The impact of land accumulation and consolidation on population trends in the pre-industrial period: two contrasting cases in the Low Countries

Abstract

From the late middle ages onwards, many regions of western Europe experienced heightened inequality in the distribution of land via consolidation of property in the hands of interest groups. What happened to those unfortunate rural people who lost their land to wealthier or more powerful interest groups? Commonly a connection has been drawn between land accumulation and population decline or stagnation in the countryside, yet this outcome was not always inevitable, as demonstrated in this article. While land consolidation was sometimes the motor setting in motion outward migration to the cities, for example, this comparative study shows that some rural societies were better ‘set up’ to retain their landless populations than others.