Читать книгу Economic Development in Denmark Before and During the World War онлайн

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Towards the close of the century, however, things began to look better. In France economists were pointing with increasing emphasis to the great importance of agriculture, and in line therewith were developing the physiocratic doctrine. It was not physiocratism, however, which eventually dominated politico-economic theory in Denmark, for the physiocrats are scarcely mentioned in the Danish literature of the eighteenth century. The foreign ideas which may be said to have influenced the literature of Denmark are rather those of the encyclopaedists. But it is more in accord with the truth to say that the humane ideas which subsequently led to the emancipation of the peasants sprang forth spontaneously when the time was ripe for them. These ideas were then, as it were, in the air.

In 1761 the Dowager Queen, Sophie Magdalene, took the first step toward reform by exempting the peasants on her estate of Hörsholm, in the north of Zealand, from all services and tithes against the payment of a fixed rent, and by making them hereditary leaseholders with the right to sell and mortgage. The peasants on her estate were thus placed, in all essentials, in the position of freeholders. Some years ​later Bernstorff followed her example on the Gentofte estate, and other landowners did likewise. An ordinance of 1771 specified the amount and kind of compulsory service to be rendered, and another of 1781 was intended to abolish the old system of 'common fields'—a sharing of agricultural labour and produce which was no longer of any importance. This ordinance allowed an exchange of 'parcels' or strips of land, so that the holdings of one man might lie in two or, at the most, three places.