The Social and Economic Structure of the Old Regime 311system of plowing and hoeing to pulverize the soil, and
invented a seed drill that increased yields and decreased
labor. Townshend advocated a planting system that
eliminated the need for summer fallowing of
plowland. His Norfolk, or four-course, system rotated
plantings of a root crop, barley, clover, and wheat.
Townshend championed the choice of turnips as the
root crop so vigorously (because they provided both
nitrogen fixation and fodder for livestock) that he be-
came known as “Turnip Townshend.” Ideas such as
these, circulated by a growing periodical press, raised
crop yields to the extent that England fed an increasing
population and still exported grain in the early eigh-
teenth century.
Most European agriculture was not so successful,
and peasant families faced a struggle to survive. Their
primary concern was a harvest large enough to pay
their obligations to the landowning aristocracy, to the
royal tax collector, and to the church in the form of a
compulsory tithe as well as to provide seed grain for
the next year, with food left over to sustain life for an-
other year (see document 17.1). The yield per acre was
higher in western Europe than in eastern Europe, which
explains much of the comparative prosperity and
strength of the west. Each grain sown in Russia and
Poland yielded an average harvest of four grains, while
Spanish and Italian peasants harvested six grains, and
English and Dutch farmers averaged more than ten
grains. Peasants typically supplemented their meager
stock of grains with the produce of a small garden and
the luxury of some livestock such as a few pigs or
chickens. Surplus grain would be sold or bartered—a
money economy was not yet the rule throughout the
rural world—at the nearest market town to acquire ne-
cessities that could not be produced at home. Even
when livestock were slaughtered, peasants rarely ate the
entire animal; they generally sold the choicer cuts of
pork and kept the fatty remnants for soups, stews, or
bacon.
Home production was an essential feature of this
rural economy and meant more than churning butter or
making cheese at home. Domestic manufacturing often
included making all of a family’s clothing, so many
peasants learned to spin yarn, weave cloth, or sew
clothing. This part-time textile production sometimes
led to the sale of excess household products, and in
some textile regions domestic manufacturing evolved
into a system of production known as cottage industry
(see illustration 17.1) in which a peasant family pur-
posely made goods for sale instead of for use in the
home. Cottage industry sometimes grew into a hand-
craft form of industrial manufacture (often calledDOCUMENT 17.1
An Eighteenth-Century
Sharecropping Contract
This list summarizes the chief points of a contract negotiated
in southern France in 1779 on behalf of a great landowner. It
was an agreement “at half fruits”—a 50/50 sharing of the
crop between a marquis and the father and son who farmed his
land. A study of this contract has estimated that this land
would yield a harvest of 100 setiers of wheat. Thus, the peas-
ant sharecroppers paid (1) 20 setiers off the top to the mar-
quis; then (2) 10 setiers of wheat as the price of cutting and
flailing the wheat, leaving a harvest of 70 setiers. They then
paid (3) 35 setiers as “half fruits” and (4) 20 setiers for seed.
The result was 55 setiers to the marquis, 15 setiers for the
peasant family. A family of five ate 20 setiers of wheat per
year.
- The lease shall be for one year, at “half fruits”
and under the following conditions. - The lessees will furnish the seed.
- Before the division of the harvest, the marquis
will receive twenty setiers of wheat off the
top. - The lessees will deliver the wheat already cut
and flailed, at no cost to the marquis. - The lessees must use the “three field” system
of planting—1/3 of the land planted to wheat,
1/3 to some other grain, and 1/3 left un-
planted. - If the lessees do not leave 1/3 of the land fal-
low, they forfeit the entire harvest. - All livestock will be held in common with
profits and losses equally shared. - If there is a shortage of hay and straw for the
livestock, the lessees must pay half of the cost
of buying forage. - The lessees must maintain the land, including
making drains for water, cutting brush, prun-
ing vines... etc. - In addition to sharing the crop, the lessees
must pay a rent of 72 chickens, 36 capons, and
600 eggs. - The lessees must raise pigs, geese, ducks, and
turkeys, to be divided evenly; they must pur-
chase the young animals to raise at their own
expense. - The lessees must make their own ploughs and
pay for the blacksmith work themselves.
Forster, Robert, and Forster, Elborg, eds. European Society in
the Eighteenth Century,New York: Harper & Row, 1969.