14th International Economic History CongressHelsinki, Finland, 21 to 25 August 2006

The transition to an advanced organic economy:

half a millennium of English agriculture1

Economic History Review (forthcoming)

E.A. Wrigley

University of Cambridge

Session 122: “Progress, stasis, and crisis:

demographic and economic developments in England and beyondAD c.1000-c.1800”

Part I:Demographic and economic developments in England c.1000-c.1800

Chair: Professor Richard Smith, University of Cambridge

Convenor: Bruce M. S. Campbell

Professor of Medieval Economic History

School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology,The Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN

Tel. 00 44 (0)28 9097 3345 e-mail: <b.m.campbell@qub.ac.uk>

2

The transition to an advanced organic economy: half a millennium of English agriculture2

E.A. Wrigley

In organic economies in the past it was a necessary condition for sustained growth that the

land should be made to yield more abundantly. In such economies almost all the raw materials

which entered into the production process were either of animal or vegetable origin, or, if

mineral, could only be converted into a form of use to man by the expenditure of heat energy

derived from wood.3 Swift, in a chapter satirising the attitudes and actions of European

governments, caused the king in Brobdingnag, revolted by Gulliver’s offer to teach him how to

manufacture gunpowder and construct cannon and so make royal power absolute, to reply by

asserting that ‘whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot

of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential

service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together’.4 The king was expressing

a view which commanded wide assent. Indeed, given the nature of all organic economies, it

appeared almost self-evident. Adam Smith shared the same conviction. He wrote:

As subsistence is, in the nature of things, prior to conveniency and luxury, so the industrywhich procures the former, must necessarily be prior to that which ministers to the latter.The cultivation and improvement of the country, therefore, which affords subsistence,must, necessarily, be prior to the increase of the town, which furnishes only the means ofconveniency and luxury. It is the surplus produce of the country only, or what is over andabove the maintenance of the cultivators, that constitutes the subsistence of the town,which can therefore increase only with the increase of this surplus produce.5

Expanding on the same point, in a passage which, at first sight, reads most oddly to

modern eyes, he remarked, of the manufactures of Leeds, Halifax, Sheffield, Birmingham, and

Wolverhampton, that ‘Such manufactures are the offspring of agriculture’.6 He argued that a

highly productive local agriculture had made food cheap and therefore labour inexpensive. The

industry which had grown up locally as a result was the product of a mutually beneficial

relationship between the two, what, in today’s jargon, is called positive feedback, but causal

priority lay with agriculture.

3

There was, however, a catch. The land might be coaxed into yielding more, but at some

point further gains could be had only at the price of a declining marginal productivity both of

labour and capital, Ricardo’s law of diminishing returns. If, as Adam Smith supposed inevitable,

a rising output of food and the other necessities of life encouraged a matching growth in

population, the average family would be no better off, and might well be worse off. During an

initial period of expansion, ‘corn wages’ might rise, but any improvement was doomed to be

temporary.7 Though it might be true that with each mouth there came a pair of hands, no

comfort could be drawn from this trite observation, since the hands of the son could not be

expected to produce as much as the hands of the father. Little wonder that economics came to be

dubbed the dismal science.

I

It is ironic that an explicit formulation of the law of diminishing returns should have been

framed in a country which had been exceptionally successful in evading its operation, or at the

least in postponing its enforcement, for several centuries.8 This essay represents an attempt to

quantify, if only very roughly, the scale of the changes in the productivity of agriculture which

took place between c.1300 and c.1800, and to discuss some of their implications. It is intended

to delineate the differences between an advanced organic economy and its forerunner. In this

attempt it will cover similar ground to that covered in recent years both by Overton and

Campbell and by Clark, but whereas the former were concerned above all with the varying

success of English agriculture in feeding the population and the latter concentrated chiefly on the

rise in productivity per head in agriculture, this essay, while including aspects of both these

topics, will focus primarily on the scale of the resources produced by agriculture which could be

devoted to other uses after having met the food needs of the population.9 As Adam Smith noted,

subsistence needs will always take priority over other calls upon resources, but if agriculture is

sufficiently productive an increasing measure of what he termed conveniency and luxury can

also be sustained. A major change in the margin available for the latter constitutes the key

difference between advanced organic economies and those which were less successful.

4

The principal elements for the reconstruction of the changes which took place lie readily

to hand in virtue of work published in recent decades.10 What follows is a work of collation

rather than of research. I intend, firstly, to produce as simple an account as possible of the

growth which took place, set out in a fashion which makes it easy to examine the implication of

alternative assumptions about the variables involved. Secondly, I shall seek to quantify the way

in which success in raising the productivity of the land, while simultaneously increasing output

per head of those engaged in agriculture, created a platform for rapid expansion outside the

agricultural sector. Towards the end of the essay some wider issues are considered.

The reason for the choice of dates for comparison is not far to seek. The population of the

country at the end of the thirteenth century was probably as large as at any subsequent point in

time until the early decades of the eighteenth century, but numbers had tended to outgrow food

output so that the balance between production and reproduction had become precarious. The

detailed study by Thornton of the demesne of the manor of Rimpton may well represent a

situation that was widely present. Higher yields per acre were secured in the course of the

thirteenth century only at the cost of a disproportionately large input of labour, leading him to

conclude: ‘Clearly, whilst higher output per acre or per seed could be achieved it was at the cost

of decreasing returns per worker’.11 Early in the fourteenth century the scale of mortality during

the famine years 1315-17 in part reflected the severity of this tension, though no doubt the

exceptional weather conditions would have caused great hardship and many deaths in any case.

During the ensuing quarter century there was marked population decline in much of eastern

England, and perhaps more generally, before plague effected a radical reduction in numbers

which was not repaired for several centuries.12 The situation in c.1300, therefore, represents the

point at which England was closer to a state of ‘bare subsistence’ than at any other period in

subsequent history. Five centuries later the country was partway through the period

conventionally termed the industrial revolution. By this time the population was perhaps 60 per

cent larger than at its medieval peak and the prevailing rate of population growth was higher than

at any previous or later period.13 Yet the challenge was met without major difficulties, even

though the country was still meeting the bulk of its food needs from local sources.14

5

Success in coping with a much larger population growing at an exceptionally high rate

was achieved even though changes in agricultural technology were perhaps less widespread and

far-reaching than was once commonly supposed. The manufacture of nitrogenous fertilisers, the

import of guano, the use of new sources of mechanical energy on the farm, and the widespread

use of tile drainage on ‘wet’ land all lay in the future. Some of the more important innovations

which were already known were still not fully exploited. Even the extensive use of legumes and

turnips to support larger numbers of livestock, to improve the level of nitrogen in the soil, and to

reduce the proportion of arable land in fallow, though well established in the more progressive

regions, was still not universally practised in 1800.15 The same was true of some other

innovations. The use of the horse-drawn seed drill and of horse hoeing to economise in the use

of seed, to simplify weeding, and to save labour, for instance, was far from universal though

widespread in counties such as Norfolk.16 The introduction of new crops and new crop rotations

was certainly highly important: without them the dramatic reduction in the proportion of arable

land in fallow which occurred could not have been achieved. And selective breeding greatly

improved the quality of farm animals. Yet changes in farm size, in market opportunity and

structures, and in organisational forms, which were, of course, closely interrelated, probably

played the decisive role in securing the gains which were achieved. In other words,

improvement in what was in many respects still the ‘old’ agriculture, allied to institutional

changes which resulted in a market-orientated, capitalist agrarian system, enabled the country to

cope with a conjunction of circumstances which would have spelled disaster five centuries

earlier.

II

Grain was the dominant source of food throughout the whole period and grain production

was the largest single element in farm output. The productivity of arable agriculture, therefore,

greatly influenced the overall productivity of farmland. The size of the cereal harvest was of

great concern to governments, and it exercised a powerful influence on the state of the

economy.17 Table 1 summarises the scale of the changes in arable agriculture which took place

in England and Wales between the later years of the reigns of Edward I and George III.

6

The productivity of land under cereals is frequently expressed as so many bushels of

wheat or barley per acre. For most purposes, however, the relevant statistic is not the gross yield

of grain harvested per unit area, but the net yield, the quantity which is available for consumption

after taking into account the claims of the production process itself.18 Table 1 represents an

attempt to estimate the net cereal output in 1300 and 1800 and to relate it to the population at the

two dates.

Table 1. The arable sector in 1300 and 1800Arableacreage

(millions)

Proportion of

arable incrops

Croppedacreage

(millions)

Proportionof cropped

land ingrain

Acreage ingrain

(millions)

Net grainoutput:wheat

equivalentyield

(bushelsper acre)

Draughtanimal

deduction(bushels per

acre)

Total netgrain output

(millionwheat

equivalentbushels)

Population

(millions)

Net grain output perhead (wheat

equivalent bushels)

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)1300 10.5 0.641 6.73 0.91 6.12 8.85 0.76 49.5 5.75 8.621800 11.5 0.840 9.66 0.79 7.63 21.59 3.25 140.0 9.29 15.07

Note. The successive steps by which the figures in each column were obtained are described in the main text.Sources. Sources for all the estimates contained in this table are given in footnotes to the main text when the columns are discussed successively.

The second column of the table contains estimates of the area of arable land in England

and Wales at the beginning and end of the period. The land surface of the country is, in round

numbers, 37 million acres. It might seem surprising that well under a third of it was in arable use

at the high point of population pressure c.1300, especially as the wooded area was probably no

more than a tenth of the total.19 A part of the difference was made up of moorland and mountain

where soils were too poor, temperatures too low, or slopes too steep for any use beyond rough

grazing at best, but the bulk of the difference consisted of permanent grassland kept as such

either to supply the fodder needed for farm animals kept for meat, wool, hides, skins, or milk; or

to provide, through the exertions of draught animals fed largely on grass and hay, the energy to

pull the plough or cart; or, more generally, because experiment showed that it failed to support a

level of yield to justify arable cultivation. The dominance of pasture was not a phenomenon of

medieval times alone. Overton has recently considered the use made of agricultural land in

England and Wales in 1800. He accepts contemporary estimates that the total of arable land at

that date was 11.5 million acres, the figure shown in table 1, and that meadow and pasture

covered 17.6 million acres.20 There can be little doubt that arable land use in medieval times

reached its apogee c.1300 and it is reasonable to suppose that, under the pressing necessity of

7

trying to meet the basic food needs of a population under great stress from rising numbers, the

arable area would have been extended as far as prevailing techniques permitted. Overton and

Campbell stress, however, that ‘given the impact of post-medieval wetland reclamation,

enclosure of former common pastures and wastes and the disafforestment of royal forest, the

arable area in 1300 was almost certainly less than in 1800’.21 Accordingly, the arable acreage in

1300 has been set at 10.5 rather than 11.5 million acres.

Although the arable areas were broadly similar at the two dates, however, the area sown

with crops differed more substantially. The third column indicates the impact of the practice of

fallowing. It is only in the last two centuries that the proportion of fallow land has become

negligible (unless enforced by decree, as with ‘set-aside’). In medieval times the depletion of

nitrogen in the soil brought about by successive cereal cropping was largely unrelieved by

alternation with leguminous crops capable of restoring nitrogen levels while at the same time

producing food or fodder. Fallowing was therefore necessary to limit nitrogen depletion since

nitrogen levels will show some recovery if the land is left bare of crops. Combined, where

possible, with frequent ploughing, it was also the most effective strategy for keeping the growth

of weeds within bounds, a problem largely overcome during the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries by the increasingly widespread use of root crops in rotation with cereals.

In considering both the suggested extent of fallowing in 1300 and estimates of other

agrarian variables, it should be noted that almost all the existing evidence about the

characteristics of medieval agriculture relate to demesne land. Peasant land use did not always

mirror that on demesnes and, unfortunately, for lack of direct evidence, any assumptions made

about differences between the two may be subject to substantial margins of error. The problem

would not be acute if demesne land constituted the bulk of land in agricultural use, but the

reverse was the case. In this exercise it was assumed that 30 per cent of the arable acreage was

in demesne and 70 per cent in peasant use.22

Fallow occupied a much higher proportion of arable acreage in 1300 than in 1800. The

figure quoted in table 1 rests on the assumption that whereas the fallowing percentage on

demesne was 38 per cent, on peasant land it was somewhat lower at 35 per cent, resulting in an

8

overall figure of 35.9 per cent, given the assumed relative size of the two elements.23 The reason

for assuming a lower figure on peasant land is that there was probably a greater labour input per

acre on peasant than on demesne land. One result of this may have been better weed control

which in turn would have reduced the need for fallowing. On the other hand, peasant practice in

this regard must have been substantially circumscribed by the communal regulation of land use

in common fields, which, in many areas, probably resulted in very similar fallowing proportions

in the two sectors. The area cropped is shown in column 4; it is, of course, the product of the

figures in the two preceding columns. Exactitude is also beyond reach for 1800, though the

margin of uncertainty is smaller. Holderness suggests that about 1 acre in 7 was fallow in the

early nineteenth century; Overton’s estimate is 16 per cent.24 Table 1 incorporates the latter

figure.

Although the cropped area was much bigger in 1800 than in 1300 because of the

reduction in fallow, the area under cereals was only modestly larger, because, as indicated in

column 5, the proportion of the cropped land devoted to cereals was substantially lower at the

later date. The 1801 crop returns provide a moderately reliable figure for the proportion of

cropped land in non-grain crops at end of the period (21 per cent).25 For the early fourteenth

century the surviving evidence for demesne land provides evidence of the extent of non-grain

crops (9 per cent), but whether peasant practice followed the same pattern is uncertain.26 For

lack of a firm basis for an alternative assumption, the demesne percentage is assumed to hold

good for the country as a whole. These assumptions allow estimates of the size of the cereal

acreage to be made; 6.1 million acres c.1300, 7.6 million acres c.1800 (column 6). With these

variables, and all the other variables shown in the table, it is, of course, a simple matter to

establish the implications of making different assumptions by incorporating them into the table

and multiplying through from left to right.

Column 7 of table 1 shows the average net grain yield at the two dates. The figures

shown are averages of the yields of the main grains (wheat, barley, oats, and rye) weighted by

the proportion of the arable acreage which each grain occupied, and by the number of calories

provided by an average bushel of the grain in question. The successive steps in the calculations

which give rise to the figures in column 7 of table 1 are set out in table 2.

9

Table 2 Cereal yields in 1300 and 1800(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Grossyield per

acre(bushels)

Seed peracre

(bushels)

Net yieldper acre(bushels)

Adjustedgross

yield peracre

(bushels)

Adjustednet yieldper acre(bushels)

Wheatequivalent(calories

per bushel)

Share ofcereal

acreage

Weightedwheat

equivalentyield per acre

(bushels)1300

Wheat 11.85 2.75 9.1 12.68 9.93 1.00 0.325 3.23Rye 10.85 2.65 8.2 11.61 8.96 0.96 0.083 0.71Barley 16.65 4.35 12.3 17.82 13.47 0.83 0.213 2.38Oats 12.75 4.75 8.0 13.64 8.89 0.75 0.379 2.53

8.851800

Wheat 21.5 2.0 19.5 1.00 0.410 8.00Rye 26.0 3.0 23.0 0.96 0.013 0.29Barley 30.0 2.5 27.5 0.83 0.244 5.57Oats 35.0 4.0 31.0 0.75 0.333 7.74

21.59Note. The successive steps by which the figures in each column were obtained are described in the main text.Sources. Sources for all the estimates relating to 1300 are given in footnotes to the main text when the successivecolumns are discussed. For 1800 net and gross yields and seed per acre: Holderness, ‘Prices, productivity andoutput’, tab. 2.7, p. 145. For shares of the cereal acreage: Overton, Agricultural revolution in England, tab. 3.13, p.96.

The derivation of the figures for 1300 shown in table 2 calls for some comment. Net

yields are shown in column 4. Campbell based his discussion of demesne grain production in

medieval England on net rather than gross yields. The gross yields in column 2 were obtained by

adding the figures for seed in column 3 to the net yield.27 The adjusted gross yields shown in

column 4 represent an attempt to make allowance for the difference between demesne and

peasant yields. I have assumed that yields on peasant land were 10 per cent higher than on

demesne land. Higher labour input per acre by more strongly motivated workers suggests higher

yields in the peasant sector, though the ability of the demesne sector to make more extensive use

of draught animals may have offset higher labour input by peasants, and the average quality of

peasant land may have been inferior to demesne land.28 Nevertheless, I have chosen to assume a

higher yield on peasant land, and have therefore provided an adjusted gross yield for each

grain.29 For example, since 70 per cent of the land is assumed to be cultivated by peasants the

average gross yield of wheat overall rises to 12.68 bushels ((11.85 x 0.30) + (11.85 x 1.1 x 0.70)

= 12.68). Adjusted net yield figures are shown in column 6 (column 5 – column 3). The

weighting figures in column 7 reflect the value in calories of a bushel of each of the other grains

10

relative to that of a bushel of wheat.30 Column 8 shows the proportionate share of each crop in

the land cropped for cereals on a total of 679 demesnes in the period 1250-1349. Thus, for

example, in 1300 32.5 per cent of the area cropped for cereals is shown in wheat. The

percentages of demesne land in wheat, rye, barley, and oats have been estimated as 38.2, 6.8,

19.7, and 35.3 respectively,31 but it is unsafe to assume that the same percentages characterise

peasant land. I have taken the corresponding proportions to be 30, 9, 22, and 39. These

percentages reflect the assumption that peasants grew a higher percentage of coarse grains.32

The assumption is open to question given the very limited evidence of peasant land use, but any

plausible alternative would make only a limited difference to the total wheat equivalent yield

figure in column 9, whose calculation is the prime objective of the exercise. Overall average

shares for each grain are readily calculated from the two series of figures for demesne and

peasant land, given that peasants were assumed to cultivate 70 per cent of the cropped area

(column 8).33 The figures in column 9 are the product of the adjusted net yields multiplied by

the ratios in columns 7 and 8. Summing the totals for the four cereals in the final column gives

the weighted average cereal yield which appears in column 7 of table 1. The comparable

calculations for 1800 are straightforward.34

Just as in the early days of steam engines a substantial fraction of the coal dug in an

average pit never left the pithead because it provided the energy needed for pit drainage and to

haul coals to the surface, so some of the oats produced on the farm was consumed by draught

animals when ploughing or carting within the farm, and should be deducted in arriving at a net

figure for cereal output since they were consumed in the course of production. Deductions from

net grain output related to this fact are shown in column 8 of table 1. The totals in question are

derived indirectly from the assumptions made by Overton and Campbell about patterns of grain

consumption in England. They suggest that 70 per cent of the oats harvest was fed to livestock

in 1800, compared with 50 per cent in 1600.35 They provide no estimate for an earlier date, but it

is safe to assume that the percentage would have been smaller still in 1300, perhaps 30 per cent,

given that oats were a major component of human diet in much of the north and west, and the

fact that oxen, which were fed little or no grain, were relatively much more important then than

later.36 By 1800 the horse had largely supplanted the ox. In 1300 it seems likely that almost all

of the oats consumed by animals was consumed on the farm. In 1800 this was certainly not the

11

case. There was a large population of horses engaged in inland transport, predominantly by road

but also by canal; of horses used to provide power in industrial processes; of pit ponies; of horses

kept for pleasure or personal transport; and of ‘town’ horses. Moreover, horses off the farm were

probably more dependent upon oats for fodder than those on the farm. I have assumed that 60

per cent of the output of fodder oats was fed to farm horses in 1800, the balance going to off-

farm horses.37 With these assumptions it is straightforward to calculate the draught animal

deduction. For example, in 1300 oats accounted for 2.53 out of the total wheat equivalent yield

per acre of 8.85 bushels (table 2, col. 9): 30 per cent of 2.53 is 0.76 bushels, the figure appearing

in column 8 of table 1. This figure rose sharply over the succeeding half millennium since both

the proportion of total oats production which was fed to farm horses rose markedly to 42 per

cent38 and the wheat equivalent yield of oats per acre tripled to 7.74 bushels, causing the animal

deduction to rise to 3.25 bushels per acre.

Column 9 of table 1 shows the total net cereal production at the two dates (col. 6 x (col. 7

– col. 8)). It suggests that net cereal output rose more than 180 per cent over the period. The

next column shows the population at the two dates. The total population in 1800 is known with

only a small margin of error.39 Its size 500 years earlier has been the subject of much debate in

recent decades.40 The range of estimates is very wide, but predominantly between 4 and 6

millions. A review of the data and arguments is outside the scope of this essay. I am persuaded

in favour of a relatively high figure. That given in the table, 5.75 millions, refers to England and

Wales whereas much of the discussion in the past has referred to England alone. It is therefore

somewhat more modest than might appear at first sight, and quite possibly too small. Self-

evidently the assumption made in this connection will have a major influence on the figure in the

final column, the output of cereals per head of population. The population total for 1800 is based

on the 1801 census total, adjusted for the substantial under-registration from which it suffered,

chiefly because of the large numbers of men in the army and navy at the time.41

Cereals were not, of course, the only crops grown in any period, though much more

dominant early than late. Legumes (principally peas, beans, and vetches) occupied 9.3 per cent

of the cropped area on demesnes in 1300. Peasants grew a variety of non-grain crops on their

holdings, not only legumes but also plants such as flax and hemp.42 What proportion of their

12

land was used to grow crops other than cereals, however, is unclear. Although apt to introduce

minor distortion, it is convenient to assume that their land use in this respect mirrored demesne

practice. In 1800 the proportion of the land in legumes was slightly higher than in 1300 (11 per

cent in peas and beans), but in addition turnips occupied 8 per cent of the cropped area and

potatoes a further 2 per cent.43 Turnips were almost exclusively used as fodder and therefore

their contribution to output will appear indirectly when the growth of the pastoral economy is

considered. The same is true of a substantial fraction of legumes as a field crop. Much of each

harvest ended in animal stomachs. Inasmuch as a small proportion of the crop was for human

consumption, legumes might be regarded as adding the equivalent of, say, 2-3 per cent to the

cereal crop expressed in wheat units at each date. Land in potatoes produced more calories per

acre than cereal land, but the area involved in 1800 was small. The net yield of potatoes per unit

area expressed in calories was about 75 per cent greater than that of wheat,44 suggesting that

potatoes were adding about 3 per cent to the cereal crop total measured in the same way.45

III

Both as an input and as an output livestock were critical to traditional agriculture in

Europe. Men without horses or oxen were hard put to cultivate a sufficient area to support

themselves and their families. Draught animals provided a large fraction of the energy input into

agricultural operations; and livestock were also of great importance in the output of agriculture.

Meat, cheese, butter, and milk were important elements in both medieval and early modern diet.

Without wool and leather men and women were at risk to go unclothed and unshod. The pastoral

sector’s proportional contribution to the overall output of agriculture increased substantially over

the period.46 It is therefore as important to attempt to quantify its growth between 1300 and 1800

as it is to do the same for cereal agriculture.47

Such an attempt, however, involves making assumptions even more heroic than those

which underlie table 1. In round numbers it is reasonable to assume that in 1800 the totals of the

main categories of livestock were as follows (in millions): horses, 1.21; cattle 3.5; sheep 20.0;

pigs 2.0.48 These totals are shown in table 3, which also shows the effect of reducing them to

13

standard livestock units, where horses and cattle are both given weights of 1.0, while sheep and

pigs are weighted 0.1.49

For 1300 any estimates must be far more precarious but Campbell has provided material

which allows the feat to be attempted. His analysis of demesne data enabled him to express both

totals of working animals and other beasts per 100 sown acres. Since the total of sown acres has

been estimated in table 1, it might appear straightforward to infer national totals of each main

livestock category by combining this information with that for farm animals per 100 sown acres.

For example, in 1275-1324 there were 10.8 cattle per 100 sown acres (exclusive of oxen).50 The

total of sown acres was estimated as 6.73 million in 1300, which in turn suggests a national total

of cattle of 0.73 million. The totals of sheep and pigs per 100 sown acres on demesnes were

87.4, and 11.9 respectively in 1275-1324, implying national totals of 5.88, and 0.80 million. To

proceed in this manner, however, embodies the assumption that the livestock ratios found on

demesne land were paralleled on peasant land, which is an unsafe assumption for several

livestock types. There is good reason, therefore, to treat these stocking rates as no more than

starting points. The totals produced for sheep obtained by this procedure, for example, are

probably too low.

Campbell noted that sheep are less well recorded than other livestock in manorial

accounts and considered that this resulted in a considerable undercount.51 Moreover, he argued

that, proportionately, sheep figured more prominently in peasant livestock farming than on the

demesne.52 On the basis of the fleece equivalents of the scale of annual exports of wool with an

allowance for domestic consumption, he concluded that ‘the national sheep population c.1310

can scarcely have been less than 20 million and is likely to have been far greater’, though noting

that other estimates had been much lower.53 The relative importance of demesne and peasant

sheep is controversial. Hallam, for instance, asserted that ‘Sheep were not a major interest of the

peasantry --- sheep-farming in medieval England was primarily an activity of the greater

capitalist farmers’.54 While recognising the fragility of any estimate, I have used a figure of 15

million.

14

A similar issue arises with horses. When compared with demesne practice, peasants met a

much greater proportion of their mechanical energy needs from horses. Langdon, whose work

on the relative importance of horses and oxen as draught animals during the medieval period has

clarified much that was previously obscure, concluded that c.1300 approximately 45 per cent of

draught animals on peasant farms were horses.55 This is a substantially different situation from

that on demesne farms where the comparable figure was 28 per cent.56 The total number of

draught animals per sown acre was probably lower on peasant holdings than on demesnes due to

their smaller capital resources, but must nonetheless have been sufficient to keep their plots in

cultivation. If it is assumed that it was only 75 per cent of that on demesnes, national totals of

horses and oxen can be estimated. Campbell provides data for the number of draught animals

per 100 sown acres on demesne land: these were 15.9 animals (4.4 horses, 11.5 oxen). This

suggests a total of 225,000 oxen and 86,000 horses on demesne land.57 With stocking density on

peasant land at three-quarters that on demesnes, the total of draught animals would be 570,000.58

Since 45 per cent of these animals were horses and the balance oxen, the two totals would be

257,000 and 313,000 respectively. Combining demesne and peasant totals yields national

figures for working animals of 538,000 oxen and 343,000 horses. To these must be added an

estimate of animals too young to work. In the case of demesne oxen they represented some 41

per cent of the total of working animals.59 Horses enjoyed a somewhat longer working life,

suggesting that immature animals may have been about 35 per cent of adult horses, a figure in

close accord with the situation in the nineteenth century.60 Assuming that similar ratios held

good in the peasant sector, final totals for oxen and horses increase to 759,000 and 463,000

respectively. In the case of horses a small addition should be made in respect of those animals

kept off-farm, as pack horses, in towns, for private transport, and for industrial and other

transport purposes. Their number is pure guesswork, but, assuming that they numbered, say,

50,000, this would raise the total of horses from 0.46 to 0.51 million.61 Once again, it is a simple

matter to examine the implications of other possible assumptions. Only radical departures from

the assumptions embodied in table 3 would produce a significantly different end result.

With cattle, other than oxen, for lack of any clear indication to the contrary, I have

assumed that the density of livestock on peasant land was the same as on demesne. To the

estimated national total of cattle, 0.73 million, must be added that for oxen, 0.76 million,

15

producing an overall figure for cattle of 1.49 million. It is reasonable to assume that the peasant

sector devoted more resources to raising pigs than was the case in the demesne sector. If it is

assumed that their density per sown acre was twice as high in the peasant sector as in the

demesne sector, the resulting national total is 1.36 million.

Table 3. The pastoral sector (millions)(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Totals of animalsHorses Cattle incl.

oxenSheep Pigs Total

1300 0.51 1.49 15.00 1.361800 1.21 3.50 20.00 2.00

Livestock units1300 0.51 1.49 1.50 0.136 3.641800 1.21 3.50 2.00 0.20 6.91

Sources. Sources for all the estimates relating to 1300 and 1800 aregiven in footnotes to the main text when the totals in each column arediscussed.

Table 3 shows that the number of livestock units almost doubled between 1300 and 1800.

It is certain, however, that this greatly understates the extent of the ‘real’ change in the output of

the pastoral sector because animals became much larger and more productive between the two

dates.62 How great the adjustment should be is debatable. Clark, for example, reviewing the

slightly longer period from 1300 to 1850, quoted estimates of milk production per cow per

annum rising from 100 gallons to 450 gallons; output of meat per cow rising from 168 lbs to 600

lbs, with the comparable figures for sheep rising from 22lbs to 70lbs (part of the rise in the case

of sheep reflects a shift from wool to multi-purpose animals), and for pigs from 64 lbs to 100 lbs;

and the annual wool yield per sheep increasing from 1.5 lbs to 4.1 lbs.63 These estimates come

from a variety of sources, and suggest very large gains. Moreover, any data about the increase in

carcase weights understates the scale of improvement in output per unit of time in that more

abundant fodder, maintained more effectively over the annual cycle as a result of the increase in

land devoted to fodder crops such as clover, vetches, and turnips, meant that animals reached

maturity earlier and were slaughtered younger, resulting in a larger number of slaughtered

animals each year for any given herd or flock size. Comparable increases in other important

pastoral products, such as leather, must also have occurred. Even allowing for substantial

16

increases in each variable between 1800 and 1850, which would reduce the gain between 1300

and 1800, it seems clear that output per livestock unit must at least have doubled over the period.

The rise in the energy output of the average working horse was not considered by Clark but it is

probably safe to suppose that it rose by a similar proportion, given the substantial increase in the

size of all farm animals suggested by the assemblage of archaeological skeletal material, and the

probability that they were fed more generously on grain.

Precision is well beyond reach and is likely to remain so, but since livestock units roughly

doubled and the output of each unit doubled and may well have trebled, it is reasonable to

suppose that pastoral output rose at least four-fold and more probably five-fold over the period.

Output growth was therefore greater in the pastoral sector than in the arable sector. Table 1

suggests that net cereal output rose less than three-fold. The measurement of the increase in

other arable output presents problems, since a large proportion of crops such as legumes and

turnips went as fodder and is incorporated in pastoral sector output. The output of the pastoral

sector also benefited from the huge increase in the quantity of oats available as fodder over the

centuries.64 It should not be overlooked that the output of animal manure will have increased in

rough parallel with the increase in pastoral output, as both the number and size of animals rose.

If the volume of manure increased five-fold while the cropped area increased by only about 45

per cent (table 1), it is reasonable to suppose that the quantity available per arable acre increased

more than three-fold. Ceteris paribus, this in itself must have improved yields substantially.

The contribution of the arable sector to the feeding of animals increased greatly between

1300 and 1800. The effectiveness with which a given quantity of fodder was converted into

meat, milk, or wool probably improved. The productivity of some limited areas was greatly

enhanced by the ‘floating’ of water meadows. And increased market demand leading to greater

regional specialisation also played a part in securing the striking secular change in the

productivity of the pastoral sector. But there was probably also a substantial increase in the yield

of fodder per acre of pasture land. Indeed, after making plausible allowance for the influence of

other factors, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the productivity of the average acre of

pasture, whether permanent or as a ley, must have risen significantly.65

17

Uncertainty about the scale of the overall increase in agricultural output is unavoidable.

Value-based and energy-based estimates, for example, may well differ even if identical data are

used (thus, estimates of changes in total cereal output based on the prices and production

volumes of individual grains will differ from those obtained by multiplying production volumes

by the calorific value of a bushel of each of the grains in question66). Even exercises using

similar methods may disagree substantially. Overton, for example, has published estimates of

the value of total agricultural output, and of the output of crops, meat, and dairy products at 50-

year intervals from 1700 to 1850 at 1850 prices. In 1800 crops represented 42 per cent of the

total output, meat 28 per cent, and dairy products 19 per cent (how the balance was made up is

unclear but probably consisted of other pastoral products such as wool).67 Grigg, in contrast,

quoted estimates which suggest that crops were approximately 60 per cent of the value of total

output at that date.68 If the relative size of the two agricultural sectors is unclear in 1800, it is far

more so in 1300, though it seems certain that the pastoral sector was relatively much less

important, however measured. Clark used price data for the main agricultural products to reduce

net output from the two sectors to their equivalents in bushels of wheat per acre, an exercise

which led him to conclude that between 1300 and 1850 overall output per acre rose 3.2 times. In

his analysis the expansion in the pastoral sector was dramatic. It expanded six-fold compared

with a doubling in the arable sector. In 1300, the pastoral sector’s output was only a third as

valuable as that from arable land, but by 1850 it was slightly the larger of the two.69 Overton and

Campbell arrive at a similar conclusion for arable production, estimating that output of grain and

potatoes, based on gross yields and expressed in calories, roughly doubled between 1300 and

1800.70 But if the precise scale of the change over time is impossible to establish, the fact that it

was very substantial seems inescapable. Whatever the relative weighting given to the two

sectors at the beginning and end of the period, the growth of the two sectors combined is

impressive. In the light of the foregoing, and the estimates arising from the data in tables 1 and

3, it seems safe to assume, conservatively, that total output more than doubled, and probably

tripled between 1300 and 1800 whatever method of reducing arable and pastoral production to a

common denominator is employed.

IV

18

The increase in the productivity of labour was at least as impressive as the increase in the

productivity of the land. If, as assumed, the population of England and Wales in 1300 was 5.75

millions, the number of men in the most productive age groups between 18 and 65, would have

been about 1.5 millions.71 The proportion of adult males working on the land was unlikely to

have been less than 75 to 80 per cent of the total, suggesting a male agricultural labour force of

1.1 - 1.2 million men.72 This total is probably slightly larger than the comparable figure c.1800,

which was close to 1.1 million.73 At that time only c. 40 per cent of the male labour force was

employed on the land.74 It follows that output per head in agriculture must have risen at least as

quickly as the rise in overall output, and therefore that in 1800 it was probably about three times

greater than it had been 500 years earlier. This finding is broadly consonant with Clark’s

estimate that labour productivity rose 4.4 times between 1300 and 1850 in cereal agriculture in

‘south-eastern’ England,75 but is much higher than that of Allen who estimated the rise in output

per worker in agriculture between 1300 and 1800 at only 79 per cent.76 In Allen’s analysis,

which covered most of the major countries of Europe, England compares very favourably with

the continent (the Netherlands excepted), but the absolute gain in productivity is relatively

modest. The difference between these contrasting estimates arises because the present essay and

that of Clark are based on estimates of physical output whereas Allen combines estimates of

population totals and of the proportion of the population engaged in agriculture with real wage

estimates and assumptions about price and income elasticities to generate his productivity

estimates. Or, to make the same point in different terms, the differences reflect the contrast

between production-based and consumption-based approaches. The trends over time using the

two methods are similar but the magnitude of the change is much less when using the latter

method. It may be significant that when Allen compared his estimates for the Netherlands with

those of De Vries and Van der Woude he noted a similar pattern; his estimates produced a more

‘pessimistic’ picture.77

The reasons for the divergence in estimates of labour productivity produced by the two

methods are clearly worthy of extensive examination. An full consideration of the issues

involved is beyond the scope of this essay, but three points which have a bearing on the points at

issue should be noted. First, the estimate of the rise in labour productivity in agriculture offered

in the last paragraph relates to output per head over the working year, not to the rise in output per

19

hour spent at work. An estimate of the latter, if it were feasible, might well be significantly

lower. Both advances in agricultural knowledge and the growing abundance of animal power to

supplement human effort broadened the range of work which could be undertaken with profit,

and much of this work took place during the winter months. Marling, sanding, and liming the

fields and work to improve drainage, for example, could be carried on outside the growing

season and was of increasing importance. The detailed evidence from the Buller estates in

eighteenth-century Cornwall discussed by Pounds illustrates the point. At Golden Barton, for

example, where the accounts enable weekly labour inputs to be measured, in October and

November the spreading of sand, lime, and manure was the dominant activity. Labour inputs per

month showed little variation by season. Rather than marking a lull in activity, January,

February, and March were amongst the busiest months. Land improvement work continued in

these months, though more was given over to ploughing, harrowing, and threshing than in the

months of late autumn. Driving horses and oxen was a substantial activity throughout the year.78

The hind’s accounts at Morval Barton do not permit a weekly or monthly breakdown but reveal

that 15 per cent of all the man-days worked in 1759-60, ‘a typical year’ were spent in mixing,

carrying and spreading sand, lime, and manure. This was the most important single activity,

followed by harvesting (11 per cent), threshing and winnowing (10 per cent), weeding, picking

stones, et sim. (10 per cent), and haymaking (9 per cent).79 If the organisation of work on the

Buller estates was typical of much of the rest of the country by the eighteenth century but

contrasted with a more markedly seasonal pattern of work in earlier centuries, it would follow

that output per man-day rose less strongly than output per man-year.

Secondly, prominence is sometimes given to the absence of any significant increase in

productivity in tasks for which there is good evidence, as in threshing grain.80 But labour

productivity in agriculture overall was greatly influenced by the ratio of animal labour to human

labour. O’Brien and Keyder, for example, in discussing the reasons for the substantial difference

between Britain and France in this regard at the end of the nineteenth century, laid great

emphasis on the difference in animal power per worker in the two countries and the associated

question of the volume of manure available to achieve favourable nitrogen levels in the soil,

remarking that ‘increased supplies of animal power saved labour per unit of arable output’.81

What serves to explain contrasts over space may be equally helpful in explaining contrasts over

20

time. The extent of the benefit linked to a high ratio of draught animals to farm workers may be

difficult to quantify but was certainly substantial.82 Much of the improvement in labour

productivity in England over the half millennium before 1800 was probably associated with a

marked rise in the quantity of animal power available at the elbow, so to speak, of each farm

worker. Until more is known of the increase in the size and weight of draught horses, of the

improvement in their nutrition, and of the implications of the substitution for horses for oxen,

any attempt to quantify this effect must involve great uncertainty. As an illustration of the scale

of the possible effect, however, consider the contrast between England and France at the

beginning of the nineteenth century. On reasonable assumptions about the equivalence between

an hour of human labour and an hour of draught animal labour, it appears that a French farm

worker would have had about 2.1 ‘man-hours’ of horse labour to assist him for each hour he

worked while the comparable figure for an English farm worker would have been 3.5 hours.83 If

there were similar or greater increases in animal power on English farms over the five centuries

in question, striking gains in labour productivity become much easier to explain.

Thirdly, a consumption-based estimate of output trends should not be restricted to

production of food for a country’s human population. A part of the output of agriculture is

always used to meet other needs. If this proportion rises substantially over time, it may lead to

an underestimate of the increase in total output if this reflects only changes in human food

consumption. This is a question considered more fully in the next section.

Finally, it should be noted that the calculations of productivity change advanced in this

essay are based solely on male labour and ignore the substantial participation of women in farm

work. It is far more difficult to make even the roughest of estimates about their share in farm

labour inputs, but it was probably greater in medieval times than in 1800.84 If total labour inputs

could be measured reliably, therefore, this factor would increase any estimate of the rise in

output per head in agriculture.

V

21

Most organic economies had no alternative but to retain the great bulk of the labour force

on the land if the demand for the prime necessity of life, food, was to be met, because output per

head in agriculture was modest. The necessity of securing sufficient food to meet the nutritional

needs of a population needs no emphasis, but, because of the changes brought about by the

industrial revolution, it is easy to overlook the fact that the output of animal and vegetable

products set limits to the expansion of manufacturing industry as firmly as it constrained

population growth. With a sufficiently productive agriculture, however, not only could the food

needs of a large non-agricultural population be met, whether living in towns and cities or

remaining in the countryside and engaging in trade and handicrafts, but agriculture could also

supply them with raw materials for their employment. Its transformation over the 500-year

period enabled English agriculture to fulfil this dual role, or, to express the same point in

different terms, to sustain an advanced organic economy.

That there was a large rise in labour productivity in English agriculture between medieval

times and the industrial revolution period has been common ground among economic and

agricultural historians for many years, and has been the subject of much comment. One aspect of

this change, however, has received relatively little attention. I refer to the size of the agricultural

‘surplus’, defined as the resources available for use in the secondary and tertiary sectors of the

economy after having met the nutritional needs of the population, a feature of the economy

which engaged the attention of Adam Smith.85

Consider table 1. It is sometimes taken as a rule of thumb that a population chiefly

dependent on cereals for sustenance will need about 1 quarter of grain per person per annum.86

The 1300 figure of 8.62 bushels is close to this level (8 bushels = 1 quarter). If it is assumed,

merely by way of illustration, that both in 1300 and in 1800 each member of the population

received an average of 1 quarter (8 bushels) of grain per annum as food, the quantity of grain

available for other uses would rise from 0.62 bushels per head at the beginning of the period to

7.07 bushels per head at its end. The same point can be expressed somewhat differently. On this

assumption, at the beginning of the period satisfying the most basic of the food needs of the

population would have required over 90 per cent of total net cereal output; at its end the

comparable claim had fallen to little more than 50 per cent. The assumption is too crude to

22

mirror reality but it illustrates the scale of the possible contrast between the two dates. Happily,

the exercise can be refined.

The scale of any ‘surplus’ of cereals and the use to which it was put can be identified, at

least in outline. Overton and Campbell have provided estimates which allow the proportion of

net grain output used for purposes other than human food to be estimated, though no doubt with

significant margins of error, and only from 1600 onwards. In 1600 almost all wheat (and no

doubt rye) went for human consumption; almost all barley was either eaten (one third) or brewed

(two thirds); and in addition half of the production of oats was eaten by people rather than

animals. In 1300 no doubt a greater proportion of the barley harvest was consumed directly as

bread or pottage rather than being brewed, and less oats went to feed animals. In c.1800 Overton

and Campbell suggest that 78 per cent of the barley harvest was used by the brewing industry,

and 70 per cent of the oats harvested was used as animal feed.87 On the assumption that in 1300

half of the barley harvest was eaten as bread or pottage with the balance used for brewing, and

that only 30 per cent of the oats harvest was fed to horses, it is possible to make a more realistic

estimate of the scale of calorie intake from cereals by the average member of the population at

the two dates. The calculation suggests a relatively modest increase in cereal consumption over

the half millennium, from 7.05 to 9.11 wheat equivalent bushels.88 On the same assumptions the

quantity of oats available to achieve a greater work output from horses rose enormously from 6.2

to 55.2 m. bushels net of seed.89

The significance of the expansion of oats production deserves emphasis. Combining the

estimates of land in arable, proportions cropped, and net yields per acre in tables 1 and 2, it

appears that oats production expanded more than that of any of the other three cereals between

1300 and 1800. It rose from 20.6 to 78.8 million bushels: the comparable figures for wheat, rye,

and barley were 19.8 and 61.0; 4.6 and 2.3; and 17.6 and 51.2 million bushels. The ratios

between the later and earlier figures were 3.83 for oats, 3.08 for wheat, 0.50 for rye, and 2.91 for

barley. The pressure for increased oats production came from its use as fodder since human

consumption of the grain decreased sharply as a percentage of total production. The energy

contained in an additional one million tons of oats could be applied to meeting the energy needs

of agriculture, inland transport, and industry.90 Net yield per acre of oats rose three-and-a-half

23

times, whereas that of wheat and of barley roughly doubled, suggesting that the place of oats in

the rotation of crops changed as its importance to farmers rose, giving it a larger share of

available nitrogen. In part this was to provide fodder for farm horses but increasingly it must

have been the expansion of inland transport, industry, and leisure pursuits which caused the

differentially rapid increase in oats production.

Any similar calculation related to pastoral output must be less precise. Assume, however,

that pastoral output was proportional to livestock numbers after adjustment for the increase in the

average size of animals and the attainment of maturity more quickly, probably representing a

quintupling of output.91 All types of animal provided raw materials for industry in the form of

hides, hair, and bones, and sheep also provided wool. Clark presented data suggesting that 30

per cent of the value of the output of the pastoral sector in 1300 was of non-food products with

wool accounting for more than 80 per cent of this figure. His estimate for wool may be a little

high, since he did not take fully into account other forms of non-food pastoral output. For

example, although he included estimates of the value of cattle and horse hides, he did not include

sheep or pig hides, or make any provision for the value of bones, hair, and animal fat. More

importantly, under horses he accounts only for their hides, but horses were a source of energy

outside the agricultural sector by providing both personal and goods transport and, for the

present purpose, account should be taken of this. On balance, however, a figure of 30 per cent at

the beginning of the period, though little more than a guess, seems reasonable for non-food

pastoral output. His estimate for the comparable figure in 1850 is only 12 per cent.92 In the

context of the present exercise, this seems much too low for 1800, given the central importance

of horse power to all forms of inland transport, the massive increase in the number of horses

which lived and worked in towns, their substantial contribution to the provision of mechanical

energy in some manufacturing processes and in mining, and their importance in leisure activities.

In 1800, furthermore, the relative contribution of domestic wool production would have been

larger than in the mid-century. The other items omitted in 1300 were again missing in his later

estimate. Some were significant given, for example, the importance of industries dependent

upon leather as a raw material.93 In addition, Clark’s calculations appear to embody the

assumption that both cattle and horse hides were the same size in 1800 as they had been in

1300.94 In view of these considerations, I have assumed that the non-food pastoral output in

24

1800 represented 35 per cent of the total. Population rose by 62 per cent between 1300 and

1800. If we assume that the growth in overall pastoral output was five-fold, per caput

consumption of pastoral food products would have risen sharply by between 180 and 190 per

cent.95 On the same assumptions the per caput consumption of non-food pastoral products would

have risen by about 260 per cent.96 Both are substantial increases, though given the severe

pressures upon resources in 1300 and, in the case of food, the enforced dependence principally

on cereal foods, not implausible. Once again it is a simple matter to follow through the

implications of making alternative assumptions about the scale of growth in the pastoral sector

and the division of its output between human food supply and other productive ends.

While the precision of this speculative excursion into quantifying output changes over

five centuries is questionable on several counts, some conclusions seem justifiable. It is probable

that the quantity of industrial raw materials and mechanical energy derived from animals

increased roughly six-fold (if overall pastoral output increased five times and the share of

pastoral output consumed as food or as a source of mechanical energy in agricultural operations

fell from 70 to 65 per cent, this implies a six-fold rise in the output from the pastoral sector of

industrial raw materials and mechanical energy consumed outside agriculture). The significance

of the latter deserves emphasis. The horses which pulled wagons and stage coaches in the

eighteenth century were supplying the equivalent to the steam raised by burning coal in the fire

box of a railway engine a hundred years later. Their ‘fuel’ was vegetable in the form of oats,

rather than mineral in the form of coal, but was equally vital to economic activity. The quantity

of energy in the form of horse power available for use outside the agricultural sector increased

even more substantially than other aspects of raw material supply, in part because of the vast

increase in the ‘surplus’ of oats in the arable sector. Of the total of 510,000 horses in 1300 (table

3), only 50,000 were assumed to be off-farm. In 1800 the comparable total was probably about

430,000 compared with 780,000 on the farm.97 Assuming that the average mechanical energy

delivered by each horse doubled over the period in parallel with its increased size, it appears that

the horse power available off-farm may have increased as much as twenty-fold. Off-farm

consumption of oats accounted for much of the increase in the quantity of oats used as animal

fodder noted above.98 The extent to which this increase magnified the productive power of the

labour force should not be undervalued. When employed in agricultural work there is evidence

25

to suggest that the work carried out by a horse in an hour is the rough equivalent of 6 hours of

work by a man.99 If a similar equivalence existed generally, the importance of the massive rise

in off-farm horse power available for transport and to supply energy in productive industry will

need no emphasis.100 It is likely that the boost to output per head in agriculture made possible by

an increasing quantity of draught animal power per worker was paralleled in many branches of

industry and mining; the phenomenon was probably especially marked in transport.

Increasing the output of food per agricultural worker released an increasing fraction of the

labour force from farm work, but for them to be able to find employment in manufacturing it was

essential that the supply of organic raw materials and energy should increase sufficiently to keep

them in work. Although it is not feasible to specify for most industries the scale of their demand

for animal and vegetable raw materials, there is no room for doubt that there was a very large

increase in the take-up of agricultural raw materials by industry, and that until late in the period

the overwhelming bulk of this increase was supplied by local agriculture. In many industries all

raw materials were either animal or vegetable. The differentially rapid expansion of the pastoral

sector in comparison with the arable sector between 1300 and 1800 greatly assisted the growth of

transport activity and some types of industry, which in turn, no doubt by a feedback process,

partially accounts for the growth differential between the two sectors.

It is, of course, true that in the latter part of the half millennium the English economy was

becoming less exclusively organic in character, and especially so in relation to the supply of raw

materials. Indeed, the change had been in progress since Tudor times.101 Coal was increasingly

used to meet heat energy needs in a widening range of industries, and its use in the metal

industries steadily increased the demand for lead, copper, tin, and iron ores and thereby caused

expansion in the mining of these minerals. Furthermore, it became the predominant source of

heating for domestic purposes.102 It is also true that some industries which were dependent on

vegetable and animal raw materials secured them increasingly by import. One indeed, the cotton

industry, was entirely dependent on foreign raw material; and a rising proportion of the country’s

timber needs was met from abroad. Nevertheless, a large fraction of domestic manufacture had

depended and continued to depend on local vegetable and animal raw materials. This is

26

indirectly borne out by other evidence. Consider, for example, some occupational data from the

1841 census, the first to provide detailed coverage of the full range of occupations.

It is unfortunate that such information was not provided in earlier censuses since the

relative importance of industries dependent upon animal and vegetable raw materials as opposed

to those using mineral raw materials declined over the first four decades of the century. Yet even

in 1841 it is salutary to note the importance of organically-based industries in the manufacturing

sector. The secondary sector as a whole can be sub-divided, conveniently if roughly, into four

parts; those industries which depended upon animal or vegetable raw materials produced locally;

those principally dependent on the import of the same raw materials; those dependent on mineral

raw materials; and those which cannot conveniently be accommodated under any of the three

preceding heads. The combined total of adult male employment in the secondary sector (males

aged 20 and over) in 1841 was 1,608,000. Of this total, 657,000, or 41 per cent, were employed

in industries in the first category (dependent on local animal or vegetable raw materials);

229,000, or 14 per cent were in the second category (the same raw materials but obtained from

abroad); 319,000, or 20 per cent, in the third category (mineral-based); and 408,000, or 25 per

cent in the final, indeterminate category (in this category by far the largest single element was

the occupational group ‘labourers’ at 270,000).103 For present purposes it is sensible to exclude

the final category from this analysis and express the percentages in relation to the total of men in

the first three categories, since the last category is indeterminate. If this is done the percentages

become; 55, 18, and 27. The relative dominance of the first category in 1800 would have been

significantly greater; more than 60 per cent of all male workers in secondary industry, excluding

the indeterminate category, would probably have fallen into this group.

A particular illustration may be used to underline the general point. The industries which

depended upon leather as a raw material were the second or third largest employers of industrial

labour in the country towards the end of the eighteenth century.104 Even as late as the 1841

census these industries continued to employ a very large labour force. Shoemaking in particular

was an industry of major importance. There were 146,000 boot and shoemakers aged 20 or more

in England in 1841. In addition there were a further 29,000 men employed in other leather trades

(glovers, tanners, saddlers, curriers, and harness makers), making a ‘leather’ total of 175,000.

27

Conjointly, they represented 11 per cent of the adult male labour force in secondary industry.

Leather workers were more numerous than the combined total of men in the iron and steel and

engineering industries (152,000).105 The leather industries remained principally dependent on

local raw material. In 1750 only about 5 per cent of tanned leather was made from imported

hides, though by 1800 the comparable figure was probably close to 20 per cent, rising to 40 per

cent by 1850.106 The importance of the leather industry is further illustrated by Crafts’ estimates

of value added in British industry in 1801. The four largest industries by this criterion were

cotton, wool, building, and leather. Their percentage contributions to the national total of value

added in industry were 17.0, 18.7, 17.2, and 15.5 respectively.107 The leather industry was

therefore of much the same size as the two biggest textile industries. Until the radical changes of

the nineteenth century it was an industry of major significance.

The case of the woollen industry is better known. In 1800 it was the biggest of the four

major industries measured by value added, and was still largely dependent on locally produced

wool. Holderness concluded a lengthy discussion of the size and rate of growth of the British

wool clip by remarking: ‘Imports provided very little quantitatively in the eighteenth century, at

least until the 1780s, and in the twenty-five years after 1781 imported wool accounted for hardly

5 per cent of total supplies.’108 The pattern for England and Wales alone must have been

substantially similar. As with leather, the woollen industry afforded much employment. In 1841

the woollen industry itself employed 91,000 men aged 20 and over, and a further 120,000 found

employment as tailors, stockingers, in knitwear, and in the manufacture of headwear.109 Not all

of these were working with woollen materials, of course, but the scale of wool-related

employment was very substantial, perhaps 10 per cent of the total adult male labour force.

Leather and woollen industries, therefore, accounted for 20-25 per cent of the male secondary

workforce in 1841 and at the beginning of the century they would have been even more

prominent. Cotton was the outstanding exception to the rule that organically-based industries

used local materials. The cotton industry was on the brink of startling growth, but when the new

century opened its rate of growth rather than its absolute size was what marked it off from other

leading industries. The productivity of local agriculture still underwrote the bulk of English

industrial production apart from the new energy-intensive mineral industries.110

28

In addition to the leather and wool industries there were many others using animal or

vegetable raw material largely provided by local agriculture: these included brewing; corn

milling; those industries using straw, hair, and bones; and those engaged in working wood,

notably carpenters, fence and hurdle makers, brush and broom makers, and coopers, much of

whose wood was still cut locally. Further down the supply chain from raw material producer to

ultimate consumer there were very many others; bakers, butchers, and those keeping pubs,

hotels, inns, and the like. Collectively, they employed the great bulk of the labour force outside

agriculture. And until the steam engine became the principal prime mover, horses were the chief

source of mechanical energy in inland transport and a major source of energy in mining and

manufacturing.

The ability of the agricultural sector to supply raw materials and energy to manufacturing

and the transport industry has a bearing on the question of the scale of the increase in the sector’s

total output, especially in the eighteenth century.111 The consumption of organic raw materials

for industrial production and to supply energy does not figure in many of the consumption-based

estimates of output which focus solely on agriculture as a source of food.112 Both the very rapid

growth in inland transport and the scale of the expansion in the woollen, leather, and many

smaller industries using local organic raw materials suggest caution in making inferences about

trends in overall agricultural output derived in this fashion. The disproportionately rapid growth

in the output of oats, at a time when less and less of the crop was eaten by men and women,

reinforces the point.113 It remains frustratingly difficult to quantify the relative rates of change

for different types of agricultural output before the nineteenth century but it seems highly likely

that industrial and transport demand grew more rapidly than food demand in the eighteenth

century. This is demonstrable in the case of inland transport whose rate of growth was

formidable. Ville reports estimates suggesting that ton-miles performed rose at a compound

annual rate between 1.0 and 2.8 per cent over the period 1681-1840 for traffic between London

and the provinces, with passenger-miles growing comparably.114 In manufacturing rates of

growth may have been less dramatic but were still notable. For example, Holderness, though

faced with refractory material, concluded that raw wool output doubled between the mid-

eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century.115 Deane and Cole tabulated the excise series for tallow

candles, soap, and hides and skins. They did so in the hope that this would throw light on trends

29

in meat production and so did not discuss their significance as indicators of agricultural output

for industrial use. However, even after making allowance for the increased import of some of

these materials, it seems clear that output rose very substantially over a similar period.116 The

balance of probability must be that agricultural output to satisfy an increasing demand from

transport and manufacturing rose steadily and substantially, outpacing population growth,

throughout the ‘long’ eighteenth century.

VI

If the reality of a change in agricultural productivity as marked as that between England in

1300 and England in 1800 is accepted, it is natural to wonder both why and when it occurred.

The two questions are, of course, inter-related and it would be absurd to suggest that complete

answers can be offered to them.117 Yet it is possible to identify some elements which should

figure in a more complete explanation. In brief, the great bulk of the change appears to have

taken place in the second half of the period, and to be closely related to rising urbanisation and

the close correlates of urbanisation. In the first half of the period the fact that population was

much lower in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than at its peak c. 1300 relieved

pressure on the land and, with grain abundant apart from years of grave harvest failure, corn was

cheap and wages measured against the price of food rose to a high level which was sustained as

long as the recovery in population numbers was delayed or remained very modest. But the

yields of field crops tended to fall rather than rise and, even though fodder must also have

become more plentiful, the average size of animals does not appear to have increased.118 Nor did

farming practise change substantially, though there were major changes in the balance of arable

and pasture. Gross output presumably declined, though not as markedly as population, between

1300 and the early sixteenth century. Change thereafter was marked and gains in agriculture

were closely linked with a group of related developments of which one was accelerated urban

growth, and it is convenient to deal with urbanisation first since there is comparatively good

comparative data for this variable.

In medieval times England had been a notably ‘rural’ country. Compared with northern

Italy, the Rhineland, the Low Countries, or parts of France, it lacked major urban centres, other

30

than London. Even the most prominent of English regional cities were not considerable towns

by the standards of the more urbanised tracts of the continent. This remained the case at the

beginning of the early modern period. For example, in De Vries’s critical compilation of

European urban population totals over the period 1500-1800 there were only four English towns

in 1500, apart from London, with 10,000 or more inhabitants. They were Norwich, Bristol,

Exeter, and Newcastle. All four stood at c. 10,000 (York had a population of 8,000). At that

date there were 22 towns with 10,000 or more inhabitants in the Low Countries (Belgium and

Holland); 22 in Germany; 12 in France; 25 in Italy; 5 in Spain; and 1 each in Austria,

Switzerland, and Portugal: a total of 89 in all. Moreover, 34 of the 89 cities had populations of

25,000 or more, and were therefore substantially larger than English provincial towns.119 There

were 12 European cities with more inhabitants than London in 1500 yet by 1700 London had

moved to first place and, although growth in London slowed somewhat in the following century,

there was breakneck growth in towns such as Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, and Manchester.120

In part, of course, the remarkable paucity of substantial towns in England compared with

France, Germany, or Italy at the beginning of the sixteenth century is attributable to the much

smaller size of the English population in the sixteenth century, but even when urban percentages

are used as a basis for comparison the same pattern is clear. Of eight important west European

countries (England and Wales, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and

Portugal), England and Wales was the least urbanised in 1500 other than Portugal, but by 1800

had become the second most urbanised after the Netherlands.121 In 1500 the urban percentage in

England and Wales was only 3.1 per cent (in Portugal it was 3.0 per cent); by 1800 the English

percentage had risen to 20.3 (the Dutch figure was 28.8). The urban percentage for the group of

eight countries treated as a single entity was 6.5 in 1500, a figure which rose to 8.9 in 1600 and

to 11.1 in 1800, but it is notable how much of this growth was due to the inclusion England and

Wales and the Netherlands. If they are removed from the list, the urban percentage in the other

six countries rises much less sharply: the comparable percentages are 6.5, 8.7, and 9.7. In Italy,

Spain, and Portugal the urban percentage actually fell between 1600 and 1800, and in Belgium it

was effectively unchanged (hardly surprising in view of the pattern of change in Belgian

agriculture).122 Urban growth became so heavily concentrated in England in particular that in the

31

second half of the eighteenth century England accounted for about 70 per cent of all the urban

growth taking place Europe-wide.123

Van Zanden, after reviewing data from a large number of European countries, both over

the whole early modern period and cross-sectionally in about 1800, has recently remarked that

‘the breakthrough to agricultural systems with markedly higher levels of productivity --- must be

primarily attributed to the strong growth of urban demand in the region concerned.’124 The

English experience appears to conform to this paradigm. Explanations of the astonishing spurt in

urban growth in England remain incomplete but its significance is unmistakable.125

Urban growth did not, of course, take place in isolation; it was one facet in a cluster of

linked developments. Two of these in particular should be noted. Increased urbanisation

necessarily implies a changing occupational structure. Drawing a bow at a venture, and to

illustrate the probable scale of the change which occurred, one might extrapolate speculatively

from data covering two small areas at the beginning of the early modern period. In Rutland in

1522 about 85 per cent of adult males were working on the land. Cornwall noted that the Rutland

survey ‘records the status of virtually every inhabitant in all but three townships.’ He also

suggested that Rutland ‘can with confidence be accepted as representative of the rural East

Midlands.’126 The muster books record the occupations of 1,281 men of whom 1,045, or 81 per

cent, were yeomen, husbandmen, or labourers. If half of the servants are taken to have been

servants in husbandry, the total in agriculture would rise to 1,098 or 89 per cent.127 Cornwall

also analysed the muster books of Babergh hundred in Suffolk for the same date, ‘possibly the

most intensively industrialised district at the time’, where the agricultural percentage, calculated

from the same occupational groups, was 55 per cent.128 If 80 per cent of the country were like

Rutland (with, say, 80 per cent of adult males engaged in agriculture), and 20 per cent like

Babergh (with, say, 50 per cent of the adult males in agriculture), in the country as a whole 74

per cent of men would be employed in agriculture (if the relative proportions were 70 and 30 per

cent this figure would fall to 71 per cent but the very low level of urbanisation in the sixteenth

century tends to lend credence to higher figure). In 1800 the comparable figure was

approximately 40 per cent.129 In 1300 it may have been as high as 80 per cent. If this simple

exercise captures reality with tolerable accuracy, it would underwrite the view that change was

32

modest in the period 1300-1500 but rapid in the two centuries after 1600. It is worth noting in

this connection that the tables of occupation and status drawn up by Gregory King in 1688 and

Joseph Massie in c.1760, while open to differing interpretations because of the indeterminacy of

some of the categories which they employed, suggest that about 60 per cent of the population

was engaged in agriculture at the earlier date and just under 50 per cent at the later date. They

therefore offer some further support for the view that rapid change and rising productivity per

head in agriculture were concentrated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.130

Just as rising agricultural productivity per head, urbanisation, and changing occupational

structure were closely interlinked, so also were all three with a fourth variable, trading activity

and commerce. As long as poverty caused the great bulk of aggregate demand to be

concentrated on the satisfaction of basic needs, the scope for trade, and especially for long-

distance trade, was limited. The great bulk of the population lived on the land. Food, housing,

and heating needs were predominantly satisfied locally, if only because in each case the

materials involved could not stand the cost of transport over any significant distance over land

(the problem was, of course, less acute where a water connection existed). Clothing, the fourth

necessity of life, was a partial exception. Weavers, spinners, fullers, dyers, and the like normally

formed the largest single sector in secondary employment in early modern Europe, and, unlike

employment in the growing and processing of food, construction, and the procuring of peat and

firewood, employment in clothing manufacture was frequently concentrated rather than widely

spread because the price of cloth of good quality was increased only moderately even when it

was carried over considerable distances. With rising real incomes the proportion of aggregate

demand directed to the necessities of life declined, with a commensurate rise in the demand for

other goods and services, many of which were supplied from a distance.131 The evidence of

inventories provides convincing proof of the markedly greater ability of a wide swathe of the

English population to secure the comforts of life and even, occasionally, its luxuries. The change

occurred progressively over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.132 It was accompanied by

a striking growth in the volume of internal trade by land, river, canal, and coastal shipping.

Ville’s figures for the rate of growth of ton-miles performed by carrier services to and from

London during the ‘long’ eighteenth century imply at least a ten-fold increase in goods transport

33

by road in just over a century-and-a-half.133 Rising imports of coffee, tea, and sugar formed part

of the same phenomenon.

Rising productivity per head on the land, urbanisaton, occupational change, and increased

trade and commerce, though often treated separately, were essentially elements in the same

complex process of growth in early modern England, elements of an advanced organic economy.

It is probably idle to try to identify priority in their development; the four elements were different

aspects of a unitary process. There was, however, nothing inevitable in its timing or form.

The fact that rural areas are capable of producing a surplus of food after meeting their

own food needs does not in itself necessarily encourage urban growth. Nor does urban growth

always set in train changes in agriculture which facilitate further growth by a feedback process.

Nor, in a purely organic economy, can any feedback process continue to produce growth

indefinitely. Yet early modern England, following broadly similar developments in the

Netherlands, illustrates the substantial possibilities for change which existed where a beneficial

feedback of this kind became established. It was emphasised by Adam Smith. While insisting

on the dependence of the town upon the existence of a rural surplus,134 he was equally clear

about the importance of an urban influence in galvanising agricultural improvement by a variety

of market and institutional mechanisms, devoting a chapter in the Wealth of nations to ‘How the

commerce of the towns contributed to the improvement of the country’. Nor was he in any doubt

about the stimulus given to trade and commerce by this exchange. The peculiar importance of

the growth of London to the process in early modern England has been a recurrent theme ever

since the publication of Fisher’s percipient essay 70 years ago.135

Towards the end of the half millennium between 1300 and 1800 England was gradually

freeing itself from the limitations which are general to all organic economies. The transition to

an energy-intensive, mineral-based economy which by-passed the constraints common to all

societies dependent upon current photosynthesis was in train. But the profound nature of this

further change should not be allowed to obscure the notable advances made while still largely

subject to these constraints. If 65-80 per cent of the labour force is engaged in agriculture, the

scale of activity outside the agricultural sector is necessarily limited and the scope for growth

34

circumscribed, if only because of manpower limitations. An organic economy cannot be

advanced in these circumstances. Save in very exceptional circumstances it will be chiefly

concerned, in Adam Smith’s terminology, with subsistence rather than with conveniences or

luxuries. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the English economy had already

moved towards the upper end of the spectrum of possibilities open to an organic economy.136

VII

It is sometimes argued that England benefited greatly from gaining access to the produce

of ‘ghost’ acres overseas since it permitted economic expansion that would otherwise not have

occurred. Just as coal, by providing an acceptable substitute for wood and charcoal, endowed the

country with the equivalent of many millions of acres of woodland, so West Indian sugar and

American cotton provided England with the equivalent of a vast new territory and so enabled the

country to avoid competition for land which would otherwise have been acute.137 Just as, so the

argument runs in effect, England ‘exported’ millions of acres in medieval times in the form of

raw wool, later the flow was reversed. Millions of acres were ‘imported’ thus helping both to

keep an increasing population adequately nourished and providing the most rapidly growing of

the major English industries with much of their raw materials. The fundamental character of this

development remains the same whether or not the territories in question were colonial.

In one sense this account is unarguably correct. The import of sugar and cotton grew

rapidly. Since neither crop could be cultivated in temperate latitudes, their purchase by English

customers must have involved ‘annexing’ land elsewhere.138 But the implication that, say, a

flourishing cotton industry in Lancashire was made possible only by the acquisition of ‘ghost’

acres abroad is acceptable only in the banal sense that cotton is a tropical crop. The arrow of

causation points in the opposite direction. The wool from medieval English sheep went abroad

because the great textile towns of the Low Countries possessed the human and physical capital to

make profitable use of this raw material. Similarly, the Baltic lands which supplied the

Netherlands with grain in the Dutch golden age were reflecting the remarkable wealth and

sophistication of the seventeenth-century Dutch economy. Matters were no different a century

later when England was beginning to accumulate ‘ghost’ acres. Their existence was, in effect, a

35

tribute to the dynamism of the English economy. In each case the existence of the trades in

question reflected the needs of the leading economy of the day. Its leading position, it is

reasonable to argue, lay upstream, so to speak, from the acquisition of ‘ghost’ acres rather than

downstream from them.139

The examples of Spain and Portugal illustrate the frailty of the supposition that access to

‘ghost’ acres played a key role in stimulating growth in western Europe. In its colonial heyday

Spain controlled the bulk of the Central and South America, and indeed substantial tracts of

North America also; Portugal had Brazil. For Spain there was a vast wealth in precious metals to

be exploited in addition to lands suitable for growing tropical crops, and the conquests of both

Spain and Portugal substantially predated English expansion. Yet both countries ended the

eighteenth century relatively impoverished rather than enriched.

To create a flourishing colonial trade might bring benefit to an imperial power but the

ability to bring this about did not stem principally from the control of large areas of colonial

territory but from the nature and strength of the economy of the colonial power. The large-scale

import of goods such as sugar or cotton was conditional upon a matching demand for such

products whether to meet the new wish to smoke tobacco and drink sweetened coffee or to

provide the raw material for a flourishing new textile industry. Such a demand was bigger and

more rapidly growing in a country like England where steadily rising productivity per head in

agriculture had permitted a shift in the structure of demand from necessities in favour of

comforts and even luxuries than in a country like Spain which had been less fortunate.

Pomeranz opened his chapter ‘Abolishing the land constraint: the Americas as a new kind

of periphery’ as follows:

One core, western Europe, was able to escape the proto-industrial cul de sac and transferhandicraft workers into modern industries as the new technology became available. Itcould do this, in large part, because the exploitation of the New World made itunnecessary to mobilize the huge numbers of additional workers who would have beenneeded to use Europe’s own land in much more intensive and ecologically sustainableways.140

36

Pomeranz’s thesis fails to do justice to the English case. The crucial difference between

most organic economies and the situation which had come to prevail in England in the course of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries lay less in output per acre, though in this respect

England compared well with most continental countries, but in output per head. Labour was

released from agriculture, or, more exactly, numbers on the land remained broadly static, so that,

with an increasing population, there was a disproportionately rapid rise in non-agricultural

employment. Those who remained on the land continued to meet the food needs of the great

bulk of the population until the early decades of the nineteenth century, and the economy as a

whole was sufficiently resilient to absorb into secondary and tertiary employment those no

longer working on the land.141 This might be described as the hallmark of an advanced organic

economy.

What was distinctive about English agriculture did not lie principally in pioneering new

crops or techniques. Inasmuch as there was technical advance in arable agriculture it consisted

mainly in the import of crop varieties and cultivation practices which had been pioneered

elsewhere, especially in the Low Countries. Their import may have made it possible to secure

higher outputs than were feasible previously, as, for example, with the use of legumes, clovers,

and root crops in rotation with cereals, an innovation which both reduced the fallowed acreage

radically and boosted the production of fodder, but their introduction did not confer technical

advantages on English farmers when compared with those on either side of the Rhine mouths,

who had long been familiar with these possibilities. Dejongh and Thoen provide abundant

evidence for Flanders and Belgium of very high cereal yields, of the early adoption of clover and

turnips, and of the associated shrinkage in fallow, but these features were associated with a very

different type of secular change in Flanders from that in England. They conclude their survey,

which referred to the same period as that covered in this essay, during which productivity per

acre, as in England, rose four- or five-fold,142 by remarking:

However, the progress of Flemish agriculture was not primarily the result of technicalrevolution but rested rather upon the high input of labour per unit of land. In most areas,the intensification of arable production went along with a splitting up of peasant holdingsand declining labour productivity [my italics].143

37

Flanders therefore illustrates one of the possibilities to which Pomeranz refers and it is not

surprising that the urban proportion was static in Flanders during the period in which there was

rapid urban advance in England. England’s different trajectory involved strong growth in

international trading exchange, but her access to ghost acreages, which was one aspect of her

success, is better regarded as a measure of her economic vigour rather than its cause.

VIII

Reviewing the facts, estimates, and assumptions contained in the preceding sections

suggests a number of reflections. Although the logic of Ricardo’s argument is ultimately

inescapable until a society escapes from the constraints of dependence upon photosynthesis for

food, energy, and raw materials, England ended the half-millennium preceding his lifetime far

less troubled by these constraints than it had been at its beginning. It is true that, although the

cumulative growth in net agricultural output per head of population was so great, if it had been

evenly spread over the whole period it would have been almost imperceptible within individual

lifetimes. For example, if the overall rise in output per head were 250 per cent (that is the final

figure was three-and-a-half times larger than the initial figure) this would imply an annual rate of

growth of 0.25 per cent per annum only. Over an adult lifetime of, say, 40 years the cumulative

growth would be only 10.5 per cent.144 Even on the assumption that all the growth took place in

the second half of the period, the rate of growth is only 0.5 per cent per annum and the growth

over 40 years 22 per cent. Yet it should be noted that on this assumption the rate of growth over

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would be slightly higher than Crafts’s estimate of its

level during the ‘classic’ period of the industrial revolution from 1780 to 1831. He estimated the

rate of growth of this variable as 0.35 per cent per annum in 1780-1801, rising to 0.52 in 1801-

31, which implies a rate of growth over the half-century as a whole of 0.45 per cent per

annum.145 The period from 1780 to 1831 was one of exceptionally rapid population growth and

it is not surprising that gains in output per head were modest, yet the extent of the success of the

economy over the two preceding centuries, which included, of course, a lengthy period of civil

war, is nonetheless impressive, if this sketch of its nature is valid.

38

Without the means of escape provided by the industrial revolution, all organic economies

were bound eventually to run up against Ricardian buffers, but organisational and institutional

change, combined with some technical advances, were plainly capable of delaying the onset of

the worst effects of his law over long periods of time. In order to sustain and extend the

advances made in the century preceding 1800, a gradual decline in the importance of the

organically based sectors of the economy in favour of those which were mineral-based and

energy-intensive was essential, but the scale of the prior progress achieved within the context of

an organic economy was notable.

Were events in England quite out of the ordinary, or did Europe as a whole, after the crisis

of the early fourteenth century, follow a broadly similar path, though at a somewhat slower pace?

It seems clear that this question should be answered in the negative for some countries,

notably those bordering the Mediterranean. Malanima has recently published a remarkable

survey of developments in Italy over the same half millennium as that covered in this essay.146

All the key indicators suggest either stasis or a slow worsening of conditions between 1300 and

1800. He constructed four series of secular change covering population, prices, wages, and

urbanisation. He concluded, inter alia, that although the overall trend in gross product was

upwards, the trend of output per head was downwards; that the relative importance of the

secondary and tertiary sectors declined from the later middle ages onwards apart from a short

recovery in the sixteenth century; and that Italy was, if anything, slightly more urbanised in 1300

than in 1800, though it is perhaps better to regard the level of urbanisation as fluctuating without

significant change.147 Comparing Italy with other European countries he remarked:

Italy would have been well to the forefront of this hierarchy and perhaps would haveoccupied first place in the late middle ages. Italy was at that time a mature economy: aneconomy near the production possibilities frontier. It lost increasingly more groundduring the early modern age both in relative and absolute terms. While its economy as awhole grew, its level of per capita product fell.148

The most striking counter example to the case of Italy was the Netherlands. The Dutch

economy flourished throughout the ‘long’ seventeenth century, attaining levels of real income

and urbanisation far greater than those to be found in England until well into the eighteenth

39

century.149 In many respects England was simply tracking the Netherlands throughout the early

modern period, finding an entirely new path to growth only with the gradual overshadowing of

the organically-based elements in the economy by new activities exploiting the abundance of

thermal and mechanical energy supplied by coal. Much of Europe, however, displayed a greater

similarity to Italy than to the Netherlands, and it must remain unclear whether other countries

would also have followed the Dutch example. But the question did not arise. The advent of the

industrial revolution rendered it irrelevant.

IX

The economic history of England and Wales in the half millennium before 1800 illustrates

the scale of the advance which is possible within an organic economy. But no organic economy

however successful could escape from the constraints common to all. Asymptotic growth was

possible and could lead to major change; exponential growth was beyond reach. A ceiling was

set by the productivity of the land. The ceiling itself might be raised by technical or institutional

change but a slowing of growth was inevitable as the ceiling was approached. The pessimistic

view of the classical economists about the long-term prospects for any economy was justified as

long as all economies were organically based. Each advance made further advance more

difficult to achieve. The experience of much of the continent in the early modern period justified

their forebodings.150

As long as the land remained the principal source not only of food but also of almost all

the raw materials used in manufacture, it was inevitable that the productivity of the land should

set limits to possible growth. At some stage, as Ricardo had insisted, further progress must

involve a decline in the return to labour and capital.151 In asserting this conclusion he was

echoing a view shared equally by Malthus and Adam Smith.

Malthus’s thinking as set out in the first Essay on population reflected similar fears to

those expressed by Ricardo, though the background to his pessimism was different.152 The first

Essay was, however, much more deductive in character than Malthus’s later writings. He proved

sensitive to the importance of reconciling theory with fact, and, as he became increasingly well

40

informed, gradually modified his original stance. He had developed the concept of the

preventive check in the first Essay, but had regarded it as unlikely to be sufficiently effective to

ward off the horrors of the positive check.153 As time went on, however, he accorded it a much

greater role in determining the relationship between numbers and resources. He also refined the

notion of ‘oscillations’ which periodically presented societies with what was, in effect, a choice

between greater numbers and the preservation of a higher standard of living.154 From time to

time the bulk of the population might experience rising incomes for many decades in succession,

and he came to believe that the possibility existed that such advances might be consolidated

rather than lost:

From high real wages, or the power of commanding a large portion of the necessaries oflife, two very different results may follow; one, that of a rapid increase in population, inwhich case the high wages are chiefly spent in the maintenance of large and frequentfamilies; and the other, that of a decided improvement in the modes of subsistence, andthe conveniences and luxuries enjoyed, without a proportionate acceleration in the rate ofincrease.155

A development of this type might substantially and even permanently ameliorate conditions for

the bulk of the population; in other words, it allowed for the possibility of an advanced organic

economy, but it did not exempt such an economy from the necessary limitations inherent in its

nature.156

Adam Smith, writing a generation earlier than Ricardo and Malthus, drove home the same

message equally vigorously, though with somewhat different arguments. At the beginning of the

chapter ‘Of the different employment of capitals’, he emphasised the fundamental importance of

the productivity of the soil: ‘Unless a capital was employed in furnishing rude produce to a

certain degree of abundance, neither manufactures nor trade of any kind could exist’.157 He then

underlined the point:

The capital employed in agriculture, therefore, not only puts in motion a greater quantityof productive labour than any equal capital employed in manufactures, but in proportiontoo to the quantity of productive labour which it employs, it adds a greater value to theannual produce of the land and labour of the country, to the real wealth and revenue of its

41

inhabitants. Of all the ways in which a capital can be employed, it is by far the mostadvantageous to the society.158

An efficient agriculture meant cheap food which in turn led to low wage costs. It is

intriguing to note that, remarking that ‘all over Great Britain manufactures have confined

themselves principally to the coal countries’, he should have attributed this to the effect of cheap

domestic fuel in reducing living and hence wage costs, rather than to its importance in providing

a new and abundant energy source for industrial processes.159

Events were to prove the classical economists wrong in their disbelief that output per head

and therefore living standards could rise rapidly and continuously. The English economy was

changing in their lifetimes, becoming less and less organically based, above all because coal

provided cheap energy in apparently limitless quantities. Both heat and mechanical energy were

necessarily in short supply in organic economies. For more than two centuries in England,

however, coal had been replacing wood as the prime source of the former, and, with the

development of the steam engine, could also provide mechanical energy on a scale to dwarf the

efforts of the horse and the ox. Moreover, mineral raw materials were the basis of a steadily

rising fraction of manufacturing activity. A mineral-based and energy-rich economy was

developing alongside the organic economy and was removing the constraints which had limited

growth and incomes in the past. England, rather than approaching a ceiling to further growth, as

Adam Smith had thought inevitable,160 had stumbled upon a means of circumventing the

difficulty which had seemed to the classical economists insuperable.161 Yet in 1800 the

comparative prosperity of England reflected in large measure the scope for advance within the

context of an organic economy rather than the fruits of a new era. It would be sad if appreciation

of what was made possible by the industrial revolution were to obscure the remarkable

achievements of the preceding half-millennium within the context of an organic economy.

42

Footnote references

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Allen, R.C., ‘The great divergence in European wages and prices from the middle ages to theFirst World War’, Explorations in Economic History, 38 (2001), pp. 411-47.

Bowden, P., ‘Agricultural prices, farm profits and rents’, in J. Thirsk, ed., The agrarian historyof England and Wales, IV, 1500-1640 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 593-695.

Bowden, P., ‘Agricultural prices, wages, farm profits, and rents’, in J. Thirsk, ed., The agrarianhistory of England and Wales, 1640-1750, V.II, Agrarian change (Cambridge, 1985), pp.1-118.

Brewer, J. and Porter, R., eds., Consumption and the world of goods (London and New York,1993).

Campbell, B.M.S., English seigniorial agriculture, 1250-1250 (Cambridge, 2000).Christensen, C., ‘Estimating arable production and productivity in Danish agriculture during the

age of reform, 1750-1850’, in B.J.P. van Bavel and E. Thoen, eds., Land productivity andagro-systems in the North Sea area (middle ages – 20th century), CORN publication ser. 2(Turnhout, 1999), pp. 168-88.

Clark, G., ‘Yields per acre in English agriculture, 1250-1860: evidence from labour inputs’,Economic History Review, XLIV (1991), pp. 445-60.

Clark, G., ‘Labour productivity in English agriculture, 1300-1860’ in B.M.S. Campbell and M.Overton, eds., Land, labour and livestock: historical studies in European agriculturalproductivity (Manchester, 1991), pp. 211-35.

Clarkson, L.A., ‘The manufacture of leather’, in The agrarian history of England and Wales, vol.6, 1750-1850, ed. G.E. Mingay (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 466-83.

Coale, A.J. and Dememy, P., Regional model life tables and stable populations (Princeton,1966).

Cornwall, J.C.K., Wealth and society in early sixteenth-century England (London, 1988).Crafts, N.F.R., British economic growth during the industrial revolution (Oxford, 1985).Deane, P. and Cole, W.A., British economic growth1688-1959 (Cambridge, 1962).

Dejongh, G. and Thoen, E., ‘Arable productivity in Flanders and the former territory ofBelgium in a long-term perspective (from the middle ages to the end of the Ancien Régime)’ inB.J.P. van Bavel and E. Thoen, eds., Land productivity and agro-systems in the North Sea area(middle ages – 20th century), CORN publication ser. 2 (Turnhout, 1999), pp. 30-64.De Vries, J., European urbanization 1500-1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1984).De Vries, J. and van der Woude, A., The first modern economy: success, failure and

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1 . I am grateful to Paulo Malanima, Richard Smith, Paul Warde, three anonymous referees, and especially to LeighShaw-Taylor for very helpful comments both on the structure of this essay and on matters of detail. Without theiradvice this would have been a much less coherent piece.The essay relates to England and Wales unless otherwise explicitly stated, but to avoid inelegance I have oftenreferred to England alone2 . I am grateful to Paulo Malanima, Richard Smith, Paul Warde, three anonymous referees, and especially to LeighShaw-Taylor for very helpful comments both on the structure of this essay and on matters of detail. Without theiradvice this would have been a much less coherent piece.The essay relates to England and Wales unless otherwise explicitly stated, but to avoid inelegance I have oftenreferred to England alone3 . This issue is more fully discussed in Wrigley, Continuity, chance and change, esp. ch. 2.4 . Swift, Gulliver’s travels, p. 176.5 . Smith, Wealth of nations, I, p. 402.6 . Ibid., I, p. 431.7 . Ibid., I, p. 78.8 . Ricardo, Principles of political economy. Ricardo set out the underlying problem in the chapter ‘On rent’, but itwas in his chapter ‘On profits’ that its implications are most fully and bleakly examined; see esp. pp. 125-6. Muchthe same reasoning and conclusions are to be found in Malthus, The nature and progress of rent, which waspublished two years earlier.9 . Overton and Campbell, ‘Production and productivity in English agriculture’; Clark, ‘Labour productivity inEnglish agriculture’.10 . Notably Campbell, English seigniorial agriculture; Overton, Agricultural revolution in England; The agrarianhistory of England and Wales, 1750-1850; and the works noted in n. 8 above.11 . Thornton, ‘The demesne of Rimpton’, p. 209; see also tab. 7.7, p. 205.12 . If the tithingpenny evidence from Essex parishes is representative of eastern England both the severity of thecrisis in 1315-17 and the extent of the overall population decline in the early fourteenth century are striking. HighEaster and Great Waltham, the two rural communities where the surviving documentation is most complete, suffereda combined fall in the number of tithingmen of 17 per cent as a result of the famine, while over the period c.1300 toc.1340 the fall was about 30 per cent. The less complete evidence from the other 11 Essex communities in Poos’sstudy suggest similar declines. Poos, ‘Rural population of Essex’, p. 521, n. 20 and fig. 2(a), p. 522.13 . See tab. 1, p. . Both crude rates of growth of population and intrinsic growth rates c. 1800 may be found inWrigley et al., English population history, tab. A9.1, pp. 614-15.14 . Jones estimated that British agricultural output covered 90 per cent of the country’s food needs c. 1800.Overton’s recent discussion of this and cognate questions results in a similar or somewhat higher figure. Jones,‘Agriculture 1700-80’, tab. 4.1, p. 68; Overton, Agricultural revolution in England, pp. 74-6, esp. tab. 3.5 (a), p. 75.15 . Ibid., tab. 3.15, p. 98 and associated discussion. There was, for example, a marked increase in the area devotedturnips in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The area of sown arable grew by almost one half between1800 and 1850 and the share of turnips among the major arable crops increased from 9 to 15 per cent. Ibid., tab. 3.6,p. 76 and tab. 3.15, p. 98.16 . Ibid., p. 122.17 . Tooke, History of prices.18 . Wrigley, ‘Some reflections on corn yields’ , esp. pp.92-9.19 . In the Domesday survey of 1086 15 per cent of the land surface of England was woodland, but over the next twocenturies between a third and a half of this area was cleared: Rackham, Trees and woodland, tab. 2, pp. 50-1 and pp.55-6.20 . Overton, Agricultural revolution in England, tab. 3.6, p. 76.21 . Overton and Campbell, ‘Statistics of production and productivity’, p. 193.22 . There is a discussion of the range of plausible estimates in Campbell, English seigniorial agriculture, pp. 57-9.Overton and Campbell suggest a figure of 30 per cent for the demesne percentage: ‘Statistics of production andproductivity’, p. 195.

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23 . Campbell notes that the evidence of the Inquisitiones post mortem suggest that the proportion of demesne arablethat was sown to crops ranged between a half and two-thirds with an average of 62 per cent, based on a total of 652IPMs. Elsewhere he presents data which imply a figure of about 60 per cent. Ibid., pp. 67, 121.24 . Holderness, ‘Prices, productivity, and output’, p. 133; Overton, Agricultural revolution in England, tab. 3.6, p.76.25 . Overton, Agricultural revolution in England, tab. 3.13, p. 96.26 . Campbell, English seigniorial agriculture, tab. 6.01, pp. 250-1.27 . Net yields are to be found in ibid., p. 334. No figure for rye was given, when those for the other grains werequoted. Rye yielded a little less per acre than wheat (see, for example, the data in tabs. 8.02 and 8.03, pp. 392-5). Ihave assumed that its net yield was 90 per cent of that of wheat. Seeding rates were taken from ibid., tab. 7.02, pp.312-13, averaging the rates given for Norfolk and for the FTC counties (data produced in the course of the ‘Feedingthe city’ research project) .28 . Overton and Campbell, ‘Production and productivity’, p. 198.29 . Campbell’s view is that output per acre was probably much the same on peasant and demesne land: ibid., pp.391-6. Overton and Campbell remark that ‘the relationship between yields on demesne and peasant holdingsremains one of the great unsolved enigmas of this period’. Overton and Campbell, ‘Production and productivity’, p.198. Dyer inclines to the view that peasant yields were lower than those on demesnes, but cites considerationswhich point to higher as well as lower peasant yields. Dyer, Standards of living, pp. 128-9. Postan was firmly ofthe opinion that the productivity of peasant land was lower than demesne land for a variety of interlinked reasons.Postan, ‘England’, pp. 600-4.30 . I have used the equivalences set out in Campbell, English seigniorial agriculture, tab. 5.04, p. 215.31 . Ibid., tab. 6.01, pp. 250-1. I assumed that ‘grain mixtures’ were distributed among the four main grains inproportion to the relative importance of each of the four.32 . See, for example, Overton and Campbell, ‘Production and productivity’, p. 195. Dyer concluded that ‘peasantsgrew much the same crops as their lords’, though perhaps with a greater preference for barley. Dyer, Standards ofliving, pp. 128.33 . Thus, for example, wheat’s share of the total cereal acreage is taken as (0.3 x 38.2) + (0.7 x 30) = 32.46 per centof the total and thus the figure for wheat in col. 8 of tab. 2 is 0.325 (that is wheat occupied 38.2 per cent of the cerealacreage on the 30 per cent of the arable land in demesne, while occupying only 30 per cent on the 70 per cent of thearable land in peasant cultivation).34 . It should be noted that there is a potentially significant omission from tab. 1 in that no estimate of losssubsequent to harvest is included. After the grain had been harvested there were losses in storage due to rodents,insects, mould, sprouting, and so on. It is, however, very difficult to estimate with confidence the significance ofsuch losses as a percentage of the harvested crop, though probable that the problems were relatively more severe in1300 than in 1800 as a result of the greater investment in substantial barns and other storage facilities. The markedcontrast between the two dates would, therefore, be still more pronounced if this factor were introduced into thecalculation.35 . Overton and Campbell, ‘Statistics of production and productivity’, tab. 7.11, p. 201.36 . See below p.37 . See p. below for estimates of the number of farm and off-farm horses c. 1800. I have assumed that the latter,forming 36 per cent of the total, consumed slightly more oats per animal than those on the farm. Hence the estimatethat 60 per cent of fodder oats was consumed by farm horses.38 . 70 per cent of the total output of oats was consumed as fodder and 60 per cent of fodder oats was consumed byfarm horses, the latter therefore representing 42 per cent of total production.39 . See n. 40 below.40 . See, for example, Smith, ‘Demographic developments in rural England’; he concluded (p. 49) that ‘the Englishpopulation total prior to 1310 is very unlikely to have been less than 5.0 million and most probably exceeded 6.0million’. Dyer has recently suggested that in 1300 the population of England was about 6 million and that of Wales300,000: Dyer, Making a living in the middle ages, p. 101.41 . The recorded total for England (excluding Monmouth) was 8,285,852. A best estimate of the true total obtainedby inverse projection is 8,671,439. Raising the recorded total for England and Wales by the ratio between these twototals yields the figure of 9.29 million in tab. 1. It may be of interest to note that Rickman, who conducted the firstcensus, after attempting to make allowance for men in the army and navy and for convicts on hulks arrived at a verysimilar total, 9.34 million. Wrigley et al., English population history, tab. A9.1, pp. 614-5; 1801 Census,Enumeration abstract, p. 497.

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42 . Campbell, English seigniorial agriculture, p. 213.43 . Overton, Agricultural revolution in England, tab. 3.13, p. 96, using data from the 1801 crop returns.44 . Overton and Campbell, ‘Production and productivity’, tab. 7.8, p. 199.45 . The importance of the potato harvest is understated in this calculation since it was increasingly widely grown ingardens and allotments. A more realistic figure might be twice as large.46 . For example, Overton presents estimates, which he stresses are subject to wide margins of error, which suggestthat meat and dairy products alone constituted 47 per cent of the value of total agricultural output in 1800, comparedwith a figure of 42 per cent for all crops: ibid, tab. 3.5(c), p. 75. The relative importance of the pastoral sector wasprobably substantially smaller in 1300. Clark’s attempt to marshal the data available from demesne agriculture intoa form allowing crop and animal output to be reduced to a common base, for example, suggests that the latterformed about a quarter of the combined total in 1300. Clark, ‘Labour productivity in English agriculture’, tabs. 8.2and 8.3, pp. 215-16.47 . On the general importance of animal power in European agriculture in contrast in particular with China, see theilluminating essay by Malanima, ‘Energy systems in agrarian societies’.48 . The totals for cattle, sheep, and pigs are based on Holderness’s discussion of the topic: Holderness, ‘Prices,productivity, and output’, pp. 150-1. The total for horses was derived from John, ‘Statistical appendix’, tab. III.11,pp. 1066-7. The total of all horses, including those exempt from tax is estimated as 1.4 millions in a note to the table.The data refer to Great Britain as a whole. In 1870 Scottish horses comprised 13.6 per cent of the G.B. total ofhorses used solely for agriculture. On the assumption that the same proportion held good for all horses and wasvalid for 1800, the total of horses in England and Wales may be taken 1.21 million (1.4 x 0.864 = 1.21).Agricultural returns of Great Britain 1870, abstract no. 3, p. 37. See also Thompson, ‘Nineteenth-century horsesense’, tab. 2, pp. 80-1.49 . These weights are unusually simple. More complex systems have often been employed. Campbell discusses anumber of them, but the more complex alternatives would produce only marginally different outcomes. Campbell,English seigniorial agriculture, pp. 104-7.50 . Ibid., tab. 4.03, pp. 136-7.51 . Ibid., pp. 151-4.52 . Ibid., p. 15953 . He notes, for example, that Trow-Smith favoured a much smaller total of 12 million. Ibid., p. 158, n. 135.54 . Hallam, ‘The life of the people’, p. 821.55 . Langdon, Horses, oxen, tab. 29, p. 205.56 . Campbell, English seigniorial agriculture, tab. 4.02, pp. 124-5 (estimate for 1275-1324).57 . The total national arable acreage in 1300 was 10.5 million (tab. 1). Of this 30 per cent, or 3.15 million acres, isassumed to be demesne land. Of this in turn 62 per cent was cropped each year, or 1.953 million acres. There areassumed to be 15.9 draught animals per 100 sown acres, yielding a total of 311,000 divided between oxen andhorses in the ration 11.5/4.4, or 225,000 oxen and 86,000 horses.58 . Peasant arable land is taken to be 70 per cent of the total, or 7.35 million acres, of which 4.778 million acres iscropped each year (65 per cent of the arable total). The stocking density is taken to be only 75 per cent of that ondemesne land. Therefore, the total number of draught animals on peasant land is 4,778,000/100 x (15.9 x 0.75) =570,000. The draught animal total is divided 55/45 between oxen and horses.59 . Campbell, English seigniorial agriculture, tab. 4.02, pp. 124-5.60 . In 1871 there were 314,000 horses ‘on farms, unbroken’ compared with 940,000 horses ‘used in agriculture’.Thompson, ‘Nineteenth-century horse sense’, tab. 2, p. 80.61 . A further uncertainty should be mentioned. There appears to be an internal inconsistency in the data used byCampbell which provided the basis for the calculations set out in tab. 3. He constructed a table showing totals ofhorses, oxen, and all working animals per 100 sown acres for England, for Norfolk, and for the counties involved inthe ‘feeding the city’ (FTC) research project: Campbell, English seigniorial agriculture, tab. 4.02, pp. 124-5. Thenotes to the table specify the ratio between oxen and horses to be used in calculating a total for working animals on aunitary basis as 1.2: 1.0 (that is, each ox should be counted as the equivalent of 1.2 horses). It is to be expected,therefore, that the total of working animals calculated on this assumption will be greater than the ‘raw’ total ofhorses plus oxen. For example if there were 10 oxen and 4 horses per 100 sown acres, the expected total of workinganimals would be 16 ((10 x 1.2) + 4). The data presented for seven overlapping half-centuries for Norfolk conformto expectation, but the comparable totals of working animals for the FTC counties are the simple sum of the horseand oxen totals, while there is no consistent relationship between the three totals for any of the half-centuries forwhich data for England are presented. Indeed, in one instance, the figure given for working animals is less than the

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sum of the individual totals for horses and oxen (1375-1424). It is therefore possible that some adjustment shouldbe made to the figures for horses and oxen in the half-century 1275-1324 on which this exercise is based. It seemslikely, however, that any error is confined to the column showing totals of working animals. If any revision werecalled for, it would be slight. This weighting of oxen relative to horses is a refinement which I have ignored in thisexercise: in many circumstances horses were more effective suppliers of muscle power than oxen, especially ifmeasured over the working day rather than the working hour (the capacities of horses and oxen are discussed inLangdon, Horses, oxen, pp.160-4).62 . There is a discussion of the small size of medieval farm animals in Grant, ‘Animal resources’, pp. 176-8 (theyappear to have compared unfavourably not only with their counterparts at the start of the nineteenth century but alsowith their predecessors in Roman and Saxon England). It is worth noting that, because the volume of an animalincreases as the cube of any of its linear measurements, if, say, the average shoulder height of medieval animals wasonly 80 per cent of that c. 1800, and assuming that length and breadth changed similarly, the weight of the averageanimal would have doubled (1.253 = 1.95). Grant notes, incidentally, that there appears to have been no increase inthe average size of farm animals before the sixteenth century at the earliest despite the likelihood that, with the sharpfall in population following the Black Death, which persisted throughout the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,‘much of the better quality land was returned to pasture’: ibid., p. 177.63 . Clark, ‘Labour productivity in English agriculture’, tab. 8.3, p. 216. Campbell offers broadly similar estimatesfor the period c.1300 to c.1850, suggesting that grain yields roughly doubled, fleece weights increased two-and-a-half times, carcass weights of cattle and sheep trebled, and milk yields quadrupled: Campbell, English seigniorialagriculture, p. 187.64 . See p. below.65 . See, for example, Overton and Campbell, ‘Norfolk livestock farming’, esp. pp. 391-2. They place particularemphasis on the development of ley farming.66 . There is an illustration of the scale of the differential involved in Overton and Campbell, ‘Production andproductivity’, tab. 7.10, p. 200.67 . Overton, Agricultural revolution in England, tab. 3.5(c), p. 75.68 . Grigg, English agriculture, tab. 2.7, p. 13. He quotes estimates (for Britain rather than for England and Wales)that crops were 62.2 per cent of total production in 1785 and 54.5 per cent in 1831.69 . Clark, ‘Labour productivity in English agriculture’, tabs. 8.2 and 8.3, pp. 215 and 216, and pp. 218-19. Clark’sestimate that about a quarter of the net value of output was from the pastoral sector in 1300 differs significantly fromCampbell’s estimate that livestock products contributed 35-40 per cent of manorial gross agricultural revenues atthat time, though the two are not, of course, directly comparable: Campbell, English seigniorial agriculture, p. 183.70 . Overton and Campbell, ‘Statistics of production and productivity’, tab. 7.14, p. 204. Their estimate was thattotal output rose from 5.77 to 12.07 trillion kilocalories, or by 109 per cent. They did not attempt a comparablecalculation for pastoral output.71 . The Princeton model North life tables suggest that at level 4 mortality with an expectation of life at birth of c.25years the proportion of males in the age groups 18-65 is 57 per cent on the assumption that the population is stableand stationary, or 54 per cent on the assumption that it was growing at 5 per 1,000 per annum. At level 5 mortalitywith an expectation of life at birth of c.27 years, the comparable figures are 58 and 55 per cent. I have assumed thathalf the population were male and that 55 per cent is a reasonable proportion to use. Coale and Demeny, Regionalmodel life tables.72 . The assumption of 75-80 per cent of the labour force working on the land currently rests upon nothing strongerthan what is known of peasant societies for which such information is available (but see also p. below ). It ispossible that the situation will improve when the scattered occupational data in the late fourteenth-century poll taxeshas been analysed. The assumptions made accord well with Dyer’s estimate that ‘in c.1300 there were about amillion peasant farms from which the majority of the population gained at least a part of their living’. Dyer,‘Documentary evidence’, p. 21. It may be noted, in support of the plausibility of this assumption, that in Finland in1805 82.1 per cent of the total labour force was engaged in agriculture. In Spain in 1860 70.0 per cent of the malelabour force was in agriculture; and the comparable percentages in Italy, Ireland, and Sweden were 61.2, 68.5 and64.6 (in 1871, 1841, and 1860 respectively). The percentages for Spain, Italy, Ireland, and Sweden would certainlyhave been higher a century earlier. Mitchell, European historical statistics, tab. C1, pp. 161-73.73 . I have elsewhere suggested that the number of men aged 20 and over engaged in agriculture in England in 1811was 910,000. Wrigley, ‘Men on the land’, tab. 11.12, p. 332. Assuming that the 1841 census can be used as aguide in increasing this total to allow for those aged 18 and 19 and for the inclusion of Wales, the overall total forEngland and Wales would rise to c. 1.1 million. (The total of farmers and agricultural labourers in England and

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Wales in 1841 was 1,148,000 but this total included 159,000 men under 20 years of age of whom perhaps one thirdwere under 18, which would reduce the total for those aged 18 and over to 1,095,000, a figure 20 per cent largerthan the total for farmers and agricultural labourers aged 20 and over in England alone. This in turn suggests thatthe total of about 1.1 million men in agriculture aged 18 and over in England and Wales (0.91 x 1.2 =1.092)). 1841Census, Occupation abstract, Preface, Occupations 1841, pp. 31-45.74 . The figure probably lay between 37 and 40 per cent: Wrigley, ‘Men on the land’, tab. 11.12, p. 33275 . Clark, ‘Labour productivity in English agriculture’, p. 221. It should be noted that Clark also found reason todoubt this figure and offered a much lower estimate of the productivity rise elsewhere in the same essay, ending on arather agnostic note.76 . Allen, ‘Economic structure and agricultural productivity’, tab. 8, p. 20.77 . Ibid., pp. 15-16.78 . Pounds, ‘Barton farming’, fig. 4, p. 62.79 . Ibid., tab. 10, p. 74.80 . Clark, ‘Yields per acre’, tab. 3, p. 449.81 . O’Brien and Keyder, Economic growth in Britain and France, p. 119.82 . For example, a study of Mexico in the recent past showed that each hour of ox labour saved about 3.8 hours ofhuman labour: Pimentel, ‘Energy flow in the food system’.83 . Wrigley, ‘Energy availability and agricultural productivity’, p. 329.84 . A casual, playful passage in Arthur Young’s diary illustrates the contrast between England and France in afashion which may mirror the contrast between the past and the present in English agriculture in his day. ‘Povertyand poor crops to Amiens; women are now ploughing with a pair of horses to sow barley. The difference of thecustoms of the two nations is in nothing more striking than in the labours of the sex; in England, it is very little thatthey do in the fields except to glean and make hay; the first is a party of pilfering and the second of pleasure: inFrance they plough and fill the dung-cart.’ Young, Travels in France, p. 7.85 . See p.86 . See, for example, Dyer, ‘Documentary evidence’, p.34.87 . Overton and Campbell, ‘Statistics of production and productivity’, tab. 7.11, p. 201.88 . The assumptions used in producing these totals were that all wheat and rye was eaten by people at both dates;that 50 per cent of barley was eaten and 50 per cent brewed in 1300 with a 70 per cent calorie loss in the process;that in 1800 the corresponding barley figures were 20 per cent and 80 per cent; and that in 1300 only 30 per cent ofthe oats harvest was consumed by animals but that by 1800 this figure had risen to 70 per cent. The barley used inbrewing was weighted to reflect the calories lost in the process by reducing the total of bushels in question by 70 percent.89 . The totals in question may be calculated from the data in col. 6 of tab. 1 and cols. 4, 6, and 8 of tab. 2, togetherwith the assumptions about the percentages of oats fed to animals just described.90 . The quantity of oats available as fodder rose by an estimated 49 m. bushels. Assuming that the average weightof 1 bushel was 40 lbs, the increase expressed in weight rather than volume was 875,000 tons.91 . See p. above.92 . The percentages are the value of hides and wool as a fraction of the total value of animal produce at the twodates.93 . See below pp.94 . Clark, ‘Labour productivity in English agriculture’, tab. 8.3, p. 216.95 . If the food share of pastoral output fell from 70 to 65 per cent, the increase for food products would have beenfrom 100 x 0.7 = 70 to 500 x 0.65 = 325. The ratio between the two figures is 4.64. Population increased by 61 percent, and 4.64/1.62 = 2.86.96 . A comparable calculation runs as follows. 100 x 0.3 = 30; 500 x 0.35 = 175. 175/30 = 5.83 and 5.83/1.62 =3.60.97 . These estimates are inferences from the data in John, ‘Statistical appendix’, tab. III.11, pp. 1066-7. In Britain asa whole in 1812 the combined total of horses in husbandry, small horses in husbandry, and horses belonging to smallfarmers keeping not more than 2 horses was, in round numbers, 800,000, to which might be added, say, two-thirdsof the 150,000 horses ‘not wholly used in husbandry’, or a grand total of 900,000 farm horses out of a national totalof 1.4 million. Since England and Wales accounted for 1.21 out of the total of 1.4 million, and assuming that theproportion of farm animals was the similar across the whole of Britain, the comparable totals for England and Walesmay easily be derived.98 . See p. .

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99 . Wrigley, Continuity, chance and change, p. 39.100 . The contrast between the ubiquity of horses in England and the situation in France attracted Arthur Young’sattention. He wrote of his approach to Paris: ‘The last ten miles I was eagerly on the watch for the throng ofcarriages which near London impede the traveller. I watched in vain; for the road, quite to the gates, is, oncomparison, a perfect desert.’ Young, Travels in France, p. 9. He returned to this theme on several occasions,remarking on his fourth entry into Paris and again seeing deserted roads: ‘By what means can the connection becarried on with the country? [that is, between Paris and the countryside] The French must be the most stationarypeople upon earth ---’. Ibid., p. 68.101 . Wrigley, ‘The divergence of England’.102 . Between the 1560s and 1800 the output of coal per head of population in England and Wales increased 24-fold,from 0.062 to 1.504 tons. The rate of growth in output per head was broadly uniform throughout in the rangebetween 1.0 and 1.5 per cent per annum (in the period from the 1560s to 1700 the rate was 1.48 per cent per annum,in 1700-50 1.07 and in 1750-1800 1.37). The data which allow these calculations to be made may be found inHatcher, British coal industry, tab. 4.1, p. 68; Flinn, British coal industry, tab. 1.2, p. 26; and Wrigley et al., Englishpopulation history, tab. A9.1, pp. 614-15.103 . In the first category I have included the following secondary industries: food and drink; the woollen industry;leather, bone, fur, hair, and glue; woodworking; cart, carriage, and coach building; furniture; rope making; straw andrush industries; and carpenters from the building and construction trades. In the second category: cotton, silk, linen,and other textiles. In the third category: instrument making; gold, silver, and jewelry; pottery, glass, andbrickmaking; iron and steel; engineering; gunmaking; chemical industries; gas, coke, and water; and bricklayers andmasons from the building and construction trades. In the fourth indeterminate category: boat, barge, and shipbuilding; papermaking; printing and publishing; painters, paperhangers, and other building from the building andconstruction trades; minor trades; and generalised occupations such as apprentices or labourers. As noted by far thelargest single occupation in this last category was labourers, who constituted 66 per cent of the total. Many of theseoccupations are not ‘pure’. Coach building involved the use of metal as well as wood. The woollen industry, asnoted, did not use local wool exclusively. Instruments were made of wood as well as metal. Some of theindeterminate category might arguably have been included elsewhere, but the general picture resulting from theallocations between categories is unlikely to be seriously inaccurate. I have, however, split one major industry in asomewhat arbitrary fashion between the first and second categories. Clothing and footwear was a large industrialgroup in 1841, employing 278,000 men. I have assumed that all those employed in boot and shoe manufacture, plusglovers and other leather-based workers fell into the first category, but that others in the group, who were primarilyworking with textile materials (tailors, hatters, hosiers, etc.), were to be divided equally between the first and secondcategories, on the assumption that about half of the materials they used were made from cotton or silk. Wrigley,‘The occupational structure of England’ , tab. 5.8, pp. 166-9.104 . Clarkson, ‘The manufacture of leather’, p. 466.105 . Details may be found in Wrigley, ‘The occupational structure of England’, tab. 5.8, pp. 166-9.106 . Clarkson, ‘The manufacture of leather’, p. 471.107 . Crafts, British economic growth, tab. 2.3, p. 22.108 . Holderness, ‘Prices, productivity, and output’, p. 174.109 . Wrigley, ‘The occupational structure of England’, tab. 5.8, pp. 166-9.110 . Crafts’s estimates of value added in British industry in 1801 suggest that 48.0 per cent of the total was added inthe wool, linen, leather, beer, soap, candle, and paper industries, all of which depended largely or exclusively on theproducts of local agriculture; 20.7 per cent of the total was provided by the cotton and silk industries whose organicraw materials were imported; 14.1 per cent by mineral-based industries, iron, copper, and coal; and the remaining17.2 per cent by the building industry. Crafts, British economic growth, tab. 2.3, p. 22.111 . See p. above.112 . For example, Jackson, ‘Growth and deceleration in English agriculture’.113 . See above p.114 . Ville, ‘Transport’, p. 297. It is worth noting that this is a much higher rate of growth than the comparable rateof growth of oats output. Much of the energy involved in inland transport was supplied by horses throughout theperiod. Any disparity between the two multiples provides an indirect measure of the increased efficiency associatedwith the displacement of pack horses and small carts moving along largely unmade roads by wagons andstagecoaches on metalled surfaces, and the still greater output of ton-miles per horse per working hour when pullinga canal barge on a towpath.115 . Holderness, ‘Prices, productivity, and output’, p. 173.

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116 . Deane and Cole, British economic growth, tab. 18, p. 72 and accompanying text.117 . Indeed, some might think it perverse to make the attempt. It has recently been argued, for example, that arableproductivity on the Ramsey estates of the Benedictine order was much the same in medieval times as in the countrygenerally in the nineteenth century: Karakacili, ‘English agrarian productivity rates’.118 . Grant, ‘Animal resources’, p. 177. See also Stone, ‘The productivity and management of sheep’.119 . Of these 6 were in the Low Countries, 3 in Germany, 5 in France, 14 in Italy, 5 in Spain, and 1 in Portugal. DeVries, European urbanization, app. 1, pp. 269-78.120 . Wrigley, ‘Urban growth and agricultural change’.121 . The urban percentage was again taken as the proportion of the total population living in towns with 10,000 ormore inhabitants.122 . Ibid., tabs. 3.2, 3.6 and 3.7, pp. 30, 36-7, and 39. See below p. for the pattern of change in Belgianagriculture during the medieval and early modern periods.123 . Wrigley, ‘Urban growth and agricultural change’, tab. 7.7, p. 179.124 . Van Zanden, ‘The development of agricultural productivity’, p. 371.125 . Not only was urban growth much faster in England than elsewhere, but latterly it took a different form. Townssuch as Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, which were of slight importance in Tudor times, had becomemajor urban centres not only by English, but also by European standards. Birmingham, with a population of 69,000in 1800 was the smallest of the three. There were 5 other cities, excluding this trio, as large as, or larger than,Birmingham in the British Isles, or a total of 8 in this category. Two were Scottish (Edinburgh and Glasgow), twoIrish (Dublin and Cork), while the four English towns were London, Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool: DeVries, European urbanization, app. 1, pp. 269-78. In the whole of continental Europe (excluding Russia and theBalkans) there were only 29 other such cities. On the continent there were few ‘new’ towns, and none in this sizerange whose growth stemmed exclusively from the vibrancy of the local economy rather than from administrativedecree.126 . Cornwall, Wealth and society, p. 14.127 . Ibid., tab. 1.2, pp. 16-17.128 . Ibid., tab. 1.2, pp. 16-17. Cornwall notes that the Babergh survey is less comprehensive than that of Rutland. Itis of interest to note that the Tawneys analysis of the Gloucestershire muster roll of 1608 showed an agriculturalpercentage of 46 per cent. Gloucestershire was also a heavily industrialised area at that time. Tawney and Tawney,‘Occupational census’, tab. 1, p. 36.129 . See above n. 72.130 . The two tables are reproduced in Mathias, The transformation of England, tab. 9.1, pp.186-7. Theirinterpretation is discussed in Wrigley, ‘Urban growth and agricultural change’, pp. 171, n. 19 and more generally onpp. 167-74.131 . In the case of manufactured goods this effect was strengthened by the tendency of the prices of manymanufactured goods to fall relative to those of agricultural products.132 . There is a very large literature on this topic. It is well surveyed and many of the most important findings ofrecent research are described in Brewer and Porter, eds., Consumption and the world of goods, especially the essaysby Weatherill, Shammas, and De Vries. As the eighteenth century progressed the change ceased to be confined tothe better sort: King, ‘Pauper inventories’.133 . See above p. . If the rate of growth is estimated, conservatively, at 1.5 per cent per annum, this would result ina final figure about 11 times greater than the initial figure.134 . See the quotation on p. above.135 . Fisher, ‘The London food market’.136 . Wrigley, ‘The divergence of England’.137 . Pomeranz, The great divergence, ch. 6.138 . Sugar, cotton, tobacco, tea, coffee, wool, and spices had it in common that they had a high value-to-weight ratioand so were still affordable, if grown close to navigable water, even after transoceanic transport by sailing vessel.They were not transportempfindlich. Bulkier cargoes with a less favourable value-to-weight ratio grown inland hadin general to await the days of railways and steamships before they could enter international commerce.139 . It seems likely that Pomeranz’s calculations of the scale of the ‘ghost’ acreage involved are exaggerated. Forexample, he estimates that to have secured in 1800 the calories obtained from sugar ‘would have required at least1,300,000 acres of average-yielding English farms and conceivably over 1,900,000’. Pomeranz, The greatdivergence, p. 275. He considered that sugar provided 4 per cent of the calorie intake of the population at that date.The balance was provided chiefly by home-grown cereals. If, for simplicity, we assume a figure of 1.5 m. acres as

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the English land use equivalent of the sugar imported, and if this represented one twenty-fifth of the totalconsumption of calories, this would imply that providing the balance would have required the use of 36 m. acres ofland devoted to cereals (24 x 1.5 = 36). Since the total arable acreage in England and Wales in 1800 was only 11.5m. acres (tab. 1), and indeed the total acreage in farm use only c. 29.0 m. acres (Overton, Agricultural revolution,tab. 3.6, p. 76), it seems likely that some recalculation is called for. There is also question mark over his estimate of‘ghost’ acreage in relation to cotton. He based his estimate on Bowden’s reconstruction of a hypothetical 500-acresheep farm in the early seventeenth century (Pomeranz, The great divergence, p. 315). In one sense his arithmetic isunobjectionable. The farm produced a little more than 8,600 lbs of wool or about 17 lbs per acre per annum. Heequated 1 lb of cotton to 1.5 lbs of wool and concluded that when in 1815 the country imported about 100m. lbs ofcotton, this represented the equivalent of just under 9 m. ‘ghost’ acres of sheep rearing. Though this is formallycorrect, he did not mention the fact that in Bowden’s hypothetical reconstruction, the value of wool produced on thefarm was only 45 per cent of the total value of the farm’s gross output (Bowden, ‘Agricultural prices, farm profits,and rents’, tab. 28, p. 665). There is therefore a sense in which the ‘ghost’ acreage required might be regarded as 4m. rather than 9 m. acres, since in a market economy the value of the other produce could have been used topurchase wool. Further, it is curious that Pomeranz did not make use of Bowden’s similar exercise for a notionalsheep farm in 1740-1, since this was much nearer in time to the early nineteenth century. This later calculationreferred to a hypothetical sheep farm of 100 acres. The output of wool per acre was much the same, in this case justover 18 lbs per acre, but wool represented less than 20 per cent of the value of the output of the farm: Bowden,‘Agricultural prices, wages, farm profits’, tab. 13.25, pp.112-13. The year in question was an exceptionally difficultone, ‘among the most disastrous ever experienced by the British livestock industry’ (ibid., p. 111), and the price ofwool was depressed, but sheep farming, compared with the early seventeenth century, now placed a greateremphasis on meat production rather than concentrating chiefly on producing fine wool (ibid., p. 116), and even in anormal year the ‘ghost’ acreage calculation might have resulted in a substantially lower figure.140 . Pomeranz, The great divergence, p. 264141 . See Wrigley, ‘Urban growth and agricultural change’, tab. 7.4, p.170 for estimates of the scale of the rise innon-agricultural employment between 1600 and 1800.142 . Dejongh and Thoen, ‘ Arable productivity in Flanders’, p. 58.143 . Ibid., p. 57. Another pattern, noted in Denmark, but which may have been widespread was characterised byparallel changes in labour input and production per acre without significant change in output per head. Christensen,‘Arable production and productivity in Danish agriculture’, esp. p. 182. Christensen was reviewing the period 1750-1850.144 . The figure of 250 per cent is merely illustrative. If, however, net grain output increased by over 180 per centand the proportion of arable land in cereal production fell from 91 to 79 per cent (tab. 1), this implies that arableoutput rose more than three-fold (assuming that the rise was in the cereal and non-cereal arable sectors was similar).Pastoral output may be assumed to have risen perhaps five-fold since the number of animal units more than doubledand output per animal increased similarly (tab. 3 and p. ).145 . Crafts, British economic growth, tab. 2.11, p. 45. For completeness it should be noted that his estimates werebased on a mixture of English and British data.146 . Malanima, ‘Measuring the Italian economy’. See also Federico and Malanima, ‘Progress, decline, growth’.147 . Ibid., p. 288 and tab. 2, p. 275.148 . Ibid., pp. 287-8.149 . De Vries and Van der Woude, The first modern economy.150 . Allen, ‘The great divergence in European wages and prices’.151 . He concluded a passage summarising the nature of the law of diminishing returns by remarking: ‘This [thedeclining returns to both capital and labour] will necessarily be rendered permanent by the laws of nature, whichhave limited the productive powers of the land’. Ricardo, Principles of political economy, p. 126.152 . The necessary tension arising from the tendency of population to grow exponentially while agricultural outputcould not be expanded commensurately (in Malthus’s terms the contrast between geometric and arithmetic growthrates) might be expected to condemn the mass of the poor to misery. Any increase in numbers tended to worsenmatters. Malthus, Essay on population, pp. 8-10.153 . The positive check operated through mortality, principally disease, famine, and warfare: the positive checkthrough fertility, in Malthus’s exposition chiefly by delaying marriage and increasing celibacy. Malthus set out hisinitial thinking on their relative importance in ibid., chs. 4 and 5.154 . The development of Malthus’s thinking after the publication of the first Essay is described in ‘Introduction’,Works of Malthus, I, pp. 20-32.

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155 . Malthus, Principles of political economy, p. 183.156 . Malthus, it should be noted, also propounded a view of the inevitability of declining marginal returns at muchthe same time as Ricardo: Malthus, Nature and progress of rent.157 . Smith, Wealth of nations, I, p. 381.158 . Ibid., I, p. 385.159 . Ibid., II, p. 404.160 . Smith used the prevailing rate of interest as a proxy for the measurement of investment opportunities generally.He remarked that Holland was a richer country than England but that Dutch rates of interest were lower becausetheir stock had ‘increased beyond what they can employ with tolerable profit in the proper business of their owncountry’, and this had led to the purchase of much French and English debt. Later in the same passage he concludedthat: ‘In a country which had acquired that full complement of riches which the nature of its soil and climate, and itssituation with respect to other countries, allowed it to acquire; which could, therefore, advance no further, and whichwas not going backwards, both the wages of labour and the profits of stock would probably be very low.’ Smith,Wealth of nations, I, pp. 102-3, 106.161 . Wrigley, ‘The quest for the industrial revolution’.