Abstract
The open field system was the arrangement of peasant agriculture in northern Europe before the twentieth century into scattered strips communally regulated but privately owned. The system shares features with much peasant agriculture worldwide, especially in its scattering of strips. Dissolved gradually by ‘enclosure’ (Turner 1984), first in England and Scandinavia and later in France (Grantham 1980), Germany (Mayhew 1973), and the Slavic lands (Blum 1961), it has been seen as an obstacle to agricultural development. The system is most thoroughly documented in England (Gray 1915; Ault 1972; Baker and Butlin 1973; Yelling 1977; and hundreds of local studies). The English case has long been disproportionately important because it has provided a rich set of myths for other cases of traditional agriculture and reform. (The Russian version, the mir, is important for the same reason; but its unique feature – the periodic redistribution of the strips among families – arose in the eighteenth century out of the need to pay taxes, not out of the ancient community of cousins.)
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McCloskey, D.N. (2018). Open Field System. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1390
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1390
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