The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century

R.H. Tawney's The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century is a landmark study of England's rural upheaval from the late Middle Ages to the Civil War, tracing how shifts in landholding, farming, and village life reshaped the nation. Grounded in original documents, maps, tables, and manuscript evidence, it combines rigorous scholarship with a humane concern for the people caught in the transition. Tawney follows the move from peasant and smallholder agriculture toward capitalist farming, showing how enclosure, land consolidation, changing rents, and the struggle over commons transformed manorial estates and everyday rural life. The book examines lords leasing demesnes in new ways, the rise of large farmers, the engrossing of holdings, and the spread of enclosed pasture for sheep and dairy use. It also shows the social cost: weakened customary tenure, loss of common rights, declining village hospitality, and the displacement of laborers and small cultivators. Throughout, Tawney asks how policy should be judged in historical context, arguing that even imperfect reforms may leave lasting effects. The result is a vivid account of agrarian change and its political, social, and moral meaning. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.