Abstract
The open field system was the arrangement of peasant agriculture in northern Europe before the 20th 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 18th century out of the need to pay taxes, not out of the ancient community of cousins.)
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© 1991 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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McCloskey, D.N. (1991). Open Field System. In: Eatwell, J., Milgate, M., Newman, P. (eds) The World of Economics. The New Palgrave. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21315-3_68
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