Pryor, Frederic L.

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Swarthmore College Works Economics Faculty Works Economics 3-1-1980 Review Of "The Origins Of English Individualism: The Family, Property And Social Transition" By A. Macfarlane Frederic L. Pryor Swarthmore College, fpryor1@swarthmore.edu This work is brought to you for free and open access by . It has been accepted for inclusion in Economics Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu. Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-economics  Part of the Economics Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits you  Recommended Citation Frederic L. Pryor. (1980). "Review Of "The Origins Of English Individualism: The Family, Property And Social Transition" By A. Macfarlane". Journal Of Economic Literature. Volume 18, Issue 1. 133-135. https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-economics/187 American Economic Association  ReviewReviewed Work(s): The Origins of English Individualism: The Family, Property and SocialTransition. by Alan MacfarlaneReview by: Frederic L. PryorSource: Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Mar., 1980), pp. 133-135Published by: American Economic AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2723908Accessed: 21-09-2017 15:50 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a widerange of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity andfacilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available athttp://about.jstor.org/termsAmerican Economic Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to Journal of Economic LiteratureThis content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Thu, 21 Sep 2017 15:50:34 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/termsThis content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Thu, 21 Sep 2017 15:50:34 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 134 Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XVIII (March 1980) defining this concept in terms of important characteristics of rural society in East Euro- pean states before their industrialization. By such a procedure he ends up with a very nar- row definition of peasant society-much nar- rower than the rather loose usage of the term by economists or the more rigorous definition employed by many anthropologists who are trying to distinguish peasants from tribal peo- ples. Conversely his definition of individualism is very broad and will not completely satisfy many people. But at least he has framed his definition so that available data can be brought to bear upon it, which is a considerable advan- tage over many other definitions. The bulk of this short book is taken up by attempting to demonstrate that the character- istics of peasant society did not apply to En- gland from the thirteenth century onward. He employs not only case studies of villages by historians but materials from his own research on two quite different small areas of England. By utilizing local records, legal textbooks, auto- biographical documents, and traveller ac- counts, he paints a quite different picture of English rural society than most of us have pre- viously viewed. Some specifics can give the flavor of his argu- ment. In peasant societies land is not individu- alized but is held by the entire family through time and seldom sold, since it is greatly rev- ered; in England from the twelfth century on- ward, land was held by individuals (both men and women) and was often sold to nonfamily members, especially since geographical mobil- ity of families was high and since children were sometimes disinherited. In peasant societies the unit of ownership (the joint family) is also the unit of production and consumption; in England at that time the nuclear family (rather than the stem or joint family) was predomi- nant, and the children often worked as ser- vants for other families, rather than for their own families. In peasant societies, there is no labor market; in England at that time, a large percentage of the labor force were servants or hired workers. In peasant society, the fami- lies are economically almost self-sufficient, production for the market is small, and cash is scarce; in England at that time, the economy was highly monetized, agricultural production for the market was important, and the exis- tence of elaborate books of accounts of farms attest to their "rational" attitudes toward money-making (there was even money-lend- ing for interest in rural areas). In peasant socie- ties there is a certain income and social equal- ity between families that work on the land and a large gap in income and social status stands between them and other social groups, so that little mobility occurs between classes; in En- gland at that time, considerable differentiation of wealth among the rural workers could be found and, in addition, some mobility between classes occurred. Finally, in peasant societies women have a low age of marriage, their mar- riage partners are selected for them, and few remain unmarried; in England at that time, women apparently had a moderate age of mar- riage, selected their own partners, and, in many cases, did not marry at all. Once the author moves from relatively con- crete phenomena to more subtle characteris- tics, the argument becomes more tenuous. For instance, he uses the reports of foreign travel- lers in England not only to adduce further evi- dence of the details of English rural life, but also to add two new elements: the English rural population had a much higher standard of liv- ing than their continental counterparts (a phe- nomenon we are led to believe was due to English individualism), and the English rural worker had those self-reliant personality as- pects-particularly arrogance and bull-head- edness-that are also allegedly associated with individualism. The author's evidence regarding these theses is interesting and pertinent. But how typical were the cases he cites? For only with regard to a few characteristics (mainly associ- ated with land sales and labor force compo- sition) could he calculate any type of aggregate statistics; and these were only for small areas. His task is not made easier by the fact that social and land tenure arrangements differed almost from hamlet to hamlet. Much of his evi- dence is sketchy; but the evidence brought by others to prove the opposite case, he tries to show, is even shakier. An informed judgement on these matters requires detailed acquain- tance with the availability and interpretations of local English records and other documents- a matter for historians to judge. However, we can make judgements aboutThis content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Thu, 21 Sep 2017 15:50:34 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Book Reviews 135 Macfarlane's interpretations of this evidence. Of particular concern is his very broad defini- tion of individualism. According to his ap- proach we will find individualism not only in other parts of Europe at that time (e.g., in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century village of Montaillou in southwestern France, about which LeRoy Ladurie [1978] has written a fascinating case study) but also in many "primitive" societies that anthropologists have studied. If this is the case, then the usefulness of his concept of individualism may be limited. And focusing on his account of England, we find few important traces of feudalism. Did it disappear as well before 1200 A.D.? Or did it ever exist? Or could England have had a mixed economy where feudalism coexisted with the type of individualism that the author de- scribes? If Macfarlane's thesis is correct, then much of what we have learned about English eco- nomic history must be given up. But we also have an exciting starting point to restudy a number of hoary questions in the social sci- ences, e.g., why the Industrial Revolution oc- curred first in England or why English colonies acted differently than those of other nations. The author has posed some new questions in a manner in which they can be answered, so that this book will undoubtedly engender an important debate that will add much to our understanding of economic history and devel- opment. Whatever reservations about his thesis the reader might harbor, his study is extremely enjoyable to read, particularly as an exercise in intellectual daring. You can't say that about many books these days. FREDERIC L. PRYOR Swarthmore College REFERENCE LADURIE, EMMANUEL LERoY. Montaillou: The promised land of error. Translated by BARBARA BRAY. New York: George Braziller, 1978. Economic growth in Britain and France 1780- 1914: Two paths to the twentieth century. By PATRICK O'BRIEN AND CAGLAR KEYDER. London; Boston and Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1978. Pp. 205. $21.25. ISBN 0-04-330288- 2. JEL 79-0062 The subject of French economic growth, never entirely out of fashion since the Ameri- can debates of the 1950's, is attracting a contin- uing stream of work in France, Britain, and the United States. Not atypically, the discussion began with broad interpretations and now cen- ters on measurement and specifics. Did France "fail" in any economically meaningful sense, and if so, for what economic reasons (noneco- nomic explanations being written off as little more than admissions of ignorance)? Professors O'Brien and Keyder attack the problem in the framework of an explicit comparison with Brit- ain. Their title implies that they are viewing the two nations symmetrically from some- where in the middle of the Channel, but that is not quite the case. England is more nearly the benchmark, France the object of study. Paradoxically, their study suggests a more novel view of the British experience of the nineteenth century than it does of the French. The explicitly comparative method is useful, since the concept of retardation, so often ap- plied to the French case, begs the question: compared to what? The book has other virtues as well. It is careful and candid in its analysis of biases and limitations in the data, and achieves readability and clear exposition in a difficult area. However, I do have some reser- vations. Although they cast their argument in the form of an effort at understanding rather than judging (the subtitle is "Two Paths to the Twentieth Century"), O'Brien and Keyder use the retardation hypothesis as their organizing device, despite the fact that crude growthman- ship is somewhat passe. More seriously, the considerable effort that has gone into this re- search adds little to our basic store of data. The analysis rests almost exclusively on the now-classic sources: Phyllis Deane and W. A. Cole for Britain (1962); J. Marczewski (e.g., 1965) and his collaborators for France. To be sure, the authors engage in long, sometimes laborious, discussions and exercises regarding the problems and biases in the data, and some of these are useful and original. Too often, how- ever, the purpose seems to be to ward off criti- cism or assuage the conscience: the available data will be used in the end no matter what. The central tasks of the book are to compare levels of commodity output per capita, and lev- els of labor productivity in the production ofThis content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Thu, 21 Sep 2017 15:50:34 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Review Of  The Origins Of English Individualism: The Family, Property And Social Transition  By A. Macfarlane

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Review Of The Origins Of English Individualism: The Family, Property And Social Transition By A. Macfarlane

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