The Agrarian Problem In The Sixteenth Century

And if the whole people be landlords, or hold the Lands so divided among them, that no one Man, or number of Men,

within the Compass of the Few or Aristocracy, overbalance them, the Empire (without the interposition of force) is a Commonwealth. –James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656)

The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (1912) was the first major work by R.H. Tawney, written while teaching tutorial classes at Oxford University. Tawney describes the great agricultural changes transforming Tudor England while undergoing a population explosion and a price revolution caused by an inflow of gold and silver from the New World. More specifically, he shows how the English peasantry of the 15th century moved from prosperity to impoverishment caused by the entrance of capitalistic agriculture.