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Tianxiang Xiong

Prof. Philip Stern

History 104

18 April 2010

The “Myth” of the Agricultural Revolution

The Agricultural Revolution was a period of development in Britain from 1750 to 1850,

during which Britain supposedly saw a large increase in agricultural productivity and total

output.1 That the Agricultural Revolution occurred has been generally accepted from its

exposition in the 1880’s until the 1960’s2. Yet, starting in the 1960’s, scholars such as Eric

Kerridge of the University of North Wales have challenged the idea of an Agricultural

Revolution occurring during this time period. In recent times, “counter-revisionists” such as

Mark Overton of the University of Exeter have claimed that the basic tenets of the Agricultural

Revolution hold true, and that this is supported by an “overwhelming mass of evidence that from

a wide variety of sources that points to the period after 1750 as witnessing an Agricultural

Revolution”.3 Thus, the debate over the existence of an 18

th Century Agricultural Revolution

continues.

According to Kerridge, the idea of an Agricultural Revolution was first formulated by

Arnold Toynbee (based on work published in 1884, after Toynbee’s death), whose lectures on

the Industrial Revolution were widely influential. In parallel to the Industrial Revolution, he

claimed, there was “an agrarian revolution [that] played as large part in the great industrial

1Overton, Mark. Agricultural Revolution in England 1500 - 1850. BBC. November 5, 2009.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/agricultural_revolution_01.shtml#one (accessed April 18,

2010) 2 Allen, Robert C. "Tracking the Agricultural Revolution in England." The Economic History Review, New Series

(Blackwell Publishing) 52, no. 2 (May 1999): 209 3 Overton, BBC, pg. 4

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change at the end of the eighteenth century as does the revolution in manufacturing industries”4.

Toynbee did not, however, claim that greater agricultural productivity or output was achieved

during this period. It was Lord Ernle, a literary journalist and writer, who would place such

progress squarely in the block of time from 1760-1840. Ernle espoused the idea that a few men,

such as Jethro Tull, Lord Townshend, and Arthur Young, led the way in the adoption of

“improved methods of cultivation, the introduction of new crops, the reduction of stock-breeding

to a science, the provision of increased facilities of communication and of transport, and the

enterprise and outlay of capitalist land-lords and tenant-farmers”5. At the turn of the century,

Paul Mantoux, another scholar of the Industrial Revolution, would make the even bolder claim

that between 1760 and 1770 “there had been more experiments, more discoveries, and more

general good sense displayed in the walk of agriculture than in a hundred preceding [years]”6.

Kerridge’s rebuttals of Toynbee, Ernle, and Mantoux are decisive. To him, the 18th

Century Agricultural Revolution was nothing more than a myth. Toynbee, he claims, stopped

short of declaring his “agrarian” revolution as resulting in increased output because he “did not

entirely forget the facts to which he was inhospitable”7, i.e. he saw a clear lack of evidence for

his claims, while Ernle failed to consult any historical records at all, not even bothering to read

the books he cites on the subject8. To Mantoux he is even more merciless, accusing the

Frenchman of making “incredible” arguments, failing to read any works that contradicted his

own ideas, and doing little more than make Young’s and Ernle’s claims more fantastic without

providing any evidence9. Beyond what appears to be personal attacks on these proponents of the

4 Kerridge, Eric. "The Agricultural Revolution Reconsidered." Agricultural History (Agricultural History Society)

43, no. 4 (October 1969): 463 5 Ibid., pg. 467

6 Ibid., pg. 468

7 Ibid., pg. 464

8 Ibid., pg. 466

9 Ibid., pg. 468

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Agricultural Revolution, Kerridge managed to put forth a few arguments. He claimed that

farming techniques, like four-course rotation and the planting of turnips, did not come from the

Netherlands, but were instead native to England and used long before the 18th Century. Legumes

and fodder crops did not lead to the transformation of pastureland to farmland; instead, it was the

overextension of tillage into pastureland that resulted in livestock being deprived of pasture.

Most damning of all, there was simply no evidence of radical changes in agricultural techniques

or output from 1700-1870. Instead, England went from being a net exporter of farm produce in

1700 to being a net importer in 187010.

Kerridge was among the first scholars to raise doubts about the existence of the 18th

Century Agricultural Revolution. Nonetheless, the Revolution has its staunch defenders. Mark

Overton, Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Exeter, is one of the

most prominent. Interestingly, he chose to begin an analysis of the Agricultural Revolution by

debunking the prominent roles of the “Great Men” in introducing tools and techniques to British

Agriculture, roles that had been put forth by Ernle and ridiculed by Kerridge. In fact, he quotes

Kerridge (albeit not by name) in portraying Arthur Young as “a mountebank, a charlatan and a

scribbler”11. However, after what amounts to an apology for the undeserved apotheoses of these

men, Overton went on to corroborate nearly all of Ernle’s other claims.

An obvious reason for the existence of the Agricultural Revolution, he begins, is the “fact

that an expanding population from [1750 onwards] was largely fed by home production”12. In

1750, British population stood at 5.7 million, which had supposedly been matched during Roman

times, around 1300, and again around 1650. Each previous time, however, the population ceased

to grow, constrained by the inability of agriculture to accommodate the large population. The

10 Ibid., pg. 474

11 Overton, BBC; Kerridge, pg. 466

12 Overton, BBC

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increase of population to 16.6 million in 1850, then, is evidence that agriculture was finally able

to support reproduction. The increased output, he claimed, was due to crop rotation with turnips

and clover, which was part of a general trend of agricultural intensification, accompanied by land

reclamation through the draining of fenlands in Eastern England, the clearing of woodland, and

the reduction of fishing and fowling in favor of farming. Low-yield crops like rye were replaced

by high-yield crops like wheat and barley, and permanent pastures were replaced by more

productive arable land. Turnips and clover, specifically, reduced the area of fallow land from 20%

of arable area in 1700 to 4% in 1871.

Since the limiting factor of crop yields was nitrogen, better fertilization techniques

proved crucial to increasing production. Here Overton repeats an argument that had been derided

by Kerridge decades before, in that “stall-feeding of bullocks”13 and the collection of their

manure as fertilizer was a major innovation in farming practice. Kerridge was of the opinion that

such an act was hardly revolutionary, while Overton counted it, along with the planting of

legumes, as one of the most important factors in increasing nitrogen concentration in farmland.

Such a counter-revisionist stance could not be left unrefuted. Robert Allen of the

University of Oxford has set himself squarely against Overton, claiming that there were in fact

two Agricultural Revolutions—one advocated by the revisionists, preceding parliamentary

enclosures, and one in the first half of the 19th Century, while the 18

th Century experienced

agricultural stagnation14. Ironically, Allen’s position seems to invoke what Kerridge disdained as

attempts to “chop the Agricultural Revolution into pieces, substituting a series of separate

revolutions”15. Nonetheless, Allen takes great pains to expose weaknesses in Overton’s

arguments. Overton’s own numbers, he charged, show that output increased by a factor of 2.14

13 Overton BBC; Kerridge, pg. 474

14 Allen, pg. 209

15 Kerridge, pg. 469

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between 1520 and 1651, while rising only 13% from 1651 to 1741. He then dismisses Overton’s

estimations of consumption per capita of agricultural products, which he refers to as the

“population method”, in which agricultural production is a constant multiple of population.

Instead, Allen introduces a rather complicated formula involving various elasticities of demand

and other variables to estimate agricultural output during this period. A deluge of statistical

models and mathematical data seem to confirm his hypothesis that no dramatic increase in output

in the latter half of the 18th Century occurred, showing instead “a pre-1740 agricultural

revolution, stagnation for the rest of the eighteen century, and a post-1800 surge in

productivity”16.

Allen’s purely quantitative methods have been accused by Overton of being attempts by

“historians [to] search for techniques that purport to give them the information they want”17. If

Overton’s claim that “no national agricultural statistics were produced until 1866”18 is true, he

may be forgiven for resorting to Ernle’s method of using minimal mathematical values to support

broad claims based mostly on literary evidence. However, even if no national figures were

available, regional figures may well prove sufficient in creating reliable mathematical models. In

fact, Overton resorted to using local data from Norfolk and Suffolk from 1580-1740 to model the

spread of turnip and clover adoption by farmers in the area. This “chronology of innovation” was

meant to “resolve some of the controversy between the proponents of various agricultural

revolutions”19, although Overton does not hesitate to use it to counter Kerridge’s revisionism. He

accuses Kerridge of being too focused on “innovators and early adopters”20, leading the latter to

16 Allen, pg. 218

17 Overton BBC

18 Ibid.

19 Overton, Mark. "The Diffusion of Agricultural Innovations in Early Modern England: Turnips and Clover in

Norfolk and Suffolk, 1580-1740." Transactiosn of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series (Blackwell

Publishing) 10, no. 2 (1985): 206 20 Ibid., pg. 206

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confuse the presence of turnips and clover in England during the 17th Century with an

agricultural revolution during that time. However, he goes on to explain, these crops were not

cultivated as part of crop rotations until the middle decades of the 18th Century, and did not reach

a significant percentage of all crops cultivated until the 1850’s21.

Overton’s argument has merit, but actually serves to increase the confusion over what is,

or is not, an Agricultural Revolution. Is the mere presence of innovation not enough to merit the

title of “revolution”? Must a certain rate of increase in productivity or volume of output achieved

before a revolution may be declared? The controversies over actual rates of output at different

time periods aside, it would be helpful to give a more concrete definition to “Agricultural

Revolution” than simply a period of “large increase in productivity”. Allen’s method of

comparing output in one time period with outputs in other time periods seems the most

promising, but appears insufficient due to its focus on output rather than innovation. Perhaps it

would be more enlightening to combine Overton’s mappings of the “spread of innovation” with

Allen’s models, and assert that a “revolution” is only reached when both innovation and a

significant increase in productivity or output is present. In this case, most sources agree that the

period after 1800 was a time of true revolution, which is further corroborated by the “spread of

innovation” mapping of another traditionally important component of the Agricultural

Revolution, the Shorthorn Cattle22.

Such a method is not without its flaws, however. Statistical information becomes more

prevalent with time, and the lack of it during earlier centuries may be what prevents them from

being agreed upon as periods of revolution—or not. Until better mathematical models appear, or

21 Ibid., pg. 213

22 Walton, John R. "The Diffusion of the Improved Shorthorn Breed of Cattle in Britain during the Eighteenth and

Nineteenth Centuries." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series (Blackwell Publishing) 9,

no. 1 (1984): 33

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superior methods of inference used in judging the spread of innovation and increase in

productivity or output developed, it is likely that the “myth” of the Agricultural Revolution of the

18th Century and before may never be confirmed or debunked.

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Bibliography

Allen, Robert C. "Tracking the Agricultural Revolution in England." The Economic History

Review, New Series (Blackwell Publishing) 52, no. 2 (May 1999): 209-235 [accessed from

JSTOR database].

Robert Allen's article is a direct rebuttal of the counter-revisionism of Mark Overton, and

imposes advanced statistical methods unto the study of agricultural productivity and net output

during the period of time commonly believed to have been part of the Agricultural Revolution.

He goes on to show that statistical data corroborates his belief that there was tremendous growth

before and after the second half of the 18th Century, with stagnation during period in between.

Kerridge, Eric. "The Agricultural Revolution Reconsidered." Agricultural History (Agricultural

History Society) 43, no. 4 (October 1969): 463-476 [accessed from JSTOR database].

Kerridge's work is the one of the first "revisionist" stances on the Agricultural Revolution.

In this paper, Kerridge attacks the validity of conclusions drawn by the creators of the idea, as

well as undermining their premises of innovation and increased productivity. He suggests that

the period of innovation and productivity actually occurred earlier, and most certainly not during

the later 18th Century.

Overton, Mark. Agricultural Revolution in England 1500 - 1850. BBC. November 5, 2009.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/agricultural_revolution_01.shtml#one

(accessed April 18, 2010).

This BBC summary of the Agricultural Revolution is heavily based on Overton's

previous works, and serves to affirm Overton's ideas on the importance of the selective breeding

of livestock; the removal of common property rights to land through enclosures; and new

systems of farming, involving turnips and clover, that allowed pastureland to be converted to

higher-intensity arable land. Overton's ideas are heavily based on much older ideas by Lord

Ernle and other original proponents of the Agricultural Revolution.

Overton, Mark. "The Diffusion of Agricultural Innovations in Early Modern England: Turnips

and Clover in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1580-1740." Transactiosn of the Institute of British

Geographers, New Series (Blackwell Publishing) 10, no. 2 (1985): 205-221 [accessed from

JSTOR database].

Here Overton uses data collected in Norfolk and Suffolk to gauge the spread of turnip

and clover farming, showing that these crops have been raised since the 1600's but did not

become agriculturally significant until the 18th Century. This is perhaps one of his strongest

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arguments against revisionist ideas of an earlier Agricultural Revolution, as he redefines

revolution as requiring more than just the presence of innovation, but rather the permeation of

innovation as a wide practice.

Walton, John R. "The Diffusion of the Improved Shorthorn Breed of Cattle in Britain during the

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New

Series (Blackwell Publishing) 9, no. 1 (1984): 22-36 [accessed from JSTOR database].

A similar analysis to Overton's work on turnips and clovers, albeit preceding it, involving

another important element of the Agricultural Revolution, the shorthorn cattle. The spread of

shorthorn breeding throughout Britain confirms that a period of innovation was prevalent in the

early 19th Century, though perhaps not the 18

th.