Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T03:53:10.492Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Making property productive: reorganizing rights to real and equitable estates in Britain, 1660–1830

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2009

DAN BOGART  and
GARY RICHARDSON
DAN BOGART
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, 3151 Social Science Plaza, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-5100, [email protected], [email protected]
GARY RICHARDSON
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, 3151 Social Science Plaza, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-5100, [email protected], [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

Between 1660 and 1830, Parliament passed thousands of Acts restructuring rights to real and equitable estates. These estate Acts enabled individuals and families to sell, mortgage, lease, exchange and improve land previously bound by inheritance rules and other legal legacies. The loosening of these legal constraints facilitated the reallocation of land and resources towards higher-value uses. Data reveal correlations between estate Acts, urbanization and economic development during the decades surrounding the Industrial Revolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Review of Economic History , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , April 2009 , pp. 3 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © European Historical Economics Society 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Archival sources

Database of Acts of Parliament, 1600 to 1830, collected by Dan Bogart and Gary Richardson.Google Scholar
Great Britain. House of Commons. Report of the Royal Commission on Real Property, British Parliamentary Papers, vol. x, 1829.Google Scholar
Great Britain. House of Commons. Report from the Select Committee on House of Commons Officers and Fees, British Parliamentary Papers, vol. xii, 1833.Google Scholar
Middlesex Deeds Registry, London Metropolitan Archives. Journals of the House of Commons, vol. 22, 1736.Google Scholar

References

Baker, J. H. (1971). An Introduction to English Legal History. London: Butterworth.Google Scholar
Beckett, J. V. (1984). The pattern of landownership in England and Wales, 1660–1880. Economic History Review. ns, 37, pp. 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogart, D. and Richardson, G. (2008a). Adaptable property rights: Britain's property system before the Industrial Revolution. Working paper.Google Scholar
Bogart, D. and Richardson, G. (2008b). Estate Acts: a new data source for British economic history. Working paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cannadine, D. (1994). Aspects of Aristocracy. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, G. (1996). The political foundations of modern economic growth: England, 1540–1800. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 26, pp. 563–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coase, R. (1960). The problem of social cost. Journal of Law and Economics 3, pp. 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coase, R. (1974). The lighthouse in economics. Journal of Law and Economics 17, pp. 357–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coase, R. (1988). The Firm, the Market, and the Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
De Soto, H. (2000). The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
English, B. and Saville, J. (1983). Strict Settlement: A Guide for Historians. Hull: University of Hull Press.Google Scholar
Great Britain (1810). Statutes of the Realm, 1101 to 1713. London: G. Eyre and A. Strahan.Google Scholar
Great Britain (1800). Statutes at Large, 1223 to 1806. London: Mark Baskett, Robert Baskett, Henry Woodfall and William Strahan.Google Scholar
Habakkuk, J. (1994). Marriage, Debt, and the Estates System: English Landownership, 1650–1950. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoppit, J. (1996). Patterns of parliamentary legislation, 1660–1800. Historical Journal 39, pp. 109–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., Shleifer, A. and Vishny, R. W. (1997). Legal determinants of external finance. Journal of Finance 52, pp. 1131–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., Shleifer, A. and Vishny, R. W. (1998). The quality of government. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 15, pp. 229–79.Google Scholar
North, D. and Weingast, B. (1989). Constitutions and commitment: the evolution of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth century England. Journal of Economic History 49, pp. 803–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, P. (1994). Central government and the economy, 1688–1815. In Floud, R. and McCloskey, D. (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Britain since 1700, vol. I, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pollock, F. (1896). The Land Laws. London.Google Scholar
Posner, R. A. (2003). Economic Analysis of Law. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Sheppard, F., Belcher, V. and Cottrell, P. (1979). The Middlesex and Yorkshire deed registries and the study of building fluctuations. London Journal 5, pp. 176–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spring, E. (1964). The settlement of land in nineteenth-century England. American Journal of Legal History 8, pp. 209–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spring, E. (1983). The family, strict settlement, and historians. Canadian Journal of History 18, pp. 379–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spring, E. (1993). Law, Land, and Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300–1800. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, F. M. L. (1963). English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century. London.Google Scholar
Thompson, F. M. L. (ed.) (1994). Landowners, Capitalists, and Entrepreneurs: Essays for Sir John Habakkuk. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, O. (1985). The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, and Relational Contracting. New York: Macmillan Free Press.Google Scholar
Wrigley, E. A. (2007). English county populations in the later eighteenth century. Economic History Review 60, pp. 35–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar