Market growth, coordination problems and control – the timing of enclosures in East Central Sweden 1807–1892

The enclosure movement was a significant element of the agricultural revolution in Sweden. Legislation from 1749 onwards, opened up for Storskifte, which reduced the number of plots per owner, but did not touch the villages’ common field or housing structures. The edicts of Enskifte (1803–1807) and Laga skifte (1827), however, made possible the final dissolution of the open-field system. According to the Laga skifte legislation one single landowner applying for enclosure, could force the entire village to enclose. Nonetheless, the process was not complete even by the 1890s. Previous research has emphasised the importance of the enclosures for economic development and/or as a factor in income redistribution. It has, however, not fully explained why some villages enclosed early and others late. We investigate this question by using a newly constructed database containing all villages in the county of Västmanland. Furthermore, by using a Cox Proportional Hazards model, a random sample of 100 villages is followed over time to estimate which factors accelerated or decelerated the enclosure process. The major conclusions are that concentration of ownership and cost factors decreased the probability for enclosure while complex land-use patterns and real GDP-per capita growth increased the probability of enclosure.