I have this fragment of a memory of reading about some arcane set of laws or customs to do with property and land inheritance. It prevented landowners from selling their land, or splitting it up, for some reason. This had the effect of inhibiting agricultural development sometime in the feudal era or perhaps slightly after. Anyone know what I’m talking about?
(I’m aware of the opposite problem, that of estates being split up among all children (instead of primogeniture) which caused agricultural balkanization and prevented economies of scale.)
This sounds like the system that France had before the first French Revolution. That is, up until 1789; I’m not sure when it started. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar system existed in other European countries at around the same time, but I’m not sure which. (I’ve only been reading history for a couple years, and most of it has been research for fiction I wanted to write, so my knowledge is pretty specifically focused.)
Under this system, the way property is inherited depends on the type of property. Noble propes is dealt with in the way you describe—it can’t be sold or given away, and when the owner dies, it has to be given to heirs, and it can’t be split among them very much. My notes say the amount that goes to the main heir is the piece of land that includes the main family residence plus 1⁄2 − 4⁄5 of everything else, which I think means there’s a legal minimum within that range that varies by province, but I’m not completely sure. Propes* includes lands and rights over land (land ownership is kind of weird at this time—you can own the tithe on a piece of land but not the land itself, for example) that one has inherited. Noble propes is propes that belongs to a nobleperson or is considered a noble fief.
Commoner inheritance varies a lot by region. Sometimes it’s pretty similar to noble inheritance (all or most of propes must go to the first living heir), sometimes the family can choose one heir to inherit more than the others, sometimes an equal split is required. There’s no law against selling or giving away common (non-noble) propes, but some of the provinces that require an equal split have laws to prevent parents from using gifts during their lifetime to give one child more than the others.
I’m not sure what effect noble property law had on agricultural development. I know France’s agriculture was lagging far behind England’s during the 18th century, but I never saw it attributed to this, at least not directly. (The reasons I can remember seeing are tenant farming with short tenures, and farmers having insufficient capital to buy newer tools.) The commoner inheritance system did fragment the land holdings, as you said. The main problems I remember hearing about with that were farms becoming too small to support a person (so the farmers would also work part-time as tenant farmers or day laborers, or abandon the farm and leave), and limiting social mobility by requiring wealthy commoners to divide their wealth with each new generation.
Most of this is coming from notes I took on the book Marriage and the Family in 18th Century France by Traer. I’m not sure how much you wanted to know, so ask if there’s anything you’re curious about that I didn’t include, and I’ll see if I can dig it up. If you want to research this, my impression is that finding good history books about a specific place is much easier if you can read the language spoken there, so it might be worth checking what the property laws were in places that speak the languages you know. If you need sources in English, having access to a university library helps a lot. When looking for information on France during this time period, “Ancien Regime” and “early modern” are useful keywords.
Lease-like arrangements that are practically selling are allowed, though. The only one I can think of at the moment is called alienation—basically you sell it except the new “owner’s” (or their heirs or whoever they sell the land to) pay your family rent for the land, forever. Something similar can be done with money, as a sort of loan that is never paid off. (These are called rentes fonciérs and rentes constituées, respectively—in case you ever want to look up more information.) They’re technically movable property, but they’re legally counted as propes, and treated the same way as noble land.
Yeah, at least in France, land can’t make you noble, even if it’s a whole noble fief with a title attached. (Then you’re just a rich commoner who owns a title but can’t use it.) You could become noble by holding certain jobs for a long enough time (usually three generations), though. And people did buy those. (Not through bribes—the royal government sold certain official posts to raise revenues, so it was legal.)
There was also a sort of real estate boom after the revolutionary government passed some laws to make it easier for commoners to buy land, which was sort of like what you describe—all the farmers who could afford it would buy all the land they could at higher values than it was worth, because it made them feel like they were rich landowners.
Adam Smith reported that this was how the law worked in the Spanish territories in the Americas, in order to ensure the continued existence of a wealthy and powerful landed aristocracy and so maintain social stability. He theorized that this policy was the reason that the Spanish territories were so much poorer than the English territories, even though the former had extensive gold deposits and the latter did not.
Yeah I did some more research, apparently they were called “fee tails” or “entails”. They were designed to keep large estates “in the family”, even if that ended up being a burden to the future generations.
Calling all history buffs:
I have this fragment of a memory of reading about some arcane set of laws or customs to do with property and land inheritance. It prevented landowners from selling their land, or splitting it up, for some reason. This had the effect of inhibiting agricultural development sometime in the feudal era or perhaps slightly after. Anyone know what I’m talking about?
(I’m aware of the opposite problem, that of estates being split up among all children (instead of primogeniture) which caused agricultural balkanization and prevented economies of scale.)
This sounds like the system that France had before the first French Revolution. That is, up until 1789; I’m not sure when it started. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar system existed in other European countries at around the same time, but I’m not sure which. (I’ve only been reading history for a couple years, and most of it has been research for fiction I wanted to write, so my knowledge is pretty specifically focused.)
Under this system, the way property is inherited depends on the type of property. Noble propes is dealt with in the way you describe—it can’t be sold or given away, and when the owner dies, it has to be given to heirs, and it can’t be split among them very much. My notes say the amount that goes to the main heir is the piece of land that includes the main family residence plus 1⁄2 − 4⁄5 of everything else, which I think means there’s a legal minimum within that range that varies by province, but I’m not completely sure. Propes* includes lands and rights over land (land ownership is kind of weird at this time—you can own the tithe on a piece of land but not the land itself, for example) that one has inherited. Noble propes is propes that belongs to a nobleperson or is considered a noble fief.
Commoner inheritance varies a lot by region. Sometimes it’s pretty similar to noble inheritance (all or most of propes must go to the first living heir), sometimes the family can choose one heir to inherit more than the others, sometimes an equal split is required. There’s no law against selling or giving away common (non-noble) propes, but some of the provinces that require an equal split have laws to prevent parents from using gifts during their lifetime to give one child more than the others.
I’m not sure what effect noble property law had on agricultural development. I know France’s agriculture was lagging far behind England’s during the 18th century, but I never saw it attributed to this, at least not directly. (The reasons I can remember seeing are tenant farming with short tenures, and farmers having insufficient capital to buy newer tools.) The commoner inheritance system did fragment the land holdings, as you said. The main problems I remember hearing about with that were farms becoming too small to support a person (so the farmers would also work part-time as tenant farmers or day laborers, or abandon the farm and leave), and limiting social mobility by requiring wealthy commoners to divide their wealth with each new generation.
Most of this is coming from notes I took on the book Marriage and the Family in 18th Century France by Traer. I’m not sure how much you wanted to know, so ask if there’s anything you’re curious about that I didn’t include, and I’ll see if I can dig it up. If you want to research this, my impression is that finding good history books about a specific place is much easier if you can read the language spoken there, so it might be worth checking what the property laws were in places that speak the languages you know. If you need sources in English, having access to a university library helps a lot. When looking for information on France during this time period, “Ancien Regime” and “early modern” are useful keywords.
Lease-like arrangements that are practically selling are allowed, though. The only one I can think of at the moment is called alienation—basically you sell it except the new “owner’s” (or their heirs or whoever they sell the land to) pay your family rent for the land, forever. Something similar can be done with money, as a sort of loan that is never paid off. (These are called rentes fonciérs and rentes constituées, respectively—in case you ever want to look up more information.) They’re technically movable property, but they’re legally counted as propes, and treated the same way as noble land.
I always wondered why people didn’t just buy a square inch of land if that’s all it took to be noble.
Yeah, at least in France, land can’t make you noble, even if it’s a whole noble fief with a title attached. (Then you’re just a rich commoner who owns a title but can’t use it.) You could become noble by holding certain jobs for a long enough time (usually three generations), though. And people did buy those. (Not through bribes—the royal government sold certain official posts to raise revenues, so it was legal.)
There was also a sort of real estate boom after the revolutionary government passed some laws to make it easier for commoners to buy land, which was sort of like what you describe—all the farmers who could afford it would buy all the land they could at higher values than it was worth, because it made them feel like they were rich landowners.
Adam Smith reported that this was how the law worked in the Spanish territories in the Americas, in order to ensure the continued existence of a wealthy and powerful landed aristocracy and so maintain social stability. He theorized that this policy was the reason that the Spanish territories were so much poorer than the English territories, even though the former had extensive gold deposits and the latter did not.
Yeah I did some more research, apparently they were called “fee tails” or “entails”. They were designed to keep large estates “in the family”, even if that ended up being a burden to the future generations.