1994 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
The Understanding of Natural Environment in Early Modern British Agriculture
| Project/Area Number |
05630044
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Economic history
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| Research Institution | Yamagata University |
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Principal Investigator |
KUNIKATA Keiji Yamagata University, Department of Economics, Professor, 人文学部, 教授 (70143724)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1993 – 1994
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| Keywords | Early Modern Britain / Agriculture / Farming Book / Environment / Wiltshire / John Locke / Property / American Puritanism |
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| Research Abstract |
Thomas Davis's General View of the Agriculture of the County of Wilts. (London, 1794) has been scarecely given attention, but I think it is worth noticing. He accurately descibed the differences of regional divisons agriculturally. In this point, his understanding of natural environment is more keen than that of Arthur Young. I have derived other aspects from Thomas's reports, which are quite different from the traditional unduerstanding of the contemporay agriculture.
I investigated the relationships between Locke's theory of property and American puritan's theory of landed property. I have arrived at the conculusions as follow. (1) John Locke has been evaluated to be the first political theorist who expounded the labor theory of property. However, I think that his labor theory is subject to the influence of the theory of landed property rights expounded by American puritans, in particular John Winthrop. For example, in his General Observations, Winthrop said, "at Dotham and all other places men accounted nothing their owne, but that which they had appropriated by their own industry...." (2) There is the controversy between James Tully and Neal Wood on the nature of a servant in the turfs passage of chapter 5 of the Second Treatise. But I think that the controversy is irrelevant to the intention of Locke. In the turfs passage he was demonstrating the labor theory of property, which means that man's entitlement to property depends on mixing his labor with the raw stuff of nature, and on this stage he had not introduced the money in his argument yet, Therefore, my conclusion is that Locke's servant appeared in the turfs passage only as a member of master's family.
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