European Peasants and Their Markets: Essays in Agrarian Economic History

377 Pages·2015·13.978 MB·English

by  William Parker, Eric L. Jones

EUROPEAN PEASANTS AND THEIR MARKETS

European Peasants and
Their Markets
Essays in Agrarian Economic History
Edited by
WILLIAM N. PARKER AND ERIC L. JONES
Princeton University Press, Princeton, NewJersey
Copyright © 1975 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton and London
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will
be found on the last printed page of this book
This book has been composed in linotype Baskerville
Printed in the United States of America
by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
Acknowledgments
The authors of the essays in this volume are all teachers of
economics or of history and stand within roughly ten years of
the receipt of their Ph.D.'s from North American institutions.
They have many acknowledgments to make, and many left un­
said, to colleagues, wives, dissertation advisers, students, and to
European scholars who have helped them. The two editors,
being scholars of a somewhat earlier vintage, feel obligations
largely to the foundations and institutions that have supported
the work and the collection of it into this form. A grant from
the National Science Foundation helped to turn the individual
papers into a joint effort, and the Council on Western European
studies at Yale University added its support for a seminar and
conference in April 1972, which drew things together. Our
obligation to two anonymous readers at the Princeton University
Press and especially to Sanford Thatcher, the Social Science
editor, is obvious not only in the fact that the book has appeared,
but in the technical quality of its production. Eric and Sylvia
Jones prepared the index and earned the relieved thanks of each
of the authors, of the Press itself, and of the senior editor.

Contents
Introduction. 3
William N. Parker, Yale University.
Part One
Communal Agriculture in the Village.
1 Medieval Origins oi the Common Fields. 23
Richard C. Hoffmann, York University.
2 The Persistence of English Common Fields. 73
Donald N. McCloskey, University of Chi­
cago.
Part Two
Private Property and Enclosure.
3 The Economics of Enclosure: A Market 123
Analysis. Donald N. McCloskey, University
of Chicago.
4 Enclosures and Depopulation: A Marxian 161
Analysis. Jon S. Cohen, University of
Toronto; Martin L. Weitzman, Massa­
chusetts Institute of Technology.
Part Three
Peasants and Industrialization.
5 Agriculture and Peasant Industry in Eigh- 179
teenth-Century Flanders. Franklin F.
Mendels, University of Maryland, Balti­
more County.
6 Peasant Demand Patterns and Economic 205
Development: Friesland, 1550-1750. Jan
deVries, University of California at Berke­
ley.
viii Contents
Part Four
Agriculture in the World Economy.
7 Organization and Change in Productivity 269
in Eastern Prussia. Robert A. Dickler,
Universitat Bremen.
8 Scale and Organization in French Farming, 293
1840-1880. George W. Grantham, McGill
University.
Afterword. Eric L. Jones, Northwestern Uni­ 327
versity.
Index 361
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Part One
EUROPEAN PEASANTS AND THEIR MARKETS