Land And Labor In Europe 1900â€1950: A Comparative Survey Of Recent Agrarian History (studies In Social Life)

This book is the outcome of research which was initiated in the fall of 1951. My research in agrarian history of past centuries in Continental Western Europe and Scandinavia had focussed my attention on the entanglement of things old and new in the rural world. I t also made me feel the lack of a comprehensive survey of modern agrarian problems. An attempt to synthesize the most recent experiences in the field of the land question in the light of a half century's history could not have been started until the main lines of the political behavior in post-war Europe had become somewhat stabilized. It is only recently that statistical material referring to the situation around 1950 has become available from most countries in Europe. The lacunas remaining in this respect might to some extent have been filled if the publication of the volume were to have been postponed. This, on the other hand, would have made the bulk of th e results less up to date than they are now. In the initial stage the enquiry was supported by a travel grant from the Swedish State Council for Social Research. During seven months' travel over large parts of Southern and Continental Europe many governmental offices, institutions, politicians, and scholars, gave precious help in finding facts and information about agrarian situations and policies in their countries. They also largely helped in establishing invaluable contacts with local technicians and with different strata of the farming population. The generous hospitality I met everywherc was both helpful and charming. For this book my work in the service of the United Nations' Economic Commission for Europe in Geneva and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome has been a source of great inspiration. The interest shown by my chiefs and colleagues at these institutions and ample exchanges of VIII PREFACE views with them have helped me forward with my work, I am specially thankful to Mr D. K. Britton of FAO/ECE, Geneva. A one-year fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation of New York made possible aperiod of concentrated activity on this book. A special grant allowed the employment of a computing assistant for three months who carried out part of the computations underlying the tables in Chapter 3. Apart from this assistance all the research for chapters 1 through 6 has been done entirely by myself. The research for the seventh chapter has been done by its author, Dr Karin Dovring under discussions with Professor Harold D. Lasswell of Yale University who attentively followed her work and read it in manuscript and proofs. Mr R. A. Bishop and Mr L. Lind of FAO, Rome, have kindly advised me on my English and helped checking the proofs. I am grateful to them all. ## Rome, October 1955 Folke Dovring AGRARIAN STRUCTURE -NATURAL AND POLITICAL (10) "Agrarian structure" is a somewhat vague but generally used term for the whole institutional framework within which agriculture does its work. All the complex structural questions in Europe cannot be dealt with in one book. We will here foeus interest on a number of main topics with direct bearings on the land-labor relationships. Agricultural settlement will thus be treated here from the viewpoint of the allocation of manpower in relation to the land. Front Matter....Pages I-VIII Introduction....Pages 1-9 Agricultural Settlement the Allocation of Labor....Pages 10-36 Layout of Land....Pages 37-60 Land Supply and Farm Structure....Pages 61-134 Land Tenure....Pages 135-191 Agricultural Co-Operation....Pages 192-218 Land Policy....Pages 219-261 Land Reform as a Propaganda Theme....Pages 263-348 Conclusions....Pages 349-353 Back Matter....Pages 355-480