... pre-revisionist response to this question is an unequivocal yes. However a revisionist school has countered the tradition of Young and others. A reassessment of old data and the formulation of new data have led to opposing answers to this question. In this essay I will outline and discuss the classic as well as the revisionist arguments. Allen terms the classic viewpoint on property rights and agrarian institutions as Agricultural Fundamentalism. Agricultural fundamentalism explains how and why England's agriculture developed more quickly than France's. This theory emphasizes how agrarian institutions and property rights were crucial to the development of English agriculture and the so-called retardation of French agriculture. Enclosure, a concept that contains institutional and teneurial facets, is central to this classic argument. The enclosures of open-fields created capitalist farming and extended markets. Agglomerated farms allowed the accumulation of capital, which in turn led to the rapid diffusion of more intensive ...

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