¹ McCloskey, Donald N., “The Economics of Enclosure: A Market Analysis,” in Parker, William N. and Jones, Eric L., eds., European Peasants and Their Markets: Essays in Agrarian Economic (Princeton, 1975), pp. 123–60Google Scholar; and , McCloskey, “English Open Fields as Behavior towards Risk,” Research in Economic History, vol. 1 (1976), pp. 124–70Google Scholar.

² Ruttan, Vernon, “Structural Retardation and the Modernization of French Agriculture: A Skeptical View,” this Journal, 38 (09 1978), 714–28:Google Scholar

³ Binswanger, Hans P., Ruttan, Vernon, et al., Induced Innovation: Technology, Institutions, and Development (Baltimore, 1978), p. 48Google Scholar; and Dovring, Folke, Land and Labor in Europe, 1900–1950 (The Hague, 1956), pp. 69–70Google Scholar.

⁴ The most frequently cited reference is the Count of St.-Vallier's assertion in 1884 that remembre-ment would raise yields by 20 to 30 percent; Chauveau, Claude, Le Remembrement de la propriété rurale (Paris, 1918), p. 105Google Scholar. At the beginning of the century De Neufchâteau estimated that the losses from excessive dispersion of plots amounted to 25 percent of the crop. Peltre, Jean, “Les Remembre-ments à l'époque moderne (XVII^e-XVIII^e siècles),” Annales de I'est, 5^e série, 28 (1976), 238Google Scholar. For similar estimates see Hottenger, Georges, Morcellement et remembrement (Paris, n.d.), p. 83Google Scholar; ville, Alfred de Fo, Etudes économiques et statistiques sur la propriété foncière: le morcellement (Paris, 1885), p. 155Google Scholar; Colonna, Jean, La Petite Propréité et le remembrement (Alger, 1914), p. 14Google Scholar, and Grandeau, Louis N., L'Agriculture et les institutions agricoles du monde au commencement du XX^e siècle (Paris, 1905–1911) vol. 3, pp. 128Google Scholar. Evidence for Germany and one commune in France at the end of the 1850s, reported in the Journal d'agriculture pratique (1860, p. 78Google Scholar; 1865, pp. 74–75), shows increases in rents from about 20 to 35 percent. I am indebted to Professor McCloskey for allowing me to see his evidence on the gains from enclosure in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

⁵ Vandervynct, Eugène, Le Remembrement parmi les amiliorations foncièrurales (Paris, 1936) p. 71Google Scholar. Studies cited by Vandervynct show that one hectare divided in six separated parcels and sown in wheat cost 79 percent more to farm than a one hectare plot, and that a three parcel holding cost 32 percent more.

⁶ Journal d'agriculture pratique (1860), p. 268Google Scholar; , Grandeau, Agriculture et les institutions vol. 3, p. 132Google Scholar; , Foville, Le Morcellement, p. 181Google Scholar; , Hottenger, Morcellement, pp. 74–75, 116Google Scholar; , Colonna, Petite Proprieti, p. 126Google Scholar; , Chauveau, Le Remembrement, p. 70Google Scholar.

⁷ , Hottenger, Morcellement, pp. 179–80Google Scholar, gives a detailed breakdown of the typical costs of abor-nement.

⁸ , Hottenger, Morcellement, p. 118Google Scholar; , Chauveau, Le Remembrement, p. 60Google Scholar.

⁹ Dumas, Jacques, “The Present State of the Land System in France,” Economic Journal, 19 (1909), 42Google Scholar. The high costs of surveying individual parcels meant that plots in the open fields continued to be identified by reference to neighboring plots. The location of precise boundaries was normally given over to arbitrators or to the few men in a village who were believed to have exact knowledge of the precise location of each boundary or the placehames and parcels that identified particular plots. Hot-tenger, who witnessed many such surveys as a notary in Lorraine, called them “le triomphe de l'a-peu-près”; , Hottenger, Morcellement, pp. 68, 76–77Google Scholar.

¹⁰ The high cost of surveys was probably the main reason why land was not consolidated more often by exchange. De Neufchâteau argued that it was the main reason why peasants divided property strip by strip, rather than by establishing plots of equivalent value. Neufchâteau, Nicolas François de, Voyages agronomiques (Dijon, 1806), p. 12Google Scholar. See also Diogey, M. J., Du Morcellement du sol en France (Paris, 1857), p. 133Google Scholar; and , Foville, Le Morcellement, p. 161Google Scholar. A cost of 10 percent of the value of large holdings was usual at the beginning of the twentieth century. , Hottenger, Morcellement, p. 184Google Scholar

¹¹ , Hottenger, Morcellement, pp. 74–75, 116, 179–180Google Scholar; Journal d'agriculture pratique, 1860, p. 268Google Scholar; Ibid., 1865, p. 75; , Foville, Le Morcellement, pp. 181, 172Google Scholar; , Grandeau, Agriculture et les institutions agricoles, vol. 3, pp. 129–32Google Scholar; , Colonna, La Petite Proprétté, p. 126Google Scholar.

¹² See Procès-verbaux de I'Assemblée Nationale, vol. 63 (Paris, n.d.), “Décret de I'Assemblée Nationale sur les biens et usages ruraux, et sur la police rurale, 28 septembre 1791.” The legislative history of this measure is reviewed inGoogle ScholarFesty, Octave, L'Agriculture pendant la Revolution française: conditions de récoltes des céréales. Etudes d'histoire économique, 1789–1795 (Paris, 1947)Google Scholar; and , Godechot, Les Institutions de la France sous la Révolution et I'Empire (Paris, 1951), pp. 158–70Google Scholar. administrative attempts to relax the constraints imposed by collective regulation of pasture are described and analyzed in Bloch, Marc, “La Lutte pour l'individualisme agraire dans la France du XVIII^e siècle,” Annales d'histoire iconomique et sociale, vol. 2 (1930), pp. 329–81Google Scholar, rpt, in Marc Bloch, langes historiques, vol. 2 (Paris, 1963). The responsiveness of local custom to new patterns of cropping is surveyed by Meuvret, Jean, “La Vaine Pâture et le progrès agronomique avant la Révolution,” in Meuvret, Jean, Etudes d'histoire économique (Paris, 1971), pp. 193–96Google Scholar.

¹³ Nineteenth-century legal texts treat common pasture as a relationship obtaining between properties rather than between persons, along the lines of a public easement. Fournel, Jean-François, Les Lois rurales de la France (Paris, 1819), pp. 262–63Google Scholar; Jay, Joseph-Laurent, Traité de la vaine pâture (Paris, 1863), p. 36Google Scholar; Jacques, Ferdinand, “De la propriété et des servitudes rurales d'après la loi de 1791,“Revue critique de législation et de jurisprudence, n.s. 22 (1890–1891), p. 557Google Scholar; and gueil, Edgard, La vaine pâture, commentaire théorique et pratique (Charleville, 1893), p. 22Google Scholar.

¹⁴ For a bibliography of these works, consult [Henri?] , Stein, Bibliographic des usages locaux (Besançon, 1907)Google Scholar. (This work is in the Musee des Arts et Traditions Populaires, Paris.) Some of the problems of interpretation of these lists of customs are discussed in Bouthors, Alexandra, Les Usages locaux du département de la Somme (Amiens, 1861), p. xxxivGoogle Scholar; Daguin, Arthur, Usages locaux; étude historique, juridique, critique et bibliographique (Paris, 1905), pp. 9, 15Google Scholar; and Clement, Henri, Essai les usages locaux du département du Pas-de-Calais (Arras, 1866), pp. 242–44Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Meynier, Andre, “La Commune rurale franchise,” Annales de giographie, 58 (1945), 166–70Google Scholar; Moreau, J.-P., “Une Cause de transformation du paysage agraire en Bourgogne: La dislocation de la communautd paysanne,” Revue giographique de Lyon, 35 (1960), 178–80Google Scholar.

¹⁶ The right to issue bans stemmed from problems associated with “voisinage” or geographical externalities; , Fournel, Les Lois rurales, pp. 345–49Google Scholar. Some examples are cited in the compilation of Verneilh-Puyraseau, Joseph de, Observations des commissions consultatives sur le projet de Code (Paris, 1810–1814), vol. I, pp. 199–200, 333Google Scholar. See also Meuvret, Jean, Le Problème des subsistances à l'époque de Louis XIV. La production des céréales dans la France du XVII^e et XVIII^e siècle, vol. I (Paris, 1977), pp. 165–66Google Scholar.

¹⁷ See Moquelet, Jacqueline, “Les Pratiques communautaires dans la plaine vendéene au XIX^e siècle,” Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations, 18 (1963), 609Google Scholar; Antoine Granveau, Usages locaux ayant force de loi dans les quatre arrondissements du département de la Marne (rpt. of the usages of 1855; Bar-le-Duc, 1922), p. 11; Cherest, Aime, Usages locaux de I'Yonne, p. 270Google Scholar; Dumay, Aime, Usages locaux de département de la Côte d'Or; procés verbal de la commission centrale (Dijon, 1859), pp. 66–67Google Scholar; Perrenet, Pierre, Les Usages locaux de la Côte d'Or, suivis de la nomenclature des communes el hameaux du département, avec Vindication de Vancienne coutume observie chacun d'eux (Dijon, 1901), p. 75Google Scholar. In Languedoc the harvest bans fell into disuse in the eighteenth century. Fons, Victor, Usages locaux ayant force de loi dans le département de la Haute-Garonne (Toulouse, 1875), p. 57Google Scholar. This may reflect the early recourse to migratory labor in this district; , Meuvret, Le Problime des subsistances, vol. 1, pp. 179–82Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Département de Seine-et-Marne, Recueil des usages locaux publiés sous les auspices du Conseil Général et de l'administration départemental (Melun, 1910), p. 281Google Scholar; Usages locaux du département de Seine-et-Oise (1938), p. 228Google Scholar;Grully, Paul de, Le Droit de glanage (Montpellier, 1912), pp. 138–39Google Scholar; Revcueil des usages locaux dans le département de I'Aisne (Laon, 1863)Google Scholar; Bourgueil, Edgard, Usages locaux du département des Ardennes (Charleville, 1898), p. 183Google Scholar; Usages locaux reconnus dans les cantons de Chartres Nord et Sud (Chartres, 1874), pp. 26, 43Google Scholar; Département de la Seine et Oise, Usages locaux (1939), p. 56Google Scholar; Berthelin, Egmont, Usages locaux ayant force de loi dans le département de I'Aisne (Troyes, 1856), pp. 162–65Google Scholar; Roy, Frederic Le, Receuil des usages locaux, particulier au canton de Calais en matiere civile et commerciale (St.-Pierre-les-Calais, 1880), pp. 10–11Google Scholar; Tailliandrer, Maurice, Les usages locaux en matière agricole dans le département du Pas-de-Calais (Arras, 1939), pp. 56–57Google Scholar; Chambre d'Agriculture du Calvados, Usages locaux à caractère agricole (Caen, 1936)Google Scholar. General adoption of the scythe occurred between 1840 and 1870 as a result of tighter rural labor markets. Even before these dates, however, landlords were inserting clauses into leases that required their tenants to scythe the standing grain; Henault, Jean-Baptiste, Usages locaux du département d'Eure-et-Loir (Chartres, 1861), pp. 149, 172, 178Google Scholar; , Hénault, Recueil des usages locaux suivis dans le canton de Bri-jolles (Chartres, 1845), p. 24Google Scholar; Usages locaux de canton de Brulon (Le Mans, 1856)Google Scholar; , Clement, Usages du Pas deCalais, p. 220Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Gottman, Jean, ed., Documents pour servir à l‘étude de la structure agraire dans la moitié occiden-tale de la France (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar.

²⁰ As long as farmers followed the same rotations, access to isolated strips raised few difficulties. In the words of a saying in Picardy, “Terre en labour, terre en clavée/Doivent passage à terre en-clavée”; Bouthors, Alexandre, Les Proverbes, dictons, et maximes du droit rural traditionnel (Paris, 1858), p. 108Google Scholar. See Pyot, Louis, Usages locaux de la Côte-d'Or (Dijon, 1934), p. 36Google Scholar; Berthelin, Egmont, Usages locaux… Aube, pp. 90–91, 114Google Scholar; Meurthe-et-Moselle, Préfecture de, Usages locaux à caractère agricole (Nancy, 1933), pp. 19–20Google Scholar; Vosges, Prefecture des, Usages locaux à caractire agricole (St.-Die, 1934), p. 295Google Scholar. In some districts where long narrow furrows did not dictate plowing methods, unrestricted access to isolated plots depended on farmers maintaining the traditional furrows; Madriere, Andre Di-doux de la, Recueil des usages locaux ayantforce de hi dans… Pontarlier (Pontarlier, 1937), p. 17Google Scholar.

²¹ Colin, G. E. and Blane, A., “Extension et declin de l'assolement triennal au XIX^e siècle: L'évolution d'une commune Lorraine,” Revue géographique de V'Est, 6 (1966), 91–93Google Scholar.

²² The minimum efficient size of a flock of sheep in the nineteenth century was determined by two indivisibilities. The first was the fixed cost of the shepherd, which was a relatively skilled occupation in areas that practiced sheepfolding or where the flock had to be moved frequently; the second was the size of flock that was needed to manure a piece of land adequately. At a salary of 300 francs and sheep producing wool and meat worth 6 to 10 francs per year, the minimum flock size was above 50 sheep. The same minimum also seems to hold for sheepfolding, which before the late nineteenth century was the most efficient means of moving manure onto the fields. To ensure even distribution of manure a fold had to be densely packed, which implied minimum flocks of 50 to 75 head. At the end of the eighteenth century it required flocks of 120 to 150 sheep to keep 15 hectares of land well manured. See , Meuvret, Le Probléme des subsistances, vol. I, pp. 133–34Google Scholar, and vol. II, pp. 113–14. In the 1830s and 1840s flocks of 150 to 500 sheep were normal in Meuse. At the then common stints to 4 head of sheep per hectare of arable, this implies a minimum farm size of from 75 to 100 hectares to support a single flock; Delamarre, Mariel, Le Berger dans la France des villages (Paris, 1970), pp. 200, 215–17, 231Google Scholar. These were giant-size enterprises by French standards.

²³ This estimate is based on calculations of the income obtainable from 6 sheep and a cow taken from data in the census manuscripts of the 1862 agricultural census. Six sheep would yield wool and meat (assuming sheep were killed at 4 years) worth 40 francs a year. A cow in milk and bearing one calf would yield about 150 to 160 francs a year. The income of a rural landless family at this time would.have ranged from 800 to 1000 francs. See Ministere de l'Agriculture, Statistique de la France… risuhats giniraux de I'enquete dicennale de 1862 (Strasbourg, 1868)Google Scholar. Detailed calculations for the departments of Eure-et-Loir and Yonne were made from the manuscripts, Enquete agricole dicennale, 1862: questionnaires cantonnaux. Archives Nationales, Paris, F 2693–2697Google Scholar.

²⁴ See Sée, Henri, “La Vaine Pâture en France sous la Monarchic de Juillet d'après l'enquête de 1836–1838,” Revue d'histoire moderne, 1 (1926), 202, 205Google Scholar. There are frequent references in the usages to the abuse of common grazing by large farmers. See Recueil des usages locaux du département du Nord (Lille, 1856), p. 65Google Scholar: , Cherest, Usages locaux de I'Yonne, p. 239Google Scholar; , Henault, Usages locaux d'Eure-et-Loir, p. 204Google Scholar; Paris, Andre, “Les Conditions du progres agricole dans le centre du bassin parisien: Droits seigneuriaux, jachere, et vaine pature dans la region de Montford-l'Amaury (XVIII^e a XIX^e siècles),” in Elhnologie et histoire (Paris, 1975), pp. 236–38Google Scholar.

²⁵ Berthelin, Egmont, Usages locaux encore en vigueur dans le département de la Marne (Chalons, 1857), p. 84Google Scholar; Antoine Grandveau, Usages locaux du département de la Marne, 2nd ed. (rpt. of 1855 usages; Bar-le-Duc, 1922), p. 38; Bouthors, Alexandre, Les Usages locaux du dèpartement de la Somme, prictáts d'un essai d'application des usages ruraux du nord de la France au projet de code rural (Amiens, 1861), pp. 70–73Google Scholar; Loiret, Département du, Recueil des usages locaux (Orléans, 1905), p. 18Google Scholar. In others a light picket fence or a furrow marked off the area to be withdrawn from common pasture. See, for example, , Henault, Usages locaux d'Eure-et-Loir (1861), p. 204Google Scholar; Bourgueil, La vaine pature (rpt. of 1855 usages of the départment of Ardennes), pp. 101, 107; and , Berthelin, Usages locaux de I'Aube, p. 65Google Scholar.

²⁶ This estimate is based on the assumption that all of the fodder potentially obtainable from fallow grazing was consumed by sheep. Estimates of production are derived from figures on value and output per hectare on fallows published in Statistique de la France, I serie, Agriculture (Paris, 1840–1841), andGoogle ScholarStatistique de la France, 2e me serie, Statistique agricole dicennale de 1852 (Paris, 1858, 1860)Google Scholar. These estimated yields were then multiplied by the areas reported to lie fallow in 1882. Estimated consumption of all sheep in northeastern France was computed on the basis o f mid-century reports that sheep consumed roughly 5 percent of their live weight daily in hay-equivalent fodder; Moll, Louis and Gayot, Eugene; La Connaissance general du boeuf (Paris, 1860), p. xxxixGoogle Scholar. Numbers of sheep are taken from the 1852 and 1882 agricultural censuses. Live weights of sheep are a weighted average of figures reported in the 1882 agricultural census. In 1852 fallows supported at most 25 percent of the sheep in northeastern France.

²⁷ Barral, Pierre, Les Agrariensfrancais de Meline a Pisani (Paris, 1968), pp. 28–29Google Scholar; Coudert, J., “La Vaine Pâture dans les pays de la Meurthe au XIX^e siècle,” in Mélanges Paul Voirin (Nancy, 1967), pp. 152–54.Google Scholar, Delamarre, Le Berger, pp. 159, 171–73Google Scholar; and Jolas, Tina and Zonabend, Françoise, “Gens du finage, gens du bois,” Annales: E.S.C., 28 (1973), 298Google Scholar.

²⁸ See Grantham, George W., “The Diffusion of the New Husbandry in Northern France, 1815–1840,” this Journal, 38 (06 1978), 311–37Google Scholar.

²⁹ This procedure, which was apparently very common in districts of large-scale farms near Paris, was extensively described in the report of the French land system at the Exposition Universelle of 1900. “A kind of exchange which occurs sometimes on highly subdivided property cultivated mainly by leasehold farmers is exchange by sub-lease. Two farmers exchange leaseholds of parcels in order to round out their farms. No lease is signed, the agreement is verbal, and its duration is determined by the length of the original leases. Most often the actual landlords of the respective plots are unaware of these exchanges; but even if they were it would not be in their interest to oppose them. Their rights bear on the harvest of their own land, cultivated by another farmer, rather than on the harvest of their own farmer on other lands…. The most frequent cases… are verbal and because of this escape attention; for there exists no trace of these agreements either in the municipal archives or in the land registry”; Grandeau, Louis N., L'Agriculture et les institutions agricole, vol. 3, p. 118Google Scholar. For a discussion of the development of large tenant farms in this area, see Brunet, Pierre, Structure agraire et économie agricole entre la Seine et I'Oise (Caen, 1960)Google Scholar.

³⁰ The correlation between the percentage of farms over 40 hectares in size and the percentage of farms held on leasehold tenure as reported in the 1862 agricultural census is.47.

³¹ For example, O'Brien, Patrick and Keyder, Caglar, Economic Growth in Britain and France, 1780–1914: Two Paths to the Twentieth Century (London, 1978), pp. 127–37Google Scholar.

³² See , Hottenger, Morcellement, p. 90Google Scholar. The enclosure at Neuville created a new park, apparently at the expense of land previously farmed by the peasants, since they reclaimed it during the Revolution. In 1831, as part of the Restoration settlement, the heirs of the enclosures had to cede back 40 hectares to the village in compensation for land taken during the enclosure. , Peltre, “Les Remembrements,” p. 245Google Scholar; and , Chauveau, Le Remembrement, p. 363Google Scholar.

³³ Peltre, “Les Remembrements.”

³⁴ Marmottan, Paul, “Un Projet de Code Rural sous de l^er Empire,” Revue des etudes napoleon-iennes, 6 (1913), 321–46Google Scholar.

³⁵ , Sée, “La Vaine Pature sous la Monarchie de Juillet,” pp. 198–213Google Scholar.

³⁶ Napoleon III appointed a commission to study a reformulation of the Code Rural in 1855. Articles on the German states' legislation facilitating consolidation (flurbereinigung) began to appear at the end of the 1850s.

³⁷ This is well brought out in the debates conducted in the Corps Legislatif over the authority of the syndicat autorisée. See Le Moniteur universelle, 1865, pp. 628–29Google Scholar. A full account is to be found in , Van-dervynct, Le Remembrement, pp. 134–36Google Scholar; and , Colonna, La Petite Propriété, p. 128Google Scholar.

³⁸ Zeldin, Theodore, France 1848–1945, Vol. I, Ambition, Love and Politics (Oxford, 1973), pp. 522 -23, 530–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In 1890 per capita debt incurred by local authorities in France was 37 francs, excluding the large towns. In England local authorities indebted their citizens to the amount of 180 francs per head; Ibid., p. 524.

³⁹ In contrast, American state governments were almost indecent in their readiness to expropriate private property for purposes of economic development. See Scheiber, Harry N., “Property Law, Expropriation, and Resource Allocation by Government: The United States, 1789–1910,” this Journal, 33 (03 1973), 232–51Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ In this and the preceding paragraph I follow David Thomson's interpretation of post-Revolutionary French politics as an expression of the tension between the Revolutionary ideal of popular sovereignty in an omnicompetent state, with overtones of social as well as political egalitarianism, and the embodiment of this ideal in ministerial government. The question to whom the executive was to be responsible was never adequately resolved, with the result that in 1791, 1830, and 1848 governments were changed by popular uprisings. See his Democracy in France since 1870, 4th ed. (London, 1964), pp. 13–14Google Scholar. For a similar verdict, see Hoffmann's, Stanley brilliant analysis of the “stalemate society” in “Paradoxes of the French Political Community,” in Hoffmann, et al., In Search of France (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 12–18Google Scholar.

⁴¹ , Grandeau, Agriculture et les institutions agricole, vol. 3, p. 133Google Scholar.

⁴² , Vandervynct, Le Remembrement, p. 175Google Scholar.

⁴³ , Zeldin, France, vol. I, pp. 582–84Google Scholar. Deputies in the Third Republic were professional agents of their districts in Paris, and owed their election more to their ability to provide patronage and small-scale public works than to their stand on “national” issues. General elections were infrequent and the turnover of deputies was very low. At any time in early twentieth century, over a quarter of them had served more than 20 years. Thus the frequent turnover of governments was matched by the infrequency of changes in the personnel of the Assembled Nationale. The deputies could thus block strong executive actions, while their hold on patronage prevented the emergence of a “ministerial party” that might have provided some room for government to maneuver.

⁴⁴ , Chauveau, Remembrement, pp. 40, 102–03Google Scholar; , Grandeau, Les Institutions agricole, vol. 3, p. 128Google Scholar; , Vandervynct, Le Remembrement, p. 168Google Scholar. The numbers of consolidations actually carried out are impossible to determine, owing to the apparently common device of exchange in leasehold, as discussed above. There is no question, however, that consolidation of land by sale and exchange was very rare. On the eve of the First World War Chauveau estimated that only one commune (probably Teuton-ville) had taken advantage of an 1865 law making it possible for landowners to form themselves into a syndicate for the purpose of carrying out consolidation of their land. The number of resurveys of open-field villages combined with a reduction in the number of parcels and a reorientation of paths seems to have been under one hundred. See , Grandeau, L'Agriculture et les institutions agricole, vol. 3, p. 128Google Scholar. Hottenger lists the communes having carried out full or partial abornements generaux in Morcellement, Appendix.

⁴⁵ “The Consolidation of Farms in Six Countries of Western Europe,” International Journal of Agrarian Affairs, 1 (1952), 25–28Google Scholar; , Barral, Les Agrariens frangais, pp. 199, 258Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Valentin, Lucien, L'Action administrative dans la vie rurale (Paris, 1961)Google Scholar.