> You should look at Philip T. Hoffman's "Growth in a Traditional
> Society: The French Countryside 1450-1815" which effectively
> demonstrates through econometrics that French agriculture, based on
> small peasant holdings, was just as productive as the English.
>
> Louis Proyect
I have a note on this book in the said paper. It does challenge the
old pessimistic assessment of French agriculture advanced by the
Annales School and others, but I would not say it demonstrates
that French agriculture was as productive as England's, though it
demonstrates - contrary to Brenner, I would insist - that small
scale agriculture is not inherently inefficient, as I think it can be
shown also for pre-1600 English agriculture, or even after since it
was the yeomen, rather than the landowners, who initiated the
agricultural revolution which eventually destroyed them.
