Restructuring Agriculture

According to royal policy statements of the late eighteenth century, agriculture in most of France was inefficient because it was too tightly regulated by the community. Cultivation was governed by fixed routines and schedules set by the group. The questions of what, when, and where to plant and to harvest were

decided collectively. In Burgundy, for example, the following procedure was routine. Arable land was divided into a few large open fields; peasants possessed strips in each field. (Separate, fenced-off parcels were not permitted.) The village assembly decided what would be planted in the open fields, which were divided into three soles: one-third was usually planted in wheat; one-third was planted in spring grain, either barley or oats; and one-third normally remained fallow. Thus, at least one-third of the tillable soil was fallow at all times. All village residents, including the seigneur, had the right to pasture their livestock on the fallow land or on wasteland. After the harvest, the cultivated area of the common fields was also made available to the village herd. The common fields thus consisted of wasteland and meadows, as well as the fallow and the harvested fields. According to the right of vaine pâture, all inhabitants, the seigneur included, could pasture livestock on the commons, the stubble of the open fields, or the fallow land. This right, along with the fragmentation of holdings, compelled individuals to sow and harvest at the same time as their neighbors, and to utilize the same crop rotation system. An additional disincentive to efficient agriculture was that the fragmentation of holdings and the scattering of plots and fields encouraged carelessness and dishonesty by neighbors. When one individual did not adequately drain his field, his neighbors' lands were often flooded; if someone carelessly turned a plow the wrong way, he might crush his neighbor's crop. The theft of a furrow or of a neighbor's crop was commonplace. The difficulty of policing fragmented holdings discouraged cultivators from investing their time or money in improvements.

Since artificial fertilizer did not exist, higher yields depended on manure, the supply of which depended on the quantity of livestock. However, an increase in livestock required an increase in the fallow land, which meant reducing the arable land. Thus, pasture could only be increased at the expense of arable land. Agronomists have referred to this dependence of livestock on fallow land as an "infernal circle." Whereas French peasants allowed one-third of their fields to lie fallow, the English developed an efficient way of increasing both arable land and livestock. On the fallow land rather than the tillable soil, they

planted root crops, such as turnips, and grasses like sainfoin and clover, which enriched rather than exhausted the soil and could be used as feed. The introduction of these soil-restorative crops and the elimination of fallow land revolutionized English agriculture and society. A larger population could be supported because more livestock providing manure allowed more intensive cultivation of the arable land. More oats could be grown to support more horses, cows, and sheep, thus improving productivity.

The physiocrats, a group of eighteenth-century economists led by Quesnay, expressed the concerns about the technological conservatism of French agriculture in a theoretical formulation. They believed that only agriculture produced a surplus over the costs of production and that to guarantee the national welfare, France must have the largest possible agricultural surplus. To achieve this surplus, they postulated, high grain prices were desirable because a rise in agricultural income would mean an increase in net product, an expansion of the entire economy, and an increase in population. Rising agricultural incomes would also fuel growth in manufacturing because agrarian prosperity would create a market for urban goods.

To increase the capital invested in agriculture, the physiocrats considered it essential to emancipate the individual producer from traditions that dictated the communal regulation of agricultural routines. They called on the state to achieve this by redefining agrarian property rights. The reformers argued that individuals would be motivated to invest in improvements only if all legal obstacles to the full private ownership of land were removed. Only then would they be guaranteed the full benefits of their investments in enclosure, hedges, fences, and husbandry. Only then would they risk the considerable capital outlays necessary for the creation of artificial meadows. Basing their claims on the English example, the physiocrats asserted that since the right of common pasture made it a practical necessity to conform to the practices of one's neighbors, introducing new techniques required abolition of that right.

The preceding discussion of open-field agriculture, based on the royal edicts and the theory of the physiocrats, is simplified, but it is convenient for the purposes of this chapter. In actuality, there was great variety and flexibility in agricultural practices

throughout France, but the argument of this chapter does not depend on recognition of that variation. The political and fiscal circumstances that prevented the implementation of the program for agricultural reform are our main concern here.

Ideas on how to escape the infernal circle—the dependence of livestock on fallow land—were part of a broader philosophy and program for economic growth, the goal of which was to increase long-term economic productivity for the benefit of the state. The physiocrats were convinced that France was underpopulated and that the soil, if properly cultivated, could support a much larger population. According to these economists, large populations were in themselves an important form of wealth. Since, according to the physiocrats, land was the basis of all wealth, the whole process of economic revitalization had to begin by bringing more money into agriculture. "Poor peasants mean a poor kingdom" was Quesnay's dictum. The first step was to free the grain trade from price controls.^[1] The resulting higher grain prices would stimulate the entire economy in the long run. High grain prices would increase agricultural employment and wages and hence would also increase the demand for industrial products. This would result not in a shift of income between the industrial and agricultural sectors, but in an increase in the income of both. Rising profits would stimulate investment in new techniques that, by increasing agricultural productivity, would support the larger population, which would create more wealth.

But what about the interim, the period of adjustment to high prices for grain? What about the poor man who might lose his land because he could not afford the increased rent, or the worker who was unable to find the money to feed his family while waiting for wages to catch up with increased prices? Such problems were never discussed by the physiocrats, who eschewed sentimentality. Their concern was the building of a stronger, more populous state that could put more soldiers in the field and send more ships to sea. It was a political problem—France's defeat in the Seven Years' War—that elevated physiocratic ideas to prominence in many discussions.

[1] See Steven L. Kaplan, Bread, Politics, and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV (The Hague, 1976).

In midcentury, the crown began to legislate the economic changes that the physiocrats had been proposing. It attempted on several occasions to remove price controls and export restrictions on grain, and to encourage and reward individual initiative. To these ends, the King's Council authorized the partitioning of common lands in 1770 and the enclosure of all lands in 1773. In addition, the right of common pasture was abolished with regard to enclosed lands so that individuals could withdraw their property from the villagewide system of crop rotation. Protected from the communal herd, owners might grow the root crops that had transformed English agriculture. The crown's program to reform and to restructure the agrarian economy is extensively covered in the literature on late-eighteenth-century France. The peasantry's opposition to those reforms has also received broad coverage in that literature. In most historical accounts, peasants are described as subsistence farmers who had little interest in producing for the market and opposed increases in grain prices. They desired, instead, protection from extreme price fluctuations. Because most peasants could not subsist on their crops alone—their holdings were often too small—they had to buy grain on the market and were interested in stable prices as consumers as much as (or more than) as producers. Lacking capital, they could neither afford nor benefit from enclosures. Moreover, the peasants feared that the loss of their collective rights would deprive them of a means of support, especially in times of need. Most peasants considered essential the right of common pasture, the use of the commons, equal shares of wood from the communal forest to use for fuel, and the right of gleaning stubble after the harvest.

Not so well known is that long before the monarchy issued orders abolishing collective practices, it was under pressure to do so from the Burgundian estates and Parlement. The reform legislation that was finally issued was the product of cooperation between the crown and those two provincial bodies, which are generally depicted as opponents of reform. Most historians are unaware that the reforms being sought by the King's Council were blocked by the royal bureaucracy. The intendant even upheld gleaning rights, which, in some regions, specified that farmers must use the sickle instead of the scythe. The sickle was less

efficient; it left much more stubble in the fields, which became the property of the community. The sickle method also created more work for the field hands and reduced owners' profits.

There were essentially two reasons for the intendant's opposition to restricting these and other communal rights. The first was that loss of communal properties made it more difficult for communities to pay royal taxes. The reforms called for a break with the communities' tradition of common rights and required that common fields become the property of individuals; thus the community would lose them forever. But as was noted in Chapter 1, since Louis XIV's campaign to verify debts, such properties had become the basis of the communities' ability to borrow money. In the eighteenth century, leasing these properties became the usual way for communities to fund day-to-day expenses. The communities' financial solvency had come to depend on the preservation of communal rights; those rights provided communities with the means to cover their expenses. The intendant, whose foremost concern was that communities remain solvent so that they could pay royal taxes, was not willing to risk communal solvency for possible long-term gains in productivity. He might be blamed if tax yields fell short. The urgency of this fiscal preoccupation becomes clear when we consider that in the late 1770s and early 1780s, the crown was on the verge of bankruptcy. To support the costs of the American Revolution, the monarchy had incurred debts that were more than 50 percent of revenues in 1789. The problem of compensating the crown's financiers had become so serious that it jeopardized the monarchy's ability to borrow. The intendants feared that the loss of communal properties, by making it more difficult for communities to pay royal taxes, could aggravate a situation that was already critical.

The second reason was that the short-term dislocations caused by the new programs presented the intendant with urgent social problems. Although intendants may have personally supported the new ideas, economic progress was not their main administrative responsibility. The social problems, and in particular growing mendicity, were more important. They required the intendant's immediate attention, and they partly explain his

opposition to the implementation of the new ideas. The fortunes of peasant families could change suddenly. One bad harvest, the billeting of troops, an epidemic, or the death of a cow or a few sheep could wipe out assets and impoverish a family. Communal rights and properties had traditionally functioned as a type of insurance for individual members of the community against sudden but temporary misfortune. The poorest inhabitants had been able to raise a cow, a pig, or a few sheep thanks to their communal pasture rights. A family in need could fall back on these resources and avoid destitution. In this sense, collective agricultural practices provided long-term security.

The physiocrats, however, did not believe that communal rights and properties should be social insurance against the mishaps and uncertainties that were the peasant's lot; advocates of physiocracy did not propose ways of coping with individual misfortune and poverty. They never considered what the possible alternatives would be once the community's resources could no longer provide welfare for individuals. Restricting communal rights forced many of the poor out of the village and onto the roads as itinerant workers or beggars. In a bad year, the number of roaming beggars sometimes exceeded the capacity of cities and charitable foundations to accommodate them. Historians today estimate that as much as 20 percent of the population of eighteenth-century France was indigent^[2] —that is, over two million French were beggars or itinerant laborers. The authorities were unable to cope with the problems of controlling vagrancy, rehabilitating mendicants, or suppressing banditry. Roaming beggars threatened the security of the countryside and were a burden on the cities. For this reason, the intendant preferred that individuals remain in their communities of origin. If communal rights allowed a poor inhabitant to raise a cow or a pig or a few sheep on the communal pasture, then allowing him to retain those rights was preferable to forcing him out of the village and into dependence on charity or on the state. Therefore, preserving

[2] See Olwen H. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750–1789 (Oxford, 1974), p. 1; and Robert M. Schwartz, "Policing the Poor in Eighteenth-Century France: The Example of the Génélité of Caen," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1981.

collective rights was a way of maintaining the poor and keeping them in their villages. Also, so long as an inhabitant remained in the village he would pay some taxes. These taxes, no matter how minimal, would lighten the load on the others.^[3]