On the Road Again with Arthur Young: English, Irish, and French Agriculture during the Industrial Revolution

Abstract

In their day Arthur Young's tours of England, Ireland, and France represented a revolutionary approach to agricultural research. Here we avail of one part of the wealth of statistical data collected by Young—that on grain yields—to provide a comparative perspective on agricultural technique and progress in these countries around 1770 to 1850. We show that, ironically, Young's carefully assembled data do not always support some of his best-remembered generalizations.