CHAPTER V: BACK TO THE FUTURE—POLICY IMPLICATIONS TO THE 21 ST
5.2 C OMPARING D IFFERENCES BETWEEN THE M IDLAND AND E AST A NGLIA M ODELS
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industrialization. Not only did “the commons” impede advancement and development, such an overdue socio-economic system, without providing adequate legal protection for peasant rights, incentive for technological innovation, channels for voicing resent and remedial measures, it actually brought tragedy to all the tenants that lived on it. The commons itself became the tragedy for the peasantry.
5.2 Comparing Differences between the Midland and East Anglia Models
From analyzing the problems of the Midland model and comparing with that in East Anglia, we can identify four import characteristical differences and one initial condition difference in the two institutions: stronger lordship and lesser peasantry bargaining power, more lively agrarian market, incentives for innovation and the individualist spirit, and the protection of legal rights and establishment of non-partisan remedial channels. The initial conditional difference is the presentation of lordship on a village.
1. On lordship, manorial power, and bargaining power of the tenants: In both models, while they have inherited traditions from Germanic tribes and started the new reign of landlords after the Norman conquest of 1066, there still are many differences among them. In East Anglia, multiple presentations of manorial lords to a village weaken the relative bargaining power of the lord vis-à-vis a serf; a significant number of freeholders in the initial stages of the society which further infused possibilities of the individualist spirit and better legal protection; denser population levels, leading to better agricultural technology; miniature landholdings leading to rise of skilled labor and cottage industry.
But in the Midland model, there was a very strong presence of lordship unlike the situation in East Anglia; the percentage of freeholders was smaller in most places; and most of all, due to the backing of the manorial lord, the communal character in the community institutions was much stronger in the midland, leading to disincentives for agrarian technology improvement and many constraints to a freer market.
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2. On the agrarian and land markets: As explained before, weaker lordship, stronger peasantry, and larger percentage of free men and copyholders led to a more individualist culture in the East. This meant better peasantry bargaining power in East Anglia. This meant that regulations were friendlier to the peasantry than in the Midlands. In the long run, changes in regional rules tilted in favor of the individual peasants and labor workers than in the Midland. One important resulting feature in East Anglia was an earlier existence of a vivid agrarian market and even a lively land market as well. Being able to reap one’s own labor, the incentives to utilize a booming market for transactions were all the more tempting. Markets worked hand in hand with the individualism spirit in the region.
3. On incentive of innovation and the individualist spirit: In the Midlands, it was the communal character that enabled and legitimized the rule-making process and thus firm level of community support for the socio-economic institution. However, it was this same mechanism that caused trial-and-error experiments of agrarian innovation to be near impossible in the Midlands and retarding its technological advancement. As pointed out by Hopcroft, the consensus-reaching communal decision-making process in the more communal regions became a resistance to possible technological improvements. More importantly, the peasantry participation of the rule-making process was only limited to the local village level. On the national level, the peasantry had no say in the century-long struggle for power between the Crown and the Parliament, nor any share of the gains of the Parliament. If any land-sliding shift happened at the top, the bottom strata would be left with the little they can control to cope with the challenges. Individuals in East Anglia thus had much more to their maneuver due to the individualist legacy—less communal rules, freer market, lesser fees and rents to the lord, better protection of legal rights, the entrepreneurial spirit, etc.
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4. On protection of legal rights and remedial channels: Protection of legal rights was much more advanced in the East due to its initiation with more free men and “copyholders”. As we know, free men did not owe lords tax, fees or labor service, and were already under protection of the common law and the King’s court and justices. They could even file suits bringing a lord to the King’s court. “Copyholders” meant that although they were also unfree in status, they received a copy of their transaction of land holding with the manorial court record as an official record. It meant that “land was held ‘by custom of the manor and copy of court roll”. It implied more protection of the copyholder, compared to those without a copy of their lease, especially in time when legal action is needed; it was still much better than totally adhering to the lord’s rule at will. The legal status of copyholders was given a better protection by the Crown in the early 13th century. In short, in East Anglia, most majority of the peasantry had legal protection to some extent of personal rights (i.e., right to petition) and property rights. While peasants in the Midland can still participate in community meetings, channels of conflict resolution, especially those between serfs bounded to land and manorial lords, were overwhelmingly biased.
Serfs without copyhold had almost no rights and liberties after the establishment of status in the early 13th century, and they made up the overwhelming majority in most estates in the Midland. Not that there were no cases of landlords losing a case here or there, it’ was just a very trivial number compared to the mass engrossment of the acts of enclosure through the hundreds of years. There was no non-partisan remedy channel for peasants and the protection of peasants’ rights to land-use was at least ineffective and at most absent all together.
5. On initial conditions: Initial institutional conditions can cause significant variation as path dependency carries on and effects accumulate. We find that an essential departure of difference came from the number of manorial lords present in the same village and the percentage of copyright holders in the region. This deeply affected the bargaining power
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of local peasants vis-à-vis feudal lords and thus leading to different paths as events unfolded. In the long-run, it led to lower rents and fees to the feudal lords, freer markets with lesser manorial regulations, better legal/property protection, and contribution to cultivation of a individualistic culture encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit. That East Anglia led the agrarian revolution and transition into modern capitalist economy seems perfectly understandable.
The signing of Magna Carta in 1215 and the series of constitutional documents following it in the 13th century enhanced bargaining power of free men and copyholders, especially in the East, while largely putting more constraints to all those that are not deemed as free. The struggle of the aristocracy and the Crown resulted in a clearer definition of social status and the rights and liberties it entails. The barons’ success to limit the Crown’s power contributed to the enlargement of their own powers in their own little realm on the manors and they took full advantage of that—the lords exploited their “subjects” as they wished. In the Midland where the lordship is strong and unfree tenants are the majority, communalism and stability of the system endured. However, in East Anglia where the lordship was weak and more of the peasantry were free men, the clarification of status enforced the existing individualist trends of agrarian innovation and skilled labor. Given the freer market and sprouting rural industry, labors could choose to leave the livelihood earned from working lands and go on to other professions. Those that were still on it were likely to be good at it, acquiring the likeminded individualist thought as other independent of land.
After the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, most of those living in East Anglia already had a like-minded capitalist mindset as the land grabbing Parliament members of the landed aristocrats and gentry. On some level, they shared some of the same interests.
Not only were they much more ready for the transition, having being ahead of their age for some time already and many lived independent of land, they were much more acquainted with the capitalist notion of capitalist and worker, wage and labor. East Anglia was doing
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lead onto new agricultural methods and became the forefront of agrarian change and played an important part in the English agriculture revolution, which in turn, provided the industrial revolution an essential foundation.316 It should have not been a surprise that East Anglians met the enclosure movement with lesser dissents.Table 5-1. Comparison of the Two Commonfield Models
Midland Model East Anglia Model
Power/Authority Strong lordship, weaker peasantry bargaining power.
Weak lordship, stronger peasantry bargaining power.
Markets More restrictions on market transactions. Lesser restrictions on market transaction.
Innovation Communalism discouraged any kind of trail-and-error experiments.
Individualism became a regional mindset, encouraging technology progression
Legal Rights Most tenants had little or no protection of the common law, and thus fell solely to the customs on the manor, meaning being treated by the lords will.
Most peasants were freemen, or at least copyholders who had more protection. Free men were under protection of the King’s court, thus a much partisan remedial channel.
Contradictory Logics
1. Strong lordship conflicts with agrarian technological advancements and market development.
2. During the process of the Parliament trumping the Crown, feudalism and
Result The ultimate tragedy: that after the waves of enclosure movements, those that only knew how to live on land were evicted from the rural settings and were compelled to join the swarm of industrial workers.
Already took significant lead in agrarian technological revolution; Had an advantaged edge in transition into the modern society and industrial revolution; Had lesser agonies during transition than the Midlanders
Using a historical institutionalist approach, not only did I identify the important essential
316 Hopcroft, 1999, pp. 80-83.
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differences in the reproduction mechanisms in the two models of British commonfield systems, I argued that Buck’s conception that the Midlands systems was a “triumph” was overstated: the institution itself contained its own seeds of destruction (see Table 5-1). Strong manorial lordship and communalism impeded the development of innovation and possibility of transition towards a pre-capitalist society from within the institutional structure. Also, peasantry trust in the feudalist logic did not play out into their liking. As the landed class and Parliament triumphed over the Crown, the ancient rights and liberties of the tenants were forgotten. The tragedy was contained within the institution before the cards were dealt. It is no wonder that the agony of the Midlanders echoed loudly through history.