Agricultural History Review, Volume 53 Part 2 (2005), p. 262

This work joins a rich tradition of anglophone studies of early modern south-western Germany that utilize the dense and high quality stock of sources from the region’s varied and numerous political entities. Ottobeuren was one such entity, a micro-state with a population never exceeding 10,000 in this period, ruled by the monastery of the same name, in the Allgäu region in the far south-west of modern Bavaria. The detailed archive- and record-keeping of the monastery has allowed Sreenivasan to piece together an exceptionally wide-ranging study of social and economic life in this rural, largely agricultural region over two centuries. The volume is organized chronologically, but the greatest weight is laid on the period c. 1560–c. 1630.

The book’s primary thrust is to describe a major transition from what Sreenivasan calls a ‘discrete society’ of subsistence agriculture, in-kind orientated exchange and largely local social and economic relationships, to a commercialized, monetized and increasingly outward-looking and specializing economy. It is argued that this is ‘Smithian’ growth, economic progress founded on market integration and the benefits of specialization. This is an important thesis, in part because it is unusual for a monograph to engage directly with this very history review current macro-economic debate about the nature of European economic development, but also because it discovers the traits associated with the more progressive economies of north-west Europe in, relatively-speaking, a remote, clerically-governed backwater. Sreenivasan dates the beginning of this transition to around 1580, and it was largely complete by 1620. By the second half of the seventeenth century, commerce was an essential part of peasant life, sustained by textile production and distilling in the post-war agricultural depression. He argues that a significant (though not the sole motor of this change) was a shift in inheritance and ‘householding’ practice; a shift from partible inheritance of farms to the maintenance of large holdings, alongside the paying-off of siblings and retirement contracts that often involved the buying-out of previous owners by heirs. These practices necessitated a much greater degree of liquidity in the economy, and access to and utilization ofcredit, and hence enforced commercialization. The process itself seems to have been kick-started by increasing demographic and ecological pressures by the mid-sixteenth century. But this world was not subject toa Malthusian trap according to Sreenivasan. Although (in common with many, but not all, parts of central Europe) population ceased to grow after the mid-1560s, agricultural output rose in response to these changes, persistent harvest shortfalls were avoided, and demographic stability was maintained by out-migration.

It is a provocative thesis, vividly set out. Agricultural historians will be most engaged with the claim of the successful expansion of grain output (though not productivity per cultivated hectare) towards the end of the long sixteenth-century, in what was apparently a very traditional three-field system. Sreeniavsan’s evidence forthis is not however overwhelming; the breakdown oftithe receipts (p.124) does not suggest an invariant traditional three-field system across the region. Unfortunately, the author has not provided sufficient methodological information to allow proper checking of the steps taken to produce his estimates of harvest size and yield. It would be surprising indeed if oat yields (pp.146–8) in the 1620s and 1660s in this alpine subregion were really as high as those obtained in most of north-west Europe only by the middle of the eighteenth century. I wondered if inappropriate conversions of local volume measures might have generated these results, but, lacking sufficient information or referencing in the section on weights and measures, could do no more than surmise. The trickiness always associated with such quantifying work might mean that the lack of an exhaustive statement of the methodologies applied is venial, but in this case accuracy is certainly essential for a whole series of claims about the expansion of output, the vulnerability of the region to Malthusian mortality crises (which do not, it is clear, appear to have occurred), and the size of subsistence holdings. Other related and potentially significant questions are not touched upon, such as was none of the cereal crop used as fodder for livestock, as appears to be implied? And what would happen to his results if he took his own higher, rather than lower, estimate for population growth between 1560 and 1620? If holding sizes, intravillage social differentiation and yields remained as consistent over time as Sreenivasan appears to suggest, who was eating the surplus produced by larger holdings before commercialization developed? Why did the grain output in the larger settlements drop between the 1560s and 1615–24, but rise in small hamlets? Sreenivasan’s argument is thus suggestive, but neither definitive nor conclusive. Indeed, despite the self-consciously comparative stance that introduces the book, it is a shame thatmany of the observations are not put in a wider context. The author appears unaware, for example, thatChristian Pfister published extensive tithe series showing similar trends for nearby regions of Switzerland in his seminal work in the mid-eighties. Similarly, there is little sense of the demand side of increased commercialization, possibly driven by the development of Swiss proto-industry, or the fact that other regions of the German south-west do not appear to show the developments outlined here, though Sreenivasan is careful tostate that his model may not be more widely applicable. English readers in particular might miss reference to recent debates on inheritances practices, holding size, and commercialization, debates that Sreenivasan has previously engaged in himself.

Nevertheless, there is a wealth of valuable material, and rich pickings for those interested in the development of the devolution of property, kin-group relations, the apparently limited ability of institutions to withstand pressures for commercialization, market integration, credit and the role of money in the rural economy, the guild system and textile production, and the potential for development in supposedly ‘marginal’ regions of Europe. This is quite a list. Sreenivasan has an eye for the detail, contingency, and increasing flexibility of kin and property relations, though the detail provided in numerous case-histories may be burdensome to the reader lessengaged with the particularities of the region. He is to be applauded for producing an agrarian history that achieves the rare feat of spanning the period form the late fifteenth to the early eighteenth century. The book is likely to be influential, but the claims relating to agriculture in particular should not be taken as gospel.