Abstract
‘Common rights’ and ‘common land’ refer to rights to use land in common in some way. Of several forms of common rights in pre-industrial Europe and elsewhere, only one – free access to land – involved what economists commonly think of as common rights. Common rights in Europe were largely swept away during the 18th and 19th centuries by a process termed ‘enclosure’. Some economic historians have reconsidered the inefficiency of open fields in an English context, but at present the data are too poor to allow a plausible rebuttal of the views of 18th-century critics of the open fields.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Allen, R. 1992. Enclosure and the Yeoman: The agricultural development of the South Midlands, 1450–1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ault, W. 1972. Open-field-farming in medieval England: A study of village by-laws. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Chambers, J., and G. Mingay. 1966. The agricultural revolution 1750–1880. London: Batsford.
Clark, G. 1998. Commons sense: Common property rights, efficiency, and institutional change. Journal of Economic History 58: 73–102.
de Moor, M., L. Shaw-Taylor, and P. Warde, eds. 2002. The management of common land in North West Europe, c. 1500–1850. Turnhout: Brepols.
Emle, Lord. 1936. English farming past and present. 5th ed. London: Longmans, Green and Co..
Grantham, G. 1980. The persistence of open-field farming in nineteenth century France. Journal of Economic History 40: 515–531.
Hardin, G. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science 162: 1243–1248.
Hoffman, P. 1989. Institutions and agriculture in old-regime France. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 145: 166–181.
McCloskey, D. 1976. English open fields as behaviour towards risk. Research in Economic History 1: 124–170.
Neeson, J. 1993. Commoners, common-right, enclosure and social change in England 1700–1820. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Overton, M. 1996. Agricultural revolution in England: The transformation of the agrarian economy 1500–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shaw-Taylor, L. 2001. Parliamentary enclosure and the emergence of an English agricultural proletariat. Journal of Economic History 61: 640–662.
Wordie, J. 1983. The chronology of English enclosure, 1500–1914. Economic History Review 36: 483–505.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Shaw-Taylor, L. (2018). Common Rights in Land. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2461
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2461
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95188-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95189-5
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences