AN EXAMINATION OF 'THE AGRARIAN PROBLEM IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY' BY R. H. TAWNEY

In 1912, a young British instructor for the Worker's Educational Association (WEA) published a book on early modern English rural society entitled The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century. The author, Richard H. Tawney, brought to his historical study his personal concerns about the proper conduct of human relations, and used his book as a vehicle to instruct his working-class students on the meaning of social justice, whether applied to early modern English agrarian society or to the modern industrialized England of his own day.; Tawney's thesis centered on the agrarian displacement that occurred in sixteenth century England as a result of the heavy fining and/or evicting of customary tenants by landlords who were themselves victims of a combination of fixed incomes and high inflation, or who merely saw an excellent opportunity to take advantage of the dramatic growth in the woolen trade by turning the land to its most profitable use, pasturage. The most vulnerable tenants (copyholders) were those whose tenure was for fixed periods only, or for whom manorial custom offered the slimmest legal protection. For its part, the Tudor state recognized the newness and perniciousness of agrarian eviction and displacement, but was able to do little more than mitigate the worst abuses of the problem by legislating against engrossment and enclosure by landlords or large leasehold ("capitalist") farmers. Tawney viewed these measures as merely delaying the onslaught of a full-blown commercialization of English society and, ultimately, of unrestrained economic individualism and the related evils of modern industrialized life.; In his later works on the gentry, Harrington, and Cranfield, Tawney continued his analysis of early modern English society, particularly from the vantage-point of the victorious landed classes. By this time, however, Tawney was no longer an idealistic youth who believed modern industrialized society so eminently alterable through human action, but rather a mature historical and political writer who sought an explanation of the deteriorating world order and the rise of totalitarian states. Thus, in these later works, conceived in the turmoil of the 1930's, Tawney concentrated his efforts on an investigation of the relationship between economic and political power.; Because of Tawney's tendency to inject his own personal concerns and opinions into his historical work, as well as because of his generalizations based on scanty statistical evidence or drawn from the select comments of early modern English observers, he has come under intense criticism from a number of his professional colleagues. However, none deny his brillance, his masterful prose, or the interest that he has sparked in the historiography of early modern English society. Indeed, even Tawney's most vehement detractors have come to regard the years from 1540 to 1640 as "Tawney's Century."...