University of Reading.
Econ Hist Rev. 2010;63(4):974-1002. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00510.x.
This article argues that historians have paid insufficient attention to the agrarian roots of early modern English famines. While not dismissing the insights arising from entitlements theory, the article takes issue with recent writings that have explained the famine of 1622–3 in north-west England as an entitlements crisis. It offers new empirical evidence from an estate in east Lancashire to demonstrate the scale of the crisis in the early 1620s, using estate accounts to produce new price data and estimates of productivity. On the basis of oat tithe data, the scale of the shortfall in foodstuffs in the harvest of 1621 is demonstrated as being probably in the region of a third; that of the following year has to be inferred from price data. The evidence shows that the crisis was not limited to the arable economy, but was followed by an extensive restocking of the pastoral economy. The article therefore makes a contribution to the growing interest in weather as an exogenous factor.
本文认为，历史学家对近代早期英国饥荒的农业根源关注不够。尽管本文并不否认权利理论所产生的见解，但还是对近来的一些著作提出了质疑，这些著作将 1622 至 1633 年发生在英格兰西北部的饥荒解释为权利危机。本文利用东兰开夏郡的一处庄园提供了新的实证证据，利用庄园账目提供了新的价格数据和生产力估算，来证明 20 世纪 20 年代初这场危机的规模。根据燕麦什一税数据，1621 年收获季歉收的规模可能达到三分之一左右；次年的歉收情况只能从价格数据中推断。证据表明，这场危机不仅限于可耕地经济，随后还导致了畜牧业经济的大规模复苏。因此，本文为日益增长的对天气作为外生因素的关注做出了贡献。
