Agricultural History Review, Volume 51 Part 2 (2003), pp. 173–189

This paper surveys the literature on the mobility of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English rack rent tenant farmers and farming families, and provides new quantitative estimates of the speed of turnover in the market for farm tenancies using data from archival sources. The evidence presented should increase our confidence in the stylised fact of relatively low tenurial mobility, although the extent of inertia should not be exaggerated. Some of the factors that could disrupt the apparent underlying long-term relationship between landlord and tenant are considered. 

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