「農業大不況」 : その実態分析
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概要
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The agricultural depression during the last quarter of the nineteenth century was so acute in England that it has been accepted either as 'great depression in English agriculture' or, at least by some Marxist economists, as the 'long agricultural crisis'. Bat, unlike the Great Depression (of trade and industry) which was primarily due to the very mode of capital accumulation in Britain, the agricultural depression was caused undoubtedly by the rapid increase of foreign-particularly American-competition and was aggravated by the fact that the cost of English agricultural production had become much higher as the result of 'high farming' in the preceding three decades. It must, therefore, be said that the agricultural depression was fundamentally quite different from 'agricultural crisis' which should be understood as a component of 'general crisis' and nothing else. On the other hand,it must be noted that the unevenness in the intensity of the foreign competition in various kinds of produce, or the relative profitableness of livestock farming did not mean the grazing sector was not struck by the depression : So long as the competition in dairy produce continued to be that of the 'better organised' dairy industry of some Continental countries, the decline of prices in English dairy products was not so serious that 'an internal revolution' or 'a sectoral advance', which must not be exaggerated as if it were an agricultural revolution, took place rather as a result of the depression in the arable farming. Thus, the agricultural depression of the later nineteenth century must be understood neither as a long agricultural crisis nor as an agricultural revolution; it was really a great depression in English agriculture, accompanied with 'a revolution in the relations of landed property'. In this article, the present writer attempts mainly an economic analysis of the changing English agriculture under the foreign competition and tries to clarify the meaning of most important land law reforms-i.e. the crucial amendments in the law of distress, the law of 'tenantright', and the law of strict settlement.
- 政治経済学・経済史学会の論文
- 1971-01-20