Revolución en los campos: La reinterpretación de la Revolución Agrícola inglesa

Our understanding of the open fields and enclosures has been revolutionised in recent decades. A wide range of research has shown that yeomen copyholders or small peasants were capable of innovation, and the open fields witnessed most of the output and productivity growth achieved by the English agriculture from the Middle Ages to c. 1750. Parliamentary enclosures increased the landlord and gentry rents, but often failed to produce much extra output or release much labour from 1750 onwards. The first steps of the new understanding aroused on statistical comparisons and regression analysis rather than the documentary data used to support the standard story. But the case for the progressiveness of the open fields can also be built in traditional sources.