The Beginnings of the Industrial Revolution 363unusually cold and damp seventeenth century. This had a salutary effect
on population, agricultural yields, and commerce. Land reclamation proj
ects helped expand the amount of land under cultivation. The Dutch contin
ued to reclaim land from the sea, and land reclamation added significantly to
the amount of land under cultivation in the Southern Netherlands (Bel
gium) and Brandenburg.
Though not to the same extent as in England, the enclosure of separate
strips of land and the sale or consolidation of common lands in northwest
ern Europe permitted the development of “agricultural individualism,” as
more land passed to peasant-owners. Beginning in the 1760s, state policies
created small farms owned by peasants, helping transform Danish agricul
ture from the stagnation of serfdom to relative prosperity. Royal decrees
encouraged enclosure and forced the commutation of labor obligations to
rent payments.
Gradually some techniques that characterized agricultural improvements
in England reached the continent. Innovative landowners and tenant farm
ers began to implement crop rotation (growing foliage crops to improve the
fertility of fields), replacing the old three-field system so that little or no
land lay fallow. As in England, turnips, potatoes, and rice enhanced dietary
nutrition. Yet many peasants remained prisoners of tradition, refusing to
plant or eat potatoes (Russian peasants called them “apples of the devil”),
despite the fact that they can grow almost anywhere under any conditions.
The cultivation of sugar beets (from which sugar can be made), the tomato
(despite the fact that some peasants believed it to be poisonous), and chest
nuts (the “bread of the poor”) also spread, sustaining population growth.
Animal husbandry also benefited from improved techniques. Oxen, mules,
and especially horses could pull plows more easily than peasants. More
cattle provided manure for fertilizer, and meat and milk for nutrition.
Sheep-raising developed rapidly, providing both food and wool.
Some landowners formed societies to discuss agriculture, and a handful
began model farms. Such groups included nobles, wealthy bourgeois, and
clergy. French physiocrats, who believed that land was the source of all wealth,
urged landowners to make their property more profitable and encouraged
state policies to free the price of grain. Publications on agriculture dramati
cally increased in number.
A few continental rulers took steps to intervene in the interest of agricul
tural progress. The elector of Bavaria in 1762 offered farmers an exemption
from taxes for ten years in the hope that they would plant foliage crops in
their fallow fields. Several princes in the German Rhineland encouraged the
selective breeding of cattle. In 1768, Queen Maria Theresa of Austria
ordered the division of common pasturelands in some parts of the Habsburg
territories and the establishment of agricultural societies.