Influences of the British Market on Agriculture and Related Economic Development in Europe before 1860

Abstract

The growth of commercial and early-industrial cities in the Low Countries and England profoundly influenced agriculture in the surrounding regions. However, quite early, the growing urban-industrial core of western Europe also began to draw food and raw materials from coastal and riverine areas in northern and eastern Europe. A series of large export zones can be discerned across northern Europe by the early nineteenth century, with dairy products occupying an inner position, followed by feed grains, wheat and then animal products on the outer fringes. Repeal of the British Corn Laws and improvements in transport were followed by increased imports from existing European supply areas, together with spatial expansion of the export zones. It is hypothesized that agricultural exporting and greater farming prosperity provided important rural markets for embryonic European industries, although the strength of this relationship varied with the nature of the crop produced and with the rural class structure. Agricultural exporting was a significant additional force stimulating regional industrialization in north-western Europe, but its effect was largely dissipated in eastern Europe and Russia. The paper concludes by speculating that both commercial agriculture and manufacturing industry were probably parts of whole economic landscapes, concentric around the urban core of western Europe, and that the diffusion of economic development across the European space might be explained in terms of a model of economic landscapes expanding under the pressure of growing demand in the urban