TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > History > Growth in Britain and France 1780 - 1914 Conclusions
- Contrast agricultural productivity between the two systems – most due to larger and higher-quality of natural endowment – no more than 40% due to higher yield per hectare – even if average yields similar marked difference in productivity persist reflect slower pace structural transformation in France
- However – some differences in value added per hectare – would have disappeared in French farmers allocate as much land as British to rearing of livestock – higher value added added in animal - organic fertiliser helped arable yields British superiority in agric. pinned down o persistence higher yields on arable land little evidence backwardness animal sector yields not overly important as 75% labour productivity gap remained even if yields caught up.
- Soils comparable quality and in animal husbandry yields achieved by French farmers not unimpressive French retardation had less to fo with the national or psychological attributes of those who tilled the soil – stemmed far more from limited capacity of small units of ownership and cultivation to generate and investible surplus OVER THE LONG RUN FRENCH AGRICULTURAL SECTOR FAILED TO ACCUMULATE STOCK OF PRODUCTIVE ASSESTS TO MATCH CAPITAL-LABOUR AND CAPITAL-LABOUR RATIOS ATTAINED IN BRITAIN
- Late 18th century: France short of capital, esp. Animals – output remained more diversified, smaller units of production devoted resources to meeting their own demands for foods and failed to take advantages of specialisation – retention underemployed labour – British capitalist agric. compelled by market forces (new Poor Law 1834) to release or expel redundant labour – the retention of labour in the countryside implied extensive cultivation of sub-marginal land of a quality that in Britain had long since been abandoned t rough pasture
- Higher density people on the land – plethora small-holdings, competition to buy and rent land must have been lower than in Britain (landed magnates no faced with inelastic demand curve for larger farms that required more capital stock and greater expertise to manage) – less share of output extracted as rent, esp. as aristocratic landowners less need than bourgeois proprietors to extract every last penny of rent. Agric. systems characterised by high rents, insecure forms of tenure and small owner-occupiers – overall propensity to deploy investible fund to buy land intensifies – French farmers heavily involved in transactions to purchase land – Britain less of agric. surplus dissipated in such transactions an greater share ploughed back, tenants, proprietors into capital accumulation – part. Animals – raised output and yields from land.
- French farmers did as well as can be expected given the demographic pressure to extend the margin of cultivation on to soils of lower quality and the constraints of investment exercised by smaller units of ownership and production. NOT problem of slow to innovate/ copy superior techniques / backwardness assoc. high labour densities, generated system of property rights held labour cside and depresses rate capital accumulation.
- Bloch: dominance large estates in England and tenacious strength peasant agric. in France – even 1789 did little to upset field layout, communal techniques of cultivation, distribution land-ownership – those who farmed the land France little desire to fundamentally transform system of property rights which might raise LP and carry beneficiaries new progress to towns. Tocqueville: “the number of people who possess land is tending to decrease rather than increase, and the number of proletarians grew ceaselessly with the popn…The English are still imbued with the doctrine, which is at least debatable that great properties are necessary for the improvement of agric”
- French society showed itself consistently reluctant to bear the economic costs and social dislocation associated with that kind of improvement
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