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- Bergenfeldt, Fredrik
(författare)
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Roads to Market. Transport and Agricultural Change - the case of southern Sweden, 1750-1850
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In most parts of preindustrial Europe, road transport was a crucial part of rural life as it linked the agricultural producers with urban markets. This study focuses on the development of road transport during the agricultural transformation in order to understand its importance in agricultural change. Scania, in southern Sweden, provides the possibility of examining the basic patterns in the road transport sector in preindustrial Europe in relation to other typical features of an agricultural setting in a preindustrial economy, such as different categories of landownership and different characteristics of natural conditions. As in most parts of preindustrial Europe, outside England and the Netherlands, there were few investments in new roads and a lack of institutional change of the road maintenance system in Scania and Sweden during the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. The road networks in most European countries were maintained by local authorities (e.g. towns, parishes, villages) with local financing during this period. The empirical results provide three important insights for understanding the development of road transport and its role in agricultural change. First, the evidence shows that in a period where there were few investments in new roads and a lack of institutional change to the road maintenance system, producers invested in their transport means to increase their transport productivity. Second, the study shows that the roads were usable, despite the absence of an institutional change to the road maintenance system and investments in the road network during the agricultural transformation. Third, it demonstrates that it was predominantly the local agricultural conditions, rather than changes in market access, that influenced the incentives and possibilities of increasing output during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
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| 2. |
- Bergenfeldt, Fredrik, et al.
(författare)
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Wagons at Work: A Transport Revolution from Below – the Case of Sweden, 1750-1850
- 2013
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Ingår i: Agricultural History Review. - 0002-1490. ; 61:1, s. 63-82
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The introduction of turnpike trusts has been considered to be an integral part of the rapid decline in transport costs in England. Institutional change in the transport system or the lack thereof has been used to explain if and when a transport revolution occurred in different localities. However, improved roads are just one component of declining inland transport costs. In this paper, we specifically analyse how the transport means on roads (i.e., animal carts and wagons) developed in the absence of major institutional changes to the road system. We use Scania, a province located in southernmost Sweden, during the period 1750–1850 as a case study of the development of transport means during the transformation from a rural economy to an emerging industrial one. Our main finding is the independent role of individuals in lowering their own transport costs, as demonstrated by the notably large increase in the value of wagons relative to other commodities and by the increasing share of wagons equipped with iron wheels instead of wooden wheels and with iron axles instead of wooden axles. This finding indicates that it was possible to lower transport costs in preindustrial Europe without an institutional change of the road system.
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