254 Agricultural Revolutions and Change
corporate ownership has opened up new avenues of investigation of those circum-
stances that have determined the development from common to private forms of
ownership and governance (Ostrom, 1990; Baland et al, 1998; Radkau, 2003).
What we have offered here is an empirical example of that development but in the
context of the modern theory of sustainable resource management.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for their financial
support of this project, the long-term intention of which is to offer a framework
for examining the experience of farmers over the past 500 years within the context
of the sustainability debate. We also thank Professor Greg Clark for the opportun-
ity to use his price indexes ahead of publication. Finally we thank the anonymous
referees who encouraged us to rework our ideas into a wider framework.
References
Ault, W.A. (1954) Village bye-laws by consent. Speculum 39, 378–394.
Baker, A.R.H. and Butlin, R.A. (eds) (1973) Studies of Field Systems in the British Isles. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Baland, J-M. and Platteau, J-P. (1998) Division of the commons: A partial assessment of the New
Institutional Economics of land rights. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 80, 644–650.
Barnes, P. (1997) The adaptation of open-field farming in an east Nottinghamshire parish: Orston,
1641–1793. Transactions of the Thoroton Society 101, 125–132.
Beckett, J.V. (1986) The Aristocracy in England. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Beckett, J.V. (1989) A History of Laxton: England’s Last Open-Field Village. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Beckett, J.V., Turner, M.E. and Cowell, B. (1998) Farming through enclosure. Rural History 9, 141–
155.
Beresford, M.W. (1949) Glebe terriers and open-field Leicestershire. In W.G. Hoskins (ed.) Studies in
Leicestershire Agrarian History (pp. 77–126). Leicester: Leicestershire Archaeological Society.
Berry, W. (1996) Foreword to W. Jackson, New Roots for Agriculture (new edn). San Francisco: Friends
of the Earth.
Broad, J. (1980) Alternate husbandry and permanent pasture in the Midlands, 1650–1800. Agricul-
tural History Review 28, 77–89.
Butlin, R.A. (1982) The Transformation of Rural England c. 1580–1800. Oxford: University Press.
Clark, G. (2004) The price history of English agriculture, 1209–1914. Research in Economic History
22.
Conway, G.R. and Pretty, J.N. (1991) Unwelcome Harvest: Agriculture and Pollution. London: Earth-
scan.
Davis, T. (1811) General View of the Agriculture of the County of Wiltshire. London.
Evans, L.T. (1998) Feeding the Ten Billion: Plants and Population Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Fox, H.S.A. (1981) Approaches to the adoption of the midland system. In T. Rowley (ed.) The Origins
of Open-Field Agriculture (pp. 64–111). London: Croom Helm.
Gregorich, L.J. (1995) Introduction. In D.F. Acton and L.J. Gregorich (eds) The Health of Our Soils:
Toward Sustainable Agriculture in Canada. Ottawa: Centre for Land and Biological Resources
Research.