The authors would like to thank the following people for helpful comments and discussions: Bruce Campbell, Nick Crafts, François Crouzet, Louis Cullen, Lance Davis, David Dickson, George Grantham, Alan Green, Knick Harley, Dan Heath, Joanne Innes, Eric Jones, Liam Kennedy, Frank Lewis, John McManus, Joel Mokyr, Patrick O'Brien, Angela Redish, Bill Schworm, Peter Solar, Michael Turner, and Herman van der Wee. Earlier versions of this article were presented to seminars at the University of British Columbia; the University of Chicago; and Queen's University, Canada; and to the Conference on International Productivity Comparisons, 1750–1939, Bellagio; the Irish Economic and Social History Conference, Galway; and the International Economic History Congress, Berne. We are grateful to all the participants at these sessions for their discussion. We would like to thank Nancy South for research assistance and Frank Flynn for assistance with programming and data analysis. We are grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support.

¹ Young, Arthur, A Six Months' Tour Through the North of England [henceforth Northern Tour] (2nd edn., London, 1771), vol. 1, p. iii;Google ScholarYoung, Arthur, Six Weeks Tour Through the Southern Counties of England and Wales (London, 1768) [henceforth Six Weeks Tour].Google Scholar

² Arthur Young, Northern Tour, and Young, Arthur, The Farmer's Tour Through the East of England (London, 1771) [henceforth Eastern Tour].Google Scholar

³ Young, Arthur, Arthur Young's Tour in Ireland (1780; Hutton, A. W., ed., London, 1892) [henceforth Tour in Ireland].Google Scholar

⁴ Young, Arthur, “A Tour to the West,” Annals of Agriculture, 6 (1786), pp. 116–51Google Scholar; “A Tour in Wales, etc.,” Annals of Agriculture, 8 (1787), pp. 31–88; “A Tour in Sussex,” Annals of Agriculture, 11 (1789), pp. 170–304.Google Scholar

⁵ Young, Arthur, Travel during the Years 1787, 1788, 1789, Undertaken with a View of Ascertaining the Cultivation, Wealth, Resources, and National Prosperity of … France (2nd edn., London, 1794) [henceforth Travels….[in] France].Google Scholar

⁶ Young, , Eastern Tour, vol. 1, p. xi.Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid., vol. 4, p. 367.

⁸ Meanwhile, see E. Mingay, Gordon, ed., Arthur Young and His Times (London, 1975), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

⁹ Young, , Northern Tour, vol. 3, p. 378.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Young also collected considerable information on land values, and it is conceivable that they might shed light on total factor productivity. However, Young, , Travels … [in] France, vol. 2, pp. 120–23, doubted that the numbers measured the economic rent of land.Google Scholar

¹¹ Griliches, Zvi, “Agriculture: Productivity and Technology,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1968), vol. 1, p. 242Google Scholar, maintained that in the twentieth century yields have depended on factors like seed variety, fertilization, and soil moisture. Mechanization and the intensity of cultivation have been unimportant in raising yields. Chorley, G.P.H., “The Agricultural Revolution in Northern Europe, 1750–1880: Nitrogen, Legumes, and Crop Productivity,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 34 (02 1981), pp. 71–93Google Scholar, explained the growth of yields in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe in terms of cropping changes that raised soil nitrogen. N. Parker, William and L. Klein, Judith, “Productivity Growth in Grain Production in the United States, 1840–1860 and 1900–1910,” in Output, Employment and Productivity in the U.S. after 1800. Studies in Income and Wealth, vol. 30 (Princeton, 1966), pp. 523–46Google Scholar, explained the growth in nineteenth-century American yields in terms of chemical inventions and (in contrast to Griliches) new mechanical equipment.

¹² For instance,Bennett, M. K., “British Wheat Yield Per Acre for Seven Centuries”, Economic Journal (Supplement, 1937), pp. 12–29;Google ScholarBourke, P.M.A., “The Average Yield of Food Crops in Ireland on the Eve of the Great Famine,” Department of Agriculture Journal, 66 (1969), pp. 26–39;Google ScholarM. S. Campbell, Bruce, “Agricultural Progress in Medieval England: Some Evidence from Eastern Norfolk,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 36 (02 1983), pp. 26–46;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Chorley, “The Agricultural Revolution”; Clout, Hugh, Agriculture in France on the Eve of the Railway Age (London, 1980);Google ScholarFussell, G. E., “Population and Wheat Production in the Eighteenth Century,” The History Teachers' Miscellany, 7 (1929), pp. 65–68, 84–88, 108–11, 120–27;Google ScholarHolderness, B. A., “Productivity Trends in English Agriculture, 1600–1850: Observations and Preliminary Results” (presented to International Economic History Conference, Edinburgh, 1978);Google ScholarMorineau, Michel, “Y-a-t-il eu une révolution agricole en France au XVIIIe siècle?” Revue historique, 239 (04–06 1968), pp. 299–326;Google ScholarMorineau, , Les faux-semblants d'un démarrage économique: agriculture et démographie en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1970);Google ScholarMorineau, , “Révolution agricole, révolution alimentaire, révolution demographique,” Annales de Démographie Historique, (1974), p. 335–71;Google ScholarNewell, William, “ The Agricultural Revolution in Nineteenth-Century France,” this Journal, 33 (12 1973), pp. 697–731;Google ScholarOverton, Mark, “Estimating Crop Yields from Probate Inventories: An Example from East Anglia, 1585–1735,” this Journal, 39 (06 1979), pp. 363–78;Google ScholarSlicher van Bath, B. H., Yield Ratios, 810–1820, A.A.G. Bijdragen, No. 10 (1963);Google ScholarTitow, J. Z., Winchester Yields: A Study in Medieval Agricultural Productivity (Cambridge, 1972);Google ScholarTurner, Michael, “Agricultural Productivity in England in the Eighteenth Century: Evidence from Crop Yields,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 35 (11 1982), pp. 489–510;CrossRefGoogle ScholarYelling, J. A., Common Field and Enclosure in England, 1450–1850 (Hamden, 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ Young, Arthur, General View of the Agriculture of Oxfordshire (London, 1813), pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

¹⁴ In the modern literature McCloskey, Donald, “The Enclosure of Open Fields: Preface to a Study of its Impact on the Efficiency of English Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century,” this Journal, 32 (03 1972), pp. 15–35,Google Scholar has advocated the use of rents to measure efficiency gains at enclosure. C. Allen, Robert, “The Efficiency and Distributional Consequences of Eighteenth Century Enclosures,” Economic Journal, 92 (12 1982), pp. 937–53,CrossRefGoogle Scholar analyzes the farm reports Young collected in his English tours and finds that rents rose at enclosure because income was transferred from farmers to landlords, not because productivity went up. See also Yelling, , Common Field, pp. 210–13.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Young, Arthur, General Report on Enclosures (London, 1808), pp. 37–38,Google Scholar as quoted by Yelling, , Common Field, p. 210.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Allen describes the general character of these data in “Efficiency and Distributional Consequences.” While that paper concentrated on analyzing the data relating to farms, this article analyzes a broader sample of villages. C. Allen, Robert and ó Gráda, Cormac, “On the Road Again with Arthur Young: English, Irish and French Agriculture During the Industrial Revolution,” University of British Columbia, Department of Economics Discussion Paper No. 86–38 and University College, Department of Economics, Centre for Economic Research Working Paper No. 45, Appendix Table 1, reports the average yields county by county.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Throughout, national yield averages have been computed as unweighted arithmetic means of the county data. The absence of county acreage data left no other option.

¹⁸ The contemporary is quoted in G. Gazley, John, The Life of Arthur Young (Philadelphia, 1973), p. 196;Google Scholar Kerridge is quoted in Mingay, , Arthur Young, p. 3.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Marshall, William, Review of the Reports of the Board of Agriculture (London, 1808–1817), vol. 3, pp. 65–66. See also vol. 3, pp. 358, 491–92, and vol. 4, pp. 456–60.Google Scholar

²⁰ Young, , Northern Tour, vol. 1, pp. xii–xiii.Google Scholar

²¹ Young, , Northern Tour, vol. 1, p. iv.Google Scholar

²² Young, , Eastern Tour, vol. 1, pp. 3, 82, 165.Google Scholar

²³ Caird, James, English Agriculture in 1850–1851, Mingay, G. E., ed. (London, 1968), p. 474.Google Scholar

²⁴ McCulloch, J. R., A Descriptive and Statistical Account of the British Empire (London, 1837), vol. 1, p. 482;Google ScholarFussell, , “Population and Wheat Production,” p. 109 fn. 35.Google Scholar

²⁵ Turner, , “Agricultural Productivity,” pp. 502–3, 494.Google Scholar

²⁶ For example, Bennett, “British Wheat Yields.”

²⁷ L. Jones, Eric, Agriculture and the Industrical Revolution (Oxford, 1974), pp. 184–90.Google Scholar

²⁸ Thus, for instance, Titow's, , Winchester Yields, pp. 121–35, z,Google Scholar summary of the yields of 40 manors of the Bishop of Winchester between 1209 and 1349 showed wheat yielding 10.7 bushels per acre, barley 16.8 bushels, and oats 11.7 bushels. Titow's figures have been divided by 0.9 to compensate for the tithe. (Titow, , Winchester Yields, p. 8.)Google ScholarFarmer, D. L., “Grain Yields on the Winchester Manors in the Later Middle Ages,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 30 (11 1977) pp. 555–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar reports yield-seed ratios for the same manors into the fifteenth century, and those ratios are scarcely different from the ones Titow reports. Brandon, P. F., “Cereal Yields on the Sussex Estates of Battle Abbey during the Later Middle Ages,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 25 (08 1972), pp. 403–20, reports similar numbers for some Sussex manors on p. 417. See Slicher van Bath, Yield-Rauos, summarizing yield-seed ratios for all English records in print when he wrote. Again those ratios are fully consistent with our argument. The only discordant findings are the high yields in some East Norfolk manors recently discussed by Campbell, “Agricultural Progress.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ Fussell, , “Population and Wheat Production,” p. 111.Google Scholar

³⁰ Turner, “Agricultural Productivity”; Overton, Mark, “Agricultural Productivity in Eighteenth- Century England: Some Further Speculations,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 37 (05 1984), pp. 244–51;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and C. Allen, Robert, “Enclosure, Capitalist Agriculture, and the Growth in Corn Yields in Early Modern England” (University of British Columbia Department of Economics, Discussion Paper 86–39).Google Scholar

³¹ Turner, “Agricultural Productivity.”

³² Young, , “Tour in Ireland,” (Dublin, 1780 edn.), pt 2, p. 75.Google Scholar

³³ Compare O'Brien, George, The Economic History of Ireland from the Union to the Famine (London, 1921), pp. 27–128,Google Scholar and Green, E.R.R., “Agriculture,” in Edwards, R. Dudley and Williams, T. Desmond, eds., The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History (Dublin, 1956), pp. 89–128.Google Scholar

³⁴ ó Gráda, Cormac, Ireland Before and After the Famine: Explorations in Economic History (Manchester, 1988), chap. 2.Google Scholar

³⁵ Thomas, Brinley, “Food Supply in the United Kingdom during the Industrial Revolution,” in Mokyr, Joel, ed., The Economics of the industrial Revolution (Totowa, 1985), pp. 137–50.Google Scholar

³⁶ Cormac ó Gráda, Ireland, chap. 2. See also Solar, P. M., “Agricultural Productivity and Economic Development in Ireland and Scotland in the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Devine, Tom and Dickson, David, eds., Ireland and Scotland (Edinburgh, 1983).Google Scholar

³⁷ Crafts, N.F.R., “Income Elasticities of Demand and the Release of Labour from Agriculture during the Industrial Revolution: A Further Appraisal,” in Mokyr, , ed., The Economics of the Industrial Revolution, p. 160.Google Scholar

³⁸ For an earlier assessment of Irish grain yields before 1845, see Bourke, , “Average Yields,” pp. 26–39. Bourke, however, largely eschews comparisons across countries and over time.Google Scholar

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⁴⁰ Another source is the parish yield data in the Ordnance Survey memoirs for the 1830s. Available for Ulster counties only, these data are often ambiguous in terms of the measurement units used. Omitting unclear cases, however, yields a 34-parish average of 37.0 bushels for oats and a 31-parish average of 26.6 bushels for wheat. We are grateful to Liam Kennedy of Queen's University, Belfast, for sharing his O.S.M. data.

⁴¹ Mingay, , Arthur Young, p. 6.Google Scholar

⁴² Fraser, Robert, Statistical Survey of the County of Wexford (Dublin, 1807), p. 56.Google Scholar

⁴³ A condensed single-volume version of the first and second tours had been produced by John Wynn Baker for the Dublin Society in 1771. This abridgement of the Six Weeks, and Six Months Tour of Arthur Young, Esq. was aimed at “the common farmer of Ireland,” and 3,000 copies were printed.

⁴⁴ Gazley, , Arthur Young, pp. 96–100.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Cullen, L. M., The Emergence of Modern Ireland, 1600–1900 (London, 1981), pp. 172–92.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Young, Arthur, A Tour in Ireland, selected and edited by Maxwell, C. (Cambridge, 1925), p. 32.Google Scholar

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⁴⁸ It is worth noting that French writers have generally been impressed with Young's Irish inquiry. When Millon, C., “Editor's Preface,” Young, Arthur, Voyage en Irlande (Paris, 1800), produced a work “qui fasse connaltre d'une manière satisfaisante l'Irlande,” it was a translation of Part II of Young's Tour in Ireland. Young's reputation was a “sure guarantee” of success; “nothing escaped his inquiries.”Google ScholarSée, H., “Introduction,” Young, A., Voyages en France 1787, 1788, 1789 (Paris, 1931; 1976 edn.), vol. 1, p. 27, fn., suggests, rightly in our view, that Young's knowledge of Irish agriculture was “plus précise et plus exacte.”Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Bourke, , “Average Yields,” p. 27.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Bourke's, Even “Average Yield,” p.27,Google Scholar more conservative assessment—reflecting a belief that the reduction in acreage during the Famine boosted yields—still implies progress between Young's time and 1845. On rotations see Wakefield, , Ireland, pp. 368–426.Google Scholar His data are tabulated in Mokyr, Joel, “Irish History with the Potato,” Irish Economic and Social History, 8 (1981), p. 12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵¹ Fraser, Robert, General View of the Agriculture and Minerology, Present State and Circumstances of the County Wicklow (Dublin, 1801), p. 178.Google Scholar

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⁵³ Bourde, A., Agronomie et agronomes en France au XVIIIe siec (Paris, 1967), vol. 3, pp. 1653–65. Young is accused of superficiality but the historians who quote him include Clout, Agriculture in France; Morineau, Les faux-semblants; Bourde, Influence;Google ScholarSexauer, B., “English and French Agriculture in the late Eighteenth Century,” Agricultural History (1976), pp. 491–505.Google Scholar See also Sée's balanced appraisal in his introduction to first complete translation of Young's French trip, Voyages en France, pp. 15–35.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Ernle, Lord, English Farming, Past and Present (4th edn., London, 1927), p. 206.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Young, , Eastern Tour, vol 1, pp. xxvii–xlvii.Google Scholar

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⁵⁷ Young, , Travels …. [in] France, vol. 2, pp. 45, 56, 76.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Ibid., pp. 43–46.

⁵⁹ See Weber, E., Peasants into Frenchmen (London, 1977), chap. 6.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Young, , Travels … [in] France, vol. 2, p. 55.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² Ibid., pp. 55–56.

⁶³ Ibid., p. 92.

⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 93.

⁶⁵ The loam district includes Picardy, Flanders, Artois, the Ile de France, and parts of Normandy, Alsace, and Auvergne. The heath district includes Brittany, Anjou, and Gascony. The mountain district includes Roussillon, Languedoc, Auvergne, Dauphiné, and Provence. The stony district includes Lorraine, Alsace, Franche Comté, and Burgundy. The chalk district includes Sologne, Saintonge, Angoumois, Poitou, Touraine, Champagne. Young also distinguished a gravel district and a district of “various barns,” but he collected little information about them. Clout, Hugh, Themes in the Historical Geography of France (London, 1977), p. 549, has produced a useful map of Young's soil districts with his route superimposed.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ The seed rates were read off Clout's, , Agriculture, p. 112,Google Scholar map for the departments where Young recorded yields. Mainly on his third trip, Young reported seed rates for some places in France (Travels … [in] France, vol. 2, p. 118). The average level of seeding he recorded is consistent with the 1837 inquiry, but seed rates do not correspond very closely place by place.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Young, , Travels … [in] France, vol. 2, p. 89.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 95.

⁶⁹ Ibid., p. 88. Specklin, R., “Les campagnes í leur apogée 1852–1880,” in Agulhon, M. et al., Histoire de la France rurale (Paris, 1976), vol. 3, p. 265, noted that Young “n'a vu le pays que le long des routes traversées, et entre elles, principalement dans l'Ouest, il y avait de grands espaces qu'il n'a connus que par oui-dite ou pas de tout”.Google Scholar

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⁷⁸ More recent assessments rely on labor productivity, and by that standard French agriculture was only two-thirds as productive as English early in the nineteenth century. See, for instance, O'Brien and Keyder, Economic Growth; Bairoch, P., “Niveau de développement économique de 1810 í 1910,” Annales: Economies, Societés, Civilisations, 20 (11–12 1965), pp. 1091–1117;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWrigley, E. A., “Urban Growth and Agricultural Change: England and the Continent in the Early Modem Period,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 15 (Spring 1985), pp. 683–728; Robert C.Allen, “The Growth in Labor Productivity in Early Modem English Agriculture,” Explorations in Economic History, forthcoming.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁹ Young, , Travels … [in] France, vol. 2, 119.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Ibid., p. 118, 123.