Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vvkck Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T10:12:25.546Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Economics of Exhaustion, the Postan Thesis, and the Agricultural Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Gregory Clark
Gregory Clark
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics and Research Associate of the Agricultural History Center, University of California, Davis.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Postan thesis is that medieval agriculture had low yields because there was insufficient pasture to keep the arable land fertile. This argument (and variants of it) has become an orthodox technological explanation for low preindustrial yields. Yet the thesis, on its face, implies that early cultivators were ignorant, irrational, or completely custom bound. This article develops a revised Postan thesis, in which medieval cultivators knew that pasture restored fertility but were unwilling to employ it. Impatience made this way of increasing yields unattractive because it required large capital investments in the soil nitrogen stock.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 61 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allen, Robert C., “Inferring Yields from Probate Inventories,” this Journal, 47 (03 1988), pp. 117–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Alan R. H., “Field Systems of Southeast England,” in Baker, Alan R. H. and Butler, Robin A., eds., Studies of Field Systems in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 377–429.Google Scholar
Batchelor, Thomas, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Bedford (London, 1808).Google Scholar
Batey, T., “Nitrogen Cycling in Upland Pastures of the U.K.,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B 296 (1982), pp. 551–56.Google Scholar
Bishop, T. A. M., “The Rotation of Crops at Westerham, 1297–1350,” Economic History Review, 9 (11 1938), pp. 38–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Bruce, “Agricultural Progress in Medieval England: Some Evidence from Eastern Norfolk,” Economic History Review, 2nd series 36 (02 1983), pp. 26–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Bruce, “Arable Productivity in Medieval English Agriculture” (paper for All-UC Conference in Economic History, 05 22–24, 1987).Google Scholar
Chorley, G. P. H., “The Agricultural Revolution in Northern Europe, 1750–1880: Nitrogen, Legumes, and Crop Productivity,” Economic History Review, 2nd series 34 (02 1981), pp. 71–93.Google Scholar
Clark, Gregory, “The Cost of Capital and Medieval Agricultural Technique,” Explorations in Economic History, 25 (07 1988), pp. 265–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Gregory, “Enclosure, Land Improvement, and the Price of Capital: A Reply to Jones,” Explorations in Economic History, 27 (10 1990), pp. 356–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Gregory, “Yields per Acre in English Agriculture, 1250–1860: Evidence from Labour Inputs,” Economic History Review, 2nd series 44 (08 1991), pp. 445–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Gregory, “Labour Productivity in English Agriculture, 1300–1860,” in Campbell, Bruce and Overton, Mark, eds., Land, Labour, and Livestock: Historical Studies in European Agricultural Productivity (Manchester, 1991), pp. 211–35.Google Scholar
Cooke, G. W., The Control of Soil Fertility (London, 1967).Google Scholar
Cowling, D. W., “Biological Nitrogen Fixation and Grassland Production in the United Kingdom,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B 296 (1982), pp. 397–404.Google Scholar
Dodgshon, Robert A., “Farming in Roxburghshire and Berwickshire on the Eve of Improvement,” Scottish Historical Review, 56 (1975), pp. 140–54.Google Scholar
Dyer, Christopher, “Warwickshire Farming 1349–c. 1520: Preparations for Agricultural Revolution,” Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, 27 (1981).Google Scholar
Fry, Edward A., Abstracts of Wiltshire Inquisitiones Post Mortem, 1242–1326 (London, 1908).Google Scholar
Glennie, Paul, “Continuity and Change in Hertfordshire Agriculture 1550–1700: II—Trends in Crop Yields and Their Determinants,” Agricultural History Review, 36 (part 2, 1988), pp. 145–61.Google Scholar
Glennie, Paul, “Measuring Crop Yields in Early Modern England,” in Campbell, Bruce and Overton, Mark, eds., Land, Labour, and Livestock: Historical Studies in European Agricultural Productivity (Manchester, 1991), pp. 255–83.Google Scholar
Hall, A. D., The Book of the Rothamsted Experiments (2nd edn., London, 1917).Google Scholar
Jenkinson, D. S., and Rayner, J. H., “The Turnover of Soil Organic Matter in Some of the Rothamsted Classical Experiments,” Soil Science, 123 (1977), pp. 298–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Eric, “Agriculture and Economic Growth in England, 1660–1750: Agricultural Change,” this Journal, 25 (03 1965), pp. 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerridge, Eric, The Agricultural Revolution (London, 1967).Google Scholar
Large, Peter, “Rural Society and Agricultural Change: Ombersley 1580–1700,” in Chartres, John and Hey, David, eds., English Rural Society, 1500–1800: Essays in Honour of Joan Thirsk (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 105–38.Google Scholar
Lawes, John B., and Gilbert, J. Henry, “Rotation of Crops,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 55 (1894), pp. 585–646.Google Scholar
Long, W. Harwood, “The Low Yields of Corn in Medieval England,” Economic History Review, 2nd series 32 (11 1979), 459–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCloskey, Donald, and Nash, John, “Corn at Interest: The Extent and Cost of Grain Storage in Medieval England,” American Economic Review, 74 (03 1984), pp. 174–87.Google Scholar
Mate, Mavis, “Medieval Agrarian Practices: The Determining Factors,” Agricultural History Review, 33 (part 1, 1985), pp. 22–31.Google Scholar
Olmstead, Alan, and Rhode, Paul, “Interest Rates and the Intensification of California Agriculture, 1860–1914” (manuscript, University of California, Davis, 1992).Google Scholar
Overton, Mark, “Estimating Grain Yields from Probate Inventories: An Example from East Anglia, 1585–1735,” this Journal, 39 (06 1979), pp. 363–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Overton, Mark, “The Diffusion of Agricultural Innovations in Early Modern England: Turnips and Clover in Norfolk and Suffolk,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 10 (1985), pp. 205–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Overton, Mark, “The Determinants of Crop Yields in Early Modern England,” in Campbell, Bruce and Overton, Mark, eds., Land, Labour, and Livestock: Historical Studies in European Agricultural Productivity (Manchester, 1991), pp. 284–322.Google Scholar
Postan, M. M., “Agrarian Society in Its Prime: Part 7, England,” in Postan, M. M., ed., Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 1: The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 548–632.Google Scholar
Postan, M. M., The Medieval Economy and Society (London, 1972).Google Scholar
Postgate, M. R., “Field Systems of East Anglia,” in Baker, Alan R. H. and Butler, Robin A., eds., Studies of Field Systems in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 281–324.Google Scholar
Raftis, J. A., Assart Data and Land Values (Toronto, 1974).Google Scholar
Russell, E. Walter, Soil Conditions and Plant Growth (9th edn., London, 1964).Google Scholar
Shiel, Robert S., “Improving Soil Productivity in the Pre-Fertilizer Era,” in Campbell, Bruce and Overton, Mark, eds., Land, Labour, and Livestock: Historical Studies in European Agricultural Productivity (Manchester, 1991), pp. 51–77.Google Scholar
Stewart, William, Nitrogen Fixation in Plants (London, 1966).Google Scholar
Stokes, Ethel, Abstracts of Wiltshire Inquisitiones Post Mortem, 1327–1377 (London, 1914).Google Scholar
Sturgess, R. W., “The Agricultural Revolution on the English Clays,” Agricultural History Review, 14 (1966), pp. 104–21.Google Scholar
Thirsk, Joan, English Peasant Farming (London, 1957).Google Scholar
Thirsk, Joan, “Farming Techniques,” in Thirsk, Joan, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 4: 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 161–99.Google Scholar
Thornton, Christopher, The Demesne of Rimpton, 938–1412: A Study in Economic Development (Ph.D. diss., University of Leicester, 1988).Google Scholar
Voelcker, J. Augustus, “The Woburn Experimental Farm—III,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 59 (1898), pp. 678–726.Google Scholar
Voelcker, J. Augustus, “The Woburn Experimental Station—Field Experiments,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 60–66 (1899–1906).Google Scholar
Warren, R. G., “N.P.K. Residues from Fertilisers and Farmyard Manure, in Long-Term Experiments at Rothamsted,” Proceedings of the Fertiliser Society, 37 (1956).Google Scholar
Whittington, G., “Field Systems of Scotland,” in Baker, Alan R. H. and Butler, Robin A., eds., Studies of Field Systems in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 530–79.Google Scholar
Wild, Alan, “Plant Nutrients in the Soil: Nitrogen,” in Wild, Alan, ed., Russell's Soil Conditions and Plant Growth (11th edn., Harlow, England, 1988), pp. 652–94.Google Scholar