Agricultural History Review, Volume 43 Part 2 (1995), pp. 117–138

Discussions of English agricultural change in the long eighteenth century imply significant changes in levels of market integration, and the capacity of farmers to respond clearly to the price signals available in the market. The present speculative paper reviews the empirical evidence for growing market integration over this long period, and raises questions over the ways in which the mercantile and transport changes that underpinned it may have facilitated farmers' reaUocation of resources to more productive ends. It attempts to link English price evidence, relatively poor by comparison with that of its European neighbours for much of the period, to changing market opportunities, to which it attributes much of the significant growth of farm output before the period of major technical innovation after 1820. 

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