938), Pisa, Pacini. Toscanelli, G. (1861), La economia rurale descritta nella provincia di Pisa, ed illustrata con una collezione di oggetti e modelli, Pisa, Nistri. Tourdonnet, A. de (1879–1880), Situation du métayage en France, Paris, Impr. de la Société de Typographie.

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7.

Agricultural change and politics in late nineteenth-century Britain: the enquiries of two Royal Commissions, 1879–1897 Robert M. Schwartz With a return of fine seasons […] we shall once more find farming a prosperous and lucrative occupation, and we shall again live to see the agriculture of our beloved country stand out in bold relief, to the admiration and pride of Englishmen and the wonder and envy of all nations. Jacob Wilson, Member of the Royal Commission, (1882).

By 1897, optimistic forecasts for British agriculture heard in the early 1880s had fallen silent. In their place was the realisation that major segments of British agriculture could no longer compete in the home and international markets for foodstuffs. As R. F. Crawford put it in 1889, ‘Our daily bread’ and most of our food came from overseas (Crawford, 1899: 598). This shift in outlook and the reasons for it are well documented in two Parliamentary enquiries carried out in the late nineteenth century in Britain. The first, known as the Richmond Commission, was the Royal Commission on the Distressed Conditions of Agricultural Interests (1879–1882). A decade later, the second and more extensive of the two, was the Royal Commission on the Agricultural Depression (1893–1897). In both cases, the principal question was whether legislation could rejuvenate depressed British agricultural and help it compete successfully in a world of growing foreign competition. Both commissions duly addressed themselves to the issue. Each heard testimony from more than one hundred witnesses, drawn from landlords, land agents, and tenant farmers. Each appointed Assistant Commissioners to gather detailed evidence on the conditions in the agricultural districts of the country and those in the foreign countries of America and Europe. Drawing on the vast body of oral, written, and statistical evidence each commission issued reports and recommendations for legislative enactment. Nonetheless, both commissions struggled and often failed to find a political solution or compromise for the problems before them that could carry the day in Parliament. Several bills were enacted that reduced taxes on agricultural land and strengthened rights of tenants to receive compensation for improvements they made on the land they worked. A limited measure to provide for the purchase of small allotments from public land was also passed into law and then expanded in

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1911. By and large, however, the edifice of land law and landlord privilege remained in place. Even in decline, the English landed elite forestalled any legislative measures that would seriously undermine the concentration of wealth, tradition, and political power under their command. In comparative perspective, this result was a striking contrast with the fulsome reform of land law and land tenure in Ireland. Concerned to placate tenant agitation and Irish independence movements, both Liberal and Conservative Governments used a series of land reform acts and public funds to subsidise the redistribution of land and wealth from landlords to Irish cultivators. That a comparable program might be introduced in Britain nurtured the hopes of small farmers and land nationalisation movements, while the idea that the Irish solution should be extended to Britain merely forced conservative MPs and landlords to make limited concessions in law and practice while maintaining the English system (Huttman, 1971; Readman, 2008). Still, the national comparisons studied by both commissions awakened British elites to the growing dependence of the United Kingdom on foreign sources of food. The sharpening of anxieties concerning food supplies in time of war prompted strategic military planning the proved critical in the First World War and thus figures as the final part of the story told here. Both commissions warrant further study. Coming at the beginning and at the end of the long agricultural depression (c. 1876–1896) their work makes it possible to identify the government’s responses to crisis, the differing views of appropriate intervention, and the political contention that kept the existing system of law and land tenure largely in place. In the vast evidence collected and published, much else comes to light: the adjustments by landlords and tenants to changing market conditions and modified law, the belief, under challenge, that the crisis would pass and that agriculture would remain an essential national industry. Added to this was an alternative conviction that far-reaching land reform and renewed support of small farming might restore the derelict fields that were ‘bleached and barren’. What follows is a modest and selective examination, focusing on the aims, organisation, and functioning of the commissions, the political struggles that shaped their often factious conclusions, and, briefly, the shifts in farming and land use that occurred on the ground regardless of Parliamentary wrangling and maneuver.

I.  The political and economic contexts To begin, let us recall the political and economic contexts. In politics, the competition between the Conservative and Liberal parties runs throughout

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the work of the commissions, sometimes shaping and often preventing legislative remedies to help distressed producers and landlords. Conservatives held to the belief that the interests of landlords, tenant farmers, and agricultural labourers were one. Agricultural prosperity, said the Richmond Commission, lay ‘in the mutual confidence and friendly relations of the three classes directly engaged in it, and in the common conviction that their interests are inseparable’. A case in point, Conservative leaders explained, was the passage, under their governance, of the Contagious Disease Act in 1878 to prevent the importation of diseased livestock – a problem that had afflicted many British herds. After 1875, when the effects of agricultural depression spread and intensified, the Liberal party – heretofore the champions of industry, the middle classes, and urban tax payers – renewed an interest in rural reform and ordinary rural voters. Taking aim at the concentration of land ownership and power in the hands of a tiny elite, Liberals – sometimes allied with radical reformers – worked variously to secure land tenure reform, the democratisation of land ownership, and measures to regenerate a small-holding yeomanry. Under the leadership of Gladstone and the Liberal majority in the early 1880s, the passage of The Allotments Extension Act of 1882 and the Third Reform Bill of 1884 moved their reform program forward. The Allotments Act authorised county councils to provide charitable allotments to cottagers and labourers. The Reform Bill extended the franchise to agricultural labourers (Readman, 2008: 23–25). The contention over ‘The Land Question’ sharpened as the agricultural depression continued and was reflected in the composition of the first and the second commissions. Appointed by Disraeli’s Conservative government in 1879, the first commission was dominated by large estate owners, members of the gentry, and large tenant farmers loyal to Tory opinion. At its head was Charles Henry Gordon Lennox, 6th Duke of Richmond. With large estates in Sussex and considerable experience in ministerial affairs, he had a well-earned reputation as a progressive agriculturalist, a long-standing member of the Royal Agricultural Society, and the guiding hand behind the Contagious Disease Act. In 1880, however, the Conservative defeat at the polls meant that the final report and recommendations of the Richmond Commission fell to Gladstone, a supporter of land-tenure reform, and the Liberals to act upon. This sea-saw situation reversed itself in the 1890s. Because the Liberal party returned to power in 1892, the Royal Commission on Agricultural Depression, appointed in 1893, had a different political profile than its predecessor. More members were drawn from the Liberal benches of the Commons, and the members of the

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House of Lords were reduced from four to two. The Chair of the commission was George Shaw-Lefevre, a Liberal MP, Cabinet member, and advocate of tenure reform (Readman, 2008: 15). Then, in 1895, the general elections returned the Conservatives to power. In April 1896, having lost his seat, Shaw-Lefevre was forced to resign the chair and his membership on the commission. Lord Cobham replaced him in the chair. This and other changes in membership shifted control to the Tory side of the aisle. Significant aspects of the economic background were historically rooted. There was firstly the widely shared pride in the pre-eminent position of English agriculture in Europe. During the second half of the eighteenth century, enclosure and improved farming practice had transformed the organisation and output of the country’s agriculture, bringing it to new heights of productivity and repute (Great Britain, Ministry of Agriculture, 1968). A second part of the background was more recent: the sustained period of agricultural growth and prosperity from about 1852 to 1874. During the increasing agrarian difficulties of 1875 to 1881, in particular, such recent prosperity made bad weather, poor harvests, and the rising imports of grain and meat seem to be temporary setbacks, nourishing hopes that farmers and landlords would recover when the rain stopped and the sun shone. The lingering memory of the ‘golden age’ of wheat farming and arable agriculture was battered by the accelerating forces of globalisation in foodstuffs. The transport revolution – powered by railways, steamships, and telegraphy – so reduced the cost of shipping that wheat, livestock, and preserved meat from the United States could land in Liverpool and be sold at less than the British farmer’s usual cost of production. In the same period, as bad harvests and cattle plagues struck Britain in 1870s, the first wave of American grain exports arrived in Britain and other European counties, forcing down the price of wheat in particular to lower and lower levels until a mild recovery began in the mid-1890s. From 1873 to 1882, American exports of wheat rose from 40 to 150 million bushels, displacing Russia as the chief exporter of cereal grains to Britain (Rothstein, 1960; Carman, 1934). As the years passed, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and India joined the United States in the production and export of food, fundamentally altering the position of the British farmers in relation to international markets. Recognising the importance of American imports as one cause of depression, the Richmond Commission charged three of its members – two Members of Parliament and Mr. John Clay – to gather evidence in the United States and report their findings. The report by Clay lauded the workings of American wheat production,

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calling it ‘a wonder of the world.’(Clay, 1882: 705–715). Other Europeans from France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia who came to study the American system agreed. (Rothstein, 1960: 412–16) In 1895, a dozen years after Clay’s report, the second commission learned that Argentina was beginning to rival the United States in wheat and meat exports, prompting one of the commissioners to ask what would be left for British farmers to do? Dairy farming, cheese making, poultry farming, fruit growing, replied the Argentine witness; ‘there are a lot of things that can be done in this country which the people will have to take to’ (BPP, 1895: 335). Turning briefly to the historiographical context, it seems that the study of the two commissions has centered less on the massive evidence they collected than on the conclusions they advanced in the final reports, each of which claimed, with more or less confidence, that depression affected Britain as a whole. Since the 1960s, however, historians have persuasively shown that the claim was mistaken. They have documented a disproportionate attention to cereal regions and the decline of arable cultivation in the English south and east. Drawing evidence from the commissions’ own records and other sources, they have stressed that depression was a regional phenomenon, severe in cereal growing regions, limited in pastoral regions, and subject to variation across adjoining districts and over time. Recent research, in short, presents more complex picture of distress, change, and adjustment. As landlords and famers adjusted to changing market conditions and converted more arable land to pasture, livestock and dairy farming remained relatively prosperous, as Figure 7.1 suggests (Fletcher, 1961a; Fletcher, 1961b; Afton, 1996; Collins, 2000; Hunt & Pam, 1997). Regions where market gardening, poultry farming, and innovative cereal production expanded also enjoyed degrees of success that the final commission reports overlooked. New research into regional variation will contribute further to understanding the patterns of agrarian change (Schwartz, 2010; Schwartz, Gregory & Henneberg, 2011; Schwartz & Thevenin, 2013). But as this work in agrarian history continues, interest in the aims, methods, and functioning of the commissions has all but disappeared. To re-open these questions, a good point of departure is T. W. Fletcher’s article of 1961 on ‘The Great Depression in English Agriculture, 1873–1896’. There, important details concerning the social and economic make-up of the commissions and witness lists provide a solid base on which to build. Other avenues for new research that cannot be taken up here include the commissions’ influence on public opinion, their use and interpretation of statistical evidence, and the results of their work in law and its influence on agrarian practice.

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II. The Royal Commission on the depressed conditions of agricultural interests, 1879–1882 The immediate cause for establishing the Commission was a crisis: a series of bad harvests and cattle epidemics began in 1873 and culminated in the disastrous year of 1879. By then farmers’ losses, inadequate domestic stocks of grain, flour, and meat, and a corresponding rise in imported wheat and livestock forced Parliament to respond. The Commission was established in 1879 at the urging of Henry Chaplin, Member of Parliament, the owner of 3000 acres in Lincolnshire, and for more than a generation, the spokesman for the ‘agrarian interest.’ The Duke of Richmond served as President, and the 18 additional members included 3 additional Peers, 2 landed gentry, and 6 Members of Parliament. The Commission defined its purpose as: […] to inquire into the depressed condition of the agricultural interest, and the causes to which it is owing; whether those causes are of a permanent character, and how far they have been created or can be remedied by legislation. (Royal Commission, 1881)

The inquiry proceeded with the appointment of 13 Assistant Commissioners, each charged with collecting evidence in districts and reporting their results. England and Wales were divided into four districts, Scotland and Ireland into two each, while two commissioners were assigned to France and Belgium, and three to the United States and Canada. Besides whole countries being assigned to one or two men, the geographical character of the investigations was coarse even in England. Assistant Commissioner Druce, for example, was responsible for 15 counties that ran from Derbyshire in the north to Sussex in the south (BPP, 1882a). The main headings of the investigation indicated the specific information that the Assistants were to collect. The headings began with the current conditions of farms and ended with the present state of imported foodstuffs from foreign countries (Royal Commission, 1881: 13–19). The formal opening of the Commission took place on 12 February 1880, the first of 141 days of examining witnesses. The hearings came to an end two years later on 9 March 1882. By then, some 190 witnesses had been heard, and two volumes of verbatim testimony and reports of the Assistant Commissioners had already been published in 1881. A last volume, published in 1882, contained the Final Report, additional testimony, and updated reports from Assistant Commissioners. All told, some 3500 dense pages were put before the government, Parliament, and the public.

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In its Final Report, the Commission acknowledged that there was evidence showing regional variation in the degree of distress experienced. That acknowledgement, however, was overshadowed by its general conclusion: The general conclusion to be arrived at from the reports of the Assistant Commissioners is that in nearly every county of England and Scotland, and in some parts of Wales, distress of unprecedented severity has been experienced by the agricultural community (BPP, 1882: 11).

It was this conclusion that framed the issue in parliamentary debate and journalistic discussion in the months and years that followed. As a few discerning contemporaries suggested, a closer reading of the Assistant Commissioners’ Reports reveals the failure of the Commission to make good use of the vast statistical data collected and of other detailed evidence the Assistant Commissioners presented (Fletcher, 1961a). Prompted to review his own notes in a collaboration with statistician Major J. P Craigie, Assistant Commissioner Druce discovered that the published version of his 1882 report was incomplete and in parts misleading (Craigie, 1883). Other reports showed that Wales was less affected, as were Devon and Cornwall, due to their particular kinds of husbandry (fruits and vegetables and a milder climate in Cornwall; cattle raising and dairy farming in Devon). The reports on Scotland, on the other hand, indicated that it was suffering as much as the worst affected English areas. In assessing the causes, the Commission concluded that two were paramount: ‘bad seasons’ and the growth of foreign competition. Although the years of cool, overcast, and excessively wet seasons from 1875 to 1880 had been unusually severe, noted the report, such were the climatic cycles that came and went in Britain and in agriculture generally, offering no means of human control. Growing foreign competition, the report continued, was something that the farming community had to adjust to; it was not an area over which the government and Parliament should assume greater control. The duties on agricultural imports having been abolished by the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, there was to be, the reported stressed, no return to tariff protection. Free trade in agricultural produce, emphasised the report, brought cheaper food and thereby benefited the whole of nation. It followed, the commission acknowledged, that competition, especially from American, was going to be a permanent condition shaping the fortunes of British farmers.

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[…] the unprecedentedly large importations, chiefly from American, have, by lowering the prices of home produce, greatly increased agricultural depression […] [and] there appears to be [no] room for doubt that English farmers must lay their account to a continuance of this competition, pursued with unabated energy and with yearly increasing enterprise […] If it had not been for the enormous competition from American, prices in bad seasons would necessarily have gone up, and English produce would have thus found compensation for deficient yield (BPP, 1882: 13).

In describing other causes of lesser importance, the Commission spoke both as and for landowners when it dealt with farmer grievances related to restrictive leases, insecure tenure, and other impediments in English land law. Despite the grievances heard, the English system, so the Commission declared, should not be seen as a cause of depression. After all, the depression was as severe in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and elsewhere on the Continent where ‘a more liberal system of ownership’ prevailed (Ibid.: 11, 14). In what seems intentional misinformation, the Commission smugly observed that ‘the position of the continental farmer was less favorable than in England owing to the short leases containing restrictive covenants with the exclusive right to game and the absence of compensation for unexhausted improvements’, (BPP, 1881: 12) such as applications of fertiliser, drainage work, and other improvements to the land that would benefit the next tenant and the landlord. That the very same conditions existed in Britain was not mentioned. With regard to proposals encouraging ‘the establishment of peasant proprietary,’ such practice was deemed unsuitable to ‘the habits of the people or to the condition of agriculture in the country.’ (BPP, 1881: 29). But if the fortress of land law and landowner privilege was reaffirmed, the report did endorse amending a few statues (BPP, 1881: 29–30). In inheritance law, it supported the Settled Land Bill, passed by the House of Lords and awaiting passage in the Commons. The passage would augment the powers of life tenants with regard to sales, exchange, partition, and leasing of their holdings. It also recommended that the guarantee of tenant compensation for unexhausted improvements, as stipulated in the Agricultural Holdings Act of 1875, be improved by amendment. Further, the statute governing the tithe rent charge, the payment that replaced the tithe in kind, should require the landowner to pay a fixed amount. Local rates, the report reasonably declared, should be shared equally between landlord and tenant. On railway rates – a determining factor in British agriculture – the commission supported amending the act so as to enforce the statutory principle of equal access to cheap and speedy means of railway carriage. Still, ‘we are not, however, prepared to recommend that railway companies should be debarred by legislative enactment from 136

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offering special terms for through traffic from abroad.’ Giving importers privileged rates for direct transships from Liverpool to London, for example, was deemed acceptable (BPP, 1881: 32). The conservative character of the Commission’s conclusions and proposals sparked dissent and debate. In his dissenting memorandum, Assistant Commissioner John Clay, an Anglo-American who had reported on American agriculture, stated flatly that the influence of American competition had been exaggerated – a point that Conservatives took to heart. More significantly, the Commission had disregarded the ample evidence showing that high rents were one of the chief causes of depression. Rents, he held, needed to be permanently reduced (Clay, 1882: 40–41).

III.  Consequences: preserving (most of) the status quo Several of the recommendations did help bring about modification of existing statutes. The passage of the Settled Land Act in 1882 and the new Agricultural Holdings Act of August 1883 are the best examples. For the newly elected Liberal Government, the new Holdings Act was a good step toward reform. Citing the commission’s vague recommendation, the Liberal Government pressed forward. The Conservative opposition conceded that the voluntary agreements in the Act of 1876 should be replaced by compulsory procedures, but much less to their liking were the provisions that 1) authorised tenants to make improvement without prior approval of the landlord, and 2) enlarged the definition of qualified improvements. One other of recommendation by the Richmond Commission was enacted in 1889 when the Conservative government created the Board of Agriculture (Fletcher, 1961a: 427). III.1.  Public opinion and the Land Question Although Clay’s call for the urgent and substantial lowering of rents was ignored in the Commission’s recommendations, the issue was amplified in an outpouring of pamphlets on the ‘Land Question,’ in newspaper reports of farmers’ opinions, and in the pages of the Journal of the Agricultural Society in England, the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, other elite periodicals. As President of the Royal Statistical Society and recognised agricultural authority, James Caird made the argument for steady-as-she-goes conservatism in The British Land Question (1881). The British system of agriculture rested, he wrote, on ‘two capitals’, that of the landowner and that of the tenant, and their cooperation was one key to the system’s success. The other was that the tenant was in fact a ‘capitalist farmer’ cultivating large acreage, as compared with the small farmers of Ireland and the peasant proprietors of France and other countries. Those, he clearly implied, noisily campaigning to restore a 137

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small-holding English peasantry had only to look at the low productivity of the French system to see that they were wrong. There can be ‘no doubt, therefore, that the true policy in British agriculture is to strengthen and maintain it on its present lines.’ (Caird, 1881: 18, 22, 27). The case for small holdings and peasant proprietors was the mission of the Allotments and Small Holdings Association. Its leading members included liberal peers, Lord Carrington and Lord William Compton, and liberal MPs, notably Joseph Chamberlain who led the campaign for protection and Joseph Arch, the founder and first president of the National Agricultural Labourers Union (1872) and liberal Member of Parliament (1885–86, 1892–1900). In the memorably entitled pamphlet, Three Acres and A Cow, the secretary of the Association, Frederick Impey, argued the case in favor of small holdings and peasant proprietors, explained that the Allotments Act of 1882 should be strengthened through government loans to labourers, farmers, and others who wished to purchase small properties, similar to the provisions of the Irish Land Law of 1881 (Impey, 1885). The revival of protectionist schemes was another contentious issue that pitted some allies of ‘the landed interest’ such as S.W. Poynter, the founder of the National Association for the Preservation of Agriculture, against longer list of free trade supporters and liberal writers such Joseph Arch and Isaac Saunders Leadam (Leadam, 1881; 1885b; Spencer, 1880; Poynter, 1886; 1887; Arch, 1884b; 1884a). As for the views of farmers themselves, newspaper accounts offer listening posts. Even before the Final Report, farmers in clubs and chambers of agriculture met to draft resolutions that could be sent to the Commission, often through the Assistant Commissioner of their region. In October 1881 one such resolution presented to Mr. Druce by the Nottingham Chamber of Agriculture was rather typical of what many farmers wanted: substantial and permanent reductions in rent; the lightening of local taxation; the abolition of the law of distress that so favored land owners; and the total abolition of the importation of livestock (Alnwick Mercury, 1 October 1881). Elsewhere, a growing number of resolutions called for fair compensation for improvements tenants made during their leases (Yorkshire Gazette, 1882; Northern Echo, 1882; The Times, 1883). When hopes for recovery began to fade after 1882 and the Commissions remedies seemed insufficient, calls for protection were heard more frequently. At their annual meeting in December 1884, for example, the Warwickshire Chamber of Agriculture passed a resolution in favor of tariff protection for imported flour (Hampshire Advertiser, 1882). In the same month, the Norfolk Chamber, in a letter to William Gladstone, requested the appointment of a new Parliamentary Commission to look further into the continuing agricultural depression. Eight years later, with the Liberals in power, Gladstone agreed. 138

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IV.  The Royal Commission on Agricultural, 1893–1897 IV.1.  Achievements of the Commission The second commission, in its first three years, was a project created by Gladstone’s Liberal government. It was designed to improve upon its predecessor both by giving it a stronger liberal voice and by enlarging the scale, nature, and quality of the evidence to be collected and assessed. George Shaw-Lefevre, Liberal MP and a member of the Cabinet, was named the commission’s Chair and President. Chosen to represent the House of Lords were Viscount Cobham and Lord Vernon, an estate owner well respected for his agricultural knowledge and initiatives in the Derbyshire dairy industry. To represent the Commons, six MPs were appointed. Five additional commissioners were drawn from the civil administration and professions, men with expertise in foreign trade, government finance, the law, and, in one case, prior service as an Assistant Commissioner under the Richmond Committee. Politically, the three members of the ‘landed gentry’ – Henry Chaplin (MP), Robert Kingscote (Commissioner of Crown Land), and Walter H. Long (MP) – were ‘offset’ by three Liberal MPs – Francis A. Channing, Robert Everett, and George Lambert, himself a large tenant farmer in Cambridgeshire. One representative from Wales and two from Scotland were chosen to represent those countries. In gathering oral testimony, the Commission broadened the geographic and economic range of witnesses chosen to represent landlords, land agents, and tenant farmers. Although the size of tenant farms in the sample remained on the whole quite large, at 500 or more acres, farmers from the grazing regions were more adequately represented than before. From a long list of requests, the Commission chose 34 representatives of agricultural societies to give testimony. In two years (9 November 1893 to 15 December 1895), the Commission gathered testimony over 117 days of hearings from 191 witnesses. Published in four volumes, the verbatim minutes filled some 2,300 pages. Reports were issued in 1895, 1896, and 1897. The Second Report of 1896 and, in 1897, the Third and Final Report offered assessments of the evidence and proposals for legislative action. Contentious and divisive, the second and third reports signaled a political impasse that blocked Liberal hopes for significant reform. The return to power of the Conservative Party following the general elections of 1895 shifted the balance in the Commission. Advocates of ‘landed interest’ – Henry Chaplin, Walther Long, and Nigel Kingscote – now had the upper hand in shaping the proceedings. Chaplin, Long, and Charles T. Ritchie were elevated to cabinet positions, respectively, as President of the Board of Local Government, President of the Board of Agriculture, and President of the Board of Trade. Signed by the Tory led 139

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majority, The Second Report proposed two measures only, both of which opponents viewed as favoring landlords instead of aiding of tenants: first, that local taxes on agricultural land be reduced by three-quarters, and second that low-interest State loans be made available to landlords to finance permanent improvements, such as drainage projects, the erection of new buildings, etc. (BPP, 1897: 13–18). A minority report written by Shaw-Lefevre criticised the recommendations, (BPP, 1896: 22–31), while in the Commons, other Liberals objected that the benefits from lowered rates went into the landlords’ pockets. Nevertheless, the Conservatives prevailed, and, with its passage, the Agricultural Ratings Act of 1896 lowered local rates by 50% on the assessed value of agricultural land. The act did little to reduce the large variation in rates across the country which continued. Whether the benefits of the lowered rates were monopolised by landlords or were shared with tenants, this adjustment reflected the much weakened position of agriculture in the British economy (BPP, 1897: 22–26; 1897a; Turner, 2000: 224–320; Beckett, 2000: 716, 721, 746). Although the Final Report demonstrated success in data collection, it also revealed political impasse in the House of Commons. Large and well-organised, the 370 page volume testified to painstaking methods of collecting and presenting qualitative and statistical information. Readers of the Report had now at hand a picture of unprecedented detail on the varied conditions of agriculture, within the country, within its regions, and in relation to countries overseas. Not at hand, however, was the political will needed to modify in any meaningful way the English system of agriculture and the land laws on which it rested. The great differences between the views of the conservative majority and those of the dissenting members guaranteed legislative inaction. To no one’s surprise, the Final Report named the decline of prices, foreign competition, and the increased cost of British agricultural production as the primary causes of the depression. New was the recognition that the United States, the center of foreign competition in wheat, meat, and cheese for 20 years, had likely reached the peak of its agricultural exporting power and that new competition was rising from Argentina (wheat and meat), Australasia (wool, mutton, and butter), Russia (wheat and barley), and India (wheat). British wheat now provided only 25% of its national consumption; Denmark furnished 40 to 50% of imported butter; the Netherland supplied nearly all of the margarine consumed; and Canada and the United States ‘practically monopolise[d] the import trade in cheese’ (BPP, 1897: 85–86). New also was the high degree of candor and realism. The strikingly regional character of depression was, unlike in the Richmond Commission’s report, not

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passed over but confirmed. Something quite close to this conclusion could have been made more than a decade earlier on the basis of the Assistant Commissioners’ updated reports in 1882. In any event, the newer, accurate consensus vindicated the description Shaw-Lefevre had given in his dissenting memorandum the previous year (1896). The pastoral areas of the country had suffered less than the arable, graingrowing regions. Wales, mainly pastoral, had largely escaped serious depression (BPP, 1897: 21). If there was consensus on these matters, the commission nonetheless failed to agree on legislative remedies. Fourteen of the members signed the majority report, but ten of them wrote dissenting opinions on one or more of the report’s recommendations. George Lambert and Francis Channing each added reports of their own, which, taken together, were of greater length than the majority report itself. That the majority’s proposals were so limited suggested a shaky consensus, for they did little more than tinker with current law and regulations. The one exception, perhaps, was the further re-writing of the Agricultural Holdings Act of 1883, which would, when revision came into force in 1897, strengthen the hand of tenants in obtaining compensation for improvements. Other proposals were palliatives. They called for the remission of the tithe rent charge; for the amending of the Railway Rates Acts of 1888 and 1894 to equalise freight charges on foreign and domestic agricultural produce; for a bill to provide for tenant compensation in the event that farms and crops were damaged by game animals belonging to neighboring owners or occupiers; for tightened control over the adulteration of food and the fraudulent sale of imported goods as home produce; for an increase in the Board of Agriculture’s budget; and for extension of State supported loans for agricultural improvements to a longer, 25 year term. Finally, they recommended that new legislation be enacted to raise the standards of middle-class education generally, and in rural areas particularly, and to grant the Board of Agriculture additional authority in technical agricultural education (BPP, 1897: 136–159). As significant as any of these proposals were the statements declaring what would not bring effective relief to famers: ‘it cannot be brought about by further reductions of rent, whether voluntary or compulsory or by land tenure reforms’. Nor would recourse to small holdings or ‘the elimination of the landlords’ interest’ do anything to improve cultivation or bring abandoned land back under the plow. ‘To lessen the landlord’s interest in his property would injure rather than benefit the tenant, and would discourage the transfer of estates from impoverished to wealthy men’ (BPP, 1897: 159).

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In his dissenting report, Channing minced no words. Despite some sections on the fall of prices, foreign competition, the sale of mortgaged land, and agricultural education, the majority report, he found, was ‘defective in method, inadequate as presentment of the facts laid before us, and misleading in several of its conclusions’ (BPP, 1897: 227). Regrettably ignored and omitted in the majority report was the documented need for further, permanent reductions in rent (BPP, 1897: 228, 230, 237–8, 276–83). Besides the fall in prices, ‘the chief cause of agricultural depression has been the excessive rent put upon agricultural land’ (BPP, 1897: 366). The other legislative results of the Royal Commission were few. The Agricultural Ratings Act of 1896 reduced taxes on land, the benefits of which critics said went mainly to land owners rather than tenants. Proposals for amending the Small Holdings Act of 1892 to make small holdings affordable to tenants and farm workers – sometimes cast the electoral slogan ‘land to the labourer’ got nowhere until 1906. Enacted under the Conservatives, the act gave county councils the authority to provide the ownership of small farms of up to 50 acres but only to those able to make the purchase, a hollow offer doomed to failure. The Light Railways Act of 1896 aimed at extending low-cost rail transport to districts with little or no access to these services by permitting the construction of narrow-gauged line to go forward without the costly formalities of Parliamentary approval. Although influenced by a state subsidised program underway in France, that British Act offered no state funding. It proved a disappointment to the Bill’s supporters and to the many farmers who wanted better access to rail. In 1898 it appeared that the campaign to reform land law and democratise land ownership had been largely thwarted, principally because after 1886, and apart from the brief Liberal interlude of 1892 to 1895, the Conservatives held power for twenty years. But two years later the passage of the Agricultural Holdings Act in 1900 showed that the hopes of Shaw-Lefevre, Channing, George Lambert, and others on the Liberal benches – not to mention the more radical reformers outside of Parliament – remained alive. In the elections of 1906, they were justified by the Liberal’s landslide victory and return to power under David Lloyd George. In 1907 and 1908 the enactment of the Small Holdings and Allotments Acts proved consequential. By 1914, county councils had created about 14,000 holdings amounting to some 200,000 acres (Cherry & Sheail, 2000: 1587). Although delayed, Parliament recognised and recorded in law the success of small-scale farming in the dairy industry, market gardening, and livestock and poultry raising in the world of intense foreign competition.

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IV.2.  Public opinion and the press In the run-up to those achievements the press proved an ally and reflected widespread public support for land reform (Readman, 2008: 25). The sharp disagreements between the Conservative and Liberal members of the Commission were echoed in public discussions and debates. A sampling of articles in The Times (London) and regional newspapers in the 1890s, and of periodicals and pamphlets shows a mixture of straightforward reporting of the commission’s work and findings on the one hand and, on the other, advocacy of conservative, liberal, and radical perspectives on reform. New magazines such as the Rural World, Land and People, and Land and Labor added their voices to populist agitation favoring small holdings and government subsidised allotments and to sharp criticism of landlordism. Articles in the socialist Land and Labor presented the views of the radical left under the banner of the Land Nationalisation Society and its goal: ‘To restore the Land to the People and the People to the Land.’ In the August issue of 1894 Edward Thomas wrote that landlords have now no place in the rural economy and that the land should be restored to the people by vesting it with parish councils. In December 1895 R. H. Holt continued in the same vein, calling for an end landlord domination in order to provide people the means of making a living on the land and secure tenure (Thomas, 1894; Hunt, 1895; Land and Labor, 1891). Given the confident position of the Conservatives at the time in both houses of Parliament and the liberal tilt of the press, conservative opinion appeared infrequently in newspapers and magazines. The Duke of Argyll – to cite one of the few instances – wrote in the York Herald in 1893 that the craving for legislative regulation of any industry was based on an erroneous idea and that agriculture must be ‘free from interference which is sure to be injurious’ (‘Agricultural Notes’ York Herald, 1893). In 1898, after the Royal Commission had published its recommendation and reformist agitation was in full cry, Edward Verney took to the pages of The Contemporary Review to refute the liberal view that overly high rents were the fundamental cause of the agricultural depression. Recent proposals by The Land Law Reform Society, he remarked, were nothing but comforting nostrums for farmers who looked to legislation to improve their lot. ‘In the rut though art, and into the rut shalt though return’ unless you improve your own farming methods and acquire more agricultural education (Verney, 1898: 346). One of the organs of reformist opinion that Verney criticized was The Land Magazine, a new monthly magazine that publicized both critiques of the Royal Commission’s majority recommendations as well as reform measures to fortify tenant rights. Francis Channing, the chief dissenter on the Royal Commission and Liberal MP,

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used the magazine to his recommendations for an equitable agricultural holding’s act. While The Land Magazine addressed elites, chambers of agriculture, framer’s clubs, and newspapers variously presented the views of land owners and farmers. In the words of aggrieved farmers, the tenant rights they sought were the ‘Three Fs’: fixity of tenure, fair rent, and free sale of tenant improvements, to which a fourth was sometimes added, freedom of cultivation (Leeds Mercury, 1895; Smith, 1897). Provincial newspapers and The Times of London followed the Royal Commission’s proceedings as well as meetings of farmers groups and chambers of agriculture, to which assistant commissioners sometimes came to gather opinion. A revealing instance of the contention over tenant rights took place when Assistant Commissioner R. H. Rew attended the quarterly meeting of the Devon Chamber of Agriculture on 24 May 1894. A motion to amend current Agricultural Holdings Act (1883) to ensure the tenant freedom of contract, freedom of cultivation, and free sale of improvements (the three Fs of Irish inspiration) received applause, presumably from the small farmers in attendance. But the prominence of landlords and large tenant farmers in the organisation led to the quick defeat of the resolution, prompting Rew to remark that it did not, he thought, carry the sense of the meeting. A motion to the liking of estate owners and large farmers was easily carried: that the agricultural crisis was principally the result of foreign competition and the inadequacy of transport in the region that would improve the situation (The Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette, 1894; Rew, Leeds Mercury, 1895). This expression of small farmer desires in Devon reflected, however briefly, an important change in agrarian politics, the growing tensions between landlords and large farmers on the one side and small farmers on the other. These tensions were formalised in associations devoted to promoting the interests of small farmers themselves, independently of organisations like that the Devon Chamber. The farmers’ organisations in Lancashire were prominent in this regard, particularly the Federation of Lancashire Farmers’ Association and the Lancashire Tenant Farmers Association that was comparatively radical in the views it promoted (Mutch, 1983). The Times kept its eyes on events in London. The paper regularly reported summaries of the Commission hearings of witnesses and subsequently published notices of the first, second, and final reports. After the final report of May 1897, it published two editorials in August that were critical of the majority’s recommendations: the remedies proposed were parochial palliatives that would have little effect in Britain because the crisis was in fact world-wide in scope. A September article endorsed by The Times and written by James Blyth, President of the British Dairy Farmers’

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Association, interpreted Parliamentary inaction optimistically, calling it a useful clarifying moment. Now that protectionism, bimetallism, and retaliatory duties have been cleared from the scene, he reasoned, the future of agriculture in the United Kingdom would rest on ‘skillful application of scientific knowledge to the production of the best commodities that can be ground and produced on British soil.’ In that way ‘this kingdom may in reality become the nursery ground of everything that is choicest in corn, cattle, or produce’ (Blyth, 1897). For the editors of The Times, this did not mean that legislative reforms were of no use or interest. On the contrary, beginning in November the newspaper closely followed the monthly London meetings of the Associated and Central Chamber of Agriculture, the lobbying organisation that acted in behalf on the provincial branches. In the regional chambers members were predominantly large farmers; in the Central Chamber the membership was made up by land owners, large farmers, and MPs, most of whom were owners, too (Fisher, 2000: 321–322, 341–343). The reporting in The Times was informative. Members supported the advocacy of stricter measures against food adulteration and the spread of cattle disease but were divided over the issue of tenant rights because landlords were typically opposed new legislation, while increasingly farmers wanted just compensation for tenant improvements. Thanks in part to persistence of members George Lambert and Francis Channing – both Liberal MPs and dissenting members of the Royal Commission – the Central Chamber did press the Conservative Board of Agriculture to bring forward a new Agricultural Holdings Act for consideration in the House (The Times 1897; 1898b; 1900). This campaign gathered force through events reported in other publications. Of particular importance was the article by two respected experts, Sir J. Henry Gilbert and Sir J. Bennet Lawes, which demonstrated the scientific basis for providing more adequate compensation for improvements made by tenants (Gilbert & Lawes, 1897). In 1897 The Land Magazine began a series of reformist articles beginning with Francis Channing’s ‘A New Agricultural Holdings Act’ and Joseph Ashby’s ‘The Condition of the English Farmer.’ They were followed by other articles advocating equitable rents, a reconsideration of import duties on foreign flour, and the need for British citizens to see the decline of their agriculture as a national problem that jeopardised the future (Ashby, 1897; Channing, 1897; Dodgson, 1897; Smith, 1897). In December of the same year, The Land Reform Association held a conference devoted to using the Royal Commission’s evidence to draft recommendations for amending the Agricultural Holdings Act of 1883. The recommendations were published in December as ‘The New Charter of Tenant Right’ (Land Reform Association, 1897a, 1897b).

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Meanwhile, provincial chambers of agricultural and farmers’ clubs mobilised to support the Central Chamber’s lobbying in Parliament. In Westmorland and Cumberland, areas less affected by the depression, the regional chamber held a special meeting to survey what farmers wanted to see in pending legislation. In the Midlands, the Shropshire Chamber promoted improved tenant rights in the Birmingham Daily Post. In Somerset County, The Western Gazette kept its readers informed about the Central Chamber’s lobbying efforts in the capitol. And by 1899 those efforts proved influential in forcing a reluctant Board of Agriculture to bring a new act to both Houses of Parliament (Westmorland Gazette, 1898; The Western Gazette, 1899; The Birmingham Daily Post, 1900). Thus, after three years of foot dragging by the Conservative Government, the amended bill was passed in the House of Commons and became law on August 8th 1900, taking effect on 1 January 1901. In his painstaking assessment of the Act, S. B. L. Druce – an assistant commissioner of the Richmond Commission and the secretary of the national Farmers’ Club – concluded that the new law, despite some shortcomings, offered more protection to tenants and would encourage more use of the act without inflaming tensions between landlord and tenant (Druce, 1901). Some farmers, however, were disappointed that the act did not go far enough. That sentiment grew and the struggle to strengthen the provisions of the Act continued, concluding with the passage of the 1906 Agricultural Holdings Act that further fortified the rights of tenants. IV.3.  Growing concerns about the food supply Before these laws were in force, the Royal Commission’s emphasis on the adverse effects of foreign competition had helped intensify debate over British dependence on foreign sources for much of its food. In publications and the press, gloomy forecasts appeared. In 1897, R. B. Marston’s book, War, Famine, and Our Food Supply warned the government and people of the UK that the country was at risk of starvation in the event of war unless a year’s worth of imported grain was promptly secured and safely stored (Marston, 1897). Amid growing international tensions and Germany’s more aggressive foreign policy, such anxieties were not dismissed. An article in The Times in May 1898 expressed concerns and months later (16 February 1899), were taken up in the House of Commons. Echoes of the debate heard across the Atlantic appeared in a headline of The New York Times: ‘The Food Supply of England. The President of the London Board of Trade Thinks There Would Be No Shortage in War’(1898d; 1899b). Cooler heads knew that the magnitude of the dependence was greater than many thought. In November, 1899, in the staid setting of a Royal Statistical Society

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meeting, R. F. Crawford, former assistant secretary to the second Royal Commission, read a paper in which he gave new estimates of foreign dependence. They included not only imported wheat, the chief commodity, but also meat, potatoes, and dairy products to better approximate actual food consumption. As was commonly known, he began, ‘over three-fourths of the wheat consumed in this country’ came from abroad. What few understood was how much other basic foods came from abroad as well. Of the UK’s consumption of meat, 48% came from foreign sources; in milk, butter, and cheese, 45%; only in potatoes did home produce satisfy the need. Even for the home production of wheat, potatoes, and other crops, UK farmers depended significantly on imported fertilisers. The conclusion was clear: So far as this country is concerned, it seems to be clear that our dependence on external sources of supply is represented by a volume of food-stuffs which could not, under conditions known to our experience, be economically produced in this country (Crawford, 1899: 622).

In March 1903 Prime Minister Balfour, pressed by his own Conservative MPs, created the Royal Commission on Supply of Food and Raw Material in Time of War. Hearings started in May and a three volume report was published in 1905. The first and essential priority was the securing of wheat from the United States, Canada, British India, and Argentina, with imports from Russia if conditions permitted (BPP, 1905, Conclusion: 58–59). Five years later, the new Liberal Prime Minister, Campbell-Bannerman, called a closed-door meeting of the Committee on Imperial Defense to open an official inquiry into ‘the Military Needs of the Empire’. Should war come, the key to success, it was eventually agreed, was the navy’s guarantee of food resources from English-speaking societies abroad and, most importantly, Canada and the United States (Offer, 1989: 228–229).

V. Conclusion Looking back from 1905, conservative members of the Royal Commissions could feel satisfied that they had helped preserve the English system of agriculture: they had helped protect landowners when their rights were under political attack and their incomes that were undermined by agricultural depression. Looking back from 1908, liberal members of the commissions could congratulate themselves on their success in helping tenants who bore the brunt of the losses strengthen their ability to get fair terms in negotiations with landlords, and in promoting small farming by increasing access to land for labourers and small holders.

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If Liberal achievement proved modest, Liberals felt satisfied in having acted on just sentiments. In practice, the conservative success in reducing the fiscal burdens on land largely favored landlords by lessening tenant pressure for larger reductions in rent. Conservative concessions on tenant’s right to adequate compensation for farm improvements and the endorsement ownership through small allotments went some way toward showing that the Conservative Party was the farmers’ friend. After the Liberal Party split over Home Rule for Ireland and Liberal Unionists deserted the party (1886–87), the Conservative government had little or no reason to grant further concessions, at least in Britain. The exception was Ireland. Sharing with the Liberals the desire to pacify tenant agitations and placate Irish nationalist organisations, the Conservatives expanded legislation begun by Gladstone in 1871 to regulate rents and assure tenant security by providing state subsidised loans to assist farmers purchase land from their landlords. Some English estate owners who recognised the economic advantages of small holdings thought that this aspect of Irish policy should be introduced in Britain, too. By the time the balance of power shifted against them in 1906 and Prime Minister Lloyd George was devoted to land reform, the owners of great estates had increasingly turned to selling out or to selling peripheral lands to better consolidate their principal properties. Although the system that underwrote their status, power, and privilege was in decline, it was still largely intact. For those who worked the land farming had been changing. Besides the well-known shift from cereal cultivation to pastoral farming, the scale of farming was contracting in response to the altered conditions of international and domestic markets. The large English farms that did well when cereals were high in the 1850s and 1860s were faced with decline or failure as the British wheat industry was displaced by overseas competition. This was a story heard often by the Royal Commissions because of the over-representation in the hearings of large farmers from grain growing regions. After 1881, and without voice in the hearings, small farmers who relied on family labour instead of hired farm workers saw their numbers increase. As shown in the Assistant Commissioners’ reports, small farmers could compete in dairy farming, market gardening, and store cattle raising; they were doing well in the booming trade in fresh milk. While neither of the Royal Commissioners could take credit for the adjustments famers were making on their own, each served to publicise the large and permanent effect of foreign competition in foodstuffs. In confirming that reality in the clearest of terms, the second Royal Commission helped persuade British statesmen that securing food for the United Kingdom’s people was a matter of strategic and military importance.

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Figure 7.1. Decline of wheat production and expansion of cattle and dairy farming

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Sources British Parliamentary Papers and publications from the Chambers BPP (1881a), Royal Commission on the Depressed Conditions of Agricultural Interests, Preliminary Report; Minutes of Evidence, Part i; Digest and Appendix to Part i, with Report of Assistant Commissioners, London, Queen’s Stationary Office. BPP (1881b), Royal Commission on the Depressed Conditions of Agricultural Interests, Minutes of Evidence, Vol. iii, London, Queen’s Stationary Office. BPP (1882), Royal Commission on the Depressed Conditions of Agricultural Interests, [Final] Report from Her Majesty’s Commissioners on Agriculture, London, Queen’s Stationary Office. BPP (1882a), ‘Reports of the Assistant Commissioners, Report of Mr. Druce, 1–2’ Royal Commission on Agriculture, London, Queen’s Stationary Office. BPP (1882b), Royal Commission on Agriculture. Agricultural Commission. Report from Her Majesty’s Commissioners on Agriculture, London, Queen’s Stationary Office. BPP (1894), Royal Commission on Agricultural Depression First Report; Minutes of Evidence, Appendices, Volume i, Volume ii, Volume iii, London, Queen’s Stationary Office. BPP (1895), ‘Minutes of Evidence Vol. iii, testimony of Dr. R.J. Brett, 21 March 1895, page 335’, Royal Commission on Agriculture Depression (1893–1897) London. BPP (1896), Royal Commission on Agricultural Depression. Second Report, London, Queen’s Stationary Office. BPP (1897), Royal Commission on Agricultural Depression Final Report, London, Queen’s Stationary Office. BPP (1905), ‘Report of the Royal Commission on Supply of Food and Raw Material in Time of War’, the Commission on Supply of Food and Raw Material in Time of War, London. Agricultural Holdings Act (1883), Address in Answer to Her Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech. (Hansard, 15 February).Available at: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/ lords/1883/feb/15/address-in-answer-to-her-majestys-most#S3V0276P0_18830215_ HOL_54. 150

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Hansard H. & sons (ed.) (1888), House of Commons Debates, 19 February. Great Britain. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food, Agriculture, Great Britain. Dept. of, et al. (1968), A Century of Agricultural Statistics, Great Britain 1866– 1966, n.p.: H.M.S.O. The Royal Commission (1881), Royal Commission on the Depressed Conditions of Agricultural Interests, Preliminary Report; Minutes of Evidence, Part I; Digest and Appendix to Part I., with Report of Assistant Commissioners, London, Queen’s Stationary Office. ‘The Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture’ (1897), Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, LX, part III (September), p. 704–707.

Journals The Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette (1894), ‘Royal Commission on Agriculture’ 25 May. Birmingham Daily Post (1900), ‘The Agricultural Holdings Act’, 21 August. Hampshire Advertiser (1882), ‘Agricultural Depression and Its Causes’, 10 December. Land and Labor (1891), ‘Landlordism and Agriculture’, 1 (January). Land and Labor (1894), ‘The Royal Commission on Agriculture’, 1 (August). Leeds Mercury (1895), ‘The Royal Commission on Agriculture’, 22 January. North Devon Journal (1895), ‘The Royal Commission on Agriculture: Report on Devon’, 30 May. Northern Echo (1882), ‘Agriculture Depression and Its Causes’, 21 March. The New York Times (1899), ‘The Food Supply of England’, 17 February. The Times (1883), The Royal Commission on Agriculture, reporting a Meeting of the Norfolk Chamber of Agriculture’, 5 February. The Times (1897), ‘The Agricultural Holdings Act’ Thursday, 4 November, p.11. The Times (1898), ‘Food Supply in War-Time’, 7 May, p. 6. The Times (1898a), ‘Chambers of Agriculture’, 8 December, p. 7. The Times (1898b), ‘Chambers of Agriculture’, 2 March, p. 6.

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The Times (1900), ‘Chambers of Agriculture’, 4 April 2. The Western Gazette (1899), ‘The Agricultural Holdings Act’, 7 July. Westmorland Gazette (1898), ‘The Agricultural Holdings Act. Views of Local Farmers’, 19 February. York Herald (1893), ‘Agricultural Notes’, 23 September. Yorkshire Gazette (1882), ‘Agricultural Depression’, 29 July.

Bibliography Afton, Bethanie (1996), ‘The Great Agricultural Depression on the English Chalklands: The Hampshire Experience’, Agricultural History Review, 44, p. 191–205. Arch, Joseph (1884a), ‘An Address to the New Voters’. Arch, Joseph (1884b), ‘Free Trade Versus Protection; or Fair Trade, weighted in the Balances and found Wanting: Lessons from English history for English Working Men’. Ashby, Joseph (1897), ‘The Condition of the English Farmer’, The Land Magazine, i, 1 (April). Beckett, J. V. (2000), ‘Agricultural Landownership and Estate Management’, in E. J. T. Collins (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 1850–1914, vol. vii, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ch.10, p. 693–758. Blyth, James (1897), ‘The Future of British Agriculture’, The Times, 17 September, p. 6. Caird, James (1881), The British Land Question, London – Paris – New York, Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co. Carman, Harry J. (1934), ‘English Views of Middle Western Agriculture, 1850–1870’, Agricultural History, 8, n°1, jan., p. 3–19. Channing, Francis Allston (1897), ‘A New Agricultural Holdings Act’, The Land Magazine i, 1, April. Cherry, Gordon E. & Sheail, John (2000), ‘The Dynamics of Change’, in E. J. T. Collins (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 1850–1914, vol. vii, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ch.29, p. 1581–1617. Clay, John (1882), ‘Supplementary Report by Mr. John Clay on American Agriculture showing its Influence on that of Great Britain’, Royal Commission on Agriculture. Reports of the Assistant Commissioners, London, Queen’s Stationary Office.

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Collins, E. J. T. (2000), ‘The Great Depression, 1875–1896,’ in E. J. T. Collins (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 1850–1914, Volume vii, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 138–207. Craigie, R. A. (1883), ‘Statistics of Agricultural Production’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, vol. 46, p. 180–194. Crawford, R. F. (1899), ‘Notes on the Food Supply of the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, and Germany’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, vol. 62, p. 598–622. Dodgson, W. L. (1897), ‘Equitable Rents’, The Land Magazine I, 5 (August). Druce, S. B. L. (1901), The Agricultural Holdings Act 1900, London, John Murray. Druce, S. B. L. (1900), ‘The Agricultural Holdings Act’, Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, Third Series, xi. Fisher, J. R. (1978), ‘The Farmer’s Alliance: An Agricultural Protest Movement of the 1880s’, The Agricultural History Review, 26, p. 15–25. Fisher, John R. (2000), ‘Agrarian Politics’ in E. J. T. Collins (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 1850–1914, Volume vii, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 321–357. Fletcher, T. W. (1961a), ‘The Great Depression of English Agriculture 1873–1896’, The Economic History Review, New Series, 13, 3, p. 417–432. Fletcher, T. W. (1961b), ‘Lancashire Livestock Farming during the Great Depression’, The Agricultural History Review, 9, p.17–42. Gilbert, Sir J. Henry & Lawes, Sir J. Bennet (1897), ‘The Royal Commission on Agricultural Depression and the Valuation of Unexhausted Manures’, Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, Third series, viii, 4, dec., p. 674–711. Hunt, E. H. & Pam, S. J. (1997), ‘Prices and Structural Response in English Agriculture, 1873–1896’, The Economic History Review, 50, 3, p. 477–505. Huttman, John P. (1971), ‘Fenians and Farmers: The Merger of the Home-Rule and Owner-Occupancy Movements in Ireland, 1850–1915’, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 3, 4 (Winter), p. 182–197. Impey, Frederick (1885), Three Acres and a Cow: Successful Small Holdings and Peasant Proprietors (Reed. 1986, by J. Chamberlain, Whitefish, Kessinger Publishing, LLC). The Land Reform Association (1897a), Conference on the Agricultural Holdings Act, November 3rd 1897: Report of the Proceedings, London, Land Reform Association. The Land Reform Association (1897b), A New Charter of Tenant Right: How the Agricultural Holdings Act must be amended, London, The Land Reform Association.

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Leadam, Isaac Saunders (1880), To the Tenant Farmers of Great Britain: Farmers’ Grievances and how to Remedy them at the General Election, London, National Press Agency. Leadam, Isaac Saunders (1881), What Protection does for the Farmer: a Chapter of Agricultural History. Leadam, Isaac Saunders (1885a), Mr. Gladstone’s Government and Agriculture, 1880– 1885, Reprinted from the Daily News, London, National Press Agency. Leadam, Isaac Saunders (1885b), Important Speech on Agricultural Topics, (Liberal Meeting at Bucklow Hill), … delivered on Monday, July 27th, 1885. Marston, R. B. (1897), War, Famine, and our Food-supply, London, Sampson Low, Marston & Co. Mutch, Alistair (1983), ‘Farmers Organizations and the Agricultural Depression in Lancashire, 1890–1900’, The Agricultural History Review, 31, 1, p. 26–36. Offer, Avner (1989), The First World War, an Agrarian Interpretation, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Poynter, S. W. (1886), Our National Dangers and Our Need: A Scheme for the Full and Proper Cultivation of the Land Of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Production of the Larger Proportion of Our Food Supplies, London, Chelmsford printed, Hamilton, Adams & Co. Poynter, S.W. (1887), The Crisis in Agriculture: Great Meeting at Bristol, 10th March 1887, National Association for the Preservation of Agriculture, &c. Formed on the 19th April, 1887. Readman, Paul (2008), Land and Nation in England. Patriotism, National Identity, and the Politics of Land, 1880–1914, Woodbridge, Suffolk, The Royal Historical Society, The Boydell Press. Rothstein, Morton (1960), ‘America in the International Rivalry for the British Wheat Market, 1860–1914’, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 47, 3, p. 401–418. Schwartz, Robert M. (2010), ‘Rail Transport, Agrarian Crisis, and the Restructuring of Agriculture: France and Great Britain Confront Globalization, 1860–1900’, Social Science History, 34, p. 229–255. Schwartz, Robert M., Gregory, Ian N. & Henneberg, Jordi Marti (2011), ‘History and GIS: Railways, Population Change, and Agricultural Development in late nineteenth century Wales’, in Michael Dear, Jim K etchum, Sarah Luria, & Doug R ichardson (eds), Geohumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place, New York, Routledge, Chapter 26. Schwartz, Robert M. & Thevenin, Thomas (2013), ‘Railways and Agriculture in Britain and France, 1850–1914’, in Alistair Geddes & Ian Gregory (eds), Re-thinking Space and Place: New Directions in Historical GIS, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, Series on the Spatial Humanities. 154

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Snell, K. D. M. (1985), Annals of the Labouring Poor Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660–1900, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press. Spencer, John (1880), Free Trade and Protection from a Labourer’s Standpoint: a Talk. Turner, Michael E. (2000), ‘Agricultural Output, Income, and Productivity’ in E. J. T. Collins (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 1850–1914, Volume vii, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ch.3, p. 224–320. Verney, Edward (1898), ‘Agricultural Depression’, The Contemporary Review, March, p. 346–355.

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8.

The state of the rural poor. The agricultural labourer and the Royal Commission on Labour in 1890s England Nicola Verdon

I. Context The British economy was in a state of flux in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. A period of mid-century stability and prosperity, when Britain was labelled the ‘workshop of the world’, came crashing down in the 1870s and 1880s when trade slumps, increased foreign competition and cheap imports all undermined Britain’s position as the world’s preeminent economic power. Large scale unemployment and underemployment followed and resulted in a series of bitter trade disputes and strikes in urban trades in the late 1880s and early 1890s. The most iconic was the successful strike mounted by dock workers in London in 1889, which symbolised a growth in trade union activity amongst the casual and unskilled workforce. The fortunes of the agricultural sector were also transformed in this era of economic change. During the mid-century ‘Golden Age’ agriculture stood at the apex of the British occupational and political structure. In 1851 agriculture employed over one million men, or about one in five of the total male workforce. Owners of land reaped the rewards of high agricultural prices and rising rents in the 1850s and 60s. From the early 1870s however agriculture was hit by a protracted depression, which derived from, amongst other things, the penetration of cheap foreign grain and foodstuffs into the British market. The impact of the depression in agriculture was regional, with the large arable farms of southern and eastern England the worst hit (Perren, 1995). The economic downturn in agriculture coincided with an era of rural depopulation. The first absolute declines in the population of rural areas were enumerated in 1851. By the 1870s nine English counties recorded reduced populations, with Cornwall and Rutland experiencing the worse losses (Saville, 1957: 54–5). The census revealed that the number of farm labourers and servants in England and Wales fell by nearly a third between 1881 and 1901.1 Migration was stimulated by the ‘pull’ of the social and economic attractions of towns and cities, but also by the ‘push’ of agriculture: as profits fell, farmers began to dispose of labour as a cash-saving exercise, coming to rely on a core of essential workers. Another   In 1881 there were 847,954 farm labourers and servants in England and Wales (male and female). This fell to 578,005 in 1901.

1

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impact of the depression was the effective curtailment of collective action on the part of agricultural labourers. Unionism amongst agricultural workers had emerged during the winter of 1871–2 and at its height in 1874 attracted around 116,000 members, or 12% of the total male farm workforce. In the 1880s unionisation amongst agricultural workers declined considerably and in the early 1890s had fallen to around 37,000, or 5% of male farm labourers (Howkins, 1991: 192). This decline was in contrast to the urban situation where labour combination and action was increasingly seen as a threat to social and economic stability in the late 1880s and early 1890s.

II.  The Royal Commission on Labour At the centrepiece of government response to growing labour unrest and industrial dispute was the appointment of a major parliamentary enquiry in February 1891. The Royal Commission on Labour, as it became known, was commanded to ‘inquire into the questions affecting the relations between employer and employed, the combination of employers and employed, and the conditions of labour, which have been raised during the recent trade disputes in the UK’ (BPP, 1894, Fifth and Final Report, Part 1: 3). The government assigned significant monetary resources to the enquiry: it received a budget of just under £50,000, and engaged 27 Commissioners, including for the first time four women as Special Lady Assistant Commissioners to examine femaledominated trades such as laundry and shop work. The Labour Commission was envisaged as a ‘fact-finding’ mission and was divided into three committees, with each assigned separate industries: the first looked at mining, iron, engineering, hardware, shipbuilding and related trades; the second at transport (shipping, canals, docks, rail and trams) and agriculture, and the third at textiles, clothing, chemical, building and related trades. Evidence was mainly collected by the crossexamination of witnesses in Westminster, backed by the submission of written evidence. In total just under 600 witnesses from all walks of life were questioned at 151 sittings (Groenewegen, 1994). The commission also collected evidence from areas of the British Empire (India, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia) and from parts of Europe and North America (including Holland, Belgium, Germany, France and Switzerland). The work undertaken by the Labour Commission therefore amounted to one of the largest investigations undertaken by the state in late Victorian England. It produced an unwieldy 49 volumes of reports published over the course of 3 years between 1891 and 1894 and was ‘of a magnitude and extent unprecedented in the history of Royal Commissions’ (BPP, 1894, Fifth and Final Report, Part 1: 4). 158

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III. The Assistant Commissioners for Agriculture and their method of enquiry As we have seen it was the industrial working class who were the focus of concern for the Labour Commission. Collective action amongst farm workers was not perceived as a threat to social stability in the same way as unionism in the urban trades was in the early 1890s. Why then, was the agricultural labourer included in the remit of the Commission at all? This was because, in the view of several of those who had been appointed to act as Commissioners, the position of the agricultural labourer and the conditions that prevailed in agricultural districts had a direct impact on the state of the economy as a whole. Indeed, rural issues were at the forefront of political concern in the 1890s. The agricultural depression, the continuing decrease of the agricultural workforce, and the rural exodus were all seen to have a direct bearing on other trades. Rural depopulation in particular was seen to have serious consequences on a number of levels. Rural migrants, it was argued, flooded urban communities placing pressure on amenities and providing competition with urban workers for limited jobs. But depopulation not only added to the economic and structural problems of towns and cities, it also had a devastating effect on the countryside, fuelling fears that domestic agricultural production would become unsustainable in a deserted countryside, that rural social structures would collapse and the nation would become reliant on overseas imports of food. The agricultural labourer has also become part of the formal political world in 1884, when the Third Reform Bill enfranchised many working men, and thereafter they became an important element in electorate politics. The circumstances of rural England, the final report of the Labour Commission noted, had therefore ‘exercised an important influence on the labour question generally’ and it was felt that measures to improve the condition of the agricultural labourer would, indirectly, ‘prove to be of considerable benefit to the whole of the industrial population’ by inducing workers to stay on the land (BPP, 1894, Fifth and Final Report, Part 1: 110). The Labour Commission therefore saw a connection between the agricultural labourer and the industrial worker, even if the circumstances of their work were very different. The agricultural labourer was seen to constitute a special case for the Royal Commission on Labour, necessitating a different method of enquiry from other trades. Labour relations were understood to present particular difficulties in the countryside because of the nature of the work, the variety of hiring and wage patterns across the country, and the effects of agricultural depression and rural depopulation. Nor, as one correspondent commented in the early 1890s, did the agricultural labourer have any ‘really effective industrial organisation’ or ‘clearly 159

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defined political programme’ (Spyers, 1894: 213). In an attempt to understand the problems of the agricultural workforce more fully the Labour Commission therefore decided not to call witnesses to answer questions in London but instead to appoint a number of Special Assistant Commissioners to carry out surveys of rural districts at the local level. There were four Commissioners for Ireland, four for Scotland, two for Wales and six for England. Their reports made up four separate volumes for each part of the UK. These are detailed in Table 8.1. In addition William C. Little was appointed as Senior Assistant Agricultural Commission, and compiled a final General Report, published as volume V. Table 8.1. The Agricultural Labourer: Reports and Commissioners Volume

Country

Commissioners

I

England

William E. Bear (Part I); Cecil M. Chapman (Part II); Arthur Wilson Fox (Part III); Roger C. Richards (Part IV); Aubrey Spencer (Part V); Edward Wilkinson (Part VI)

II

Wales

D. Lleufer Thomas and Cecil M. Chapman

III

Scotland

H. Rutherford and G. R. Gillespie (Part I); R. Hunter Pringle and Edward Wilkinson (Part II)

IV

Ireland

R. R. McCrea (Part I); W. P. O’Brien (Part II); Roger C. Richards (Part III); Arthur Wilson Fox (Part IV)

These Commissioners were men of their age, trained in the official discourse and methodology of social science. Many of them had a legal background. Aubrey J. Spencer was typical, having been educated at Marlborough College and Christ Church, Oxford, then serving as a barrister and Justice of the Peace. All of the Commissioners had previous experience of serving as investigators on government bodies. Some, but not all, had direct knowledge and experience of rural affairs. William E. Bear and Roger C. Richards had both contributed articles on agriculture to national periodicals; Spencer was an expert in agriculture and land law, and Cecil M. Chapman had served as an assistant on the Markets and Fairs Commission in the late 1880s (Freeman, 2003: 79). It was however Arthur Wilson Fox who was considered to have ‘unrivalled’ knowledge of labour conditions and agricultural life. In the 1890s as well as his work for the Labour Commission he served as Assistant Commissioner on the Royal Commission on Agriculture (1894), and was agricultural correspondent (1895) and then Assistant Commissioner for Labour (from 1897) for the Board of Trade. He was also a member of the Royal Statistical Society and went on to become Comptroller General of the Commercial, Labour and Statistical Departments of the Board of Trade between 1906 and his death in 1909 (A.E.B, 1909: 64–6). The Agricultural Commissioners were therefore professional, upper middle

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class men of wealth and education. Together they belonged, as Karen Sayer puts in, ‘to that imperial world of mastering the facts, the literal and mental accumulation of data’ (Sayer, 1995: 137). The reports they produced were shaped by their background and mindset. Table 8.2. English Commissioners and the Poor Law Unions they investigated Commissioner

County and Poor Law Union

Part I: William E. Bear

1. Berkshire: Woburn 2. Huntingdon and Bedfordshire: St Neots 3. Sussex: Thakeham 4. Hampshire: Basingstoke 5. Nottinghamshire: Southwell 6. Leicestershire: Melton Mowbray

Part II: Cecil M. Chapman

1. Oxfordshire and Berkshire: Thame 2. Berkshire: Wantage 3. Cambridgeshire: North Witchford 4. Devon: Crediton 5. Cornwall: Truro 6. Shropshire: Atcham 7. Hertfordshire: Buntingford

Part III: Arthur Wilson Fox

1. Suffolk: Thingoe 2. Norfolk: Swaffham 3. Northumberland: Glendale 4. Cumberland: Wigton 5. Lancashire: Garstang

Part IV: Roger C. Richards

1. Warwickshire: Stratford-on-Avon 2. Northamptonshire: Brixworth 3. Gloucestershire: Cirencester 4. Monmouth: Monmouth 5. Hereford: Bromyard 6. Cheshire: Nantwich 7. Derbyshire: Belper

Part V: Aubrey Spencer

1. Dorset: Dorchester 2. Wiltshire: Pewsey 3. Kent: Hollingbourn 4. Somerset: Langport 5. Essex: Maldon 6. Worcester: Pershore 7. Surrey: Godstone

Part VI: Edward Wilkinson

1. Lincolnshire: Louth 2. East Yorkshire: Driffield 3. North Yorkshire: Easingwold 4. West Yorkshire: Wetherby 5. Staffordshire and Derbyshire: Uttoxeter 6. Lincolnshire: Holbeach

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It was recognised that Assistant Commissioners for agriculture could not effectively cover large areas within their country of enquiry so instead they were each assigned select districts. For England, Wales and Ireland the district chosen was the local government administration unit of the Poor Law Union.2 Unions that were seen to be representative of the various local conditions existing as regards to agricultural systems, population, competing industries, work and wage were selected. Together the six commissioners covering England produced reports for 38 Poor Law Unions, with 8 being written for Wales and 30 for Ireland. Those for England (on which the rest of the paper will concentrate) are detailed in Table 8.2.3 Four English counties were not visited at all – Middlesex, Durham, Westmorland and Rutland – but the three Ridings of Yorkshire were treated separately, and Lincolnshire, a large county in eastern England, was divided into two districts (Louth and Holbeach). The Commissioners were asked to cover disparate regions and were not confined to particular groups of counties to enable them ‘to be able to contrast the practices, habits, and conditions of the labourer in widely different districts’ (BPP, 1894, The Agricultural Labourer, Vol V, General Report by William Little: 3). This technique was modelled on that adopted by an earlier major agriculture enquiry, the 1867–70 Royal Commission on the Employment of Children, Young Persons and Women in Agriculture, which was admired by William Little as ‘a most comprehensive and searching investigation of the condition of the agricultural labourer’ and one to be emulated (BPP, 1894, The Agricultural Labourer, Vol V, General Report by William Little: 2). In Scotland however the approach of the Labour Commission was different as there was no local government unit analogous to the Poor Law Union. Therefore in Scotland the Assistant Commissioners reported on groupings of counties, with 14 districts covered in total. The Assistant Commissioners were asked to investigate nine specific themes: supply of labour; conditions of engagement; wages and earnings; cottage accommodation; land held by labourers; benefit societies; trade unions and strikes; general relations between employers and employed, and finally, general conditions of the agricultural labourer. They approached their districts of investigation by writing to notable local official (such as the Chairman of the Board of Guardians) prior to their visit. These local spokesmen would then introduce the Commissioner to other prominent individuals including farmers and landowners who were asked to supply evidence either in written form or in conversation. Public meetings were also set up with local labourers to give them space to air their views. Unsurprisingly the evidence from these two classes – the employer and employee – was often contradictory and inconsistent. Commissioners therefore also collected much information from local doctors, Poor   The Poor Law Union was created in 1834. They brought together a number of local parishes under the umbrella of a ‘union’ which managed the administration of the poor law in their area. 3   William Little’s General Report on agricultural labour also concentrated on the evidence from England. 2

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Law Guardians, schoolmasters and clergymen as these were seen as more impartial (Freeman, 2003: 82). This view is expressed clearly in the summary report of Aubrey Spencer. His mode of enquiry was first to communicate with the clerk to the Board of Guardians in order to obtain ‘a general idea of the district to be investigated, and names of the principal farmers and landowners and of other acquainted with the condition of the agricultural labourer in the district’. He then visited these individuals, as well as a number of labourers’ cottagers and their inhabitants. He also held one or more open meetings with agricultural labourers, which were ‘extremely well attended in some districts, but less so in others’. He believed that the statements made by the workers ‘were not always entirely reliable, as there was an obvious tendency to take rather too unfavourable a view of their condition’, whilst those from farmers ‘seemed to me to view the labourers’ condition in too roseate a light’. He argued that ‘It was only by putting the views of the two classes of employers and employed one against the other and by comparing them with the views of independent persons that a satisfactory conclusion as to the real facts of the case could be arrived at’ (BPP, 1893–4, The Agricultural Labourer, Vol 1, Report by Aubrey Spencer: 5–6). Each Commissioner produced a report which consisted of a summary of their evidence, followed by detailed accounts of each Poor Law Union they visited under the nine headings outlined above. Mark Freeman has assessed the witness profile of the agricultural labourer reports and concludes that whilst the range of informants was, on the face of it, ‘fairly broad’, commissioners relied most heavily on the evidence of the employers and local elites. Arthur Wilson Fox’s report on Swaffham, in Norfolk, cites evidence from employers 101 times, from labourers 36 times and from other sources 3 times (Freeman, 2003: 80–3). Freeman argues that in the Labour Commission, the background and education of the Assistant Commissioners effectively placed a barrier between them and the agricultural labourers, who they approached as ‘objects of inquiry’. Their conclusions were therefore filtered through a lens of urban, middle class sensibilities, ‘a cultural distance that located the inquiry within elite discourses in which representations of labouring life were likely to conform to established and enduring stereotypes’ (Freeman, 2003: 82–5). As we will see below this had an impact on the conclusions reached by the agricultural labourer enquiry.

IV.  Conclusions of the agricultural labour enquiry The reports of the Assistant Commissioners show that agricultural labour in England in the 1890s was still dominated by a diversity of hiring practices and wage structures across regions. Cecil Chapman noted in the Poor Law Union of Atcham, Shropshire that ‘The contract of service varies in this Union to a remarkable extent, being sometimes by the week, sometimes by the month, sometimes by the quarter, 163

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and sometimes by the year, and it is scarcely ever in writing’ (BPP, 1893–4, The Agricultural Labourer, Vol 1, Report by Cecil Chapman: 126). In general a mixed system of hiring prevailed, whereby men working with livestock (such cattlemen, horsemen and shepherds) were hired on a yearly basis, whilst ‘ordinary’ labourers were hired on a shorter, most usually a weekly, basis. The system of boarding and feeding yearly hired men in the farmhouse still prevailed in many English counties, particularly those in the north and Border regions where population was scarce and farmers needed to ensure a year-round workforce (Howkins & Verdon, 2008). Weekly men lived off farm in rented village housing. Hours of work also varied considerably. Four Poor Law Unions reported a working day of between 11 and 12 hours, whilst two stated working hours were 8.5 hours a day. On average most ‘ordinary’ men were said to typically work 10–11 hours a day, with some short-time working in winter being balanced by longer hours in the summer harvests. Those who tended livestock worked longer hours and had to be available for early mornings and on Sundays for milking and feeding. The issue of wage rates was considered to be ‘one of the most important’ that the Labour Commission considered (BPP, 1894, General Report by William Little: 57). This was a vexed question because levels of earnings for agricultural labourers diverged considerably both within and between districts. Even in the same districts, three or four different levels of basic earnings could be found, depended in the local nature of supply and demand. The issue was further complicated by the lack of account keeping amongst English farmers and the unwillingness of both employers and workers to reveal their level of wages to the Commissioners. Roger Richards complained in his summary report that ‘arriving at a correct estimate of the total earnings of the several classes of labourers’ had been the most difficult task of his inquiry because ‘the men very rarely keep any record of either wages of extras; and where they might give a moderately correct estimate of what these amount to, there is a reluctance to give it’, whilst the farmers ‘as a rule are equally unable to assist; and it is only the larger ones who keep accurate accounts of what is paid’ (BPP, 1893–4, The Agricultural Labour, Vol 1, Report by Roger C. Richards: 10). The average weekly wage for ‘ordinary’ agricultural labourers across the 38 English Poor Law Unions was shown to be 13s 5d. However, this figure obscures significant regional differences: the mean weekly wage varied from 18 shillings in areas of the north and north-west (Lancashire and Cumberland) to as little as 10 shillings a week in areas of the south and south-west (the lowest being Gloucestershire, Dorset and Wiltshire). This regional north-south divide in the level of agricultural labourers’ average weekly wage was a constant feature of nineteenth-century English farming (Hunt, 1986).

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Wage patterns were further complicated by piece rates and perquisites. The Assistant Commissioners again found a great difference in the extent to which piece work – where labourers were paid by the task rather than for their time – prevailed across their districts and conflicting accounts of the desirability of the system from employers and employees. Piece work rates varied according to the job, the ‘capacity and industry of the workman, and the hours during which he work […] the laboriousness or irksomeness of the work, the amount of skill which is required’ (BPP, General Report by William Little: 66). Perquisites, or payments in kind, covered a range of benefits given to labourers in addition to, or instead of, cash wages and could include rent-free cottages, gardens, potato grounds, food and drink (for example at harvest time), and fuel. These were found, in varying degrees, across the country but in many areas were in decline. Cecil Chapman argued that perquisites were of ‘great value’ to labourers but found that their payment ‘has for the most part greatly decreased’ (BPP, 1893–4, Report by Cecil M. Chapman: 28). Wilson Fox found ‘the system of payment in kind has died hard’ in the eastern districts he visited, and this decline meant that labourers were worse fed than they had been formerly (BPP, 1893–4, The Agricultural Labourer, Vol 1, Report by Arthur Wilson Fox: 16). The Assistant Commissioners noted that two groups of workers previously engaged on a casual basis across England for a variety of jobs – women and children – had declined considerably in numbers. Education Acts in 1870 and 1880 had introduced compulsory elementary education for all children between 5 and 10 years of age. This diminished the employment of young boys, who were now usually taken on by farmers at the age of 12 or 13 (BPP, 1894, General Report by William Little: 56). The decline in the employment of women was seen by William Little as a ‘very marked feature distinguishing the present inquiry from any of the previous investigations of a similar character’ (BPP, 1894, General Report by William Little: 54). Women workers had not disappeared from the land and were still needed for traditional female tasks in the hay and harvest fields and in districts where crops such as fruit, vegetables and hops necessitated their labour at certain seasons of the year. At St Neots, William Bear found that ‘There are a good many regular workers in market gardens among the women’, whilst at Basingstoke ‘Women work in the fields to a considerable extent […] picking stones off the fields, weeding and doing work in the hay-field’ (BPP, 1893–4, The Agricultural Labourer, Vol 1, Report by William E. Bear: 38 and 78). At Swaffham in Norfolk, Arthur Wilson Fox noted that ‘Women are very generally employed in many of the parishes, and their employment usually consists in pulling and cleaning roots, stone picking, weeding corn, singling turnips, and raking after the wagons in hay and harvest times’ (BPP, 1893–4, Report by Arthur Wilson Fox: 68). At Glendale in Northumberland, Wilson Fox reported that ‘nearly all the unmarried women are regularly employed and on many farms, there

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are as many women working as men’ (BPP, 1893–4, Report by Arthur Wilson Fox: 104). This was however an exception district, where female agricultural labour was long-established (Verdon, 2002). Migration from rural areas emerged as a central concern in the Labour Commission agricultural reports, with all Assistant Commissioners noting a decrease in populations in their districts, on a greater or lesser scale. Despite this migration was not seen to cause a major shortfall in supply of labour. Most English districts (27 out of 38) reported that supply of labour was equal to the present demand, as labour needs had been fundamentally altered in many regions, particularly the arable south-east, by the agricultural depression. As Cecil Chapman argued: The effect of this decrease in the supply of labour upon the position of the farmers would have been disastrous if they had not been economising their labour during the same period. Farm staffs have generally been reduced, machinery has been adopted wherever it is possible and the farmer can afford it, neatness on farms is generally neglected […] (BPP, Report by Cecil M. Chapman: 16).

Migration concerned the Commissioners in other ways however. In particular they were concerned that those who migrated into towns were physically and intellectually the most adept, leaving behind a residuum of indifferent, feeble and incompetent workers. William Little concluded that although ‘no part of the country […] is without farms where a high standard of work is to be observed’ the balance of evidence pointed to the fact that […] if the more active and intelligent young men of the class are drawn away by various inducements from agricultural pursuits, the average of those who are left must be lowered, and naturally if there be amongst the young men of the class a general feeling of restlessness, and a desire to escape from field work […] the spirit of emulation and a desire to attain to excellence in work is not likely to be fostered (BPP, 1894, General Report by William Little: 44).

Disquiet about rural depopulation and quality of labour was connected to wider unease about the state of the nation’s health in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Falling birth rates (especially amongst the middle class) and persistently high infant mortality was fuelling eugenic fears of national racial degeneration (Davin, 1978; Dyhouse, 1978; Soloway, 1995). The countryside was seen at this time, as Karen Sayer argues, as ‘the last bastion of a physically fit nation’, and contemporary social observers popularised the view that ‘urban degeneration from healthy countryman to unhealthy cockney’ occurred within three generations of migration from country to town (Sayer, 1995; Howkins, 1986; Stedman Jones: 1971). 166

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Rural depopulation fuelled fears that domestic agricultural production would become untenable in an under-populated countryside and the physical and moral character of the countryside, and the nation as a whole, would disintegrate. The state of rural housing emerges as one of the key factors ‘pushing’ labourers from the land to seek better prospects elsewhere. All the Assistant Commissions included detailed descriptions of the nature and condition of labourers’ cottages in their districts, and William Little spent a considerable portion of his General Report on this matter. Cottages were found in many places to be irregularly distributed and in poor condition. In estate villages, where a dominant landowner oversaw the construction and upkeep of housing for his workers, cottages were of a superior design and quality. Those living in estate housing were in a minority however. Little conceded that ‘it is to be feared that a large proportion of the cottages inhabited by labourers are below a proper standard of what is required for decency and comfort, while a considerable number are vile and deplorably wretched dwellings’ (BPP, 1894, General Report by William Little: 92). Some compensation for the labourer came in the form of good gardens, where produce could be grown to supplement their diet, but again the distribution of these was patchy. In just under a half of all districts visited labourers also had access to allotments and although the advantages to labourers of allotments were widely recognised, some farmers expressed concern that they tempted labourers to abandon regular work (BPP, 1894, General Report by William Little: 136). Despite the volume of evidence that highlighted the low level of wages and housing standards, the Labour Commission stressed that the ‘general condition’ of agricultural labourers in most districts of England had ‘improved’ in the past 10 or 15 years (BPP, 1894, Fifth and Final Report, Part 1: 110). It was claimed that a ‘quiet economic revolution’ had taken place over the last quarter of the nineteenth century, which saw the price of provisions fall and therefore the real spending power of the labourer rise. The decline in the employment of women and the rise in the education of children were considered part of this progress as it had ‘emancipated’ them from laborious work. A considerable proportion of labourers were also able to contribute to local benefit societies in order to insure themselves again loss of wages through sickness or injury. These were considered signs of ‘social well being’ in the countryside by conforming to middle-class standards of domesticity and thrift (Sayer, 1995: 141). Agricultural labourers, it was argued, had therefore obtained a considerable share of the advantages gained by men in other industries through trade union activity. However, despite the low-level presence of trade unionism amongst agricultural labourers by the early 1890s, relations between master and man were still found to be strained. Cecil Chapman argued that ‘The relations of employers and employed are marked everywhere by a want of cordiality, and in many places by 167

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mutual suspicion’ (BPP, 1893–4, Report by Cecil M. Chapman: 43). William Bear ‘heard many complaints from each class in relation to the other’ over the course of his inquiry (BPP, 1893–4, Report by William E. Bear: 12). What concerned the Assistant Commissions most was that these uneasy relations signified the dismantling of the old paternalist system of the English countryside. In particular they were disturbed that a new autonomy and confidence amongst the labourers had disturbed old ties between the two classes. Roger Richards commented on the ‘more independent and commercial relations’ that now existed, a relationship that Cecil Chapman described as now merely ‘contractual’ (BPP, 1893–4, Report by Roger Richards: 11–12; BPP, 1893–4, Report by Cecil M. Chapman: 43). Aubrey Spencer felt that in all the districts he had visited ‘labourers were said to be more ‘independent’ than they used to be, by which is means, I think, that they regard their relation to the farmer more in a strictly commercial light than they used to, and that the quasi family tie which used to exist between farmers and labourer has now ceased to exist’ (BPP, 1893–4, Report by Aubrey Spencer: 19). The Commission concluded that a generational shift had taken place, furnishing the agricultural labourer of the 1890s with better prospects and amenities but rendering him restless and truculent in the process. The General Report therefore concluded. The labourer of the day, who is better fed, better clothed, better housed than his father was, may not be fully conscious of the improvement which has taken place, because his ideas have expanded, and his wants, like those of persons in every other class, have grown […] he lives in less discomfort, his toil is less severe, his children have a better prospect before them and opportunities which he himself never enjoyed (BPP, 1894, General Report by William Little: 159).

V.  Recommendations, results and reaction The positive picture painted of agricultural labour led the Labour Commission to make few recommendations. William Little argued in the conclusion to his General Report that ‘When all the grievances and all the aspirations of the agricultural labourers are recapitulated and considered it will be found that few of them require legislation for their redress of fulfilment’ (BPP, 1894, General Report by William Little: 163). The only area where it was felt that legislative remedies would make a difference was in rural housing. The report recommended that costs of housebuilding could be reduced by better planning and construction; that the government should implement a scheme of loans to landowners at low interest rates to encourage building programmes; and that the adjustment of rents could facilitate the provision of better cottages. The attachment of larger gardens where practicable, was also endorsed (BPP, 1894, General Report by William Little: 121). However, whilst such

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measures which promoted improvement in the countryside were seen as ‘eminently desirable’ by the final report of the Labour Commission, it argued that they were unlikely to have any major impact on the operation of the labour market as a whole (BPP, 1894, Fifth and Final Report, Part 1: 111). Did the reports of the Assistant Commissioners and the conclusions of the agricultural labourer general report fairly represent the actual condition of life and work in the English countryside at the end of the nineteenth century? They certainly congratulated themselves on producing a fair and balanced enquiry. William Little thanked his Commissioners for their ‘ability, zeal, and tact’ in carrying out their investigations, which were believed by the authors of the Final Report of the Labour Commission to represent ‘a fairly complete and accurate account of the present condition of the agricultural labourer’ (BPP, 1894, General Report by William Little: 164; BPP, 1894, Fifth and Final Report, Part 1: 110). They were also applauded by other commentators who read the reports on publication. Beatrice Webb, who was a very vocal critic of the Commission as a whole, brandishing it ‘a national disappointment’, did however praise the Agricultural Commissioners for their ‘competent work’ in producing ‘a definite, authoritative and trustworthy account of the actual condition of the agricultural labourer’ (Webb, 1894: 8–9). The Times newspaper commended Cecil Chapman on the ‘care and thoroughness with which his report has been compiled’ (The Times, 9th October, 1893). Others however were much more sceptical. T. G. Spyers pointed out that although the condition of the agricultural labourer had improved in some respects, it still lagged well behind that of other workmen, their wages being 25% below the average for the UK as a whole, with ‘his general mode of living lower in proportion’ (Spyers, 1894: 218–9). An anonymous correspondent to The Speaker noted the ‘amazing discrepancy’ between the supposed good fortune of the labourer to work in agriculture and the fact they were leaving that occupation in ever increasing numbers. He also raised the question of the reliability of the evidence collected by the Commissioners and the biases inherent in the reports. ‘[…] the official inquirer’, he argued, ‘necessarily gets his information, in large part, from landlords, farmers, and land-agents; and it is important that an optimism founded on that basis should not blind us to the darker aspects of the labourers lot’ (Anon, 1894a: 264). The findings of the agriculture commissioners were also challenged by other contemporary rural enquiries such as the English Land Restoration League’s ‘red van’ reports of 1891–7, which gave much more prominence to the evidence of trade unionists and agricultural labourers themselves (Freeman, 2003: 84). Perhaps one of the most important critics of the Labour Commission in relation to the agricultural worker was one of the signatories of the General Report itself, Jesse

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Collings. Collings was a Liberal Unionist Member of Parliament for Birmingham Bordesley from 1886 until 1918, and was at the forefront of the campaign for better rural education, old age provision, cottage accommodation and, most importantly, for land reform. Although he argued that he agreed generally with the main views and recommendations of the Commission, he did ‘not concur with many of the statements and conclusions contained in it with regard to the agricultural labourers’. In particular he felt the recommendations made were weak and did not go far enough to be able to significantly improve the lot of the agricultural worker. Migration, he argued, was not provoked by a dislike of agricultural work per se, but was linked to low wages, poor housing, long hours and lack of opportunity. The Commission, he argued, had made no recommendation for regulation that seriously addressed these issues. For Collings it was only by giving people land to cultivate that ‘a race of skilled workmen’ could be persuaded to remain in rural England, ‘and that the most serious calamity that can befall a country – that of a decaying peasantry – can be averted’ (The Times, 16th June 1894). A Smallholding Act of 1892 had empowered local county councils to acquire land to be leased as smallholdings to those that applied, but this was seen as inadequate. Collings advocated giving state-financed loans to agricultural labourers themselves to buy plots of land to till and become ‘peasant proprietors’ (Readman, 2008). Land reform, became a central plank of the Liberal Party from the 1890s until the First World War but it was not touched upon by the Labour Commission.

VI. Conclusion Royal Commissions were (and still are) established by the government to investigate matters of public concern. Many in the nineteenth century were influential and led to significant changes in areas of employment law. The great Commissions on working conditions in mines and textile factories in the 1830s and 1840s led to a series of laws banning or curtailing the employment of women and children. Other Commissions however are convened mainly to placate public opinion and their work is sidelined or ignored by government. After three years of investigations, thousands of pounds of expenditure and the publication of volumes and volumes of unwieldy reports, the Royal Commission on Labour overall lacked any firm conclusions or recommendations. It was poorly received in the press at the time. The National Observer was scathing in its assessment of the enquiry: […] the only serious reflection to which that Report gave rise was that, when the country was none too rich, it was a little extravagant to spend £50,000 or thereabouts, in discovering that the things which cannot be done are impossible and that the things which are impossible cannot be accomplished (Anon, 1894b: 109).

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Some though saw that the Commission had value beyond its legislative failure. An observer in The National Review believed that future historians ‘will find in the records of the Labour Commission material for a full and vivid picture of industrial life of England in the latter part of the reign of Victoria’ (Observer, 1894: 204–5). This is true to an extent of the agricultural reports. The collection and collation of their evidence was not unproblematic. The methodology that it employed, relying heavily on the information provided by the farming interest, was defective in many respects and also somewhat out-moded. Although the men who wrote the agricultural reports were highly professional and educated in the language of social science, there is little attempt to collate the data or analyse the material in a systematic or statistical manner. This was an era that pioneered new ways to understand and measure poverty and standards of living, as exemplified in the surveys of London and York conducted by Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree in the 1890s and early 1900s. The Labour Commission stands apart from this development. The reports provide an insight into the world of the agricultural labourer in England, and they remain valuable documents of the regional differences in work patterns and wage structures, and of changes in social and economic relations in the late nineteenth-century countryside. The historian of rural England, whilst being grateful for the material provided in the Labour Commission, still has to treat this source with caution however.

Sources British Parliamentary Papers (BPP): BPP, 1893–94 [C.6894-I] Royal Commission on Labour. The Agricultural Labourer. Vol. i. England. Part I. Reports by Mr. William E. Bear. 1893–94 [C.6894-II] Royal Commission on Labour. The Agricultural Labourer. Vol. i. England. Part II. Reports by Mr. Cecil M. Chapman. 1893–94 [C.6894-III] Royal Commission on Labour. The Agricultural Labourer. Vol. i. England. Part III. Reports by Mr. Arthur Wilson Fox. 1893–94 [C.6894-IV] Royal Commission on Labour. The agricultural labourer. Vol. i. England. Part IV. Reports by Mr. Roger C. Richards. 1893–94 [C,6894-V], Royal Commission on Labour. The Agricultural Labourer. Vol. i. England. Part V. Reports by Mr Aubrey J. Spencer.

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1894 [C.7421], Fifth and Final Report of the Royal Commission on Labour: Part 1: The Report. 1894 [C.6894-XXV], Royal Commission on Labour: The Agricultural Labourer, Vol. v, General Report by Mr William C. Little.

Bibliography A. E. B. (1909), ‘Arthur Wilson Fox, C. B’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 72 (1), p. 64–66. Anon (1894a), ‘The “Improved” Labourer’, The Speaker, Sept, p. 264. Anon (1894b), ‘Wisdom from the Labour Commission’, The National Observer, June 16, p. 109. Davin, Anna (1978), ‘Imperialism and Motherhood’, History Workshop Journal, 5 (i), p. 9–65. Dyhouse, Carol (1978), ‘Working-class Mothers and Infant Mortality in England, 1895–1914’, Journal of Social History, 12 (2), p. 248–67. Freeman, Mark (2003), Social Investigation and Rural England, 1870–1914, Woodbridge, Boydell and Brewer. Groenewegen, Peter D. (1994), ‘Alfred Marshall and the Labour Commission, 1891–4’, The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 1 (4), p. 273–96. Howkins, Alun (1986), ‘The Discovery of Rural England’, in Robert Colls & Philip Dodds (eds), Englishness: Politics and Culture, 1880–1920, London, p. 62–88. Howkins, Alun (1991), Reshaping Rural England: A Social History, 1850–1925, London, Harper Collins Academic. Howkins, Alun & Verdon, Nicola (2008), ‘Adaptable and Sustainable? Male Farm Service and the Agricultural Labour Force in Midland and Southern England, c. 1850–1925’, Economic History Review, 61 (2), p. 467–95. Hunt, E. H (1986), ‘Industrialisation and Regional Inequality: Wages in Britain, 1760–1914’, Journal of Economic History, 46 (4), p. 935–966. ‘Observer’ (1894), ‘The Labour Commission’, The National Review, 23, 134 (April), p. 204–5. Perren, Richard (1995), Agriculture in Depression, 1870–1940, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Readman, Paul (2008), ‘Jesse Collings and Land Reform, 1886–1914’, Historical Research, 81, 212, p. 292–314. Saville, John (1957), Rural Depopulation in England and Wales, 1851–1951, Reed. 1998, London, Routledge. 172

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Sayer, Karen (1995), Women of the Fields: Representations of Rural Women in the Nineteenth Century, Manchester, Manchester University Press. Soloway, Richard A. (1995), Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics and the Declining Birthrate in Twentieth-Century Britain, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press. Spyers, T. G (1894), The Labour Question. An Epitome of the Evidence and Report of the Royal Commission on Labour, London, Swan Sonnenshine & Co. Stedman Jones, Gareth (1971), Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Verdon, Nicola (2002), Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth-Century England: Gender, Work and Wages, Woodbrodge, Boydell and Brewer. Webb, Beatrice (1894), ‘The failure of the Labour Commission’, The Nineteenth Century, 36, 209 (July), p. 8–9.

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9.

The French parliamentary inquiry of 1884: a response to multiple crises Jonathan J. Liebowitz*

In 1884 a French parliamentary commission distributed around the country tens of thousands of copies of an agricultural survey. Assuming that agricultural workers, along with those in commerce and industry, were suffering from the economic crisis of the early 1880s, the parliamentarians sought political advantage by showing their concern for those facing hardship. Surveys like this one and other kinds of censuses and inquiries proliferated in the western world since the eighteenth century as politicians, administrators, and reformers sought the information that would help them seize control of their changing economies and societies.

I.  A tradition of enquiries As several historians have pointed out, the censuses, surveys, inquiries, ‘monographs’, and the like had antecedents going back at least to the seventeenth century and a multitude of functions. Some presented data on the condition of the nation while others produced descriptions or allowed voices (usually local) to be heard. In this vein Marie-Noëlle Bourguet distinguishes between German statistics aimed at helping rulers manage their states and the more open English ‘political arithmetic’ that sought to compare states’ power. Both traditions influenced French Revolutionary and Napoleonic inquiries (Bourguet, 1988: 46–52). Theodore Porter shows how quantifiers in France and elsewhere clashed with elites who believed in their own privileged position and understanding. Lower class people could be counted in their multitudes of but not their superiors (Porter, 1995). Nineteenth-century agricultural information gathering in France and elsewhere followed the two patterns, though sometimes they would be mixed together (Perrot, 1972; Garrier, 1987: 269–279; Demonet, 1990). Statistical surveys copied the census model and tabulated data for geographical regions, in France usually departments. From the Napoleonic era, agricultural statistics had been collected by the administrative apparatus, using prefects (chief departmental administrators) as main gathering points (Bourguet, 1986; Ministère de l’Instruction Publique, 1914). *  The author would like to express his appreciation for the guidance, assistance, and encouragement provided by Nadine Vivier, panelists at various Social Science History Association meetings, members of the Harvard University Economic History Workshop, and an anonymous referee.

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By the middle to late nineteenth century these collections had become regularised and were, in principle, to be gathered every ten years. Reports with hundreds of pages of tables were published for 1852, 1862 and 1882 (Gille, 1964; Ministère de l’Agriculture, 1868; Ministère de l’Agriculture, 1887). From the start these reports published data on crops, the area devoted to them, and farm animals. Other topics, such as land values and types of farmers (owners, tenants, etc.), were added later. Though their accuracy has been questioned, Demonet’s work proves that for the most part their data can be trusted (Garrier, 1987: 272–278; Demonet, 1990: 221–231). The case study was one form of the second type of inquiry – more descriptive, more open to individual voices. Under this rubric I would put all sorts of studies, usually carried out by private individuals or associations with the purpose of spotlighting examples to be followed or avoided. Spreading the practices of the best farmers had long been considered a means of improving agriculture in general, so local agricultural societies rewarded best practices and encouraged others to emulate them. That was the goal of J.A. Barral when he published a book in 1867 about a model farm in the Nord department, where sugar beet, cattle, and other products gave the farmer considerable profits (Barral, 1867). On a slightly different tack, the early social scientist Frédéric Le Play and his followers compiled and published case studies of families from many countries as they sought a solution to what Le Play considered the leading social problem of his time, family instability (Brooke, 1970; Le Play, 1857–1913). A number of these studies covered French farm families, some chosen from the Le Play ideal type of stem family, some from families who through selfishness or irreligion provided an example of what should be avoided. They included both narrative or descriptive information and quantitative material, notably family budgets. While an objection may be raised that these inquiries are different from the subject of the present volume because of their specificity and private organisation, it should be remembered that they did deal with similar questions and that Le Play held significant public roles, including chief administrator for the Paris Exposition of 1867 (Mandell, 1967: 11–12). Several questions related to family budgets formed part of the 1884 survey. The closest ancestors of the inquiry of 1884 were the governmental studies undertaken to learn about specific problems, which bear the closest resemblance to the German eighteenth-century inquiries described by Bourguet. They often included two features that formed part of the 1884 Inquiry – hearings at which experts as well as the involved parties could express their opinions and voice their complaints and a questionnaire providing written evidence of conditions and opinions. While they might have evoked data about wages and hours, they were not the purely quantitative

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agricultural censuses. Their model was rather the British parliamentary inquiries, which led to pioneering factory legislation early in the century. Indeed, in proposing the resolution that created the 1884 Inquiry, Clemenceau declared that he wanted the French to follow the example of British inquiries of the 1830s, which he lauded for producing social reform (Rapport, 1886: 850). A recent example of such a body was the Royal Commission on the Depressed Condition of Agricultural Interests, established in 1879 to study the crisis that began with the disastrous harvest of that year. A comparison of the work of this body and that of its French counterpart can help us to understand better the nature of the latter. The Royal Commission sent experts to study conditions not only in different regions of Britain but also in France. One of these experts distributed a small set of questions to thirty-three farmers in northern France (‘Schedule of Questions’, Royal Commission, 1882, xv: 120). The survey emphasized the nature of farming – land and crops – and land tenure – rent, terms of leases, large vs. small farms. The first of these emphases was natural for anyone interested in farming; the second derives from the contemporary British concern with landlord – tenant relations. Free trade sentiments remained so strong that nothing was mentioned about protective tariffs. The existence and causes of an agricultural depression were assumed, with only one question asked about it: ‘Have the large or the small farms suffered the most from foreign competition and bad seasons?’ The Commission’s gathering of information produced little benefit for agriculture. A few laws affecting land tenure and the creation of a Board of Agriculture were its only accomplishments (Perry, 1973: 46; Perry, 1974: 132–37). According to Michael Tracy, because the Royal Commission failed to recognise the fundamental changes in world trading patterns, its recommendations ‘bore little relevance to the basic causes of distress.’ (Tracy, 1989: 43–44). The main influence of the British work on the French was the idea of a parliamentary inquiry that would yield reform. Some more direct effect may have resulted from the consultations of the British investigator with three leaders of French agriculture before he undertook his study and the publication of the survey and its responses two years before the French commission began its work (‘Jenkins’ Report,’ Royal Commission, 1882, xv: 69). But the British inquiry followed much more the pattern of hearings and soliciting information from a few experts. They asked a few questions (30 instead of almost 200) and only expected responses from 33, not thousands. An immediate French predecessor of the 1884 inquiry was the Parliamentary Inquiry on the Conditions of Work in France of 1872. Its 64 questions were divided into sections on ‘The material and economic situation,’ ‘Wages and relations between

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workers and employers,’ and ‘The Intellectual and moral situation’1 (Perrot, 1972: 17). While some questions were quantitative – asking about salaries, for example, most were directed toward the opinions of those responding, e.g., ‘Does harmony exist between workers and employers?’ The bulk of the questions give a sense of paternalistic concern. Workers were looked on as children, perhaps unruly, perhaps in need of assistance, but not responsible for their own destiny. The questionnaire itself was not directed to the workers but to others who were presumably informed about their condition. The Commission of 1884 followed its predecessor in its concern with workers’ conditions and its use of a questionnaire. It also drew on the British example and conducted hearings at which representatives of Parisian workers presented their views on the crisis. Because of the broad nature of the crisis, it considered commercial and agricultural workers, along with those of industry.

II.  A political and economic crisis The economic crisis was first of all an agricultural crisis, which was apparent all over western Europe after the disastrous weather of 1879. The spring and early summer of that year were very cold, with December being one of the coldest months on record (Le Roy Ladurie, 2009: 39–44. Teisserenc de Bort, 1883: 41–60). The rest of the decade through the early nineties was generally cold until 1893. Despite the poor weather and bad harvests, however, the prices that farmers received for their staple crops, notably grains, remained stable. The reason for price stability was that foreign grain, benefiting from improved transportation, was imported to replace the shortfall of French production. According to Kevin O’Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson, ‘the decline in international transport costs after mid-century was enormous’ (some 45% from 1870 to 1913), and it was this decline, not lower tariffs, that provoked the integration of markets after 1860 (O’Rouke, & Williamson, 1999: 29–36; Ville, 1990). Railroads also had a complex impact on national economies, pulling workers to cities, allowing perishable goods like vegetables, milk, meat, and fish access to cities, and enabling transport of artificial fertilisers. Greater contact with the rest of the world also played a role in the spread of pests and disease that damaged the wine industry. Oïdium, a fungus, struck in mid-century, but was quickly overcome. Phylloxera, caused by an insect that came to Europe from   For the 1872 questionnaire, see Archives Nationales (hereafter abbreviated A.N.), series C, cartons 3018–3026.

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America, began to affect vines in the mid-1860s. It spread inexorably through the French vineyards for the next decades, and grape-growers waited in fear for their own vines to be affected (Duby & Wallon, 1976: 237, 388–391). After January 1882 the agricultural crisis was compounded by one in industry and commerce, which were hurt by the collapse of the Union Générale investment bank. Its bankruptcy produced a financial panic, which ushered in a slowdown in construction and industry. Output of most industrial products stagnated and prices fell. The depression threatened to heighten social tensions and increase political instability. Instability continued to plague the Third Republic from the uncertainty of its origins and continued rejection by a significant part of the public. Despite the successes of the moderates in creating the Republic in 1875 and surmounting the seize mai crisis of 1877, they still had to contend with the royalist and bonapartist right whose implacable hostility to the regime had been increased, if that were possible, by Jules Ferry’s anti-clerical education reform. The extreme left, though sometimes needed as an ally in defending the Republic, could also be counted on for strong denunciations, with the acerbic Georges Clemenceau leading the way. Trade unions and socialist groups added to the political uncertainty as they began to revive after their destruction during the suppression of the Commune (See Mayeur & Rebérioux, 1984; Lejeune, 2011; Lévêque, 1992). In such circumstances the moderates (often called ‘opportunists’) who controlled the government sought a means to preserve the bourgeois republic they had created and thereby also hold onto their own dominant position (Smith, 1980: 19–25). They were fumbling and unsure of their strategy, as the history of the 1880s shows, and hesitated to take any bold action in social or economic policy. Interest groups felt no such timidity, however, and many textile and iron manufacturers called for a break with the immediate past by the adoption of protective tariffs. Facing opposition from commercial interests and liberal economists, the ruling moderates hesitated to take this course. To change their minds, they would have to see protection as a way of holding together the republican coalition. This would mean the conversion of agriculture to a protectionist stance. As Michael Smith shows, a major goal of industrial protectionists in the late 1870s and early 1880s was therefore the winning over of agricultural interests to the cause of protection (Smith, 1980: 165–168). A study of the 1884 parliamentary inquiry brings out both the hesitations of the politicians and the state of opinion among French farmers. Thus I shall try to demonstrate that: 1) those leading the government sought to use the inquiry as a way of holding onto the political support that was endangered by economic problems they 179

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did not know how to handle; that it was, as commissions so often are, a substitute for action, when the course of action is either unknown or bound to provoke opposition; 2) the inquiry revealed the eventual solution to the crisis in the widespread support for protection, the political and economic answer the bourgeois republicans needed. Another goal will be to examine the nature of the inquiry itself and how it fit into the history of surveys of national conditions.

III.  Creation of the commission of inquiry The inquiry itself came out of a week-long debate in the Chamber of Deputies on the economic policy of Jules Ferry’s government. At its conclusion Clemenceau proposed creation of a commission of inquiry on the situation of workers in industry and agriculture and especially on the Parisian ‘industrial crisis’ (‘Rapport,’ 1886: 850). The vote on Clemenceau’s proposal turned into a test of the government with the extreme left and the right joining together to pass the resolution by 254 to 249 (Annales de la Chambre… Débats, 1884a: 290, 293). At this juncture the moderates found themselves in a delicate position, not wanting to seem indifferent to the workers’ distress but at the same time unwilling to have the government become the focus of criticism for having brought on the depression. The moderates could use their domination of the Chamber to control the commission of inquiry. Deputy Eugène Spuller, vice-president of the Chamber, who had moved with his patron, the late Léon Gambetta, toward the centre of the political spectrum, was chosen as its chair (Bayon, 2006: 171–174). A majority of the members were moderates, as shown by their choice of Spuller, and in fact only 17 of them had voted for Clemenceau’s resolution, with 23 against, and 4 abstaining or uncertain. Spuller himself is among the last group; listed as being opposed in the vote count, he later declared that he voted in favour. The Commission would have to do something – at least issue a report – but its moderate majority would ensure that it would make no proposals that might hurt the Republic or encourage radical economic change.

IV.  The 1884 survey The first action of the Spuller Commission was to hold a series of hearings between February and April 1884 at which representatives of Parisian workers (largely artisans) testified about the conditions and problems of their industry. A volume containing the minutes of these sessions was then published (Annales de la Chambre…Documents, 1885). For non-Parisian workers the Commission prepared 180

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separate questionnaires for industry, commerce, and agriculture.2 Each was divided into ten sections with about two hundred questions, covering approximately the same topics. These included education, working conditions, housing, wages, crises and unemployment, workers’ organisations, credit, insurance and savings, public assistance, and general conditions. Some questions in the industrial and agricultural surveys were repeated almost word for word. This is hardly surprising for such items as ‘What trade did your father follow?’ an item that could have been drawn from one of Le Play’s family studies. Less obviously, both surveys asked whether foreign superiority (seemingly assumed) was due to ‘the difference in wages and the economic condition of the worker, to taxes, to customs duties, to transport costs, to equipment’, with the industrial survey adding raw materials costs and the agricultural mentioning the price of fertiliser and the division of the soil (Industrial survey, Q. 226; Agricultural survey, Q. 191). Despite an absence of direct evidence, the similarity of questions indicates that the agricultural survey was probably derived from the industrial since the Commission first put together a brief questionnaire to be sent to the Parisian workers’ groups invited to testify (Procès-verbaux, 1885: 6–7). Furthermore the questions themselves, directed as they are at ‘workers’, are more appropriate for industry where bosses and workers are clearly distinguished than for agriculture where the separation was not so clear. Agricultural workers were considered ‘all those who devote themselves to manual agricultural work, day labourers, piece workers, sharecroppers, tenants’ (Agricultural survey, p. 1). The largest segment of the agricultural population – peasant proprietors – was omitted by this categorisation, and the need to address so many different types of farmers complicated the questionnaire and confused many respondents. Thus there were questions about wages (‘Are you paid by the day, by the month […]’), which could only be answered directly by those who were wage earners, and separate sets of questions for sharecroppers and tenants (Q. 42, 122–137, 138–156). Even owners could not be ignored, and the very first question included ‘on your own account’ as one response to the question about how the respondent worked. Two puzzles arise from the survey: one from the questions and one from the responses. The agricultural survey contained many questions – exactly 196 – printed in booklets of 46 pages. Each page had numbered questions on one side and blank   Copies of the questionnaire, as well as other material pertaining to the Spuller Commission may be found in the A.N., Series C, cartons 3326–3329, for letters, general correspondence; 3330–33731 for questionnaires from the departments in alphabetical order; 33732 for various brochures collected by the Commission. References to questions from the agricultural survey will hereafter just be cited as Q. and the number of the question.

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spaces for answers on the other. Most of the questions required open-ended responses. For example the question about the conditions of sharecropping: ‘If you are a sharecropper? What are conditions of sharecropping? What is your share? How are crops divided? What is the length of your lease?’ (Q.122) Surely these are important questions, as were many others, and the Commission can hardly be faulted for asking them. Yet how could they have expected them to be answered in the space of a few half lines, especially since preceding and following questions also called for long answers? Could they have expected that farm workers of any sort would have taken the time to answer 196 of them? If the first puzzle derives from the number of questions, the second comes from the number of surveys distributed. The forms were sent, via prefects and mayors, following the pattern of the decennial statistical compilations, to each of France’s more than 30,000 communes. Despite being addressed to individual workers, the only way they could be completed was to have them filled out by the mayors or with the assistance of the mayor’s office, and in fact many were, as can be determined by the large number of forms stamped with the mayoral seal or signed by the mayor. The Commission encouraged the mayors to get help from additional ‘competent persons’ (personnes compétentes), presumably to assure broad distribution of the questionnaires. The returns in the Archives include many examples of additional forms, with only one set of questions, rather than all three. On a few occasions there were several responses from the same commune. An idea of the wide distribution of the questionnaires may be gathered from the comment of a critic who reported that 40,000 kilograms of paper were sent out (Resnes, 1885: 32). While this manner of distribution sought to meet the requirement that respondents be knowledgeable, the lack of explicit directions to the mayors, according to Perrot, ‘Explains the great number of failures to answer and incomplete answers’ (Perrot, 1972:18). The method of distribution also did nothing to solve the problem of the nature of the survey’s addressees. While many mayors, especially in smaller communes, may have been farmers, few were likely to come from the ranks of poor farmers, and very few were farm labourers. Of the 449 respondents in my sample, only 35 indicated they were farm labourers (salariés), 2 that they were pieceworkers (tâcherons), and another 13 that they were workers and something else (Q. 1). The distribution of questionnaires among non-officials did little to extend their reach into the poor. Was there really any desire or intention to reach the poor, or did the commissioners just want to pretend to be interested in them? If the procedures for distributing the questionnaires were problematic, the Commission’s understanding of what to do with them once returned was even 182

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more so. Had all, or even most of them (at least 30,000 on the basis of one per commune) been returned, the task of reading or analysing them would have been overwhelming. Even the 5000 or so that were returned could not have been analysed the pre-computer era. In the words of Senator Augustin Pouyer-Quertier, quoted by the anti-republican critic mentioned above, ‘working four years, night and day […] these forty-four commissioners would not be able even to read the answers to their questionnaire’(Resnes, 1885: 32). The implication – that the questionnaires would remain unread – seems to have been accurate. The returned questionnaires were filed by department as received by the prefects and then at some point transferred to the Archives Nationales, where they remain in the order received. There is no evidence that they were ever looked at; as Perrot remarks, ‘Of all that […] nothing was published’ (Perrot, 1972: 18). But perhaps, as Spuller declared, giving voice to the voiceless was valuable in itself (Annales de la Chambre…, Débats, (1884b): 20 Nov. 1884: 402). The Commission’s leaders also used the survey to disseminate their political positions. They declared their desire to protect their supporters in the church-state conflict from ‘electoral or religious pressure’ and enquired whether any workers had been fired ‘for having displayed (manifesté) their political opinions; […] for having refused to attend a religious ceremony’ (Q. 28). They sought to exhibit a sympathetic attitude toward the ‘workers’, as illustrated by general questions like number 60: ‘Have wages risen in proportion to increases in prices of consumption items?’ And more personally, not without a touch of condescension, the worker was asked whether he had been able to put aside money for times of unemployment or sickness (Q. 70). From the questions asked we get a sense of the Deputies’ concern with the ‘social question’ and those ills typically thought to be part of it – unemployment (Q. 26, 79–82), accidents (Q. 29–34), crowded and unhealthy housing (Q. 36–41). Resolving these ills would be accomplished by individual effort, for example education (Q. 5–15) and savings (Q. 70–72). But the moderates were not dogmatic liberals, and they provided a considerable place for savings banks, mutual aid societies, cooperatives (Q. 157–171), public assistance (Q. 172–183), and even resistance organisations (des cercles, des sociétés de résistance) (Q. 83–95). The Chamber’s favourable view of organising should not be a surprise if we remember that 1884 was the year that the right of association was legalised. Questions like these, on the social and political relations of agricultural workers, occupied the bulk of the questionnaire. The few questions about farming itself were to be found among the fifteen addressed to sharecroppers and the nineteen to tenants. Nothing was asked about soils, and the questions on crops and animals seem almost offhand (Q. 124, 125, 140). Recent bad weather and crop diseases were also ignored, 183

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except for what might be implied by questions on the causes of the crisis (Q. 78, 184). The lack of direct concern for farming can be traced to the absence of farmers from the ranks of deputies and the belief of the latter that the crisis was not a technical or even an economic issue but a political and social one.

V. Responses Yet the survey results contain valuable information, especially on French opinions about the crisis, its causes and remedies. Since most of the communes were rural, farmers’ opinions are unusually well represented. The sample of 449 responses that I have drawn from the several thousand forms in the Archives is roughly representative of the agricultural population.3 Geographically, departments from all regions of France were chosen. Proportions of different categories of farm workers and operators did not differ greatly from their representation in France as a whole. In order to analyse opinions quantitatively, discursive replies had to be coded into discrete answers. Sometimes the process of preparing data for the computer also required combining answers to several questions. Indeed it is not always obvious from the written responses which question is being answered. A good example of this process in the series of questions on the crisis (Q. 75–78). 75. Has agriculture in your region already suffered from crises? Their history? 76. Is agriculture in a state of crisis? Since when? 77. Is the crisis passing? Does it tend to continue (se perpétuer)? 78. Do you know the causes of the crisis? What measures would you propose to attenuate the crisis or bring it to an end?   The information derived from the survey was obtained from a sample constructed in the following manner. Departments were listed in random order. The number of surveys to be selected from each was then chosen in proportion to the share of the department’s agricultural land area to the total of such land in France. Inclusion of departments continued until 450 surveys were reached. (In fact several surveys had no quantifiable information, so they had to be excluded, and the Aisne was sampled at twice its proper rate and then those case weighted 1/2, so that the actual total of cases is 449.) The following departments entered into the sample: Aisne, Alpes (Hautes), Alpes-Maritimes, Bouches-du-Rhône, Charente-Inférieure, Cher, Corrèze, Corse, Côte-d’Or, Dordogne, Doubs, Eure, Finistère, Gers, Hérault, Jura, Landes, Loir-et-Cher, Loiret, Lot, Lot-et-Garonne, Lozère, Marne (Haute), Mayenne, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Orne, Pas-de-Calais, Rhône, Saône (Haute), Saône-et-Loire, Seine-Inférieure, Seine-et-Marne, Seine-et-Oise, Sèvres (Deux), Somme, Tarn-et-Garonne, Vaucluse, Vienne, Vienne (Haute), Vosges. Survey forms were sampled randomly within departments.

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Responses to these questions usually did not cover all the points but contain enough information to form the basis of three replies: the presence or absence of a crisis, how long the crisis has lasted, and what the causes of the crisis were. Similar procedures were followed for many other questions or sets of questions. The responses derived from them help us to understand the climate of opinion that would shape French politics in subsequent years. The most striking conclusion to be drawn from the survey is the near unanimity with which French farmers agreed on the existence of an agricultural depression. Eighty-one percent of those who answered the questions on the crisis (73% of all the survey respondents) thought so (Q. 75 and 76). Opinions in all regions of France were in accord. Even in the Centre, with the fewest respondents with this opinion, two-thirds of the answers were positive. The departments with the highest percentages of positive responses were those on the coasts and borders or near large cities. This may be explained as a result of the greater market orientation of these departments, making them more subject to the competitive forces that played a large role in producing the crisis (Price, 1983; Liebowitz, 1993). Since those in power are always blamed for hard times, the widespread sense of an agricultural crisis was bound to worry the moderate republicans. They would be especially troubled that most survey respondents said that the crisis had begun ten years earlier or more recently, i.e., since the capture of the Republic by the republicans. The average time for the start of the crisis was said by respondents to be 9.87 years ago, while almost 13% put its start about fifteen years ago, thus dating it to the end of the Second Empire (Q. 76). As the prefect of Gers wrote when submitting his department’s questionnaires in November 1884, This crisis preoccupies a lot of minds. Aided by the passionate recriminations of the hostile press, the inhabitants of the countryside evoke the past, remembering that fifteen or twenty years ago they sold their harvests more profitably […] and it might be feared […] that they would place responsibility on the government, which could create difficulties [passage missing] the coming general election.4

The moderates did suffer a setback in the elections of autumn 1885. Their seats in the Chamber dropped from 457 to 383, while the right won 201 compared to about 100 in the previous house. Within Republican ranks the place of the centrists diminished to the profit of the left. Spuller himself was defeated in his bid for re-election to the Chamber’s vice-presidency (Bayon, 2006).

 

4

Letter from prefect, Gers, to Minister of Interior, 14 Nov. 1884, A.N. C3350.

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The moderates would need to act, not just make people feel good by asking for their opinions. The survey revealed that one policy that might attract farmers to the Republic was tariff protection. By 1884 its supporters had convinced many farmers that foreign competition was the source of their woes and that protection was the solution. When asked about the causes of the crisis, 25.6% of respondents blamed free trade or foreign competition and 20.1% low prices, which might be regarded as one of its consequences (Q. 76). On the other hand, 29.2% saw the cause of the agricultural depression in natural events like disease and bad harvests. They would seem to be less open to protectionist arguments. Another 17.2% blamed both natural and economic causes.

VI. Conclusions The way the inquiry was composed and conducted, on the one hand, and the responses that it evoked, on the other, provide the historian with conclusions about the nature and content of inquiries, which in a real sense were both events and compilations of their time and place. They also inform us of the political opinions of French rural inhabitants. That a survey was chosen by French politicians as a response to social and economic crisis indicates how the regularity of surveys had made them seem normal. The 1884 inquiry borrowed from both those that asked for points of view, like that of 1866 (See Vivier chapter in this volume), and statistical compilations, like the decennial agricultural censuses. As with the first, it sought opinions, but not through testimony at meetings. Instead, the Commission sent out questionnaires, operating on the same departmental and communal scale and with the same machinery as the censuses. Some questions did imply numerical answers, like those on wages, rents, or hours of work. These answers, however, were not the same as the reports requested for the censuses because they were meant to be about individuals or individual holdings rather than the broader areas of those compilations, and the opinions would be even harder to add up. In the end the inquiry was a hybrid of the two types of inquiries that have been discussed above. It was groping – lacking the necessary real and virtual machinery – toward the social science research and public opinion survey that would be invented in the later decades. In 1884 it was used more as a political tool. The moderate republicans had chosen in the parliamentary inquiry to meet a social, economic, and technological problem with a political answer. The farmers replied with a political solution that the moderates may not have expected – protection. Responses to the survey are a first sign that increased tariffs had won wide adherence from farmers by 1884. Even if their failure to read the responses 186

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meant that politicians would not have been aware of this adherence, they must have gotten some inkling that sentiments were moving. Clear public evidence was provided at a national agricultural convention sponsored by the Société des agriculteurs in November of the same year when the Société shifted its position from a moderate to a protectionist stand (Smith, 1980: 199–200). During the eighties the extension of the market to more farmers would only increase rural support for protection. If the moderates were to remain in power, they needed to keep this support; they might try to do it with surveys, but by the mid-eighties the persistence of the depression and the spread of protectionist propaganda meant that this was no longer enough. The Méline Tariff of 1892 turned out to be the answer.

Sources Annales de la Chambre des Députés, Débats (1884a), Session ordinaire de 1884, i, Paris, Imprimerie du Journal officiel. Annales de la Chambre des Députés, Débats (1884b), Session extraordinaire de 1884, iii, Paris, Imprimerie du Journal officiel. Annales de la Chambre des Députés (Nouvelle série). Documents parlementaires (1885), Tome xii, Session ordinaire de 1884. ‘Commission d’enquête parlementaire sur la situation des ouvriers de l’industrie et de l’agriculture en France et sur la crise industrielle à Paris’, Paris, Imprimerie du Journal officiel. Ministère de l’Agriculture du Commerce et des Travaux Publics (1868), Statistique de la France, Agriculture: Résultats généraux de l’enquête décennale de 1862, Strasbourg, Berger-Levrault. Ministère de l’Agriculture (1887), Statistique agricole de la France: Résultats généraux de l’enquête décennale de 1882, Nancy, Berger-Levrault. Ministère de l’Instruction Publique et des Beaux-Arts (1914), Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, Section d’Histoire Moderne (depuis 1715) et d’Histoire Contemporaine, Notices, inventaires et documents, ii, La Statistique agricole de 1814, Paris, F. Rieder et Cie. Procès-verbaux de la Commission chargée de faire une enquête sur la situation des ouvriers de l’agriculture et de l’industrie en France de de présenter un premier rapport sur la crise industrielle à Paris (1885), Paris, Imprimerie du Journal officiel. 187

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Rapport présenté à la commission d’enquête parlementaire sur la situation des ouvrier [sic] de l’agriculture et de l’industrie en France, et sur la crise parisienne, par M. Spuller, président de la commission et rapporteur provisoire (1886), Annales de la Chambre des Députés, Documents parlementaires, Session ordinaire de 1885, ii, Paris, Imprimerie du Journal officiel. Royal Commission (1880, 1881, 1882) on the Depressed Condition of Agricultural Interests in British Parliamentary Papers, London, HMSO.

Bibliography Barral, J. A. (1867), L’Agriculture du Nord de la France, 1, La ferme de Masny, Paris, Ch. Delagrave. Bayon, Nathalie (2006), Eugène Spüller (1835–1896): itinéraire d’un républicain entre Gambetta et le ralliement, Villeneuve d’Asq, Presses du Septentrion. Bourguet, Marie-Noëlle (1988), Déchiffrer la France: La statistique départementale à l’époque napoléonienne. Paris, Editions des Archives Contemporaines. Brooke, Michael Z. (1970), Le Play: Engineer and Social Scientist, London, Longman. Demonet, Michel (1990), Tableau de l’agriculture française au milieu du 19 e siècle: l’enquête de 1852, Paris, EHESS. Duby, Georges & Wallon, Armand (dir.) (1976), Histoire de la France rurale, vol. 3, Paris, Seuil. Garrier, Gilbert (1987), ‘Les enquêtes agricoles décennales du xixe siècle: essai d’analyse critique’, in Pour une histoire de la statistique, Paris, INSEE, p. 269–279. Lejeune, Dominique (2011), La France des débuts de la Troisième République, 5th edition, Paris, A. Colin. Le Play, Frédéric (1857–1913), Les Ouvriers des deux mondes, Paris, Société Internationale des Études Pratiques d’Économie Sociale. Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel (2009), Histoire humaine et comparée du climat, vol. 3, Paris, Fayard. Lévêque, Pierre (1992), Histoire des forces politiques, Paris, A. Colin. Liebowitz, Jonathan J. (1993), ‘Rural Support for Protection: Evidence from the Parliamentary Inquiry of 1884’, French History, 7, p. 163–182. Mandell, Richard (1967), Paris 1900: The Great World’s Fair, Toronto, University of Toronto Press. Mayeur, Jean-Marie & Rebérioux, Madeleine (1984), (translated by J. R. Foster), The Third Republic from its Origins to the Great War: 1871–1914, Cambridge – London – New York, Cambridge University Press; Paris, Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. 188

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O’Rourke, Kevin H & Williamson, Jeffrey G. (1999), Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy, Cambridge, MIT Press. Perrot, Michelle (1972), Enquêtes sur la condition ouvrière en France au Paris, Microéditions Hachette.

xix e

siècle,

Perry, P. J (1973), ‘The Great Depression of English Agriculture, 1875–1896’ in P. J. Perry (ed.), British Agriculture, 1875–1914, London, Methuen, p. xi-xxxiii. Perry, P. J. (1974), British Farming in the Great Depression, 1870–1914: An Historical Geography, Newton Abbot, David and Charles. Price, Roger (1983), The Modernization of Rural France, London, Holmes & Meier. Resnes, Etienne de (1885), La crise agricole: Conférences faites à Beaumetz-les-Loges, le 13 janvier 1885 et à Bapaume, le 15 mars 1885, Arras, Commission Agricole d’Arras. Smith, Michael Stephen (1980), Tariff Reform in France, 1860–1900, Ithaca, Cornell University Press. Teisserenc de Bort, Léon (1883), ‘Hiver de 1879–1880’, Annales du Bureau central météorologique, 1881, p. 41–60. Tracy, Michael (1989), Government and Agriculture in Western Europe, 1880–1988, 3rd edition, New York, New York University Press. Ville, Simon P. (1990), Transport and the Development of the European Economy, 1750–1918, London, Macmillan.

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10. The 1879–1880 enquiries on agriculture in Hungary András Vári (†)* The question of what kind of information on agriculture and rural society was needed by the state at the end of the 1870s perhaps seems superfluous. Although modern scholars assume that there must have always been a comprehensive need for information, the nature of what was required was itself subject to change over time. Estate societies typical of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as those found in Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Poland and Hungary had a very restricted role for the central agencies of the individual kingdoms. So long as most affairs were decided in the autonomous regions and within particular social orders and corporations, there was little scope for the central gathering and processing of information.

I.  The need for information The growth of absolutism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries helped change this agenda. The first aim of the princely courts was to attempt to exploit the country’s tax base without intermediaries. This was achieved only in stages, after the owners of the various types of revenues in each region were forced to surrender their tax autonomy and accept princely control. Yet even at the outset this process required the central court to know in detail the size of the potential taxable wealth that was available. Equally important it needed to understand the legal issues behind of each particular tax and the rights of those subjects, corporations and territories. The science of political arithmetic, founded by Gaunt and Petty in England, was essentially an attempt to apply mathematical methods to the general problems of society and economy. However, its methods could only be utilised for a fairly narrow range of problems. Independent of this school, scholars in late seventeenth-century Germany started to produce integrated descriptions of states and their public organisation, together with such geographical features as topography, settlement and productive resources, but without numerical analysis. This became known as descriptive statistics (Staatenkunde). In late eighteenthcentury Germany Gottfried Achenwall and August Ludwig Schlözer opened up descriptive statistics to new methods developed by political arithmetic. Achenwall and fellow statisticians combined descriptions of constitutional structures, public *  András Vári participated in this research programme from the beginning. Tragically he died in October 2011, and could not finalize the second draft of the paper. We publish his paper as homage to an excellent colleague.

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administration and the Grundmacht, or the basic elements of the power of a state, which employed as far as possible numerical measurements of the land, resources and the people living there. This survived to the mid-nineteenth century. In the course of its development it shed some parts, such as the description of the flora and fauna of a land which belonged to other scientific disciplines, and acquired a much more sophisticated methodology using regular population censuses. What is significant here is that from the late eighteenth century this methodology used to describe social conditions involved not just experts, but also provided a forum for debate among the educated public. It was, therefore, both a forerunner of statistical science, and the later genre of inquiries. These inquiries in the second half of the nineteenth century, or ‘enquetes’ as they were called in German and Hungarian, were to some extent an intellectual fashion. However they were also needed to provide information on topics which the professional statistics could not provide reliable information. The need for information on the economy notably increased in the last third of the nineteenth century. The first stage of industrialisation of the Habsburg lands was already well under way by the 1870s (Katus, 2009; Scott, 1989; Kövér, 2004). The great recession of 1873 was accompanied by bad harvests and a cholera epidemic which highlighted the major social dislocations taking place during the course of industrialisation. The increasing disenchantment with capitalism led to a growth in public discourse concerning the need to widen the government’s scope for regulative action. The general public government, interest groups in agriculture and industry were all forced to look beyond their own agendas to understand wider social and economic problems of the day. In particular, it led to a demand for more detailed information regarding what was happening in the country, so that practical decisions could be made concerning possible future legal changes affecting economic institutions and government policies. The topics on which inquiries were held give an idea to the government and the public interests of the time: economic questions predominated, as other fields accounted for only half as many inquiries, although sometimes several related topics were discussed at the same time.

II. How did enquiries operate in the Hungarian context between 1867 and 1918? The Hungarian enquetes were unlike the English institution of inquiries. First there was no established legal framework and no official mandate for the inquiry. The process was not initiated in the parliament and the results did not usually directly lead to new legislation, but instead it was a sort of politically neutral forum for discussion concerning future government policies. In Hungary most of the 192

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enquetes were organised by one of the ministries, although some were initiated by other associations, including two by the city of Budapest. The convener devised a questionnaire, which was sent to knowledgeable individuals and in some instances to autonomous or professional bodies. Care was taken to invite representatives of all the relevant bodies and authorities, but the representatives of these organisations generally replied as individuals, rather than providing the official version of their institutions. This accorded well with the semi-informal character of the inquiries. Those invited were expected to provide a written answer. But this too was often rather casual, with some participants providing folios of well-researched reports, while other experts confined themselves to answering just those questions which they felt competent enough to handle. Others simply ignored the questions and gave general statements instead. These answers were usually circulated, and even published beforehand. The sessions lasted between two days and a week, and the first part consisted of speeches and the questions they provoked, and in the second part the written answers to the questionnaire were read aloud. Some of these were probably not read out in full, as they were very long. It is not usually known how many people declined to answer the questions or who they were. Neither the questionnaires nor the answers were statistically representative for the whole country, region, or a single sector of economy. While this limits the value of these inquiries, they provided a useful supplement to the official statistics. However their real value lies in showing the thinking of the contemporary ruling elites.

III.  The participants in the agricultural inquiry of 1879–1880 The young aristocrats demanded reform of the National Agricultural Association following the major stock exchange crash of 1873, growing state indebtedness, rising taxes for agricultural producers, and especially the steep fall in grain prices after 1879 (Vári, 2009a). The Association went to great lengths to keep their internal divisions hidden from the public. The attempts at reform failed, but in compensation the young aristocrats were granted a permanent section within the National Economic Association for continued discussion on the state of agriculture, and a national enquete, divided into five sections, on the sector. The National Economic Association was effectively a debating club, and a decidedly multi-party affaire, but with very limited practical influence. The enquete by contrast was to be both wider and much more public. But although it was born out of unease and discontent, it was not considered as being ‘oppositional’ to the interests of the status quo. The enquetes reflect the different forums for discussion that were appearing in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the scope of state action widened enormously, individuals and professions channelled their discussions on public 193

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matters into corporative organisations, interest-group representations, professional associations or even artistic and cultural bodies and networks, to influence public policies. The growth of the state and the development of corporatist structures were two sides of the same coin. This can be seen in the creation of organisations to represent interests that appeared in agriculture all over Europe at the time of the late nineteenth-century grain crises, although with somewhat different results in each country. More importantly, by looking closely at the functioning of these new forums of discussions such as provided by the enquetes on agriculture, one can observe peculiarities of the different societies during modernisation. We shall now look at who participated in the discussions of the enquetes and in what way. Formally, the agriculture enquete was conducted as a series of five separate parts: grain production and trade; livestock; wine production and marketing; forestry and transport. Some sessions had an introductory lecture and all had questionnaires, but while some people answered in writing, others communicated their opinions orally. In some case those who submitted written answers also participated in the sessions too. Their results were published (Az Országos Magyar, 1880). The participants in the discussions at the five enquetes (actually, six, for the grain enquete had subsections on trade and production) and the authors of the written statements can be roughly grouped in categories using the minutes of the discussions. For brevity’s sake the enquete on forestry is omitted because with 16 participants, 11 of whom were high-ranking foresters, it was the smallest section and lacked social diversity. Participants in the rest of the sessions are classified using a series of labels which mark social roles and positions in public discourse, rather than a class typology (Table 10.1). The most problematic aspect of the classifications in the table is the distinction between ‘experts’ and landowners, since quite a number of experts owned some land or came from landowning gentry families. In these cases, previous work helps to determine the major activity and source of income for the person concerned (Vári, 2009a). In the table, the sum is inferior to the number of participants; those who only submitted questions have been excluded. About half the individuals included submitted written replies to the questionnaires, and the rest made oral statements. Table 10.1 attempts to show to what extent that participants transcended social boundaries. To simplify, the exact delineations of individual groups is excluded, and we concentrate on three important blocks: the ‘Core’, the ‘Opponents (or enemies to the sector)’ and the ‘Countryside’.

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Table 10.1. Participants of 1879–1880 enquetes according to their social group and their membership in the National Agricultural Association Group, association membership of speakers

Grain prod.

Grain trade

Cattle

Wine

Transport

Dates of the sessions, continuous discussions

19.01.1880.– 20.01.1880

15.12.1879.– 17.12.1879

15.12.1879.– 17.12.1879

29.01.1880.– 31.01.1880

15.12.1879.– 17.12.1879

1. ‘Leaders’: Association leaders + aristocratic members of enquete committee

3

3

4

2

4

2. Experts – association members + section reporters of enquete, with or without land

7

1

4

5

3

3. Experts – no association membership, with or without land

4

2

6

3

4. Merchants, capitalists – members of agric. association

0

1

2

1

5. Merchants, capitalists, non-members, regional chambers of commerce and their representatives

0

0

1

5

6. County agric. associations as bodies, no name given

8

7

0

0

7. Railway representatives

0

0

0

5

8. Landowners, representing county agric. associations or being members of directorate of nat. agricultural associations

8

9

3

0

9. Landowners, not representing county agric. association, nor members of directorate of nat. agricultural association

2

1

4

0

10. Non-landowner representatives of county agric. associations or members of directorate of nat. agricultural association

3

7

1

1

11. Civil servants, public figures

0

1

1

0

12. Others and unknown Sum

8

1

2

1

3

6

1

37

14

39

31

23

Note. Groups which supplied about 20% of the contributors at each enquete are set in bold.

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‘Association leaders’ (i.e. group one) in the table were individuals who were either president or vice presidents of the National Economic Association, or major landowners who belonged to the 14-member committee of this Association that organised the enquetes. These committee members presided over the enquetes, and although they rarely provided oral or written statement themselves, they actively participated in the discussion. Although at any one enquete no more than three or four of these ‘elders’ spoke, most were also present during the debates. This group of leaders were supplemented with experts, some of whom were also members of the National Association (groups 2–3). Previous work shows these experts had a variety of employment and life-styles (Vári, 2009b). One group included elderly members living in retirement in the capital city, sometimes sitting in the parliament. Younger members were busy making themselves a name through a combination of activities including publishing, public administration, or managers on the great estates. This group of experts was in a symbiotic relationship with the first group of public-minded great landowners leading the National Agriculture Association. There was little difference between those experts who were formally members of the Association, and those who were not. These groups of landowners and experts can be lumped together and referred to hereafter as the ‘core group’ (left column numbers 1–3). Merchants, capitalists and railway representatives were the major groups that formed the ‘opponents’ to the agricultural cause (left column numbers 4, 5 and 7). However, they were treated with respect by the ‘core’ and one of them was the first keynote speaker in both the session on transport and on grain trade, Strasser one of the biggest European grain traders of the time. Landowners, some of whom were members of national or regional associations, can be seen as the representatives of the countryside rather than those found in the first ‘core’ group. The assumption is that these people (numbers 8 to 10), even those who did not own land themselves, were more preoccupied with immediate local problems and their possible solution, than the ‘elders’ who had a longer time horizon and took a broader view of the issues. It is clear that these enquetes were nowhere near national in scope, even though both individual experts and regional associations reported on local problems, and this three-tiered structure seems to span the whole country. An additional category is the opinion of economic institutions, as opposed to the private opinions of their officers or members. Their reports probably implied that the subject was interesting enough to have merited previous gatherings and deliberations by the associations. As this is only an assumption, the written contributions are kept separate from the other groups. 196

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The participants of the individual sessions varied significantly according to the enquete. In the enquete on grain, it was mostly the great landlords and agricultural professional experts who were the speakers. Table 10.1 shows, that the number of participants from the so-called ‘core group’ (left column numbers 1–3) and from the ‘countryside’ (left column numbers 8–10) were very similar, and with hardly any outsider participants. The enquete on cattle was much more open. Just as with grain growing, there was some overlapping between the role of ‘experts’ and ‘big producers’. This enquete had some fierce debates, and the fact that the development of cattle farming was seen by some as the only feasible alternative to the wheat-monoculture of the day led to a sort of democratisation of the discussion. In this respect the participants of the core group (1–3) were outnumbered by representatives of the countryside (8–10), by a ratio of 2 to 1 (and if group six is taken to be part of the ‘Countryside’, then by 3 to 1). Unlike the other sessions, both grain-growing and cattle enquetes had a number of county associations who delivered formal statements as a collective opinion. Since these two were the most open and vigorously debated subjects, the assumption that the collective statement submitted in the name of the country organisation was voicing some sort of regional opinion, seems reasonable. Group 6 therefore can be included with the ‘Countryside’ faction. The large participation of the countryside in the wine section meant that there was neither strong anti-capitalistic language nor oppositional political rhetoric. Phylloxera, which was later to have a catastrophic impact, was still only sporadic, being found in five villages. The other major irritant, the manufacturing of artificial wines, was referred to in the questionnaire in a very restrained way. The answers in general were highly technical and individualistic, which perhaps was rational, given the need to accommodate the vine and wine-making to a range of radically different local conditions. Beside the large number of unknown participants, the other big group was that of the experts without association membership. It seems that this part of the enquete about wine was effectively a conference of a separate and selfcontained community from the rest of agriculture. The enquete on transport was again very different.1 Here there was a clash of opinion not just between individual professional views, but between two different sides. The protagonists were the core group of the agrarians and the representatives   Because of its landlocked position, railways and tariffs were of much greater significance in Hungary than elsewhere (Katus, 1983).

1

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of the railways, who were invited to explain their policy on freight tariffs. In the eyes of the landlords, tariffs were not just too high, but the differential tariffs, which made the transport over long distances disproportionately cheaper than on shorter runs, were responsible for the flood of grain from Russia and Romania into Central Europe. However there were some beneficial effects for grain exports from Hungary to continental Central Europe. Another cause of discussion was the system of unpublished and unacknowledged rebates for certain big customers of the railways which, according to contemporary experts, were sufficiently widespread as to distort price levels. The major rail lines on the export routes were in private hands and engaged in cartel-like practices, but even before the enquete the government was pushing them to help grain exporters. Some major lines were nationalised in 1879–80, foreshadowing a full-scale nationalisation of the principal private railways (Fellner, 1884). Rail tariff policies generated an enormous amount of conflict and the representatives of the railway companies were heavily criticised in the discussions of the enquete. The agrarians complained bitterly about the railways, and these were aired on occasions like the enquete. By voicing criticism they helped unite different groups of rural society. Despite these complaints, the wholesalers and railway company representatives were listened to carefully and with respect.

IV.  Style and content of the inquiry of 1879–1880 The transport enquete reflects well the nature of political debate found in these inquires, with individuals willing to exchange arguments and positions with their opponents. Contemporary public discourse in 1880 took place at three levels. At the popular level there were powerful currents of anti-modern and anti-capitalistic feelings. The anti-capitalistic resentment and search for ways of social regeneration coloured the entire range of the political spectre, with important contributions from the ruling liberals, who were increasingly concerned by the demands for change they themselves had let loose. It was also reflected in the street disorders in 1882/83 which saw a flare-up of anti-Semitism, and found in contemporary novels portraying social types and developments (Fábri, 1991). At the other extreme, individuals thought in terms of parliamentary wheeling-dealing, and looked for ways to end the period of liberal governments. The debates in the enquetes are found between these two extremes, as it was only possible to get people to make rational compromises when deliberating controversial economic propositions such as customs tariffs or rail freight rates if the debate was kept away from both the populist politics of the street and the parliamentary

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power-game. The polite forms that debates took concerning these controversial issues were manifest not only in the enquetes, but also at other meetings and reflected not just tolerance, but a commonalty of interest on all sides at keeping the discussion in the realm of non-political, but public-minded and professionally informed exchanges. Instead of the modern spectacle of party politics colonising every trivial, banal public issue, the discussions perhaps half-consciously clung to the Enlightenment ideal of the ‘republic of the learned’, in an effort to get measures accepted without being bogged down in parliamentary politics. While no text surrounding the enquetes gives prima facie evidence for this assumption, it is supported by other actions and undertakings of the same agrarian elites. The fact that these discussions appear isolated from the real world was no accident, as the world of the masses was the one force against which the representatives of different opinions and persuasions could unite. Popular mobilisation was what conservatives and liberals abhorred in equal degrees. However some of the public discourse appears decidedly un-modern, and it needs to be asked to what extent this archaic mode of communication affected the functioning of enquetes. We shall consider now to what extent the enquete was an appropriate channel of information, and what data and knowledge it was able to collect.

V.  The results: the data in the answers to the questionnaires The most important of the 32 questions used to study grain production show how comprehensive and factual the enquete was: 1.  What is the situation for wheat production and producers today? 2. Why is wheat less profitable than previously and what price level is needed to make it profitable? 3.  What evidence is there that yields have fallen? 4. To what extent do economic factors or crop rotations explain low yields? 5.  Why are yields only half those found in France or in Germany? […] 7. Is the situation aggravated by the high production costs of wheat? How much have costs increased over recent years?

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8.  What is the cost of production cost for wheat per acre? 9. How have wheat production costs and incomes changes over recent years? 10. In what ways can alternative crops or the development of livestock farming reduce the area under wheat? […] 11. How should livestock farming be encouraged? What are the most suitable regions for it, and which sectors are most promising? What support should be given to the production of flax and hemp? 12. What is the best means to encourage producers to change their farming systems? By the use of circulating publications, awarding prizes, providing help or training? […] 13. What measures need to be taken against the shortage of labour and high wage costs? […] 14. What can the government do to provide producers with better information to market their grain? Better statistics on the size of the harvest; prices; information on the harvests in America, Russia, India; speedy publication of consular reports, etc.,? 15.  How profitable is rye and oats production compared to wheat? […] 16.  What obstacles exist for the production of fodder crops? […] 24.  How profitable is maize production compared to wheat? […]

The data provided in response to these and other questions is to the modern eye often highly eclectic. The tables and numerical data were as might be expected, collected in an unscientific fashion, but the obvious disregard for classifying information is still surprising. For example, there appears to have been no agreement on the type of measurement units to be used in the individual reports, even though this should

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have been possible by the time of the enquetes. Though unsystematic, the data of the answers can still yield insights. To what extend does the inquiry reveal the response of rural societies to economic change? The first observation is that the object of the enquetes was not concerned with rural society as such. Forestry and transport was not something that the small gentry landowner, let alone the ordinary peasant, could comment upon. However, even in activities such as cereals or cattle where they both were actively involved, the emphasis was very much on commercial farming, making it hardly relevant to them given the size of most peasant and gentry holdings. With this in mind, the answers reflect how large producers saw their own situation and represent an attempt at understanding the impact of the world economy on local agriculture. There is an obvious effort by the invited experts to give reasoned and balanced statements, with data taken from their own businesses and neighbouring organisations. By contrast the major problems facing the general farm population were not something that they could easily answer for. The grain crisis provides a convenient topic to examine the nature of replies and proposals to the enquete. The agricultural crisis was phrased in the questionnaire as a protracted decrease in incomes. There are two main ideas found among the respondents’ statements. First, some people limited their comments to the national scene and saw the price fall as the result of natural calamities, and something to be lived with. These were opposed by others who considered world market developments, and their opinions ranged from acquiescence to demands that the government or other actors to do something to ease the plight of farmers. As Hungary had experienced a major export boom in the sixties and early seventies, it could not now just blame the world market, but it was also evident that the government had very limited scope of action. Not only was it still a net exporter, therefore limiting the effects of a possible protective tariff, but Hungary also belonged to a customs union with Austria. This limited the ‘activist’ response, but those of a passive disposition also found themselves in a difficult situation, as they found themselves only being able to recommend taking a more scientific approach to farming. The adherents of passivity and those confining their comments exclusively to the national economy tended to come either from the ranks of highly trained agricultural experts or from the liberal public servants. By contrast those referring in their answers to world developments and/or demanding some sort of outside help for agriculture came from the groups of conservative, agrarian landowners and experts. The differences between the two groups in fact were not very great. All contributors advocated change, but preferred this to be gradual rather than revolutionary. Some

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placed more weight than others on livestock as an alternative to wheat. None of the respondents demanded any large-scale government action with regard to grain, or indeed with any other matter except rail freight rates. Since none of the agrarians wanted to give state agencies significant powers, and those of a liberal/government affiliation were no more interested in a creative response to the grain crisis than those agrarian landlords who had initiated the enquete, the lack of genuine conflicting opinion among the participants appears somewhat strange. While these were happy to exhort each other, without really demanding or negating anything, the positive advise were mostly practical policies which could actually have been implemented on their own estates or farms without the need for an official gathering in Budapest. In a sense the enquete can be considered as a stage for different social and professional groups. However the factual information provided by the enquetes was not without its value for the government or for agricultural experts. State statistics at the time already provided yearly information on the major crops, and the people employed in agriculture. Local authorities were also required to give data on the size of the major crops, as well as on cattle numbers, although these statistics were notoriously unreliable. Grain prices in Budapest were systematically recorded, but prices in other markets were insufficiently registered. As there were no wage statistics for agricultural labourers, it was impossible to calculate changes in the profitability of agricultural production. The enquetes therefore did provide the general public and government with some useful information.

VI. Range of functions of enquetes: from social groups to policy bargains The contents and the discussions during the inquiries of 1879–1880 reveal three distinct social groups who used the stage to reveal their changing identities. First, professional experts saw it as an opportunity to show how their new skills were relevant to the sector. Second, aristocratic landowners engaged in the contemporary agrarian movement experimented with adapting to a modern society. While finally some merchants and capitalists aired their social responsibilities by embracing particular views. Although agriculture could justly claim to be a victim of the radical changes occurring on the capitalist world market, and therefore attracted the symbolic gestures of complaint from landowners, agricultural experts, grain merchants etc., there were other reasons for the inquiries of 1879–1880. In addition to the obvious and basic function of collecting factual information, the inquiries also show the development of

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different coalitions which were forming and which eventually materialised to support specific demands. If this required some sort of additional state budget expenditure, such as to create a state veterinary service, then the groups acted together to sign a petition. In this case the enquete allowed participants to show that they represented rural public opinion and backed a particular demand. On some other issues agreement might itself influence future government policy. The questionnaire on cattle asked how breeds and farming districts should be defined. In particular, to what extent the local breeds were sufficient, and whether imported blood stock was required. If it was, the question was then whether permanent imports were needed, or just some initial breeding animals. Equally important was to define how breeding should take place in the village, and whether villages should be compelled to buy a pedigree bull which was alone to be used for breeding. With the exception of the imports, only relatively insignificant government expenditure was required. So if discussions in the enquete arrived at an agreement on policy, it was difficult for the government to ignore. Most suggestions of this type in the enquetes were taken up and acted upon the government. But there were two enquetes, those on grain and on transport, where there were a number of issues to be decided, which clearly involved contrary interests. The questionnaire contained a number of very different propositions with regard to railways: that the cartel of the different railway lines should be banned by the government, which was paying subsidies to these railway companies; that the government should regulate tariffs; that the differential tariffs should be reduced or abolished, etc. The suggestion that the big secret rebates for large shipments should be banned met with stiff resistance from the railways, as did the idea to abolish differential tariffs. On the other hand, some of the railways and most of the grain merchants actually accepted the idea of government establishing tariffs, and a larger role for it in the running of the railways. From the differing responses to individual suggestions it becomes apparent, that there was indeed a bargaining process taking place. The structure of the participants also points to this result, for the enquete on transport was the one gathering where ten representatives of the core farm group faced an equal number of capitalists and railway representatives, with only a single participant representing the countryside. This kind of bargaining was, admittedly, not always feasible. The enquetes, then, could also be places at which one farm group could negotiate and bargain with opponents, such as in our case merchants, capitalists, railway representatives. The form and nature of the discussions was structured by the questionnaire, by the organising committee and by the experts advising the organisers

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who to invite. This, of course, does not mean that enquetes were solely there for this one function. In fact, this aspect would have been manifestly irrelevant to the sessions on wine or on cattle. But while not all of the sessions were bargaining places, there was a range of other functions such as the ones outlined above. In fact, the one feature which was probably similar to inquiries found in other countries was probably that these discussions were fulfilling a range of more or less visible functions. This similarity can be used by the historian to contrast the spectacular differences of functions and groups involved in the form of enquetes. To conclude, the enquetes seem to be the inheritor of the centuries old efforts of the princely power centres to gathering information concerning their societies. With the passage of time they underwent profound changes of function. Towards the end of the liberal age they functioned as interfaces between state-government which was in the process of expanding its scope of action and influence, and a society which was rapidly becoming a web of interest representations, professional organisations, networks, etc. The content and nature of opinions, demands, or terms of discourse at any one of these enquetes shows a clearly focused image of the state at that moment, and the aspirations of a particular profession, economic or social group, with regard to public policy. This was shown by the series of enquetes of the Hungarian National Economic Association. Here, the different sessions, organised by the same association and with seemingly the same philosophy came to assume a wide range of differing functions and gave rise to different types of discourse. Beyond the differing arguments and demands there was a common feature of the genre of enquetes as a particular space, or stage of discourse which was set above popular politics and below parliamentary party politics. Thus, in the form considered here it was an essentially pre-modern form of exchange and discourse. It would need further research to clarify the extent of the validity of these observations, and how far enquetes on other themes, or in other countries, would support what was observed in the Hungarian 1879–80 enquetes on agriculture.

Bibliography Az Országos Magyar (1880), Gazdasági Egyesület által gazdasági bajaink kipuhatolása és orvoslása érdekében tartott enquete tárgyalások. Budapest. Fábri, Anna (1991), Jókai-Magyarország. A modernizálódó 19. századi társadalom képe Jókai Mór regényeiben, Budapest, Skíz. Fellner, Simon (1884), A vasúti tarifák reformálásának kérdéséhez, Budapest, Magyar királyi egyetemi nyomda. Kövér, György (2004), ‘Inert Transformation: Social History of Hungary from the Reform Era to World War I’, in Gábor Gyáni, György Kövér, Tibor Valuch (eds), Social

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History of Hungary from the Reform Era to the End of the Twentieth Century. Atlantic Studies on Society in Change, n° 113, East European Monographs, dcxlii, New Jersey, p. 3–267. Katus, László (2009), ‘The Common Market of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy’, in András Gero˝ (ed.), The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy Revisited, Boulder, Col. – Highland Lakes, N.J. – New York. Katus, László (1983), ’Transport Revolution and Economic Growth in Hungary’ in John Komlos (ed.), Economic Development in the Habsburg Monarchy, Boulder, Colorado. Scott, Eddie M. (1989), ‘Economic Policy and Economic Development in AustriaHungary, 1867–1913’, in Peter Mathias & Sidney Pollar (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Volume viii, Cambridge, p. 814–886. Vári, András (2009a), Herren und Landwirte. Ungarische Aristokraten und Agrarier auf dem Weg in die Moderne 1821–1910, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz. Vári, András (2009b), ‘Les gardiens du changement. Développement agricole et professionnalisation des intendants de grands domaines en Hongrie 1780–1914’ in Nadine Vivier (ed.), Elites et progrès agricole, xvi e–xx e siècles, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009, p. 209–225.

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11. Spanish agriculture and the government enquiry. La crisis agricola y pecuaria, 1887–1889 Juan Carmona & James Simpson* This paper looks at the major government Enquiry of 1887–1889 (Crisis agrícola y pecuaria, hereafter referred to as CAP) in the context of long term shifts in the nature and demands of Spanish agriculture, and changes in the international economy. It argues that the State possessed very little information concerning the sector, as there were no official figures for farm output, and those for factor inputs such as land and labour were limited. A critical look is provided of the government’s objectives and the context of the Enquiry, which took place against a background of rising imports of food products and falling prices (for the difficulties of these years, see especially the essays in Garrabou, 1988). Neither the government of the day, nor the members of the Commission in their final report were in favour of changing tariffs. However many of those who provided written and oral evidence, while often exaggerating the effects of the international crisis on domestic agriculture, demanded an increase in protection against cereal imports. Tariffs were duly raised once more in 1891 following the election of a new government, and this helped keep much of the sector profitable, but at the cost of higher domestic prices. Yet the replies presented to the Commission also show that neither politicians nor agronomists could envisage a realistic alternative to extensive dry farming for most farmers. The possibilities of producing high value fruit and vegetables for the export market required both the creation of suitable marketing structures and major investment in irrigation, roads, and scientific research. Furthermore, its potential to create employment was very limited, a fact that was especially important for an economy where two thirds of the active population was still employed in the sector. The chapter is divided in three main sections. After looking briefly at the long run trend in Spanish agriculture, the first discusses the agrarian crisis of the 1880s. Section two shows how the Enquiry was created and the results that were obtained and this is followed in the next section by considering its influence on government policy, as well as other initiatives taken by the state at this time to improve its knowledge of the sector. It finishes with a short conclusion.

*  10739).

The authors acknowledge financial support of Spain’s Ministry of Education (ECON2009–

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I.  Why an Enquiry in the 1880s? The main objectives of the Enquiry were to resolve the short term problems created by the fall in domestic farm prices and increase in foreign imports of different commodities, as well as to address problems associated with the organisation of agricultural production (dispersed holdings, ‘inefficient’ plots, contracts, etc), which had been debated by liberal reformers over many decades. Consequently, the difficulties involved in encouraging technological change, creating new institutions to resolve problems of collective action, or the state’s involvement in research and extension were conspicuously absent, although these too were debated by contemporaries in other forums. Interest by the Spanish state in the agrarian question was not new, and a number of writings appeared from the late eighteenth century, the most famous being that by Gaspar Jovellanos (1795 and 1968). The major concern of these writers until well into the nineteenth century was the perceived under-population of the countryside, often in contrast to some idealised historical past such as during the Roman Empire (Martín Rodríguez, 1984: 159, 170–3). Institutions inherited from the Old Regime including the Mesta, the church’s land possessions and tithes, the extensive village commons, the entail of noble estates, as well as certain traditional forms of land tenure, were considered by liberal reformers as obstacles to rural prosperity and economic growth. Change during the nineteenth century was significant, and include the massive transfer of church and municipal land to private ownership (GEHR, 1994). While the Spanish economy slipped further behind relative to the leading European powers, output increased in absolute terms. By the 1880s, Spanish agriculture had enjoyed around a couple of centuries of slow growth. As population doubled from around nine millions in the mid-eighteenth century to 18.6 million by 1900, farmers extended the area cultivated and intensified traditional crop rotations (Garrabou and Sanz, 1985; Simpson, 1995, ch.1). Areas of extensive cereal land which was sown only once every three years or more declined and rotations shortened. The vine and olive, which produced considerably more per hectare and required abundant quantities of labour in comparison to cereals, increased rapidly, almost quadrupling between 1795 and 1888 according to one study (Garrabou and Sanz, 1985: 130). However productivity growth was slow. Bringas (2000: 149) suggests an annual increase for Spain in total factor productivity of 0.16% between 1800 and 1857, and 0.95% between 1857 and 1905, while Prados de la Escosura (2003: 606–8) estimates a very moderate growth in labour productivity over the second half of the century. It was helped by the greater integration of the national market, and a government policy which restricted imports, thereby maintaining the sector’s profitability. With the promise of railways linking the major cereal producing region of Castile with the northern ports, some contemporaries dreamt of Spain becoming Europe’s bread

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basket, a scenario that was repeated with wine a couple of decades later (Robledo, 1993: 63–80 and Pan-Montojo, 1994). Both dreams proved to be short lived, in the case of cereals because the country’s land abundance compared to other European countries became irrelevant with the incorporation of American and Russian cereal farmers in the global economy, and because of foreign tariffs in the case of wine. The timing of the Enquiry can be explained by the word ‘crisis’ in its title. Farmers from the 1870s in Western Europe faced sharply lower prices for their products because of lower transport costs, especially in the Atlantic economy. In Spain, the crisis was delayed, but by the early 1880s cereal producers complained of the strong competition from low cost New World producers and olive oil growers from cheaper vegetable oils; and by the 1890s livestock producers had to compete with imported chilled and frozen meats. Farm profits were also squeezed by the tendency for wages to slowly increase. In Spain, as elsewhere in Europe, farmers lobbied the state for answers to their lack of competiveness. Cereals and legumes were the most important sector of Spanish agriculture, accounting for 35% in 1910, compared to 23% in France, 19% in Germany, 22% in Italy, and 15% in the United Kingdom (O’Brien & Prados de la Escosura, 1992, Table 3). Wheat exports fell sharply from the end of the 1870s to virtually nothing, although a small trade in flour continued to the country’s captive Antilles colonies until their loss in 1898. By contrast wheat imports, which previously had been limited to years of exceptionally poor harvests, surged to successive peaks in 1882, 1887/8, and 1893/4 (Figure 11.1). Wheat prices also fell, on average by 12.9% between 1885/95 and 1874/84, although in coastal Catalonia and Galicia it was over 16%, while in the major cereal producing region of Old Castile and Leon just 9% (Table 11.1). However, tariffs kept the fall to less than most western European countries after 1891 (Simpson, 1997). A significant drop in cereal prices caused by cheap imports from the 1880s would have required a radical reorganisation of production. The potential to achieve this, at least in the short term, was limited. In Spain, unlike Britain, the relatively low levels of urbanisation, low incomes, and poor transport infrastructure, implied that the income elastic demand for superior goods remained limited. Instead some farmers looked to export markets, and the rapid growth of the area under vines, increasing by perhaps a third between the late 1850s and 1880s, was caused by the exceptional short-term circumstances in France where the vine disease phylloxera, which cut domestic production there by almost a half between 1863–75 and 1879–92. The subsequent replanting of vines in that country, as well as the expansion of output in colonial Algeria, resulted in Spanish producers facing significant tariffs once

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more after 1891. The loss of this important market, and rapid spread of phylloxera in Spain itself, saw the area under vines shrink from 1.7 million in the late 1880s to 1.2 million by the First World War (Simpson, 2011 and Pan-Montojo, 1994). Another possibility was to specialise in high value goods such as specialist fruit and market gardening as export markets became increasingly important, especially on the irrigation fed regions along the Mediterranean coast. However, the shift from flow irrigation, where rivers and streams were simply diverted to neighbouring fields, to a system based on creation of reservoirs and distribution channels, was very slow because of the huge capital costs, but also because of the need to identify profitable crops, provide technical information to farmers, and create distribution networks to market their produce. Only in parts of Valencia, were institutions changes, and new tube well technologies introduced (Calatayud, 1984, and Garrabou, 1985a). In 1900, Spain had a reservoir capacity of only 78 million cubic meters, a figure that increased to 3,620 million by 1940 and 42,201 million by 1980 (Simpson, 1995: 132). Raising tariffs were a relatively easy solution compared to the practical difficulties associated with trying to change traditional agriculture.

Table 11.1. Wheat prices and answers to the Enquiry 1874/84

1885/95

pesetas/ Hls

pesetas/ Hls

Higher Ebro

20.85

18.46

Western Andalucia

24.58

Eastern Andalucíia

24.67

Aragon Cantabria

% price fall

% Spain’s

% answers

% answers

harvest 1890/94

to the enquiry

which mention the crises

11.5

5.2

9.2

7.4

20.70

15.8

10.6

10.2

11.0

20.74

15.9

7.5

4.2

4.6

21.47

18.56

13.6

13.0

11.8

12.1

24.18

21.51

11.0

1.3

7.6

7.2

New Castile

21.33

18.92

11.3

11.6

17.2

19.6

Catalonia

24.66

20.51

16.8

6.3

6.2

6.6

Old Castile-Leon

19.17

17.44

9.0

27.1

21.8

20.1

Extremadura

20.92

18.60

11.1

5.4

1.8

1.4

Galicia

25.08

20.97

16.8

2.6

5.6

5.6

Murcia

24.60

20.84

15.3

2.6

1.6

1.4

Valencia and Baleares

24.91

22.08

11.4

6.8

2.8

3.0

Spain

22.70

19.78

12.9

100

100

100

Source. Columns 1–3, Gehr (1980), table 4; column 4, Sanz (1985), table 17 and Arrazola (1896: 50–1); columns 5–6, CAP, vol. 1–1 and 5. 210

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Figure 11.1: Imports and exports of wheat and flour (in millions of pesetas)

Source: GEHR (1980: 104)

Although wheat prices did not fall significantly after the 1880s, the nature of cereal markets changed radically. Poor domestic harvests had been traditionally accompanied by high prices, with low prices following large ones. Farm incomes were therefore smoothed, but consumers faced highly volatile wheat and bread prices. Government intervention therefore had been traditionally shaped by the highly volatile prices that consumers faced, and the need for sufficient supplies to be available in years of extreme shortage. Municipal granaries were created in urban centres, and local authorities were required to collect large quantities of information on prices. The greater integration of cereal markets in the Atlantic Economy implied that farmers were no longer compensated by high prices after poor harvest, and these now faced highly volatile incomes, while consumers saw much smaller yearly price movements (Simpson, 2001). While prices were published on a regular basis for the major crops in the Gaceta de Madrid from June 1856, information appears to have been scarce for contemporaries, as suggested by the various questions concerning farm prices in the Enquiry (Sánchez-Albornoz, 1975 and GEHR, 1980). In the mid-1880s the government also lacked basic statistical information on the area of cultivation, crop production, and the problems facing the farm sector. A number of attempts were made during the last years of the eighteenth century to measure national output for the major crops (most notably, the Censo de Frutos y Manufacturas of 1799), and again sixty years later with the Junta General de Estadística (1857) (Fontona, 1967: 61, Simpson, 1989: 356–363, and Bringas Gutiérrez, 2000: 19–35). With the exception of the livestock census of 1865, none of these estimates have been 211

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widely accepted, either by contemporaries or historians (GEHR, 1978–9). When Figuerola became the minister of finance in 1868, he had only general summaries of tax returns for half of Spain’s provinces, and when these were compared with other sources, found that on average approximately 40% of the total area was missing, and with half these provinces it was over 50% (Pro Ruiz, 1995: 92). The Enquiry felt it useful to publish some of these tax figures, even if they were already twenty years out of date (CAP, 7, 568), thereby not only giving publicity to the fraud and administrative inefficiency, but also to the difficulties facing the administration to create accurate statistics. It was especially difficult for it to measure the size of the harvest when the area cultivated was unknown. In 1879 the Servicio Agronómico de España was given the task to create a statistical service, but only began collecting statistics on a regular basis after 1891 (GEHR, 1991: 28–29, 31). This organisation did not depend on information provided by the municipalities, which tended to underestimate figures, but rather on technicians who took a more scientific approach to collecting data. This work, however, was posterior to the Enquiry.

II.  Creating the Enquiry The Royal Decree of July 7 1887 created the Enquiry to deal with the specific problems associated with the agrarian crisis, especially the cereal sector. With the exception of the very limited Encuesta agrícola of 1849–56 (see Moral Ruiz, 1979), it was Spain’s first major parliamentary enquiry for agriculture, but the organisers were well aware that similar ones had already been held in other European countries. The organisational committee was dominated by parliamentarians and the debates reflected those of the Cortes rather than among agronomists. Spain between 1885 and 1890 was governed by the liberals, a party that believed the agrarian crisis could only be resolved by a program of global reforms, but set up the Enquiry in the face of criticism for doing too little to resolve sector’s problems (Garrabou, 1985b: 518). The major opposition conservative party demanded an increase in protection, but the liberals maintained an eclectic position with respect to tariffs as illustrated by Germán Gamazo, an influential member of the government, who initially was opposed to increasing them, but demanded more protection as the Enquiry progressed (Serrano Sanz, 1987: 105–114 and Varela Ortega, 1977: 267–77). As there were only a handful of genuine free traders in Spain at this time, the real debate centred on whether tariffs were already sufficiently high in 1887, or whether they needed to be increased further. The majority of those chosen to sit on the commission were opposed to further tariff increases (see Appendix). The Committee was composed of landowners and civil servants, rather than technicians. There were 47 members, including 28 senators and deputies who

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represented those provinces where farmers had been most vociferous in the face of declining cereal prices. Some of the leading politicians of the day were present (Conde de Toreno, Andrés Mellado, Manuel Becerra, Gumersindo de Azcárate), and politically they represented the whole parliamentary range of liberals, conservatives, and republicans. They were joined by 11 civil servants with responsibilities to the agricultural sector. The last eight represented the interests of the urban working class, and while these were predominantly landowners and included three leading aristocrats, reformists such as Urbano González Serrano, Azcárate or Cristobal Sorni were also present. The majority of these eight delegates had already participated in an earlier commission on working class living standards (Junta de Reformas Sociales, RD 10 December 1883), which partly explains why the remit of La Crisis Agrícola y Pecuaria did not cover the impact of tariffs on basic dietary necessities and urban living standards. There was no reference to this earlier enquiry, either in the main text of La Crisis Agrícola y Pecuaria or in its conclusions. A major problem in compiling the study was the lack of interest shown by many of the commissioners. This appears to have been foreseen, as it was agreed that decisions could be taken without a quorum being present, and the president (Conde de Toreno) was given considerable powers (CAP, 1–1, 24). In fact, there were rarely more than 20 of the 47 members present (CAP, 1–1, 116). The Real Decree fixed a tight schedule: just one month to prepare the questions, compile a list of institutions and people to whom it should be sent, and post them, all by 15 August 1887. A further month was given for recipients to reply. It was then planned that the commission receive oral evidence until the October 15th. The final report and its recommendations were required to be finished by the end of December, 1887. Despite the fact that the enquiry took longer than expected (the conclusions were not published until November 1889), it was a remarkably quick survey. There were 24 general questions, followed by others written by the four subcommittees on cereals (39 questions); wine (23); olives and other crops (14), and livestock (26), making a total of 130 in all. The questions were written in under a month during the summer, and provoked little debate within the commission. In reality, the questionnaire was too long and contradictory, creating a further barrier for interested parties to respond. Repetition was common, as illustrated by questions 25, 36, 40 and 58, which dealt with cereal prices, which suggests that they had been drawn up by different committees without any attempt to integrate them. Some 15 of the 39 questions on cereals were linked to the tariff question, and could not realistically be expected to produce useful information from rural communities. There were few questions on taxation, although these were sufficient for local authorities to demand reductions. Certain topics were hardly covered. For example,

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there were few questions on improving productivity and none on the use of manure or artificial fertilisers, farm machinery, new crops, or land distribution. There was only one question relating to labour markets and contracts. A number of questions reflected contemporary concerns, such as the need for enclosures or the provision of credit for farmers (Carmona & Simpson, 2003). Frequently the questions themselves guided the respondent in a particular direction to reply. Some 12,000 copies of the questionnaire were produced, and 150 sent to each of 49 provincial governors to distribute among most of the country’s 8,100 municipalities. Copies were also sent to provincial bodies such as the chambers of commerce, agricultural societies, provincial organisations, and interested individuals. One surprise was the initial absence from the list of government agronomists (CAP, 1–1, 71). Another was that the Director General de Agricultura, who was a member of the commission, was forced to sack members of his own department who were responsible for collecting statistics (Junta Consultiva Agronómica) as these failed to reply to requests for information. Replying to the questionnaire was voluntary, but the prevailing low prices were a positive incentive for some groups to respond. The response was especially strong from the major cereal producing regions (the two Castiles, western Andalucía and Aragón), which produced 62.3% of the nation’s wheat production, and were responsible for 61% of replies (Table 11.1). In reality the strict calendar was not adhered to. It took longer than expected to compile the questionnaire, and the commissioners decided to concede an extra month for individuals and institutions to reply (CAP, 1–1, 62). Even so, the members were skeptical about the benefits for giving more time, especially as it took three weeks just to communicate this information, effectively extending the dead line by just one week (CAP, 1–1, 75). The response was abysmal, and by October 15th only 15 replies had been received from the 11,319 questionnaires sent, and the figure had increased to only 242 by the end of the month. (CAP, 1–1, 68). The government’s timetable failed to take into account Spain’s slow moving administration. For example, the Consejo Superior de Agricultura, an institution that had considerable knowledge of the agrarian problems and was theoretically involved in writing the final report, failed to reply for the simple reason the demands coincided exactly with the dates of its three month holiday (CAP, 1–1, 74). Another problem was that assembling the necessary information was often time consuming. Representatives from 180 villages in the wine producing province of Navarra first met to discuss a joint reply the 11 October, but on the same day they received (after a delay of 10 days) a demand that their report was required to be sent by the 14th October (CAP, 6, 18).

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The Commission decided not to extend the time any further, leaving it with just 400 replies, with a further 18 arriving between the end of November and Christmas (CAP, 1–1,108). Only 4% of villages (300 out of 8,100) in the whole country replied. By contrast, 55 agronomists and civil engineers sent reports, toget3her with 35 from individuals or societies, such as Sociedades de Amigos del País (CAP, 1–1, 106). In the two years that it took to elaborate the enquiry, the collection of information was carried out in just a couple of months, while the debates among the committees and preparation for publication took a further year and a half, with the volumes appearing at the end of 1889. Those enquiries which had inspired Spain’s had taken longer: four years in France (for that of 1866); six in Italy, and three in the United Kingdom. Some believed that the Enquiry’s unrealistically tight schedule was because it made it easier for the politicians to write a report that would justify new legislation that had already been decided. This was senator’s Abazurza opinion, as he noted that the conservative party, which had a number of members on the Commission tried, without success, to pass legislation to increase tariffs by 30%, as well one on industrial alcohol, without waiting for the final report. He noted that while the Conde de Toreno lamented the lack of information on cereals, he simultaneously backed the demands by Cánovas to increase duties (CAP, 1–1, 116). Not only was there more time available to carry out the enquiries in other European countries, but participants could also draw on detailed annual statistics for the area cultivated, production, and livestock, as well as a considerably greater literature on farming practices and traditions. By contrast in Spain there was very little statistical information at the disposal of town mayors to provide detailed replies, and commissioners believed that extending deadlines was unlikely to lead to significantly more or better information (CAP, 1–1, 82). Indeed a number of commentators suggested that the Enquiry did not have much value (Martinez Anibarro, Allende Salazar, Juan Bautista Díaz, Gabriel Rodríguez or Joaquín Sánchez de Toca), and internal debates questioned to what extent the La Crisis Agrícola y Pecuaria can be considered as a genuine enquiry (CAP, 1–1, 83, for example). The oral evidence also failed to provide much useful information. Evidence was taken over a period of several weeks, with interviews lasting a maximum of half an hour (CAP, 6). These took place in Madrid, with commissioners encouraging the presence of local landowners, politicians, and a few representatives from each region. The Commission complained of the poor attendance, especially from the more depressed agrarian provinces, although this could be explained in part by the short notice that individuals were called, and the general belief that their opinions

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would not be considered (CAP, 1–1, 69). The most interesting debate was perhaps between free traders such as Laureano Figuerola or Ruiz de Castañeda, and those seeking protection such as Allende-Salazar or Sánchez de Toca. The Enquiry’s major advantage perhaps was that it was comparatively cheap, although no figures are actually given. A large body of statistical material was included in the final volume. Some of this was provided by the railways companies to show the volume of agricultural produce transported between stations. The Norte also included a long essay to justify their freight rates, by showing that these were lower than those of other countries (CAP, 7, 15–31). A similar study was presented by another major railway, the MZA (CAP, 7, 120–125). The Dirección General de Aduanas published extensive information on trade and tariffs. Tax information was given by the Dirección General de Contribuciones, together with the recently published figures by the Instituto Geográfico on avoidance and fraud (CAP 7, 568–9). Figures were also given for properties seized in lieu of debts (CAP, 7, 571). Limited information on taxes paid by rural industries in each province are also included (CAP, 7, 572). Finally, the Junta del Servicio Agronómico provided estimates of cereal output in each province during a normal year (CAP, 7, 579). Surprisingly, no figures are given on the numbers employed in agriculture, land sales (which existed from 1876), or town granaries (pósitos). Before the final report was published, each subcommittee produced its own written one, which was then presented to the main commission for discussion and approval, which sometimes led to considerable changes, as was the case with cereals. This sub commission was heavily influenced by liberals and members who favoured lower tariffs (it included Cuesta y Santiago, Torre y Villanueva, Becerro de Bengoa, Conde de Guaqui, Claudio Moyano, Manuel González Serrano, Cecilio de Mora, Juan Alvarado, and the Conde de Mariana. CAP, 1, 28). The final report, which was presented and debated in March 1889 (14 months after the written and oral reports had been collected), is long (100 pages) and summarises the major part of the contemporary literature on agricultural problems. It contains three parts: the first debates the causes of the crisis; the second looks at the written and oral evidence given; and the final provides policy proposals. The first section on the causes of the crisis is based around information not presented to the Enquiry, and mention is made of the climate, lack of manure, poor quality seeds, and the need for better training, machinery and better instruments for tillage (CAP, 1–2, 133–43). The lack of labour is blamed on the lower population density found in Spain compared with other countries (CAP, 1–2, 147). High taxation (although levels are not compared with those of other European countries) is also criticised, as well as the increase in public expenditure, although no account is taken of population growth on the need for

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increased state expenditure, or how the money was spent. There is also concern about the nature of the land market (property deeds, mortgages, credit), and the lack of human capital (CAP, 1–2, 154). The solutions proposed were not so different to those given by reformers over the previous decades, namely the need to create state-backed banks to provide credit to small farmers; lower taxes; a reduction in rail tariffs; the creation of secondary lines and new roads; enclosures; improvements in the land registry; etc (CAP, 1–2, 225–32). The major debate that followed was the question over whether to increase the level of protection that cereal farmers already enjoyed. The Vizconde Campo Grande and Trifino Gamazo presented two allegations against the final report. First, they criticised the vagueness of the proposed measures and the fact that it did not differentiate between the short and long term measures required. Second, and more importantly, they argued that the final report ignored the fact that there were 245 replies in favour of increasing tariffs and only 17 against, and the Commission’s proposals therefore ignored public opinion and putting in doubt the utility of the Enquiry (CAP, 1–2, 233–48). Indeed, the report only counted as supporters of protection those who had answered positively to a 30% increase in tariffs (as suggested by the question 52), and assumed that everyone else was against, including those who wanted an even greater increase, or a total ban on all imports (CAP, 1–2, 213). Those opposed to higher tariffs found that they had considerable problems in justifying their arguments. Becerro de Bengoa, the leading spokesman, argued that those who demanded higher tariffs were misinformed, as the volume of imports was not depended on the price of wheat but rather the demand, and that the international market had no influence on Spain’s domestic prices (CAP, 1–2, 268–9). However those opposed to a tariff increase enjoyed a majority on the Commission, wining the vote by 17 against 7 votes, with 23 members absent (CAP, 1–2, 275). The report on wine was short, with the Commission unwilling to accept those replies that argued the sector was in crisis, and consequently rejected their demands to reduce taxes and rail freight. Many replied that there was a problem of overproduction and low prices, but this was considered inconsistent with the reported lack of wine stocks (CAP, 1–1, 573). Instead the report concluded that there was a need to improve quality to make wine more competitive in international markets (CAP, 1, 575). A similar conclusion was reached with olive oil, a sector which in some years exported as much as a quarter of production (CAP, 1–2, 399). Finally the sub-committee on livestock underlined the major problems facing the sector and the decline in the national herd from the late eighteenth century. The report criticised the lack of reliable statistics, although the most accurate livestock census available, that for 1865, was ignored. This census

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had showed that the national herd had increased with respect to the eighteenth century, despite the sale of municipal lands that had taken place. After 1865 the limited evidence suggested that the herd size had declined, with contemporaries attributing this to the sale of municipal grazing lands, and their conversion to arable by the new owners (CAP, 1–2, 363). As for recommendations, this subcommittee was the only one of the four to recommend an increase (moderate) in tariffs, as well as the preservation of public lands and a more effective sanitary policy for livestock (CAP, 1–2, 463–73). In general, pre-conceived arguments were used in the conclusions, rather than new ones being advanced based on information collected by the Commission.

III.  Consequences of the Enquiry To understand its true importance, the Enquiry needs to be placed in a wider context. In the mid-1880s the government knew very little about the nation’s agriculture, not just with respect to the area cultivated or annual production, but also concerning the nature of local farming systems and the potential for increasing output. The Enquiry was just one of a number of incentives by the State in the late 1880s and early 1890s to address the problem, and it is against this background, not just the increase in tariffs from the 1891, that it needs to be considered. Many of the demands of those who participated and which were included in the final reports were taken into account by the liberal government in the following years, in part in the hope as to avoid increasing tariffs. In this respect the tax bracket was reduced from 17.5% to 15.5%, reducing revenue by 14 million pesetas during two years (Serrano Sanz, 1987: 100 and Vallejo, 2010: 109–47). Between 1887 and 1888 decrees were published to establish farm schools in all the judicial regions and several experimental farms as well as specialised schools to teach olive culture, livestock farming, viticulture, and the growing of silk worms. Other decrees established nurseries, seed banks, research laboratories for viticulture, and an increase in the number of government agronomists. Legal changes were introduced to encourage irrigation, as well as the fight against phylloxera, which was beginning to devastate Spanish vines at this time, and combating other disease and plagues, such as locusts. All these decrees had the same structure: they referred to the agricultural crisis caused by foreign competition, and the need to resolve problems by technological change and an intensification of cultivation, as reflected in the final reports of the Enquiry (Serrano Sanz, 1987: 101). Nevertheless the demand for a more laissez-faire approach to trade within the liberal government rapidly lost support, as reflected by the opinions of a leading political such as Gamazo. In 1891 the protectionists once more controlled the congress, and tariffs were increased, perhaps the single most important demand by the participants of the Enquiry. 218

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At roughly the same time as the Enquiry was being compiled, the government’s Junta Consultiva Agonómica was compiling one of the most detailed studies of Spanish agriculture ever undertaken. The government agronomist in each province returned long reports on cereals (and their rotations), wine, olive oil, and livestock (Spain. Dirección General de Agricultura, 1891a, 1891b, 1891c, and 1892). Other reports quickly followed, most notably on phylloxera (1892), new production figures including minor crops (1902), irrigation (1904), and pasture land (1905) (Spain. Dirección General de Agricultura, 1892, Ministerio de Agricultura, n.d., 1904 and 1905). Annual production figures for the leading crops date from 1890 (GEHR, 1991). In conclusion, when taken in isolation the Spanish Enquiry is a rather poor attempt to imitate the earlier enquiries in the leading western European countries. However the 1880s can be regarded in Spain as the decade when the government was forced to take seriously the need to modernise agriculture in what was becoming an increasingly global economy. The Enquiry highlighted the serious lack of information that ministers had, and this led to a major increase in publications sponsored by the government to remedy these shortcomings.

Appendix The following members opposed higher tariffs during the important vote on the cereal report on 20th March 1889: Duque de Veragua, Buenaventura Abarzuza, Duque de Almodóvar, Daniel Balaciart, Manuel Becerra, Cros, Pedro de Ezeiza, Joaquín López Puigcerver, Cecilio de Lora, Juan Navarro Reverter, Pardo y Belmonte, Amós Salvador, Conde de San Bernardo, Manuel María del Valle y Cárdenas, Conde de Villapardiena, Eduardo Vincenti, Juan Sitges, Salvador de Albacete, Gumersindo de Azcárate, Marqués de Castro Serna, Andrés Mellado. Those who wanted an increase were: Vizconde de Campo Grande, José de la Cuesta y Santiago, Trifino Gamazo, García y Martínez, José Grande de Vargas, Conde de Toreno, José de la Torre y Villanueva, Francisco Botella y Andrés, Escosura, José García Barzanallana, Conde Guaqui, López, Puig, (CAP, 1–2, 292, 313–4). The members of the subcommittees were as follows. For cereals: Claudio Moyano, Manuel Becerra, Urbano González Serrano, Cecilio de Lora, Juan Alvarado, and those members without voting rights (vocales), Cuesta y Santiago, Torre y Villanueva, Becerro de Bengoa, Conde de Guaqui, Conde Moriana. For wine: Salvador de Albacete, Juan Navarro Reverter, Duque de Almodóvar, Isidro Recio de Ipola, Buenaventura Abarzuza, and the vocales: conde Guaqui, Millas, Sorní. For olive oil and other products: Servando Ruiz Gómez, Francisco Bergamín, Andrés Mellado, Pedro A. de Eceiza, Amós Salvador, and vocales: Sánchez Arjona, Conde 219

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de Casa Galindo. For livestock: Luis Rodríguez Seoane, conde Toreno, Marqués de Monistrol, Daniel Balaciart, Félix García Gómez, and the vocales: vizconde de Campo Grande, Marqués de Castro-Serena, Conde de Villapadierna, Conde de Guaqui, Sánchez Arjona, Grande de Varga. (CAP, 1, 21–2 and 28).

Sources La Crisis agrícola y pecuaria, (1887–9), Información escrita de la comisión creada… para estudiar la crisis por la que atraviesa la agricultura y la ganadería. 8 vols, Madrid, Sucesores de Rivadenyra. Spain. Dirección General de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio (1891a). Avance estadístico sobre el cultivo cereal y de leguminosas asociadas en España, formado por la Junta Consultiva Agronómica, 1890. Quinquenio 1886 a 1890, ambos inclusive, 3 vols, Madrid. ——. (1891b), Avance estadístico sobre el cultivo y producción de la vid en España formado por la Junta Consultiva Agronómica, 1889, Madrid. ——. (1891c), Avance estadístico sobre el cultivo y producción del olivo en España formado por la Junta Consultiva Agronómica, 1888, Madrid. ——. (1892), La ganadería en España. Avance sobre la riqueza pecuaria en 1891, formado por la Junta Consultiva Agronómica conforme a las memorias reglamentarias que en el citado año han redactado los ingenieros del Servicio Agronómico, 5 vols, Madrid. ——. (1892), Mapa de la invasión filoxérica en España en 1892, formado con los datos remitidos por los ingenieros agrónomos afectos a este servicio, Madrid. Spain. Ministerio de Agricultura, Industria, Comercio y Obras Públicas. Dirección General de Agricultura (1904), El regadío en España. Resumen hecho por la Junta Consultiva Agronómica sobre riegos, conforme a las Memorias de 1904 remitidas por los ingenieros del Servicio Agronómico Provincial, Madrid. —— (1905), Prados y pastos. Resumen hecho por la Junta Consultiva Agronómica sobre dicho tema conforme a las Memorias de 1905 remitidas por los ingenieros jefes de Sección del Servicio Agronómico Nacional, Madrid. ——. (nd.) Noticias estadísticas sobre la producción agrícola española por la Junta Consultiva Agronómica, 1902, Madrid. 220

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Bibliography: Arrazola, F. (1896), Informe acerca de la producción, comercio y consumo de trigo en España, Redactado por la Dirección General de Aduanas, Madrid, Sucesores de Rivadenegra. Bringas Gutiérrez, Miguel Ángel (2000), La productividad de los factores en la agricultura española (1752–1935), Madrid, Banco de España. Calatayud, Salvador (1984), ‘Transformaciones jurídicas y sociales en la Acequia Real del Júcar durante el siglo xix’, Estudis d’História Contemporánia del País Valencía, 5, p. 295–322. Carmona, Juan & Simpson, James (2003), El laberinto de la agricultura española. Instituciones, contractos y organización entre 1850 y 1936, Zaragoza, Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza. Fontana, Josep (1967), ‘El Censo de Frutas y Manufacturas de 1799: un análisis crítico’, Moneda y Crédito, (101), p. 54–89. Garrabou, Ramon (1975), ‘La crisis agraria espanyola de finals de segle xix: una etapa del desenvolupament del capitalisme’, Recerques, (5), p. 163–216. Garrabou, Ramon (1985a), Un fals dilema. Modernitat o endarreriment de l’agricultura valenciana (1850–1900), Valencia, Institució Alfons el Magnànim. Garrabou, Ramon (1985b), ‘La crisis agraria española de finales del siglo xix: una etapa del desarrollo del capitalismo’, in R. Garrabou & J. Sanz (eds), Historia agraria de la España contemporánea. 2. Expansion y crisis (1850–1900), Barcelona, Crítica. Garrabou, Ramon (ed.) (1988), La crisis agraria de fines del siglo Crítica.

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Barcelona,

Garrabou, Ramon, & Sanz, Jesus (1985), ‘Introducción’, in R. Garrabou & J. Sanz (eds), Historia agraria de la España contemporánea. 2. Expansión y crisis (1850–1900), Barcelona, Crítica. GEHR (1978–9), ‘Contribución al análisis histórico de la ganadería española, 1865–1929’, Agricultura y Sociedad (viii and x), p. 129–182 and 105–169. GEHR (1980), Los precios del trigo y la cebada en España, 1891–1907, Madrid, Banco de España. GEHR (1991), Estadísticas históricas de la producción agraria española, 1859–1935, Madrid, Mapa. GEHR (1994), ‘Más allá de la propiedad perfecta. El proceso de privatización de los montes públicos españoles (1859–1926)’ Noticiario de Historia Agraria (8), p. 99–152. Jovellanos, Gaspar (1795, ed. 1968), Informe sobre la Ley agraria, Barcelona, Materials. Martín Rodríguez, M. (1984), Pensamiento económico español sobre la población, Madrid, Ed. Pirámide. 221

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Moral Ruiz, Joaquín del (1979), La agricultura española mediados del siglo 1850–1870, Madrid, Mapa.

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O’Brien, Patrick & P rados de la E scosura, Leandro (1992), ‘Agricultural productivity and European industralization, 1890–1980’, Economic History Review, 45, p. 514–36. Pan-Montojo, Juan L. (1994), La Bodega del Mundo. Historia de la vitivincultura en España, 1800–1936, Madrid, Alianza. Prados de la Escosura, Leandro (2003), El progreso económico de España (1850–2000), Madrid, Fundación BBVA. Pro Ruiz, Juan (1995), ‘Ocultación de la riqueza rústica en España (1870–1936): acerca de la fiabilidad de las estadísticas sobre la propiedad y uso de la tierra’, Revista de Historia Económica, 13 (1), p. 89–114. Robledo, Ricardo (1993), Economistas y reformadores españoles: la cuestión agraria (1760–1935), Madrid, Mapa. Sánchez-Albornoz, Nicholás (1975), Los precios agrarios durante la segunda mitad del siglo xix, 1. Trigo y Cebada, Madrid. Sanz, Jesús (1985), ‘La crisis triguera finisecular: los últimos años’ in J. L. García Delgado (ed.), La España de la Restauración, Madrid, Siglo xix. Serrano Sanz, José María (1987), El viraje proteccionista en la Restauración. La política comercial española, 1875–1895, Madrid, Siglo xxi. Simpson, James (1989), ‘La producción agraria y el consumo español en el siglo Revista de Historia Económica, 7 (2), p. 355–388.

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Simpson, James (1995), Spanish agriculture: the long siesta, 1765–1965, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Simpson, James (1997), ‘Did tariffs stifle Spanish agriculture before 1936?’ European Review of Economic History, 1 (1), p. 65–87. Simpson, James (2001), ‘La crisis agraria a finales del xix: una reconsideración’, in C. Sudrià & D. Tirado (eds), Peseta y Protección. Comercio exterior, moneda y crecimiento económico en la España de la restauración, Barcelona, Edicions Universitat de Barcelona, p. 99–119. Simpson, James (2011), Creating Wine: the Emergence of a World Industry, 1840–1914, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Vallejo, Rafael (2010), ‘Fiscalité et revenu agraire en Espagne au xixe siècle’, Histoire et Sociétés Rurales, 34, p. 109–147. Varela Ortega, José (1977), Los amigos políticos. Partidos, elecciones y caciquismo en la Restauración (1875–1900), Madrid, Alianza.

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12. The 1896 parliamentary enquiry report in Denmark Ingrid Henriksen A parliamentary enquiry was created in Denmark by the law of April 13th 1894 with the official mandate to ‘prepare a revision of the legislation on parcelling out of land and amalgamation of land, and to prepare a plan according to which plots of land could be provided for rural labourers on favourable conditions.’ The report from enquiry was published in the 1896 White Paper leading up to the 1899 law. The preparation included a questionnaire to be answered by the about 1,100 local councils. Both the questionnaire and the debate cited in the commission report mirrored the different positions of the landless and the rural employers. The landless had always hungered for land. The new feature was the desire of employers to keep them on the land. The present study examines this parliamentary enquiry and questions its objectives and efficiency. It first looks at the Danish political and economic context and then in Section two at the long term production and use of statistics and enquiries. Section three shows the composition of the Commission and its conclusions, together with the proposals for legislative changes in 1899.

I.  The Danish political and economic context I.1.  The political context The Land Commission was set up after almost thirty years of hard political struggle that ended with the victory of parliamentary democracy in 1901. European politics in the late nineteenth century, despite revolutions and new constitutions, was still heavily influenced by earlier autocratic ideas. In some countries, Denmark among them, there was a true constitutional backlash (Hvidt, 1990: 150ff.). The political conflict, at least at the national level, overshadowed almost every other issue at the time. The 1849 constitution was essentially the work of the National Liberals. It granted franchise to the second chamber Folketinget to male householders of over 30 years of age, thereby excluding live-in servants. This exception was important as the 1899 bill mostly targeted male servants who wished to settle down with a small plot of land.

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This group was not represented in the Commission. The members of the first chamber Landstinget were chosen by the same electorate as Folketinget but eligibility was limited to men over 40 years of age with either an income or a tax payment over a certain minimum. The opportunity for changing the constitution in a more conservative direction presented itself after the loss of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein following the Second Schleswig war in 1864. The new constitution of 1866 favoured owners of estates and large industrialists in the Landstinget. The franchise to 27 out of 66 seats in Landstinget became limited to those males who paid the most tax and 12 were appointed by the King. These rules ensured a comfortable conservative (Right) majority in Landstinget up until 1901. The king would, subsequently, appoint his government from Landstinget rather than from the more democratically elected Folketing, since the constitution was unclear on this issue. A political stalemate followed, when the political Left, the Liberal peasants’ party, won the majority in Folketinget in 1872. At the beginning of the 1890s both political wings were torn and disillusioned by the long struggle over the constitution and a number of compromises were reached. In 1894 a faction of the conservative party sought a compromise with the right wing of the liberals. The controversial Right wing konseilspræsident (prime minister) J.B.S. Estrup, in power since 1875, stepped down and was followed by three other Right party prime ministers until, finally, in 1901, a prime minister elected by the Folketinget majority took office. The political parties in Denmark experienced a formative period during this last quarter of the century. With the broadening of political representation, a need for a more equitable distribution of land had to be met. The time was ripe for an improvement in living conditions of the landless and the smallholders in Denmark. This appears both from the growing parliamentary support for their cause and from the growth of the smallholders’ organisations outside the parliament. A first law in 1787 improved tenants’ legal position and the important law of 20 June 1788 abolished adscription, the system which forced the tenants to stay on the estates where they were born and raised. Most of the time arrangements existed between landowners and tenants (i.e. a fixed payment by the tenant). Then the idea of letting the tenants own the farms emerged, provided they were willing to pay the landowner a reasonable amount. The 1792 law encouraged the shift from tenancy to self-ownership. This process went on during the first half of the nineteenth century. At time of the agrarian reforms, former common land was enclosed and farms consolidated to form compact holdings. Farmers moved out of the village to live on 224

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their land. This slow process was accepted by estate owners because of the rapid increase in the population which ensured a plentiful supply of labour to run their farms. It was this population growth, rather than the enclosure, that impoverished cottagers and people left with small plots. The number of new establishments was, however, believed to have slowed down in the late 1880s. A law of 1880 that offered cheap loans to small landholders from a state guarantied credit association had little impact (cf. below). There was, on the contrary, a decline between 1885–1895 in the number of landless households, those with very small holdings and those renting holdings.1 What makes the Danish example particularly interesting is the recognition by influential landowners, towards the end of the century, that it would be to their advantage to stem the flow of migrants out of agriculture by offering state subsidised access to land. Higher wages for day labourers and farm servants had failed to keep labour from leaving the countryside. The left wing of the Liberal party, the Liberal Reform party, actively began to support the case for parcelling land for the landless in 1895 at the time the Land Commission was at work. Some prominent members in 1905 broke away from the party and formed the Radical Liberal Party, a party that had the improvement of the lot of the landless and smallholders high on their agenda. The Social Democratic party, represented in Folketinget from 1884, suggested the expropriation of estates and access for common use of land. These ideas though attractive to some in the targeted group, had less of a following than the idea of obtaining more land for propriety-owned holdings (Skrubbeltrang, 1942: 88–90). Danish organisations representing various interest groups were flourishing in the second half of the nineteenth century at the same time as their political influence was growing. The associations for owners of middle-sized farms originated in the 1840s and were strengthened by countrywide organisations in 1872 and a national association in 1893. They aimed at disseminating technical improvements as well as obtaining political concessions for their members. The smallholders’ interests were to some extent served by the farmers’ associations but from the 1880s they began to form their own organisations. By 1902 the regional smallholders’ associations had a large following and a political program. Besides providing their members with technical advice these associations had a broader social policy agenda. In 1907 they gained the right to distribute half of the state subsidies to extension services and other purposes. These funds had until then been administrated by the farmers’ associations alone.

  The Statistical Bureau, (now called Statistics Denmark), only recorded the results from the agricultural censuses 1873, 1885 and 1895 in Statistical Yearbook.

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I.2.  The economic context: How to retain labour in agriculture Economic change in the Atlantic World influenced Danish agriculture in more ways than one. It may be justified to identify the period 1870–1914 as the first era of Globalisation. Never before had goods and services, capital and people in such quantities and numbers crossed borders and oceans (O’Rourke and Williamson, 1997). The ‘grain invasion’ from the 1870s reinforced the process of transforming Danish agriculture from a net exporter of grain to an exporter of animal products. The export value of animal products increased from 51% in 1880 to 91% of total agricultural export value in 1900 (Henriksen, 1993: 155). The Danish response to the change in the relative prices of grains and animal products was to accelerate the production of labour intensive products such as milk and pork. The number of milk cows increased by about 40% and the number of pigs five-doubled. In addition to the traditional tending of the animals Danish farmers were pioneers in winter stall feeding of the cows and thereby raised the workload in feeding and milking (Henriksen & O’Rourke, 2005). The area under root crops that had to be weeded in the early summer was expanded. The workload in Danish agriculture was growing in tasks that were labour intensive and could not be mechanised until decades later. While grain production on large farms and estates to an increasing degree could be mechanised, for example by steam threshing, the substitution of capital for labour was much slower with beets and potatoes. The creation of agricultural cooperatives required more careful handling of the animals and raw materials. At the same time this movement created the opportunity for smallholders to be self-reliant, since they received the same unit price for their products. Another problem from the point of view of the employers was that cultivators of small holdings became increasingly self-supporting. The report of the Land commission suggested that the margin between economic independence and parttime work for other farmers went somewhere between the possession of two and three cows. According to the 1903 cattle census the membership of cooperative creameries went from 58% for cows in holdings with an average of 1.3 cows to 83 for those with 2.1 cows and 85% for holdings with 4.2 cows. By joining a cooperative the owners of small herds were granted the same price per kilo of milk as larger members. There is no doubt that this contributed to their economic independence. Another consequence of the First globalisation was a growing number of emigrants leaving Europe for North America. A detailed study of Danish overseas emigration between 1862 and 1914 shows that 62% of the rural emigrants were farm servants (Hvidt, 1971: 215, 245 and 250). Furthermore, emigration was strongest from the regions with less than average access to new land holdings. Migration out of

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agriculture, to towns and overseas took off from the 1870s (Johansen, 2002: 164). During the 1870s annual net migration in% of mid-year population amounted to minus 6.6% and to minus 9.3% during the 1880s. A logical solution to the flight from agriculture would have been to raise real wages of rural labourers, but at no time did these exceed those of urban labourers. We only know that the money element of the farm servants’ pay was increasing relatively through the period we are looking at (Ølgaard, 1976: 39–40). The money wage of farm servants from 1875/76 to 1912/13, according to Ølgaard, increased faster than the wage of urban workers.

II.  Statistical information on Danish agriculture Compared with contemporary enquiries in other countries, the scope of the 1894 enquiry in Denmark was limited. This was partly the result of political decisions and partly due to the public statistics that were already available. As in many other European countries, absolutist monarchs instigated the gathering of statistical information starting with the population censuses. Their interest was in knowing the number of potential soldiers and taxpayers. The first two, somewhat incomplete, censuses were carried out 1769 and 1788. The first complete census that included all population groups was in 1801. The first census specifically on agriculture was held in 1838 and included the distribution of arable land sown with various crops and the harvest size. Official statistics was formally institutionalised in 1849 into Det Statistiske Bureau following the Constitution of 1849. Besides the obligation to publish the results the Statistical Bureau was granted complete political independence. Agricultural censuses were not resumed until 1866, but then included the harvest yields, the number of animals, and the size distribution and prices of farms. Prices of agricultural products after the harvest (kapitelstakster) were gathered annually by the dioceses since 1600 and were now published regularly to be used for the regulation of rent. The population censuses recorded by occupations. Trade statistics gathered from the mid-nineteenth century, and especially after 1875, illustrated the weight of agriculture in the Danish economy. What was lacking was a more precise knowledge on the relatively large group of ‘day labourers’. It was not known to what extent they depended on farm work as opposed to other types of employment. Another omission concerned the day wages and annual incomes of rural labourers. These issues, which were central to understanding the labour supply, were only superfluously dealt with by the 1894 enquiry.

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II.1.  The first public enquiry on agriculture in 1872 The introduction to the first public enquiry on agriculture in 1872 explicitly stated that the main problem was the Concern about the labour question that has arisen both nationally and internationally, a concern that has been kept alive by the recurrent strikes [urban labourers were included in a separate part]. Thus, the Ministry of the Interior has found it useful to provide information on the living conditions of Danish labourers in order for this to serve as the foundation of measures to remedy the possible deficiencies.

Although judged by contemporary economists as an excellent piece of academic work, the 1872 enquiry and the white paper following it had little practical impact. The only visible result was the establishment from 1880 of state guaranteed small holders’ credit associations. Credit associations for farmers had existed since the 1850s. The members were jointly liable for the down payment of their mortgage loans. In order for this to reach smaller farmers the state guaranteed a minimum of 3% interest to the buyers of their mortgage bonds. However this measure was of little importance to the major part of the rural poor, as noted in the 1894 enquiry. Farm servants, landless labourers, and those renting their plot did not have anything to mortgage. The public enquiry of 1872 published information on incomes and the number of days of employment, but had just a handful of examples of household accounts from large estates. The 1879–80 survey brought the household accounts to the fore. The 1894 only dealt with reported (under)-employment. II.2.  A privately initiated local survey 1879–80 The reason this survey deserves to be mentioned is not for its immediate effects, because there were none, but for its thorough method and the insight it supplied into matters not touched upon by the two public enquiries. The 1879–80 survey was initiated by Th. Sørensen, a general practitioner in a small provincial town, Hobro, in north eastern Jutland. He was in charge of several medical and social statistical surveys published during the 1880s. These surveys resulted from his commitment to improve the situation of the poor by illuminating their living conditions. He was described as a ‘social conservative,’ since he eagerly promoted the idea of self-help as a solution to social problems.2

  Appropriately he ended his career as the head of the newly established directorate to monitor the state support for local health insurance in all of Denmark after 1892.

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His report was published in 1881: Markarbejders Villkaar I de jyske Hedeamter (The living conditions of field hands in the heath land counties of northern Jutland) (Sørensen, 1881). The main source of information was reports from local schoolmasters. According to him they were reliable and knew their community well. At the same time the people they interviewed would not feel that the interviewer’s social position was far above their own. This is an interesting contrast to the information supplied in the two public enquiries 1872 and 1894, which rested mainly on the replies of the local councils. Sørensen investigated the living standard of rural families who worked part or full-time for others, mainly in agriculture. In other words the group that was in the focus of the later 1894 public enquiry. He found little difference when he compared the total income, in cash and kind, of a landless labourer family with that of a working class family in nearby towns. This result, however, disguised the fact that part of the male breadwinner’s income in agriculture was in kind in the form of a hot meal in the middle of the work day. The rural male breadwinners take home pay in cash was still about 20% below that of his urban fellow worker (Sørensen, 1881: 127–28).

III.  The 1894 enquiry III.1.  The mandate of the 1894 enquiry The task of the committee appointed in April 1894 was stated as follows: [To give] labourers of limited means – farm hands and day labourers – a prospect by thrift and diligence […] to acquire better conditions of life with the greater independence that follows from ownership of a plot of land. At the same time the manpower they have left from tilling their own soil can benefit other holdings at the times of the year when these other holdings need more manpower than that permanently available.

The commission was well aware of local differences as in some regions there was an oversupply of farm labour and thus local authorities recorded unemployment rather than shortage of labour as their problem. The following citation reveals a double purpose from the employers’ point of view. The prospect of a moderately independent and safe position is bound to provide rural labourers with a stronger attachment to the countryside and the desirable firmness in labour conditions especially with respect to [the recruitment of] farm servants. There has been a tendency, for some time already, to lure people away from the countryside

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by the prospect of a faster and safer route to a free existence for themselves in the towns. This has created an ever increasing migration from the countryside to the capital and to provincial towns. The benefits to these people are by far superseded by the inconvenience and costs they have incurred. At the same time the emigration to towns and overseas emigration has deprived agriculture of necessary labour.

It was hoped that not only would owners of small holdings supply some labour to larger farms in the peak seasons, but the possibility of them obtaining their own holding after a number of years in service would entice young landless people to stay in the countryside and work on the farms until they had saved enough money and gained sufficient experience to buy their own holding. III.2.  The composition of the 1894 Land Commission The Minister of the Interior, in charge of agriculture until 1896, set up a 22-member commission of which 12 members were appointed by the Ministry, including the chairman, a county prefect and long-time civil servant. Three members were agricultural scientists. The remaining members included another civil servant and seven others proposed by various agricultural associations. Two of the association representatives were smallholders, one was a farmer and four were owners of estates. Among the estate owners was Nygaard, proposed by the Farmers’ Association of Zealand. He chaired a subcommittee in his association for the cause of the small holders. At an early day in the work of the Commission he suggested that new small holders pay only a small rent for their plots before they became their own property at a later date. The plots would be established by local councils and the initial payment paid by the state. It is interesting because this was, at least partly, a precursor of the demands of the small holders’ own association in 1902 and a later law of 1919. The Folketinget selected 5 members, and the only estate owner, Lüttichau became minister of Finance a few months later. He was replaced by another estate owner, Hage, who was to become the first minister for agriculture in 1896. Of the remaining four members one was a smallholder. The Landstinget selected 5 members of which two were estate owners, one a farmer and two held other positions. The estate owner, Breinholdt, belonged to the left wing of his own party, the Right, and later broke away with seven others to form his own parliamentary group. In spite of the conspicuous lack of any representative of the group directly concerned with the report, namely the landless workers, the composition might have been worse. At least rural labour had some spokesmen. 230

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III.3. Collecting information: The role of local government in public enquiries Before trying to interpret the information on local issues, a brief to look at local authorities in the late nineteenth is required. The lowest level of public administration in rural areas, kommunerne, the municipalities, gained in importance from the beginning of the nineteenth century as administers of poor relief, primary schools and local roads. The 1849 Constitution also expanded democracy at the local level but not until 1868 were all members of the local councils elected by local men over 24 years of age. The council was responsible for the collection and processing of local information demanded by the central government. There is no doubt that large and mid-sized farmers held a dominant place in the councils. This might have biased the answers towards an employer friendly view. At the same time, however, the councils might have worried about the costs of poor relief. Landless and underemployed people were in a vulnerable social position. As potential employers of seasonal labour and taxpayers, in the local community (humanitarian considerations apart) they would try to strike a balance between cheap labour and low contributions to the poor. The public had already, by the mid-1890s, access to statistics from three cattle censuses 1881, 1888, and 18933 as background material for the enquiry. A decline in the number of houses without land during 1888–93 could be observed, while the number of houses with very small plots of land had increased. An alternative measure was the herd size that could be sustained on a given plot. Table 12.1 gives an abridged version. Table 12.1. Indices for the growth in cattle herds by size Census year

Indices of the number of herds 1881=100 With 1 head of cattle

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