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The organization and rise of land and lease markets in northwestern Europe and Italy, c. 1000–1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2008

B. J. P. VAN BAVEL
Affiliation:
History Department, Utrecht University, and Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.

Abstract

In the course of the late Middle Ages and early modern period, in Western Europe, ways of transferring and redistributing land outside the market were replaced by market transactions. This, however, was by no means a general and unilinear process, but one that displays strong regional differences and temporal discontinuities. This article aims to gain more insight in the factors underlying these differences, by reconstructing and analysing the institutional organization of exchange in land and lease markets. The analysis, undertaken for northwestern Europe and Italy, points to the socio-political context as a main determinant of this organization.

L'organisation et l'essor des marchés des terres et des baux dans l'europe du nord-ouest et l'italie entre 1000 et 1800

Au cours du Moyen-Age tardif et de la période moderne, le transfert et la redistribution des terres qui se faisaient auparavant hors marché sont devenus objets de transactions sur marché. Mais cela n'a été en rien un processus général et unilinéaire. Au contraire on observe de fortes différences selon les régions et des discontinuités dans le temps. Nous entendons ici mieux comprendre les facteurs qui furent à l'origine de ces différences en reconstruisant et en analysant les institutions organisant les échanges de terres et de baux. Cette analyse, qui couvre l'Europe du Nord-Ouest et l'Italie, nous indique que le contexte socio-politique a joué un rôle déterminant dans cette organisation.

Organisation und wachstum des grundstücksmarktes im nordwestlichen europa und italien, ca. 1000–1800

Im Verlaufe des Spätmittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit wurden in Westeuropa die außerhalb des Marktes bestehenden Mittel und Wege, Land zu übertragen und umzuverteilen, durch Markttransaktionen ersetzt. Dieser Prozess war jedoch alles andere als umfassend und linear, sondern durch starke regionale Unterschiede und zeitliche Verzögerungen gekennzeichnet. Um zu einem besseren Verständnis der diesen Unterschieden zugrunde liegenden Faktoren zu kommen, unternimmt dieser Aufsatz eine Rekonstruktion und Analyse der institutionellen Organisation des Grundstücksmarktes (und berücksichtigt hierbei sowohl den Verkauf als auch die Verpachtung von Grundstücken). Die Analyse erstreckt sich auf Nordwesteuropa und Italien und legt den Schluss nahe, dass der soziopolitische Kontext die maßgebliche Determinante der Marktorganisation war.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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References

NOTES

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4 For the Netherlands see B. J. P. van Bavel, ‘Agrarian change and economic development in the late medieval Netherlands’, forthcoming in R. Brenner, J. de Vries and E. Thoen eds., Agrarian change and economic development in Europe before the Industrial Revolution, and for Italy see Federico, G. and Malanima, P., ‘Progress, decline, growth: product and productivity in Italian agriculture, 1000–2000’, Economic History Review 57 (2004), 437–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, or Malanima, P., ‘Urbanisation and the Italian economy during the last millennium’, European Review of Economic History 9 (2005), 97122CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 107–14, albeit with a different explanation of the causes of agrarian growth.

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6 For instance by calculating differences in annual turnover of land in the market: see B. J. P. van Bavel and P. C. M. Hoppenbrouwers, ‘Landholding and land transfer in the North Sea Area (late Middle Ages – 19th century)’, in van Bavel and Hoppenbrouwers eds., Landholding and land transfer in the North Sea area (late Middle Ages – 19th century), CORN publication series 5 (Turnhout, 2004), 13–43, esp. pp. 28–31.

7 See Faith, R. J., ‘Peasant families and inheritance customs in medieval England’, Agricultural History Review 14 (1966), 7795Google Scholar, esp. p. 86, and C. Howell, ‘Peasant inheritance customs in the Midlands, 1280–1700’, in J. Goody, J. Thirsk and E. P. Thompson eds., Family and inheritance: rural society in Western Europe 1200–1800 (Cambridge, 1976), 112–55, esp. pp. 139–43.

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11 See J. Heringa, De buurschap en haar marke (Assen, 1982), esp. pp. 10 and 16, for some fifteenth-century examples.

12 See A. Macfarlane, The origins of English individualism: the family, property and social transition (Oxford, 1978), 23–4, basing his picture of a peasant society mainly on eastern European material.

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15 See D. Nicholas, Town and countryside: social, economic, and political tensions in fourteenth-century Flanders (Bruges, 1971), 280–81, and R. Koerperich, Les lois sur la mainmorte dans les Pays-Bas catholiques (Louvain, 1922), 1–22.

16 Opsommer, ‘Omme dat leengoed’, 463–71 and 478–80.

17 See the examples for Norfolk given by Williamson in ‘Norfolk: thirteenth century’, esp. 93, 96 and 98–9, but even more those from the Midlands: R. M. Smith, ‘The English peasantry, 1250–1650’, in T. Scott ed., The peasantries of Europe from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries (London, 1998), 339–71, esp. pp. 355–60.

18 Whittle, ‘Individualism’, esp. pp. 57–8 and 60–1.

19 S. Brakensiek, ‘Farms and land – a commodity? Land markets, family strategies and manorial control in Germany (18th–19th centuries)’, in van Bavel and Hoppenbrouwers eds., Landholding and land transfer, 218–34.

20 J. Whittle, The development of agrarian capitalism: land and labour in Norfolk, 1440–1580 (Oxford, 2000), 93 and 99. The extent of lordly power is nuanced in Campbell, B. M. S., ‘The agrarian problem in the early fourteenth century’, Past and Present 188 (2005), 370CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 21–44.

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23 See M. North, ‘From land mobility to immobility: the emergence of the early modern manorial economy’, in S. Cavaciocchi ed., Il mercato della terra secc. XIII–XVIII: atti delle “Settimane di Studi” e altri convegni 35 (Prato, 2003), 261–9.

24 S. Brakensiek, Gemeinheitsteilungen in Europa: die Privatisierung der kollektiven Nutzung des Bodens im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2000), N. Vivier, Propriété collective et identité communale: les biens communaux en France, 1750–1914 (Paris, 1998), and various articles in M. de Moor, L. Shaw-Taylor and P. Warde eds., The management of common land in Europe, c. 1500–1850, CORN publication series 8 (Turnhout, 2002).

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27 van der Linden, H., ‘Het platteland in het Noordwesten met de nadruk op de occupatie circa 1000–1300’, Algemene geschiedenis der Nederlanden 2 (1982), 4882Google Scholar, esp. pp. 73–8.

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29 J. de Vries and A. M. van der Woude, The first modern economy: success, failure, and perseverance of the Dutch economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge, 1997), 159–65.

30 See E. Kerridge, Agrarian problems in the sixteenth century and after (London, 1969), 65–93, and Hoyle, R., ‘Tenure and the land market in early modern England, or a late contribution to the Brenner debate’, Economic History Review 43 (1990), 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 1–6.

31 W. M. Ormrod, ‘England in the Middle Ages’, in R. Bonney ed., The rise of the fiscal state in Europe, c. 1200–1815 (Oxford, 1999), 19–52, esp. pp. 21–33.

32 W. P. Blockmans, ‘The Low Countries in the Middle Ages’, in Bonney ed., The rise of the fiscal state, 281–308, esp. pp. 284–8.

33 P. K. O'Brien and P. A. Hunt, ‘England 1485–1815’, in Bonney ed., The rise of the fiscal state.

34 More extensive with respect to Italy see Section 5, below.

35 Opsommer, ‘Omme dat leengoed’, 427 and 533–53.

36 See E. Thoen, Landbouwekonomie en bevolking in Vlaanderen gedurende de late middeleeuwen en het begin van de moderne tijden: testregio: de kasselan Oudenaarde en Aalst (eind 13de – eerste helft 16de eeuw) (Ghent, 1988), 779–880, E. Scholliers and F. Daelemans, De conjunctuur van een domein: Herzele, 1444–1752 (Brussels, 1981), 59–62, and G. Fourquin, ‘Le temps de la croissance’, in Histoire de la France rurale, part I (Paris, 1975), 377–547, esp. pp. 500–2.

37 B. M. S. Campbell, ‘Population pressure, inheritance and the land market in a fourteenth century peasant community’, in R. M. Smith ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle (Cambridge, 1986), 87–134, esp. pp. 107–8.

38 See for instance D. Kastner, Das Schöffenbuch der Stadt Zülpich und die Urkunden des Stadtarchivs (Cologne, 1996), esp. pp. 12–14, and Das Troisdorfer Schöffenbuch (Cologne, 1997) esp. pp. 9–13.

39 P. L. Nève, ‘De overdracht van onroerend goed in de middeleeuwen’, De levering van onroerend goed, Ars notariatus 32 (Deventer, 1985), 23–37, esp. pp. 27–9.

40 F. C. J. Ketelaar, ‘Van pertinent register en ordentelijk protocol: overdracht van onroerend goed in de tijd van de Republiek’, De levering van onroerend goed, Ars notariatus 32 (Deventer, 1985), 39–56, esp. pp. 39–42.

41 F. F. X. Cerutti, Hoofdstukken uit de Nederlandse rechtsgeschiedenis (Nijmegen, 1972), 192 and 247–51.

42 Geraedts, F. F. J. M., ‘De registratie van de gerechtelijke eigendomsoverdracht in het Kwartier van Veluwe, 1538–1733’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen Gelre 85 (1994), 4060Google Scholar, esp. pp. 43–4.

43 J. A. E. Kuys, De ambtman in het Kwartier van Nijmegen (ca. 1250–1543) (Nijmegen, 1987), 151–2.

44 One of the finest examples – the protocol of ’s-Hertogenbosch – is analysed by M. H. M. Spierings in Het schepenprotocol, 1367–1400 (Tilburg, 1984), and was used extensively by H. P. H. Jansen in Landbouwpacht in Brabant in de veertiende en vijftiende eeuw (Assen, 1955).

45 G. Béaur, Histoire agraire de la France au XVIIIe siècle: inerties et changements dans les campagnes françaises à la fin de l'époque moderne (Paris, 2000), 37.

46 For silent renewal of the lease see Section 6, below. For inland Flanders see E. Thoen, ‘A “commercial survival economy” in evolution’, esp. pp. 128–9.

47 D. Herlihy and C. Klapisch-Zuber, Les Toscans et leur familles: une étude du catasto florentin de 1427 (Paris, 1978), 261–2 and 274–8.

48 A. J. Maris, De reformatie der geestelijke en kerkelijke goederen in Gelderland (The Hague, 1939), 75, 83, 221 and 490. For the seventeenth century see also P. Brusse, Overleven door ondernemen: de agrarieschiedenis van de Over-Betuwe, 1650–1850, AAG Bijdragen 38 (Wageningen, 1999), 140–5.

49 J. A. E. Kuys and J. T. Schoenmakers, Landpachten in Holland, 1500–1650, Amsterdamse historische reeks 1 (Amsterdam, 1981), 26 and 34 (a picture of a poster dating from 1603).

50 Moorman van Kappen, Met open buydel ende in baren gelde, 8 and 10, for instance in West Friesland.

51 D. W. Sabean, Property, production, and family in Neckarhausen, 1700–1870 (Cambridge, 1990), 356.

52 See the examples in L. Feller, ‘Quelques problèmes liés à l’étude du marché de la terre durant le Moyen Âge', in S. Cavaciocchi ed., Il mercato della terra, 21–45.

53 C. Wickham, ‘Land sales and land market in the eleventh century’, in his Land and power: studies in Italian and European social history, 400–1200 (London, 1994), 257–74, and Mountains and the city: the Tuscan Appenines in the early Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988), 242–56.

54 P. Toubert, ‘L'Italie rurale aux VIIIe–IXe siècles: essai de typologie domaniale', in I problemi dell'Occidente nel secolo VIII (Spoleto, 1973), volume I, 95–132, esp. pp. 104–11.

55 Wickham, Mountains and the city, 27–8 and 231–5.

56 Remaining the case until far into the modern era; see G. Levi, Le pouvoir au village: histoire d'un exorciste dans le Piémont du XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1989), 112–18.

57 See P. J. Jones, ‘From manor to mezzadria: a Tuscan case-study in the medieval origins of modern agrarian society’, in N. Rubinstein ed., Florentine studies (London, 1968), 193–241, esp. pp. 206–14, and S. R. Epstein, ‘The peasantries of Italy, 1350–1750’, in T. Scott ed., The peasantries of Europe, 88–9.

58 G. Corona, ‘La propriété collective en Italie’, in N. Vivier ed., Les propriétés collectives face aux attaques libérales (1750–1914) (Rennes, 2003), 156–73.

59 E. Huertas, ‘Between law and economy: “divided property” and land market in Tuscany, 12th–13th century’ (unpublished paper, COST a35 Conference, Gregynog, 2006).

60 C. Violante, ‘Quelques caractéristiques des structures familiales en Lombardie, Emilie et Toscane aux XIe et XIIe siècles’, in G. Duby and J. le Goff eds., Famille et parenté dans l'occident médiéval (Rome, 1977), 87–147, esp. pp. 118–24.

61 Jones, ‘From manor to mezzadria’, 215.

62 P. Jones, The Italian city-state: from commune to signoria (Oxford, 1997), 240.

63 See Osheim, D. J., ‘Countrymen and the law in late-medieval Tuscany’, Speculum 64 (1989), 317–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for the Lucca area, where the situation was relatively favourable.

64 P. Schulte, Scripturae publicae creditur… das Vertrauen in Notariatsurkunden im kommunalen Italien des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 2003), 100–8.

65 See Aymard, M., ‘From feudalism to capitalism in Italy’, Review 6 (1982), 131208Google Scholar, esp. p. 193, and J. P. Cooper, ‘Patterns of inheritance and settlement by great landowners from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries’, in J. Goody, J. Thirsk and E. P. Thompson eds., Family and inheritance: rural society in Western Europe, 1200–1800 (Cambridge, 1976), 192–327, esp. pp. 277–88.

66 D. Sella, Italy in the seventeenth century (London and New York, 1997), 27 and 63–9.

67 B. J. P. van Bavel, ‘The emergence and growth of short-term leasing in the Netherlands and other parts of Northwestern Europe (11th–16th centuries): a tentative investigation into its chronology and causes’, to be published in B. J. P. van Bavel and P. Schofield eds., The rise of leasing, forthcoming in CORN publication series, 10.

68 See R. H. Britnell, ‘Tenant farming: Eastern England’, Agrarian history, part III, 611–24, esp. pp. 613–16, and J. L. Bolton, The medieval English economy, 1150–1500 (London, 1980), 40–2, 88–9 and 208–20.

69 E. Miller, The abbey and bishopric of Ely: the social history of an ecclesiastical estate from the tenth century to the early fourteenth century (Cambridge, 1951), 104 and 109–10.

70 Britnell, ‘Tenant farming: Eastern England’, esp. pp. 615–16.

71 According to one of the few estimates made; see J. Whittle, ‘Leasehold tenure in England c. 1300–c. 1600’, to be published in B. J. P. van Bavel and P. Schofield eds., The rise of leasing, forthcoming in CORN publication series, 10.

72 See Hopcroft, R. L. and Emigh, R. J., ‘Divergent paths of agrarian change: Eastern England and Tuscany compared’, Journal of European Economic History 29 (2000), 951Google Scholar, p. 14, and Jones, ‘From manor to mezzadria’, 205 and 220–1.

73 See Galassi, F. L. and Cohen, J. S., ‘The economics of tenancy in early twentieth-century southern Italy’, Economic History Review 47 (1994), 585600CrossRefGoogle Scholar, nuancing the older picture on this point.

74 Kuys and Schoenmakers, Landpachten in Holland, 23–5, and J. T. de Smidt, Rechtsgewoonten. De gebruiken en plaatselijke gebruiken waarnaar het burgerlijk wetboek verwijst (Amsterdam, 1954), 105–6 and 126–33. (‘After-letting’ was the assumed right to carry on with the tenancy on the same conditions for some time after the term of a lease had expired.)

75 As in the village of Langerak (1502); see de Geer, B. J. L. ed., ‘De heerlijkheid van Langerak en hare rechten’, Verslagen en Mededeelingen Oud-Vaderlandsch Recht 3 (1898), 163–81Google Scholar.

76 C. Cau, S. van Leeuwen et al. eds., Groot placaet-boeck, part I, cols. 329–42 (1580) and 363–4 (1515), part II, cols. 2515–20 (1658) and part III, col. 586 (1452).

77 Hoyle, ‘Tenure and the land market’, 9 and more extensively his ‘Long-term trends in tenure in the British Isles, 1300–2000: a comparative survey’, unpublished paper for the ESSHC conference in The Hague (2002), E. Miller, ‘Tenant farming: Yorkshire and Lancashire’, The agrarian history of England and Wales, part III (Cambridge, 1967–2000), 596–611, esp. pp. 597–8 and 608, and M. Bloch, French rural history: an essay on its basic characteristics (Berkeley, 1966), 179–80.

78 P. Bowden, ‘Agricultural prices, farm profits, and rents’, Agrarian history, part IV, 593–695, esp. pp. 685–6.

79 Jansen, Landbouwpacht, 77–83.

80 See B. J. P. van Bavel, ‘Elements in the transition of the rural economy: Factors contributing to the emergence of large farms in the Dutch river area (15th–16th centuries)’, in Hoppenbrouwers and van Zanden eds., Peasants into farmers?, 179–201.

81 Roessingh, H. K., ‘Garfpacht, zaadpacht en geldpacht in Gelderland in de 17e en 18e eeuw’, Bijdragen en mededelingen Gelre 63 (1968/1969), 7297Google Scholar.

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83 Bhaduri, A., ‘Cropsharing as a labour process’, Journal of Peasant Studies 10 (1983), pp. 8893CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More empirical research is needed to test this assumption.

84 For urban dominance in product markets see Epstein, S. R., ‘Cities, regions and the late medieval crisis: Sicily and Tuscany compared’, Past and Present 130 (1991), 350CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 15, 28–33 and 38–9.

85 See for instance B. Poulsen, ‘Rural credit and land market in the Duchy of Schleswig c. 1450–1660’, in van Bavel and Hoppenbrouwers eds., Landholding and land transfer, 203–17, and the careful discussion by Béaur, G., ‘Foncier et crédit dans les sociétés préindustrielles: des liens solides ou des chaînes fragiles?’, Annales ESC 49 (1994), 1411–28Google Scholar.

86 Ackerberg, D. A. and Botticini, M., ‘The choice of agrarian contracts in early Renaissance Tuscany: risk sharing, moral hazard, or capital market imperfections?’, Explorations in Economic History 37 (2000), 241–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 See Toch, M., ‘Lords and peasants: a reappraisal of medieval economic relationships’, Journal of European Economic History 15 (1986), 163–82Google Scholar, esp. pp. 168–77, and Thoen, Landbouwekonomie, 569–88.

88 See Epstein, ‘The peasantries of Italy’, 98–101, and a more pessimistic view in Hopcroft and Emigh, ‘Divergent paths of agrarian change’, 16. See also Herlihy, D., ‘Population, plague and social change in rural Pistoia, 1201–1430’, Economic History Review 18 (1965), 225–44Google Scholar.

89 J. Zuijderduijn, ‘Medieval capital markets: markets for renten between state formation and private investment in Holland (1300–1550)’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Utrecht University, 2007), 186–91.

90 Ackerberg, D. A. and Botticini, M., ‘Endogenous matching and the empirical determinants of contract form’, Journal of Political Economy 110 (2002), 564–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 575–6.

91 Jones, ‘From manor to mezzadria’, 226–7. For the Netherlands see van Bavel, ‘Land, lease and agriculture’.

92 E. Thoen and T. Soens, ‘Appauvrissement et endettement dans le monde rurale: étude comparative du crédit dans les différentes systèmes agraires en Flandre au bas Moyen Age et au début de l'Epoque Moderne', in Cavaciocchi ed., Il mercato della terra secc. XIII–XVIII, 703–20, esp. pp. 710–11.

93 J. Zuijderduijn, ‘Assessing the rural economy: household wealth, economic traffic and the domestic market in Holland and Tuscany, 15th and 16th centuries’, unpublished paper (Florence/Utrecht, 2007), and ‘Medieval capital markets’, 182–6.

94 P. Godding, Le droit foncier à Bruxelles (1960), 205, 213–16 and 220–31.

95 The following examples are taken from Smith, ‘Families and their land in an area of partible inheritance’, 135–195, esp. p. 153, and Glennie, P., ‘In search of agrarian capitalism: manorial land markets and the acquisition of land in the Lea Valley c.1450– c. 1560’, Continuity and Change 3 (1988), 1140CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. p. 20.

96 This applies to the period before 1350, as well as to the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries. See the overview by Whittle, ‘Individualism’, 49–50 and 55–6. See also, for instance, the general impression one obtains from A. Jones, ‘Bedfordshire: fifteenth century’, in P. D. A. Harvey ed., The peasant land market in medieval England (Oxford, 1984), 178–251, esp. pp. 192–223.

97 For instance see Campbell, ‘Population pressure, inheritance and the land market’, esp. pp. 107–20.

98 B. J. P. van Bavel, Transitie en continuïteit: de bezitsverhoudingen en de plattelands-economie in het westelijke gedeelte van het Gelderse rivierengebied (ca. 1300 – ca. 1570). (Hilversum, 1999), 418–23.

99 Van Bavel, Transitie en continuïteit, 536–7.

100 See G. Bois, Crise du féodalisme (Paris, 1976), 219; Vandewalle, P., ‘Het pachtkontrakt in westelijk Vlaanderen, 1550–1645: een analytische studie’, Handelingen van het genootschap voor geschiedenis ‘Société d'Emulation’ 118 (1981), 561Google Scholar, esp. pp. 26–7 and 44; Thoen, Landbouwenomie, 361–3, Jansen, Landbouwpacht in Brabant, 91–2; and C. Reinicke, Agrarkonjunktur und technisch-organisatorische Innovationen auf dem Agrarsektor im Spiegel niederrheinischer Pachtverträge, 1200–1600, Rheinisches Archiv 123 (Cologne and Vienna, 1989), 127–31.

101 L. Genicot, L'économie rurale Namuroise au bas moyen âge, 1199–1429 (Louvain, 1943), 280–1; Reinicke, Agrarkonjunktur, 127–31; and Cooper, ‘In search of agrarian capitalism’, in T. H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin eds., The Brenner debate: agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe (Cambridge, 1985), 163 and 172.

102 Corresponding to the impression of the peasant land market in England having evolved earliest in East Anglia, or in eastern England in general; see Hyams, ‘The origins’, 19.

103 W. Achilles, Deutsche Agrargeschichte im Zeitalter der Reformen und der Industrialisierung (Stuttgart, 1993), 109–20.

104 B. J. P. van Bavel, ‘Agrarian change, property rights and economic growth: regional divergencies in the late medieval Netherlands’, paper presented at the workshop ‘Property rights, the market in land and economic growth in Europe’, Gregynog, 2006.