Summary of Sir Edward Anthony Wrigley’s work Urban Growth and Agricultural Change: England and the Continent in the Early Modern Period
Sir Edward Anthony Wrigley is a well-known British demographer, who, in his paper Urban Growth and Agricultural Change: England and the Continent in the Early Modern Period, links changes in urban population to rising income per capita and agricultural productivity in economies before industrialization.
In order to understand this relationship, we need to first follow Wrigley in describing how urban population changed over several centuries in England and how these changes were related to changes in real income. We need to first consider the 16th century. Between 1520 and 1600, when England experienced a …show more content…
The urban population increased all century and especially accelerated by the end of it. We would expect the real income to have followed the same trend as the cause of this effect. Wrigley, however, found a different picture. After mid-century, increase in real wages seemed to have halted and even fell by the end. What, then, sustained this significant population growth? Wrigley found that urban growth happened mostly in newly emerged urban centers, while the old towns followed the expected path of decline in urban population. These peculiar urban centers seem to have particular characteristics that kept them from going down the normal path. This characteristics, as Wrigley explains it, were higher overseas demand and improved infrastructure for internal trade. Indeed, the towns benefitting from these new variables were either the towns with ports, or transit towns through which products now travelled and thus attracted workforce or, as suggested by table 3, towns which specialized in …show more content…
If, however, the population of the whole country grew and the population of town population grew as well, the case would have to be that less people produced more food, ergo agricultural productivity rose. This logical outcome, however, is not the only indicator of agricultural productivity. In fact, this rise was even greater, given that the percentage of labor force engaged in agriculture decreased dramatically from 76% in 1520 to 33% by 1750. This led to more services offered in villages and, therefore, development of rural areas.
Since an average farmer could now feed more people, villagers were more confident to go to the cities and seek employment there, knowing that food would be available. For all of these reasons, it can be inferred that growth in agricultural productivity led to urban growth in England.
The question that follows: was this phenomenon only observed in England or all of the European Continent? Wrigley goes on to show us and compare different demographic tendencies in several European countries to show the moving factors which landed England where it was by the end of the eighteenth
Sir Edward Anthony Wrigley is a well-known British demographer, who, in his paper Urban Growth and Agricultural Change: England and the Continent in the Early Modern Period, links changes in urban population to rising income per capita and agricultural productivity in economies before industrialization.
In order to understand this relationship, we need to first follow Wrigley in describing how urban population changed over several centuries in England and how these changes were related to changes in real income. We need to first consider the 16th century. Between 1520 and 1600, when England experienced a …show more content…
The urban population increased all century and especially accelerated by the end of it. We would expect the real income to have followed the same trend as the cause of this effect. Wrigley, however, found a different picture. After mid-century, increase in real wages seemed to have halted and even fell by the end. What, then, sustained this significant population growth? Wrigley found that urban growth happened mostly in newly emerged urban centers, while the old towns followed the expected path of decline in urban population. These peculiar urban centers seem to have particular characteristics that kept them from going down the normal path. This characteristics, as Wrigley explains it, were higher overseas demand and improved infrastructure for internal trade. Indeed, the towns benefitting from these new variables were either the towns with ports, or transit towns through which products now travelled and thus attracted workforce or, as suggested by table 3, towns which specialized in …show more content…
If, however, the population of the whole country grew and the population of town population grew as well, the case would have to be that less people produced more food, ergo agricultural productivity rose. This logical outcome, however, is not the only indicator of agricultural productivity. In fact, this rise was even greater, given that the percentage of labor force engaged in agriculture decreased dramatically from 76% in 1520 to 33% by 1750. This led to more services offered in villages and, therefore, development of rural areas.
Since an average farmer could now feed more people, villagers were more confident to go to the cities and seek employment there, knowing that food would be available. For all of these reasons, it can be inferred that growth in agricultural productivity led to urban growth in England.
The question that follows: was this phenomenon only observed in England or all of the European Continent? Wrigley goes on to show us and compare different demographic tendencies in several European countries to show the moving factors which landed England where it was by the end of the eighteenth