The important question we need to ask, then, is whether England
had a "unique" group of peasant holders. A full answer to this
question would require a comparative study of the world
peasantries.
But we have enough research on the peasantries of England and
France to say that: 1) through the medieval period there were
regions in England - counties in the east and southeast - where a
"freeholding" peasantry prevailed, a peasantry whose fields were
"enclosed", held under private property rights, including exclusive
rights of use, that is, fields which enjoyed weaker manorial rule and
less customary regulations; 2) these fields were already consolidating
farms after 1350, by leasing land from the lord's demesne and
through a process known as "engrossing"; 3) these farmers
obtained higher yields per seed through extensive use of
leguminous plants and complex crop rotations; and 4) later became
the tenants (leaseholders) of the large enclosed estates.
5) some copyholders also managed
to engross additional parcels of land, and had a lot
more security of tenure against enclosing landlords than previously argued,
with Parliament many times intervening in their favor against landowners.
Meanwhile, in France, to quote Croot and Parker "the real crime of
the French Monarchy was *not* that it bolstered peasant ownership but
that (together with the church, seigneurs and landowners) it
depressed it so brutally. The consequence was that the countryside
lost its most dynamic force - a class of truly independent peasants"
- despite all their talk about the "independent" farmers of France,
Brenner and Wood have yet to respond to this argument.
These conclusions are in line with the arguments of the
international socialist R. H. Hilton - so I am a real Marxist afterall!
