Book Reviews

MARIE CLOUGH (ed.), The Book of Bartholo- edited with competence and discretion. Dr mew Bolney. Sussex Record Society, Vol. Clough's introduction is admirable as far as LXlII, 1964. it goes. One wishes she had been allowed to This is the estate book of an interesting Sussex write at greater length about the agrarian family whose landed fortunes appear to have background. A map or maps would have in- been at their apogee in the middle years of creased the interest and utility of the edition. the fifteenth century. Bartholomew Bolney R. H. HILTON (14o57-77) was a typical member of the county gentry. Trained as a lawyer, he acted MARY LOBEL (ed.), A Victoria History of the as steward to the abbot of Battle, kept a court County of Oxford. Vol. VIII, Lewknor and in Sussex for the archbishop of Canterbury, Pyrton Hundreds. Published for the Insti- was a J.P. and on innumerable government tute of Historical Research by Oxford Uni- commissions in his county. Like other Kent versity Press, 1964. xxx + 298 pp. £7 7 s. and Sussex gentry he supported Jack Cade This volume is the fourth of the topographical and seems to have suffered no set-back in his volumes prepared by the present editor since career for having done so. Although a gentle- 1957, and like its predecessors it is mainly man in 145o , his ancestors may have been concerned with tile flat country between yeomen, but this is uncertain. Oxford and the Chiltern hills. The hundreds This book is essentially a collection of of Lewknor and Pyrton lie adjacent to one an- proofs of title, but it contains more than re- other at the eastern edge of the plain with cords of deeds. Under the heading of each their southern tips extending over part of the place where Bolney had property are entered Chilterns. They are just south of the town of detailed rentals and a sort of narrative of the Thame and a few miles to the north-west of various acquisitions and titles. As a layman's the Thames at Wallingford. For agricultural cartulary the book is a comparative rarity, historians this is an area of great interest be- reminiscent of the Boarstall Cartulary. Much cause it was one of the last strongholds of of the legal and tenurial detail is of minor in- open-field farming in England; no fewer than terest to the agrarian historian, whose real eleven of the fourteen parishes included in need is for matter which reveals agricultural this volume retained their open fields into the practice. But there are nevertheless items of nineteenth century, and one of them, Cro- considerable interest. In spite of attempts at well, was not enclosed until 1882, being one consolidation, it is clear that there was very of the last in the country. great fragmentation of holdings, both arable Thus this detailed study of the region pre- and meadow. And in spite of the still low level sents an excellent opportunity to examine the of population, there is much evidence of the complex forces involved in such a long sur- shortage of pasture and of its careful regula- vival of the ancient system, and a chance to tion, suggesting an increase in livestock. assess their relative strength, parish by parish. Bolney's inheritance, mainly built up dur- It is not the policy of the Victoria History to ing his lifetime, began to be dissipated imme- draw general conclusions about the regions it diately after his death and was all gone from includes in its topographical volumes, but the family less than a century afterwards. Is from the abundance of hitherto little-used this all illustration of the same instability of manuscript sources on which the editors have landed fortunes among the gentry as was been able to draw, unusually full sections characteristic of the richer peasants at this on agrarian history have been provided, and period? these are of real value to specialists in agri- The book is translated from the Lati.n and cultural history. They are conveniently aug- 61 62 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW mented by some maps of the field systems be- sand was very fertile and this must have en- fore enclosure. Five maps covering complete abled farmers there to continue to find farm- parishes and two covering parts of parishes ing profitable in the open fields when it was are provided. These maps are so helpful that ceasing to be so in other parts of the country. one wishes it had been possible to provide This would apply particularly to the numer- maps for all the parishes. Expense is no doubt ous small freeholders in the district. For in- a limiting factor, but there is no substitute for stance, Arthur Young reported in 18o9 that a map; and even a post-enclosure map based the yield of wheat in the common fields of on the enclosure, or the tithe, award is better Aston Rowant was five quarters per acre com- than nothing. pared with an average of three quarters for In the survival of the open fields many com- south Oxfordshire as a whole (p. 31). At plex influences, some of them purely per- Chinnor in I699 land in the common fields sonal or eccentric, played their part, but three usually sold for twenty-five to thirty years' basic factors continually recur--the nature of purchase and the best land at forty years' I the soil, the structure of land-ownership, and purchase (p. 69). In contrast the gault clay improvements in the practices of open-field land was unsuitable for crops, but grew fair :i farming. Nearly all the parishes in Lewknor grass, and it is not surprising that the small jr ¸ and Pyrton hundreds are what are known as townships (mostly containing 500--750 acres) strip parishes and they are common to much which had grown up on it were the first to I,El of the English limestone and chalk scarpland. be enclosed. Some of them such as Clare, They are parishes based on ancient settle- Standhill, and Golder (all in Pyrton parish) J ment which have assumed a long narrow form and Cop Court and Chalford (in Aston ! in order to take advantage of the prevailing Rowant parish) are now only single farms; geological conditions. They are frequently while the others, Emmington, Adwell, and several miles long (the ancient parish of Wheatfield, are hardly more than hamlets. All Pyrton, which included the separate town- these townships were mainly enclosed in the ships of Clare, Golder, and Standhill in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries or earlier. vale, and Assendon on the Chilterns, was Geographical position was also a factor twelve miles long) but seldom more than a favourable to the open fields, for most of the mile wide, and sometimes much less. This villages in Lewknor and Pyrton hundreds shape enabled them to take maximum advan- were within ten miles of the river port of tage of the differing soils. The villages them- Henley-on-Thames from which corn, malt, selves are usually situated on the narrow belt and other agricultural produce could be of fertile upper greensand which lies below cheaply transported to the London market. the chalk of the Chilterns, near the spring This tended to encourage the continuance of line. The core of the old open fields was on arable cultivation and so to inhibit enclosure the greensand, and they extended north- for pasture. wards to the edge of the heavy gault clay and The importance of social structure is also southwards on to the lower slopes of the Chil- clearly brought out, and this is linked to terns. The gault clay was usually too wet and favourable economic conditions; for it is stiff for much arable farming and was used as clear that in most cases the continuance of common meadow or pasture, while the thin, open-field farming was closely associated stony soils on the Chilterns provided common with a large group of freehold owners farm- grazingor timberinthe extensivebeechwoods. ing their own land; and the maintenance of The hamlets on the Chilterns sometimes had small freehold farms of this type required a few open fields but the bulk of their land was favourable soil and market conditions. The enclosed and much of it had been so since it influence of these small owners was particu- was first cleared for cultivation. larly noticeable in Chinnor, which was not It is clear that the arable land on the green- enclosed until 1854. In 1841 9 ° people owned BOOK REVIEWS 63 land in Chmnor, of whom only seven owned of the land with clover and vetches. This was more than 50 acres. The majority of the free- presumably on the fallow field as at South holders (45) owned only cottages, orchards, Weston, where a similar agreement had been or gardens, but there were 38 farmers owning made in I763, to try an experiment of growing under 25 acres. These freeholds were of turnips, vetches, and clover on the fallow several centuries' standing, most of them field to increase its fertility. Similar agree- having originated when the manor was split ments probably existed in other parishes as up and sold in 1591. Freeholders with small well. holdings were also numerous in other The variable use of arable strips by sowing parishes, and especially in Watlington, them to grass as temporary leys had also been Lewknor, and Kingston Blount (a township in existence for many years, as for instance in of Aston Rowant parish). They usually had to Aston Rowant, where as early as 1618 Combe be bought out before enclosure could occur. furlong was described as consisting of $ acres For instance, in Chinnor Samuel Turner, a of arable land and 9 acres of pasture. The en- Londoner who inherited an estate in the closure of part of a parish and its conversion :i parish in 183o, and who never resided there, to pasture could also help to strengthen the i:i bought out 21 smallholders between 1830 and open fields by relieving the shortage of grass- 1854, before he could obtain sufficient agree- land. This was especially true of old en- I ment for enclosure--which apparently in- closures which were 'Lammas land' (i.e. on terested him solely as a speculation in land which common grazing rights still existed at values (p. 7o). Again at Kingston Blount, certain times of the year). Such enclosures where enclosure came slightly earlier (in the were not uncommon. 183o's) it "was evidently the number of small The consolidation of strips into compact landowners at Kingston Blount that delayed blocks of about twenty acres had occurred at inclosure of the common fields of Aston and Shirburn by 173o (p. 191), no doubt accom- Kingston. It finally came in 1832-5, after panied by other minor improvements. It is the holdings ranging from -~-acre to 58 acres not possible to give further examples here, of some 23 farmers had been bought up" but there is enough evidence to indicate that (p. 31). The same story could be repeated open-field farming was considerably modi- elsewhere in the region. fied during the eighteenth century, if not even However, the question remains: did open- earlier, and that this was an important field farming survive in this area because it influence in its survival. was a backwater inhabited by a multitude Of course, the survival of the open fields is 'i of conservative peasants--Arthur Young's not the only subject of interest in the agri- "goths and vandals"--who were too stupid cultural history of this area. There is much and narrow-minded to see the advantages of interesting material relating to earlier and enclosure, or had some improvements taken later periods, and the editors are to be con- place in open-field farming which made it gratulated for giving the subject such detailed tolerably convenient and profitable? No treatment. The volume is handsomely pro-

t doubt there is some truth in both views. In- duced and contains excellent illustrations, in- ertia and dislike of change are usually strong cluding twenty-six photographs and thirteen forces, but there is enough evidence of im- reproductions of old prints and drawings. provements-necessarily scattered about in M. A. HAVINDEN leases, court rolls, and accounts--to suggest that some of the more serious disadvantages H. MIJNZ, The Australian Wool Industry. commonly associated with open-field farm- Angus and Robertson, 1964. 2nd edn. 237 ing had been overcome. For instance, at pp. 5os. (Australian). Crowell in 18o9 Arthur Young found that This book, first published in i95o , has been there was an agreement to sow about a third revised and new chapters added to bring it

J :l 64 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW up to date. It hfls a general approach aimed tary enclosures in north Lincolnshire, here at the practical sheep man. Although there describes the course of five more. His maps, are several historical chapters of an introduc- analyses of proprietors, their allotments, and tory nature concerning the introduction of the cost of enclosure, his use of enclosure Merino sheep into Australia, and their sub- commissioners' minute books and news- sequent evolution, the main appeal of the papers supply all the information that anyone book to the agricultural historian will lie in could wish for. And for anyone seeking fruit- its summary of the Australian wool-growing ful ideas for a novel, there are many embedded industry. in the fantastic story of the North Kelsey en- All aspects from geography and climate closure. The commissioners set to work with through structure of the industry and sheep alacrity as soon as the Act was passed in 1813. types to life and work on a sheep station, and By 1817 things were slowing down noticeably the classing and marketing of wool are dealt and between 1822 and 1824 the commission- with. Chapters concerning research on sheep ers were meeting only once a year. It was not and on the structure of the wool fibre give until 184o that the award was finally executed, useful and up-to-date summaries, but that and by that time 36 out of 6I proprietors were concerning the growth of wool within the skin dead. is weak, and readers needing to quote such The explanation for the long delays lies, in details should seek more authoritative infor- Mr Russell's view, in the eagerness of the mation elsewhere. There is a useful I3-page commissioners to take on every enclosure ap- glossary of wool and textile terms, and an up- pointment that came their way; they were too to-date bibliography. lucrative to miss. One of the commissioners M. L. RYDER for North Kelsey, John Burcham, accepted at least twenty more appointments between P~x C. RUSSELL, The Enclosures of East HaL 1813 and 184o besides serving as steward ton, z8of-zSo 4 and North Kelsey, I8z3- to Lord Yarborough. He left a fortune of i84o. Rex Russell, I I Priestgate, Barton- £600,000, and although it is not suggested on-Humber, Lines., 1964. 78 pp. +4 maps. that all this came from the luckless proprietors 4s.; REx C. RUSSELL, The Enclosures of of Lincolnshire parishes, the documents show Bottesford and Yaddlethorpe, x794-7, Mes- that he was a hard man who made sure of get- singham, z798-z8o 4, and Ashby, 18Ol- ring his own accounts paid while poorer men z8o9. Journal of the Scunthorpe Museum suffered. Contractors digging the new ditches Society, I, 1964. 4 ° pp. 5s.; ¥. H. T. SKIPI' and laying the new roads waited eight years assisted by R. P. HASTINGS, Discovering and more for their bills to be settled, while Bickenhill. Department of Extra-Mural one proprietor who had land awarded to him Studies, Birmingham University, 1963. waited indefinitely for some means of access 96 pp. 6s. to it. The financial cost of the enclosure was Adult-education tutors and their classes have only one aspect of the hardship and frustra- produced some excellent local studies in the tion which it occasioned. past few years, and have been showing con- Discovering Bickenhill is the outcome of siderable ingenuity in getting them published. team-work by adult-education students on The three books under review are the next in the local history of a large parish in Warwick- an honourable line, all well illustrated with shire, seven miles from Birmingham. Geo- maps (those furnished by Rex Russell are logical information, manorial boundaries, and especially large and beautiful specimens of the present-day map are cleverly exploited the mapmaker's art) and all moderately for their information on the early history of priced. settlement; deeds and manorial documents Mr Rex Russell, who has already com- are used to trace the changes in field layout, pleted some admirable studies of Parliamen- land use, and landownership; parish docu- iiI

II H BOOK REVIEWS 65 ments shed light on population size and prob- argument of those who have not subjected lems of local government up to the mid-nine- themselves to this sobering experience. In teenth century. To the present reviewer the short, he believes with Dr Thompson that most impressive part of the story is that in the melodramatic view of nineteenth-century which the complex field pattern at Church landlords adopted by Mr McGregor (the ad- Bickenhill in the period I29o to I35o is con- jective is Professor Spring's) ignores the cold structed from medieval deedsand then com- realities of agrarian history. pared with a survey of I677 when a regular Professor Spring's evidence also tends to three-field system had emerged. It is a con- reinforce Dr Thompson's argument that, so vincing example of the way in which fields far from neglecting agriculture, much of the were rationalized and tidied up into a system, heavy estate investment of landlords of the contrary to the prevailing view which main- middle nineteenth-century was uneconomic. tains that the system was in existence from Their capital laid out in drainage, farm build- the outset and that by hook or by crook we ings, and cottages frequently produced a re- must fit the muddled medieval pattern of turn of a mere z½ per cent (as on the Duke of fields into it. Others may well find other gems Bedford's estates), and to finance this invest- in this account, for it touches on many facets ment landlords were in fact often borrowing of social and economic history. And most at 4½ per cent over terms of twenty-five years good local studies, such as this, lead to the or more--terms whose length took many of modification of more than one old-established them beyond the i879 limit of rising rentals generalization. and into the slough of the great depression. JOAN THIRSK Why did landlords choose to invest in so un- economical a manner, or, as Dr Thompson DAVID SparNc, The English Landed Estate in would put it, why did they subsidize farming the Nineteenth Century: its Administration. at so great a cost to themselves? Professor Johns Hopkins Press: Oxford University Spring sees the answer in the imperatives of Press, I963. viq-zI6 pp. 4os. the system of administration of great estates, David Spring's book appears as a timely con- particularly in the control exercised by agents, tribution to the present discussion of the enthusiastic for improved productivity, and English landed estate and, in particular, to fascinated by the techniques of the new scien- the controversy centring round the r61e of tific agriculture. In addition, many large the nineteenth-century landlord. Indeed, in owners of the golden age had buoyant in- many ways the most interesting part of an comes from mines or urban ground rents, and interesting volume is found in the few pages could afford to look with a degree of compla- of conclusion in which these matters are spe- cency on a high and unprofitable level of farm cifically considered. Here the author discusses investment. And, of course, the undertaking only too briefly the advantages and disadvan- of this kind of investment was a fulfilment of tages of the English landlord-tenant system the traditional r61e of the landlord: in this and the capacity of landowners as estate way he asserted his leadership in agricultural managers. He shows that his sympathies lie affairs, and at no small cost to himself met the with those who believe that agricultural pro- new standards of fixed capital required for the gress was not unduly hampered by the legal successful 'high' farming of his tenants. restrictions imposed on settled land, or by the Professor Spring believes that by the mid- absence of leases, which he states was due nineteenth century the English aristocrat had more to economic causes than to a concern undergone some transformation in character. with game or votes. Professor Spring is thus On the defensive in the political sphere, he in clear agreement with those other scholars now extended and intensified his activities in who have taken the trouble to thumb tedious- agricultural and administrative affairs, and in ly through the estate archives, and rejects the consequence he often adopted a more busi- i]

i ¸¸~, iI j•

66 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW nesslike and scientific attitude towards the tion was respectable, if not opulent: it gener- running of his estate. Such a landlord found ally amounted to from 3 to 5 per cent of the an appropriate chief executive in the barrister- gross rental, or a sum of from £500 to £r,ooo auditor, who controlled the local land agents a year, with a house and certain other allow- and undertook the detailed administration of ances. The social origins of the agents were the property. With considerable reliance on various, but in the main their background was the history of the Bedford estates under the one of practical acquaintance with the ex- seventh Duke and his auditor and chief agent pertise required for estate administration-- Christopher Haedy, but with a wealth also of they were very often farmers, builders, sur- other contemporary illustrations, Professor veyors, or mining engineers, and frequently Spring examines in detail the efficiency, the sons of land agents themselves. Their for- drive, technical knowledge, and the single- mal training was usually slight, akhough some minded loyalty to the well-being of the estate went as pupils to established land agents. which the best administrators showed. He Originating and remaining firmly within the has an intriguing chapter on the r61e of law- middle c/asses, they knew their place and yers in estate management, and a series of generally kept it: it was an unusually bold case studies, from which one concludes that agent who would presume to upbraid his em- the Scots were strongly represented among ployer for extravagance harmful to the estate the best agents. Some of these were men of Nalthough Lord Francis Egerton was once considerable distinction. James Loch, for ex- informed that his agent would let him know ample, "was a Member of Parliament and a "when you may again increase your outlay." cultivated man. He was the friend of Huskis- A valuable chapter considers the state-pro- son, Peel, and Brougham. He was a director vided drainage loans, the legislative measures of the English Historical Society, and designed to relax the financial rigidities of sprinkled his letters to Lord Francis with settled estates, and the work of the land- erudite bits of etymological lore. In cultiva- drainage companies and the Enclosure Com- tion he was his employer's equal; in business, missioners in helping landlords to improve his master and tutor. Such men demonstrated their estates. But it is in this aspect of the the power of professional excellence, and in study that the reader feels especially the limi- time would cast doubt by their mere existence tations imposed by Professor Spring's choice on the purported excellences of a hereditary of a restricted period and a restricted treat- aristocracy." ment. Thus, while we have a useful discussion As in the eighteenth century, the compe- of the work of the enclosure commissioners tent estate agent was important in stimulating we have nothing on tithe commutation or the improved farming methods. Reluctantly re- tithe commissioners, and while the relatively specting the traditional regard for old ten- unimportant legislation of the mid-nineteenth ants of the family and the conventional secur- century is examined in some detail, the study ity of tenure, he weeded out the inefficient. of the changes in land law runs out with a Sometimes he was obliged to concern himself brief statement on the Settled Land Act of with electoral matters, and not infrequently I882. One cannot but think that what the with the oversight of mines, quarries, and author has chosen to give us, interesting and canalsNand in one case, at least, an agent was useful as it is, should have constituted the prepared to do battle against striking miners, central section of a much longer book. As it sending for troops and taking up station in is, we are presented with only the middle act the engine house in the hope that the miners of a three-act drama, and are left wondering might rashly attack, when "several must be what happened before and what came after. killed which will more rapidly put an end to How did estate administration develop before the matter." the I83o's--the French wars and the post- For all these responsibilities the remunera- war depression period would be worth an ex-

~j BOOK REVIEWS 67 tended examination~and what was the im- farming that repeatedly happened in the nine- pact on estate administration of the great teenth century are already well known to eco- price fall of the last quarter of the century? nomic and agricultural historians. This vol- And even if it is accepted that the middle ume emphasizes their incidence in a particu- forty years of the century have a certain unity lar area of the country, where the family as the heyday and final flowering of the great played a large part in trying to ameliorate the landed estate, and thereby merit separate conditions for a good many people, and did treatment, it must be said that this treatment their best to overcome the successive difficul- still omits much of importance. For example, ties that followed in such rapid sequence. Professor Spring merely touches on the rela- Both father and son had an intimate know- tionships between the great owners and the ledge of the area they served they lived rising industrial and commercial classes, there all their lives--and their experiences are whose interests in the transport changes, well worth following, if only because they urban expansion, and the growth of the coal underline the troubles of farming in their and iron industries offered both challenge and time, troubles that we ought to hope will t opportunity to estate administrators; little re- never recur. It should certainly be read by S ference is made also to the connected topic of Essex historians, and indeed those of wider the growing incomes from urban land; more interests. It is one of those useful family re- ] might have been expected on relations be- cords that illuminate the duller chronicles of tween tenant farmers and estate administra- government inquiries and private polemic tion--a matter of some importance in view writing. A disconcerting feature of the book J of Mr McGregor's criticisms; and lastly, as is the author's habit of referring to his ances- Professor Spring states, he has not extended tors by their initials; while these must be well his study to the growth of land agency as a known in the family, the outside reader is profession and the rise of London firms of occasionally baffled. agents. G. E. FUSSELL While we must therefore be grateful for this interesting and stimulating study, we MANCUR OLSON, JR. The Economics of the must also regret that it was not conceived on Wartime Shortage: A History of British a broader and more valuable scale. Food Supplies in the Napoleonic War and in G. E. MINGAY World Wars I and H. Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 1963. viii j. OXLEY PARKER, The Oxley Parker Papers + 152 pp. $4.5o. from the Letters and Diaries of an Essex It was a happy idea of Mr Olson to examine Family of Land Agents in the Nineteenth the British food situation during the struggle Century. Benham & Co., Colchester, 1964. against Napoleon and in the wars of 1914-18 ix+3oo pp., illus. 2is. and 1939-45. As Great Britain was the only This is the history of an Essex family from power continuously at war for the complete the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth cen- periods covered by these events, the relevant tury. It was originally prepared for family statistics (such as they are) for the British consumption, but through the good offices of economy are naturally the most extensive Mr F. G. Emmison, county archivist of Essex, available. As an economist Mr Olson is pri- the author was persuaded to put it at the dis- marily concerned to discover similarities in posal of a wider audience. The family was at the British experiences and seeks in a rather least well-to-do, even rich, and besides being naive and unsatisfactory introduction to landowners and farmers acted as land-agents apply economic theory to the analysis of the for several owners, and arbitrated in disputes three situations. As an economic historian the about land from about 18oo to 188o. present reviewer is inclined to keep in mind The constant fluctuations and crises in the dissimilarities and the uniqueness of each Ii I;!

68 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW set of historical events. Even where the impressive a bibliography on the subject as general situation appears superficially very the Germans, yet no general history has been similar, e.g. in 1914-18 and 1939-45 , there published since Alfred Maury's Histoire des were extraordinary differences in the way the For~ts de la Gaule et de l'Ancienne France food problem was handled. An example is the (1867). In the meantime much additional reluctance to introduce food rationing until documentary evidence has come to light. the First World War was nearly over, in con- Michel Dev~ze, therefore, builds this new trast with its early application during the study of the French forests in the sixteenth Second World War. Confidence in the power century upon the solid foundation laid by of economic analysis to enlighten the his- others (his bibliography at the beginning of torian is not likely to be strengthened by Volume I is of great value), and adds much statements such as "Agriculture is, needless new material culled from hitherto unused ad- to say, confined to rural areas, areas which for ministrative and legal records. It is an instruc- the most part support no other industry" tive and interesting story in many ways, not (p. zo). To anyone familiar with the extent least because the crisis in the forests overtook of the domestic system of industry in the the French at least fifty years before it afflicted countryside during the early nineteenth cen- the English forests, and judging by some re- tury, and the proliferation of industries into markable similarities in their' policies, the rural areas in the early twentieth century, this English Crown took some lessons from the generalization appears to bear little relation French. to the facts of British economic life. The story is not mainly one of parallels, When Mr Olson gets away from his intro- however, but of significant differences. Royal duction he has many interesting and valuable forest law did not cut across the rights of things to say, in particular about the food owners of the soil as it did in England. The situation during the First World War, which French king's rights were restricted to his is not well remembered and about which own estates, and extensive though his forests little seems to have been written recently. It were, they were no greater in many districts will be most useful for students of economic than those belonging to lay lords, ecclesiastics, ij history at all levels to have so many references and villages. However, as the century wore to the extensive literature on the subject on, the Crown began to intervene more and assembled and subjected to a preliminary more in the management of private forests on analysis by someone who is versed in the the ground that their preservation, particu- strategic as well as the historical and eco- larly as sources of timber, was a matter of nomic implications of the subject. In parti- public interest. The only forests which es- cular British readers will be made aware of caped attention were the communal forests Frangois Crouzet's monumental L'Economie belonging to villages, but these did not as yet Britannique et le Blocus Continental, zgo6- invite commercial exploitation. They lay for zSr 3 (2 vols.), Paris, I958 , which was un- the most part in the thinly settled and poor- accountably ignored in the appropriate soiled mountainous areas of the south and volume of the Oxford History of England. east, in the Pyrenees and the Alps, and in any W, H, CHALONER case were fairly carefully administered by the communities owning them. They remained a MICHEL DEV/~Z~,La Vie de la For$t Franfaise piece of communal property run on medieval au XVIe Si&le. Ecole Pratique des Hautes lines throughout the period. Etudes, Sixi~me Section, Centre de Re- The problems of royal and private forests cherches Historiques, Paris, I961.2 vols. all sprang from the same cause. The increas- 326 PP., 474 PP. ing population was making heavier demands i0 The French have shown great interest in the on all forest resources, demanding more pas- history of their forests and can produce as ture for an increasing number of animals,

ii! BOOK REVIEWS 69 more arable for cultivation, more fuel for author of this book. He describes the com- more fires, fuel for expanding industrial uses, moners' rights to pasture and gives examples and fuel for the towns. The old forest laws of the horse-rearing, cattle-keeping, and pig- were totally inadequate: they did not effec- fattening, which were staple activities in most tively control the use of wood for commercial forests, but he views the crisis of the sixteenth purposes or restrict the growth of workshops century from the standpoint of the proprie- and forges; they paid no heed to rising num- tors and the industrial and urban users of bers, but conceded common rights to all timber, and does not have much to say about comers; they almost encouraged offenders by the agricultural problems which must un- their lenient fines. doubtedly have beset the forest inhabitants Owners began to fret at the restraints im- when their common rights were drastically posed by commoners upon the commercial reduced. In England the absence of forest re- development of their forests. But it was the forms encouraged a swarm of immigrants to Crown which took the first steps towards move into the forests, which in the seven- breaking this stranglehold, initiating reforms teenth century acquired a reputation for being which lesser landowners then copied. Francis the refuge of a wild and ungovernable people I ordered a survey of his forests and instituted and the home of religious dissent. In France a court of judges, sitting at the Tables de it is difficult to believe that economic condi- Marbre to administer speedy justice. Other tions after the reforms attracted outsiders into landowners recognized in these measures a the forests, yet they still became the centres solution to their problems and availed them- of opposition to established authority, in- selves of the services of royal surveyors, forest habited by supporters of the ancien rdgime and advisers, and courts to rescue their forests enemies of the revolution. In short, a host of from ruin. important questions are bound up with the Reforms were introduced with remarkably effect of forest reforms in the sixteenth cen- little opposition from the commoners. They tury upon the subsequent agricultural and accepted various curtailments of their rights: social development of the forest communities often they were given free use of one-third of of France. the forest while the remaining two-thirds be- JOAN THIRSK came the exclusive preserve of the owner; in other cases they accepted larger or smaller WILHELM ABEL, Geschichte der deutschen allotments according to their estimated needs. Landwirtschaft yore friihen Mittelalter bis Occupants of houses built less than forty zum z 9. Jahrhundert. 1962. 336 pp. DM. years before forfeited their common rights; 43.8o; FRIEDRICH Lf2TGE, Geschichte der industrial workers had to buy the wood they deutschen Agrarverf assung vom friihen Mit- needed for their furnaces and forges. The telalter bis zum z 9. Jahrhundert. 1963. 270 crisis of the forests was averted to the satis- pp. DM.37.8o; HEINZ HAIJSHOFER, Die faction of the owners and at the expense of deutsche Landwirtschaft im technischen Zeit- the commoners. alter. 1963. 290 pp. DM.39.8o. Vols. II, Much of this study is based upon adminis- III, & v of Deutsche Agrargeschichte, ed. trative documents, and so is especially con- Prof. Dr Giinther Franz. Verlag Eugen cerned with administrative problems. There Ulmer, Stuttgart. is still room for another study which uses These three volumes are the first to appear local records to uncover something more in a series of five which will cover the agrarian about the agricultural communities of the history of Germany from prehistoric times to forest. For while the structure of forest indus- the present day. This large theme is being tries emerges fairly clearly--more dearly skilfully compressed into some relatively slim from French documents than from English volumes, each the work of one hand. Pro- ones--the details of the agriculture elude the fessor Wilhelm Abel writes on tile agrarian "i!

70 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW economy from the early Middle Ages up to areas which lent themselves naturally to the nineteenth century, seeking to relate the cattle-keeping, namely, the marshlands and economic fortunes of landlords and farmers the mountains. Not until the plagues of the to changing population levels and changing fourteenth century, when the proportion of techniques. Professor Ltitge concentrates on men to cattle was temporarily changed, did the structure of society during the same the peasant begin to enjoy beef. period, while Dr Haushofer describes the The losses of population through plague course of the agricultural revolution from were not made good until about i56o when i i8i 5 to the present day. Two volumes are yet pressure On the land encouraged a fresh wave to come: Professor Jankuhn will deal with of colonization and increasing agricultural i prehistoric and early settlement history; Pro- specialization. East Germany and Poland fessor Franz is preparing a volume on the concentrated on corn production, west and peasantry as a class. The complete series central Germany on stock-keeping, and a affords an interesting comparison with the lively traffic in cattle, which had begun on a Agrarian History of England and Wales, now small scale in the fourteenth and fifteenth in preparation. centuries, brought stores and oxen by the English readers will know Professor Abel thousand from parts of Poland, Russia, and already through his work on the desertion of Hungary to the great marts of Posen, Frank- villages in Europe at the end of the Middle furt an der Oder, and Btittstadt, Vienna, Ages. The same style and approach is evident Breslau, and Brieg. Professor Abel draws at- here: in a closely woven narrative he exa- tention to new methods employed at this time mines and, where possible, co-ordinates every to intensify production, but concludes that aspect of technical and social development, more was done to meet the needs of the grow- offering at the same time a framework of ing population by enlarging the area under generalizations that will pull the many tangled cultivation than by economies in the use of threads of the story into order. He sees the land. A spate of farming manuals poured from beginnings of village life in the settlements of the printing presses, but, as before, arable two or three families with ring-fence farms, farming received the lion's share of attention cultivating their land on an extensive rotation and stock was comparatively neglected. of corn and grass. As numbers increased-- The history of agriculture during the and he postulates something of a population Thirty Years' War is evidently no better explosion during or immediately after the documented than that during the English seventh century--these small groups of farms Civil War and Professor Abel has little to say grew into nucleated villages and land was of this period. But the losses of population more intensively cultivated. All improve- were so large that the peace was followed by ,! ments thereafter until the fourteenth century, a period of extraordinary enthusiasm for in- .ii and with some interruptions virtually until novation and improvement, unparalleled in the eighteenth, were directed towards increas- Europe, which lasted from I67o to I75o, and ing the productivity of the arable. They in- which affords abundant written evidence for cluded the introduction of the three-course the first time on the types of grain varieties in rotation, the development of the common- use, techniques of farming, and breeds of "ii field system, and the use of many new arable stock. crops. Simultaneously, the forest and grass- One of the most striking features of Pro- land diminished and stock-keeping declined. fessor Abel's account is his pessimistic judge- Animals were considered a necessary nuis- ment on the standard of farming before the ance only, providing manure, but not to be nineteenth century. Observing the close i i:i fed on crops that might feed men. Sheep were parallels between German and English agri- II!, fed on stubble; swine were still kept in the cultural development up to the end of the i'i remaining forests; but cattle withdrew to the sixteenth century, the English reader may

i:! BOOK REVIEWS 71 well wonder whether the picture is not unduly society, Liitge offers an opinion that steers a gloomy. Clearly, the majority of the rural middle course between thetwo extreme views population in Germany, as in England, con- now current in Germany. Early society, he sisted of subsistence farmers. But the r61e of argues, consisted of free men as well as lords the improving farmer should not be under- and their underlings, but as lords took pos- rated. His routine may be impossible to guess session of large tracts of territory and popula- at, but his influence can be detected in the tion increased, the descendants of freemen in amount of specialization on farms in the search of land were forced to rent it from a Middle Ages, the scale of activity at the mar- lord on his terms. The class of free tenants kets, and in isolated scraps of information did not expand until the post-Carolingian about technical innovations. Professor Abel period when a fresh wave of colonization himself wrkes of specialized milk and butter began, and settlers had to be attracted with production in the mountains and cattle- freer tenures. fattening in the marshes at the end of the Uncertainties about the unfree peasant's Middle Ages. Friesian cattle were sold as such right to pass on his land to his descendants on German markets. A Cologne market ordi- were brought to an end by the hardening of nance of I492 speaks of the sale of Hungarian, custom, and in some areas this led to much Polish, Danish, and Russian cattle. Fruit-, partitioning of holdings. Eventually, many vine-, and hop-growing are said to have ex- tiny holdings and an impoverished peasantry panded greatly in the late fourteenth and fif- emerged, but at first, Lfitge argues, partible teenth centuries, despite the fac~ that labour inheritance was economically advantageous was in short supply. From all this specialized for it led to more intensive cultivation of the activity, we must infer the existence of size- land. It is no coincidence, he writes, that the able markets or other channels for the ex- partitioning of holdings increased in the change of agricultural produce, and hence twelfth and thirteenth centuries as towns ex- plenty of incentives to further improvement. panded. But perhaps Liitge has missed the Did no one respond? Surely, when we find more important social causes for the preva- that Dutch bulls and Friesian cows were be- lence of the custom at this time. Land was in ing imported into Germany in the I58o's , and short supply and heirs were driven to stand that the watering of meadows was being prac- upon their rights to inherit family property. tised in the seventeenth century, we may sus- We find the custom in vogue in parts of pect the existence of some improving farmers, England in the sixteenth century, and for the even some who did not regard stock as a tire- same reason. On the other hand, when land some necessity. In short, Professor Abel's was plentiful, young men did not set such generalizations are stimulating but not always store by their inheritance, and the custom convincing. seems to have fallen into abeyance. In Bavaria Professor L/itge's volume on the structure and in north-west Germany where peasants of rural society is particularly valuable for its insisted on the indivisibility of holdings account of regional differentiation, especially throughout the period of land shortage, the in the later pages where the evidence is more social effects were different again, and a wide abundant. Some regions of Germany became gulf developed between the landed peasant and have remained the strongholds of a pros- and the landless labourers. perous peasantry, others of a poor peasantry The colonization of the east introduced a dependent on handicrafts for supplementary new factor for landless men from other parts employment, yet others of large landlord of Germany moved eastwards and in various farmers. There is much to be learned here ways helped to alleviate the conditions of the about the relative influence of different insti- rest. But from the sixteenth century the his- tutions upon each kind of society. tory of landlordism in east and west diverged: On the thorny problem of the o:igins of in the west and south the great farms shrank

;) i:! i] 72 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW in size or broke up altogether; in the east the French beck'me the model. One of Germany's lords of large estates expanded their own farm most influential agricultural textbooks was a ! ; enterprises and laid increasingly heavy labour comparative study of English and German services on their tenants. The balance of agriculture by Thaer, for which he received power was not much altered until the mid- a congratulatory letter from the Board of eighteenth century when princes, politicians, Agriculture; English breeds of cattle, horses, and men of letters developed a policy towards and pigs were introduced into Germany, and, : i the land and attempted to arrest the decline of course, tile drains and agricultural~ parti- of the peasant class. Thus the "liberation of cularly harvesting, machinery; Max Eyth the peasantry" took place, without any prod- spent many years with the agricultural engi- ding from the victims themselves. It is a neering firm of John Fowler of Leeds, and strange story. returned home to form a German association Dr Haushofer's account of the agricultural modelled on the Royal Agricultural Society. revolution between I8I 5 and the present day Where German agriculturalists scored over is the work of a historian rather than an the English was in appreciating at an early economist, and a historian, moreover, who stage the value of schools, rural institutes, and favours the now unfashionable biographical universities for promoting and disseminating approach. But the result is a most refreshing knowledge. Dr Haushofer's biographies re- and readable book. The lives of the great men veal the influence of the Swiss pedagogues of the agricultural revolution like Albrecht and the German doctors of medicine who Thaer, Justus yon Liebig, and Johann Men- turned to the study of plant life. Through del are sympathetically described and related them agricultural science quickly became a to those of their contemporaries in the world subject which ranked high among academic of literature and politics. These studies of a disciplines. few outstanding individuals together with In one review it is difficult to do justice to some incisive comments from contemporary three substantial volumes of German agricul- newspapers and treatises enable the author tural history. But perhaps enough has been in a few pages to re-create the climate of said to show their interest for the English opinion of each generation. reader, and to underline how much they de- It is instructive to observe the influence of serve to be translated into English and so to England on German agriculture. It was of reach a wider public. paramount importance until I846 , when the JOAN THIRSK

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