Agrarian world market and Finnish farm economy

Abstract

Abstract The development of agriculture in Finland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — i.e. towards the end of the period of Autonomy, when Finland was an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire — has been the subject of a great deal of attention in economic and social history studies. This transition period has, however, been mainly treated from the point of view of politics and legislation: whether the land ownership reform was necessary, how it was carried out and whether it was successful or not. Thus the social crisis in rural Finland at the turn of the century has been perceived as a result of an unequal distribution of land ownership, as a battle between two rural population groups: those who owned land and those who did not. The students of the era have been especially interested in one layer of the rural population strata, the crofters. These were small leaseholders, tenant farmers who paid their rent mainly in labour.