In Pursuit of Capitalist Agrarian Transition: Terence J. Byres

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Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 16 No. 3, July 2016, pp. 432–451.
In Pursuit of Capitalist Agrarian Transition
TERENCE J. BYRES†
This is a contribution to a long-standing ‘conversation’ between Henry Bernstein and Terry

Byres on capitalist agrarian transition, encompassing the development of capitalist agriculture
and capitalist industrialization. Two themes are central: first, the divergence of view with
respect to the possible relevance of past transitions for the present (posited by Byres) and
the contemporary, pre-emptive power of globalization (argued by Bernstein); and, second,
the basic difference of analytical procedure. There is discussion of how, in India, before
1947, colonialism sought unsuccessfully to replicate an ‘English model’ of transition in
eastern India; and how, throughout India, colonialism through surplus appropriation and
remittances to Britain prevented the creation of the underlying structural conditions necessary
for successful agrarian transition. Aspects of the nature of the Byres treatment of the Scottish
experience of agrarian transition in the eighteenth century are considered, to illustrate the nature
of the Byres method. The paper seeks to advance the conversation by clarifying the contrast be-
tween the two approaches.
Keywords: capitalist agrarian transition, paths of agrarian change, globalization,
comparative historical political economy, eighteenth-century Scotland, Scottish
Enlightenment, colonialism, India
AN ONGOING ‘CONVERSATION’ ON AGRARIAN TRANSITION

There is said to be a ‘Bernstein–Byres debate’ on capitalist agrarian transition: the notion of such a
‘debate’, according to Bernstein (2016), was coined by Oya (2013). Certainly, Oya refers to such a
‘debate’, although there was loose reference to it before then. It relates essentially to the possible
relevance of the historical experience of transition for contemporary poor countries and, indeed,
to the possibility at all of such transition there. I suggest both to be the case. Bernstein’s challenge
has been to argue that this is pre-empted by the powerful and pervasive operation of globalization
and global capital.
The issues at stake are of consequence both in the past and the present. Their contemporary
significance is widely recognized, and the views of Bernstein and myself, along with those of others,
are discussed and contested. I will not rehearse here what is an abundant literature. I will focus, rather,
on the individual analyses of Bernstein and myself. Something of the wider literature may be seen, for
example, in the collection edited by Akram-Lodhi and Kay (2009), Peasants and Globalization. Both
Bernstein and I have essays therein. The chapters by the editors (chapters one, nine and thirteen), in
which the pertinent questions are judiciously covered, in some detail, are especially useful.
That most erudite, formidably well-read and incisive of historians, Victor Kiernan, once
observed that ‘history shows that there are…many roads to capitalism … and many variant forms’
Terence J. Byres, Department of Economics and Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, UK.
E-mail: tb1@soas.ac.uk
†
I am grateful to the editors of the special issue for their thoughtful and incisive comments on the first draft of this
essay. They pushed me to improve what was an incomplete presentation, to eliminate unnecessary material and to
clarify the argument. The errors and misconceptions remain my own.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd doi: 10.1111/joac.12176

In Pursuit of Capitalist Agrarian Transition 433
(Kiernan 1961, 65). History further demonstrates that, in societies that were overwhelmingly rural, it
was, often if not always, in the countryside, in agriculture, that capitalism first, and in manifestly
different ways, made progress, and usually (although not always) from a feudal base. Historically,
we are on the terrain of the substantive variety of paths by which capitalist agriculture emerged,
and the economic and political implications of different paths. Much of my work, as referenced
below, has focused on identifying the nature of those paths and their implications. Today, I suggest,
the relevant issues, as displayed historically, have clear potential economic substance analytically.
They also have political significance, inasmuch as the prospects for a socialist transition are far less
plausible than they were in the past.
A crucial element in the development of capitalist agriculture is the generation of surpluses that
give sustenance to capitalist industrialization: labour, which helps create an urban proletariat and
much of the industrial labour force; food, the wage good par excellence; raw materials, most
prominently for textile industries; and financial surpluses, in the form of rents, capitalist profit and
tax revenue, which, along with industry’s own profits, fuel capital formation in industry. Agriculture
also provides a market for industrial products: both consumer goods and agricultural means of
production. Reciprocally, industrialization creates a home market that sustains capitalist agriculture
in its earlier stages as well as supplying the aforementioned means of production (e.g. in the past more
efficient ploughs, more recently tractors). The terms of trade between agriculture and industry may
constitute an area of potent conflict. A full treatment of agrarian transition requires close attention to
this reciprocal relationship, and I have pursued that throughout my writing. My concern, then, is
with Bernstein’s views on capitalist agrarian transition in its full sense, and the differences between
us on that. Underlying those differences lies a basic divergence of approach. That I seek to explore.
I identify the various writing by Bernstein and myself on this. I thus abstract from his rich body of
work on agrarian political economy: at once sophisticated, rigorous and original. The full extent of
that work, culminating in his book, Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change (Bernstein 2010), and the
contribution it has made, are discussed elsewhere in this special issue. It is characterized by high
theoretical content. My own work on agrarian transition started in relation to India, and shifted to
consideration of the key instances, or ‘paths’, of historical transition, among the now advanced
capitalist countries, as a possible way of casting light on contemporary transition. Since the second
half of the 1980s, it has related very largely and most seriously to those instances. Treatment of their
possible relevance for contemporary poor countries has been less systematic, more tentative and
more fragmentary, although seriously pursued. As with the historical work, it has focused on
empirical investigation, informed by the theoretical perspectives of Marxist agrarian political
economy.
In his most recent addition to the ‘debate’, Bernstein (2016) prefers to refer to it as a
‘conversation’. That captures the comradely way in which it has proceeded and the mutual respect
it has embodied. I will maintain that representation, in that spirit. I have found Bernstein’s interven-
tions at once challenging, stimulating and clarifying. My response to the challenge, even where it
seems defensive, should not conceal the stimulus and the clarification. I have learned much from it.
It is a conversation that originated in a paper I wrote in 1986, which appeared in two versions
(Byres 1986, 1991; hereinafter ‘1986/1991’). It was there that I first considered the nature of some
of the ‘paths’ in question. In what follows, I will refer, where appropriate, to both. The 1991 version
is the one used by Bernstein.
Here I will not go over, other than very cursorily and selectively, ground already covered either
by Bernstein or myself in previous writing. I will refer to the Oya paper already noted (2013), as well
as another of Oya’s papers (2007), and to arguments and evidence discussed in both.
The present essay is intended to distinguish the contributions to our conversation, and the
analytical frameworks within which they were made, and to add to the conversation in four ways.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
434 Terence J. Byres
These are: first, by clarifying aspects of what I have written previously and pointing to various
lacunae; second, by considering the basic difference of approach between us; third, by identifying
a situation in which the relevance of a past transition does not hold; and, fourth, by signalling very
briefly elements of my most recent work on this subject, not yet published, in a book to be entitled
Capitalism and Enlightenment: An Essay on the Political Economy of Agrarian Transition and its Analysis in
Eighteenth Century Lowland Scotland (Byres forthcoming). That book is more or less finished. Those
who are so inclined can read my latest offering on agrarian transition there. Treatment of it here is
intended to advance the conversation by highlighting the contrast between the two approaches.
ELEMENTS IN THE BERNSTEIN–BYRES CONVERSATION AND SOME

CLARIFICATION
Bernstein began our conversation in a 1994 paper, ‘Agrarian Classes in Capitalist Development’
(Bernstein 1994). He there (pp. 44–7), as part of a broad-ranging, carefully documented and cogent
argument, drew on the 1986/1991 paper I had published earlier. In that paper, there is no mention of
possible lack of relevance of historical examples of agrarian transition or that agrarian transition may
now not be possible. That would come later.
Bernstein proceeded ‘within a broad periodization of capitalist development on a world scale’
(p. 42), or, as he would later put it, ‘the uneven and combined development of capitalism on a world
scale’ (Bernstein 1996–7, 41). That was not a framework that I used, either in the 1986/1991 paper,
or later. In his 1994 treatment of ‘Landed Property and Labour’ (pp. 42–4 and see pp. 62–5, where
‘Agrarian Transition and Class Struggle’ is discussed), he focused on a theme that he would develop
in later writing on agrarian transition: that of the agrarian question and labour (Bernstein 1996–7, 52).
That is important. One needs to be reminded forcefully that there is an agrarian question for labour as
much as for capital.
Let me stress, first, that my early paper was intended as no more than an exploratory essay, in
which some tentative hypotheses might be suggested within a political economy framework. It
was, however, serious in purpose and pursued with care. It had three components: in the first, and
least tentative, I identified how the different meanings of the agrarian question emerged in Europe;
in the second, I considered, in encapsulated form, with some caution, some of the major, different
paths of capitalist agrarian question that have been traversed successfully, mostly in Europe; and, in
the third, and most tentative, made some very provisional observations on possible contemporary
analytical relevance. It is the last that has been singled out as the subject of the conversation between
myself and Bernstein.
I noted three distinct senses in which the ‘agrarian question’ was pursued by Marxist writers. The
first was the political sense considered by Engels, the problem for socialist/Marxist parties of how to
capture political power in European countries in which capitalism was developing but had not yet
swept all before it; the second, as pursued by Kautsky and by Lenin, was the extent to which
capitalism had developed in the countryside, the forms that it took and the barriers that stood in
its way; and the third, influenced by Preobrazhensky’s writing in the context of the Soviet Union’s
attempt to secure the development of socialism in the 1920s, was the countryside’s role in allowing
accumulation to proceed outside of agriculture, mostly with respect to industrialization.
In the 1986/1991 paper, the ‘paths’ I examined were: England, Prussia, France, the northern
United States, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Amid the substantive diversity, I distinguished
‘capitalism from above’, in which the landlord class was the major agent of change, and of which
Prussia was the classic example; and ‘capitalism from below’, where the major impulse came from
the peasantry, and of which the northern United States was the exemplar; with England identified
as an instance of ‘landlord-mediated capitalism from below’.
I considered ‘in the barest possible outline’ (Byres 1991, 59) how the analysis might connect with
various contemporary poor countries. I was acutely aware of the starkness of the outline, and set out
simply to establish hypotheses for systematic empirical testing. I nowhere suggested that any of the
historical paths had any necessary or inevitable contemporary relevance. I did suggest, however, that
capitalist development was possible and was, indeed, proceeding in a variety of places; that careful
scrutiny of the underlying processes at work historically and today was potentially illuminating;
and that such investigation had to be pursued empirically.
I noted possible variants of a ‘Prussian path’, of ‘capitalism from above’, where a feudal or semi-
feudal landlord class might be in process of transformation into a class of capitalist farmers, mainly
in Latin America; and of a possible ‘peasant’ or ‘farmer’ road, where a dynamic rich peasantry might
be the driving force. I noted, also, a possible ‘merchant road’ or a ‘contract farming road’. I pointed to
possible instances of all these in Latin America, especially, and also in Asia and Africa. In a speculative
treatment, I had least to say about sub-Saharan Africa. The 1986/1991 paper, I stressed, was simply
the very provisional groundwork for a separate, detailed paper (Byres 1991, 59). No such paper has
been attempted. Such an empirically based exercise is much needed. My work on agrarian transition,
in fact, became increasingly focused on historical instances of transition.
The ‘English model’ has been very influential. It was the one explored by Marx in great detail in
Capital. England is generally seen as the first instance of a full agrarian capitalist transition – and, more
generally, a full capitalist transition, both agrarian and industrial – in world history: as having won ‘the race
for capitalism’ (Wood 1999, 129). That is a judgement that I would endorse. It would be disputed by
some. It is challenged by de Vries and van der Woude, who clearly argue, in their magisterial book
(1997) for Dutch primacy in ‘raising up the first modern economy’ (p. 716, with the argument made in
full in chapter 13), both agrarian and urban. They are not Marxists and do not use the notion of
capitalist transition, but the thrust of their argument is clear (for their ‘orthodox’ conceptual
apparatus, see pp. 693–9). Then, Robert Brenner has clearly argued that the Dutch were first, largely
but not exclusively, with agrarian capitalism (Brenner 2001b, 169, 212–13, 217, 231, 233), and that,
indeed, the Dutch economy was fully capitalist by 1650 (p. 231). That it is necessary to explore the
Dutch path is obvious. I did not do so in the 1986/1991 paper. That was unfortunate. I would do so
later, in my 2003 paper (Byres 2003, 184–6); and then far more fully in my forthcoming book on
Scotland.1
Let me stress here that it was the English path that I considered in my 1986/1991 paper. Bernstein
wrongly refers in his 1994 paper to my stressing a distinctive feature of the British path (Bernstein
1994, 42). I did no such thing. As I would stress in my 2003 paper: ‘note that I … consider the
English and not the British example – the Scottish experience was quite distinct from the English’
(Byres 2003, 185). The two cases differ in several substantive ways. Scotland was a distinctive instance
1
The Dutch path is notable for a variety of reasons. My neglect of it was largely because, in 1986, the available sec-
ondary sources relating to agrarian transition were predominantly in Dutch. That, however, was not a sufficient rea-
son. There was, surely, enough material in English to allow an informed sketch. I sought to rectify my remissness in
my 2003 paper, stimulated by Brenner’s ‘The Low Countries in the Transition to Capitalism’ (see Brenner
2001a,2001b). The Dutch are to be noted not least because of the relationship between Holland and Scotland: the
links between the two were strong and the Scots, in the eighteenth century, looked to the Low Countries as a possible
model of transformation. I consider the Dutch case fully in my forthcoming book. As well as being important in the
Scottish context, it has significance more generally: as an instance of the early role of merchant capital, which took the
Dutch so far, but not to full capitalist transition. That came in the nineteenth century, much later than agrarian tran-
sition. Wood has described Holland, indeed, I think accurately, as ‘a “failed transition” in the development of indus-
trial capitalism’ (1999, 129). For a blistering critique of Brenner, see Wood (2002). Here was frustrated general
transition. Dobb had observed of the Dutch experience, 50 years before it became the object of prominent attention:
‘The launching of a country on the first stages of the road towards Capitalism is no guarantee that it will complete the
journey’ (Dobb 1946, 195). Dobb considers the reasons for this briefly but cogently (loc. cit.). Hobsbawm developed
Dobb’s argument eight years later (Hobsbawm 1954b, 54–5), although he did not refer to Dobb. But neither Dobb
nor Hobsbawm mentioned Dutch agriculture, or, therefore, the possibility of agrarian transition.

of capitalist agrarian transition, inasmuch as it proceeded with remarkable speed; and was second in
‘the race for capitalism’, if one excludes the Dutch from that position. It, too, needs to be explored.
Again, I did not do so in 1986/1991. Again, I would do so later.
The northern United States constituted one half of the ‘American path’ and is noteworthy for
the relative absence of wage-labour and of a landlord class. It is a further lacuna in my 1986/1991
paper that I did not consider the American South, where the transition from slavery to capitalism,
via an interlude of sharecropping, was central. I attempted a full treatment of the US transition in
my Capitalism from Above and Capitalism from Below: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy
(Byres 1996), where the American North is taken as an instance of ‘capitalism from below’,
and treated along with the classic and first instance of ‘capitalism from above’, Prussia. This was
my first full-length and very detailed consideration of historical examples of agrarian transition.
In the concluding chapter, I considered ‘The Comparison, Some Implications, and Some
Contemporary “Lessons”’. I was cautious in drawing any contemporary lessons. I stressed that I
give no more than the most initial of sketches of how the present analysis might connect with
the treatment of contemporary poor countries (pp. 431–2).
In my 1986/1991 paper, I considered the key variables in, and the driving forces behind, agrarian
transition. I focused upon: the character of the landlord class (where there was a landlord class); the
nature of the peasantry and the degree and course of social differentiation; relationships between the
peasantry and landlords; labour supply – whether labour was scarce or abundant and whether
alternative employment opportunities outside of agriculture existed; class struggle; the role of the
state; and the involvement of agriculture in capitalist industrialization. The productive forces in
agriculture were discussed, but to only a minor extent. That was for reasons of space. They do need
to be considered most carefully. I have continued to explore those themes in subsequent writing on
agrarian transition. They lie at the heart of all of my treatment of agrarian transition. They would
need to be central in any serious consideration of the possible contemporary relevance of historical
paths of agrarian transition and of the nature of agrarian transition. Such consideration requires the
most careful empirical treatment.
My treatment, then, has two core elements: one the actual historical experience of agrarian
transition in a number of countries in which that transition was successfully negotiated; and the other
the possible relevance of this for contemporary poor countries. Both I have pursued with some
caution, and especially the latter. The former encompasses two distinct components: the first, to
which I have paid particular and primary attention, is the forms and trajectories taken by individual
paths of capitalist agriculture; and the second how this related to capitalist industrialization.
My caution, in the first regard, derives from the need to establish the nature of paths that were
multifaceted and rooted in complex histories, from a forbidding amount of secondary literature,
often the subject of considerable controversy. The pitfalls associated with such a comparative method
are many. One would be unwise not to be cautious.
On the second component, we encounter a basic problem: how useful is the past as a way of
understanding the present (i.e. the contemporary) – or, indeed, the future? How misleading might it
be to assume that the past has such power to illuminate the future; or, in different terms, be the basis
for its construction? There is an analytical distinction: which is implicit in what I have argued in previous
writing. That is between, on the one hand, what Marx, in a colourful formulation, termed
‘world-historical necromancy’ and, on the other, comparative historical political economy. The former, which
at best may be a form of wishful thinking, can be dangerously misleading, and the latter, which must
be empirical, is potentially fruitful, if carefully pursued. It is the latter that informs my work on
agrarian transition. I will come back to this.
Bernstein gave our conversation some spice in his 1996–7 paper where he examined critically
the view of agrarian transition expressed in my 1996 book (Bernstein 1996–7, passim). I will
focus on this paper, since his argument, although elaborated subsequently, is made cogently and
fully there. He proceeded with all of the acumen one would have expected: in a thoughtful and
incisive treatment that was detailed and subtle. His argument, as I later put it, amounted to ‘a
vigorous questioning of any possible contemporary relevance of my historical treatment, on
the grounds that it has been rendered redundant by globalization’ (Byres 2003, 206). This
was unreservedly stated with respect to capitalist industrialization. He was rather more guarded
in relation to the nature of and prospects for the development of capitalist agriculture. We
may take capitalist industrialization first.
In nuce, and reduced to its most basic form, his argument is as follows (see Bernstein 1996–7,
42–3, 46 and 50). He puts great emphasis on the possible access of contemporary poor countries
to ‘external sources of accumulation’; it is imperialism/globalization that will industrialize
backward agrarian formations, and without reference to agriculture; for global capital, there is
no agrarian question; we have ‘the end of the agrarian question without its resolution’ (1996–7,
50). He discusses with clarity the mechanisms of globalization in this respect. So, it seems, as I
put it in Byres (2003, 208): the agrarian question is dead; agrarian transition in its full sense is
impossible; and there are no lessons, of any kind, to be disclosed by history in this respect. At issue
here is not the power and ramifications of globalization and the contradictions it engenders.
Rather, it is whether it has the obliterating effect postulated. I further observed in that paper
(p. 209), that despite protestations about diversity, Bernstein operates at a relentlessly general level:
with his argument proceeding from the global – ‘the generalisation of commodity relations on the
global plane’ – to a series of conclusions relating to national social formations, but without
substantive treatment of those formations.
But what of capitalist agriculture? Has history been rendered irrelevant in this respect? He is less
clear on this. He does point to ‘the massive diversity of the social formations of the periphery, their
differential trajectories of capitalist development and what explains them’ (p. 51). But globalization
does intervene: ‘In modern capitalism the “agrarian interest” is not exhausted by farmers (petty
bourgeois or capitalist) but also comprises the weight of corporate agribusiness which may
both “dominate” and support certain conditions of their reproduction, politically and ideologically
as well as economically … [via] the forms of vertical integration [of farmers] … in the circuits
[of agro-industrial capital]’ (p. 50). Clearly, the ‘massive diversity’ that he posits needs to be explored.
Again, one cannot ignore the relationships introduced by globalization or the potency of global
capital. These are discussed illuminatingly. It is, rather, whether globalization extinguishes so
pervasively and so effectively the agency of national (indigenous) capitals.
I continued my argument in two papers: ‘Paths of Capitalist Agrarian Transition in the Past and
in the Contemporary World’ (Byres 2002, 64–5); and ‘Structural Change, the Agrarian Question,
and the Possible Impact of Globalisation’ (Byres 2003, 206–9). The latter was the more complete.
I maintained my stance of potential contemporary relevance in each of my senses of agrarian
transition. I noted analytical/methodological dangers of Bernstein’s approach to which he himself
drew attention: the general danger of ‘analytical closure’ and a particular manifestation of that,
‘world system determinism’ (see Bernstein 1996–7, 50). I observed that he confessed to those sins
‘without repenting one whit’ (Byres 2003, 209). I will return to these below, in the concluding
section. They mark a difference of approach between us. I argued that the strong variant of my
argument in favour of the success of agrarian transition, in its full sense, was supported by the
experience of China and India, but also, although in a more limited way, by other countries,
in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East (Byres 2003, 208–9). That I would still maintain. I
further suggested that the Bernstein view was informed, in part, by his Africa experience: that
his clear reference point, informing much of his analysis, was sub-Saharan Africa, and that
globalization may there have the implications he suggests (p. 209). Bernstein knows far more
about sub-Saharan Africa than I do. But, on a basis of work by Oya (2007, 2013) I would now
wish to qualify my judgement that ‘the development prospects of sub-Saharan Africa now seem
to be dire’ (p. 209). I will come to that.
He continued his probing in a paper published in 2009, ‘Agrarian Questions from Transition
to Globalisation’ (Bernstein 2009). By now it was obvious that we had gone well beyond Dr
Johnson’s complaint to Boswell about a meeting with some friends: ‘No, Sir; we had talk
enough, but no conversation; there was nothing discussed’ (Boswell 1807 [1791], 295). Bernstein
has returned to this matter more recently, in the 2016 paper. He considers in these papers other
of my writings on agrarian transition (Byres 2003, 2006, 2009a). This is the extent of the con-
versation so far.
I would reiterate what I have said already. My intention was at least to identify the nature of the
initial unfolding. From that, we may obtain some possible hypotheses as to the processes at work.
That I continue to see as a potentially illuminating exercise.
It is instructive to turn to Oya’s work on sub-Saharan Africa. In a 2007 paper, Oya
presents a strong case for the development of capitalist agriculture in Senegal, on a basis of
careful and detailed fieldwork conducted there in 1998–9 and 2006 (Oya 2007, 456):
with evidence of accumulation by Senegalese farmers and of both ‘capitalism from above’
and ‘capitalism from below’; and suggesting ‘the uneven but gradual socio-economic
transformations and agrarian transitions that can be seen in rural Senegal and other parts of
Sub-Saharan Africa’ (Oya 2007, 489). He does so through the life histories of rural capitalists –
‘stories of rural accumulation’. He later conducted fieldwork in Ethiopia, Uganda, Mozambique
and Mauritania.
In a more recent paper (Oya 2013), a systematic ‘scoping review’ of the literature on ‘land
grabs’ in sub-Saharan Africa published between 2005 and mid-2013, he points to the limited
interest in ‘long-standing debates in agrarian political economy’ and ‘proposes a re-engagement
with debates on the classic agrarian question in a Marxist political economy tradition in light
of the recent experience of large-scale land deals’ (p. 1533). He argues a strong case for the
development of agrarian capitalism in sub-Saharan Africa: slow development, perhaps, but
clear. He draws particular attention to Ethiopia, and the need to research it thoroughly. Global
capital has contributed to capitalist agrarian development, but national (indigenous) capital has
been especially important. That latter has been particularly neglected. Oya concludes: ‘the
article disputes the overly pessimistic interpretations of Bernstein’s argument on the agrarian
questions of capital and labour, and suggests that current agrarian change in many parts of
Africa is more dynamic and contradictory than often assumed in the literature on land grabs’
(2013, 1554). He argues:
These are largely empirical questions, though informed by the long tradition of a rich concep-
tual debate on the major forces driving or impeding agrarian transitions in African social
formations. The article therefore calls for more attention to the twin agrarian questions of
capital and labour through more in-depth and rigorous research on socio-economic impact,
from survival at one end of the social spectrum to accumulation at the other end. Given the
neglected importance of ‘national capitals’ in these processes and to their interaction with
classes of labour in rural Africa, the article also proposes that more attention be paid to
the ‘internalist problematics’ of the agrarian question, to use Bernstein’s terms. (Oya 2013,
1554, my emphasis)
Bernstein’s argument, it is suggested, ignores the empirical and pays scant attention to ‘national
capitals’. We may return to the distinction between world-historical necromancy and comparative
historical political economy, which is, I think, instructive.
WORLD-HISTORICAL NECROMANCY AND COLONIALISM2

Marx, in the celebrated opening lines of his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, observes:
‘Hegel remarks somewhere that all the great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak,
twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce’ (Marx 1973 [1852], 146).
Whether or not the first occurrence was tragedy, if, to Marx’s ‘the great events and characters of
world history’ one were to add ‘the great processes of world history’, the danger is that in seeking
to see a particular instance of agrarian transition replicated, in the future, we run the risk of
proceeding from substance to parody. This might, at one level, be where a deliberate attempt was
made so to make the future, on that basis – in an act, if we may borrow Marx’s phrase, of
‘world-historical necromancy’ (Marx 1973 [1852], 147). This is to be distinguished from an
analytical exercise in which particular instances of transition are used to help single out the processes
at work in another. That is an altogether different proposition, where we may identify hypotheses to
be tested: not historical necromancy but comparative historical political economy. It is the latter that has
informed my writing on agrarian transition. We may, for now, concentrate on the former.
What is vital is that the full underlying structural conditions, central to successful agrarian transfor-
mation, must be in place if it is to be replicated successfully. That is, perhaps, obvious to the point of
banality. It needs to be stated, nevertheless. Critical, on the one hand, are the relations of production
– the class relations – between landlord and tenants, the underpinning modes of appropriation, the
course of class struggle and the nature of peasant differentiation; and, on the other, the development
of the productive forces. Moreover, the essential accumulation intrinsic to fruitful transformation
must be possible, and the means of securing such accumulation must be available. If the necessary
structural conditions do not exist, and are not created, then the outcome, may, indeed, be parody.
My argument is that, in contemporary circumstances, those structural conditions do exist. Capitalist
transformation may be slow and incomplete, as Oya argues for sub-Saharan Africa, but there is
evidence that it is proceeding. Indeed, by historical standards its progress, while less than spectacular
in sub-Saharan Africa, is by no means negligible there; while elsewhere it is more marked. It may,
then, be appropriate now to view its experience against the forms of agrarian transition that have
taken place in the past.
I noted (Byres 1986, 39–40; 1991, 60–1) one archetypal example of an attempt by the British
colonial power in India to impose a land settlement, and so make a future that would encompass a
productive agriculture and a healthy flow of land revenue to the colonial state. An assured source
of land revenue was essential for that state. The settlement was conceived to this end, in the image
of what was seen as the ‘English model’ of agrarian transition and prosperity: a model the dynamism
of which supposedly derived from a progressive, English landlord class. The Permanent Settlement
was a wager on the landlord class. It sought to create a class that would both bring prosperity to
the countryside and be a powerful and loyal collaborator with the British and so secure political
power. Such a class, it was postulated, might be replicated in India, so initiating a powerful set of
transforming impulses from above and ensuring the land revenue. The Permanent Settlement of 1793
was instituted in a vast swathe of eastern India (in Bengal, and also in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar,
Orissa and northern Madras): where the British sought to create, in the great zamindars, what they
intended – to use anachronistic language – as a class of capitalist landlords, a class akin to the great
Whig landed aristocracy, a class of improving landlords, under whose aegis a prosperous capitalist
agriculture would emerge. The zamindar was made responsible for the land revenue, which would
come from the rent appropriated from his peasant tenant farmers. The zamindars’ property rights and
2
The following is considered in far greater detail in my forthcoming book on eighteenth-century Scotland, as part
of my treatment of the involvement of Scots in attempts at securing agrarian transition in colonial India.

the amount of revenue to be paid were fixed in perpetuity. In that sense, it was a permanent
settlement. So much for the vision and its application.3
It was a failure so far as a capitalist agriculture, on the English model, or any other model, was
concerned. The Permanent Settlement simply brought into being a class of large, parasitic, mainly
absentee landlords, appropriating surplus coercively from a subordinate peasantry and using it
unproductively, and presiding over a stagnant agriculture. Surplus was further appropriated by a class
of moneylenders – by usurer’s capital. As Marx observed, it was ‘a caricature of large-scale English
estates’ (Marx 1962, 328) – a caricature, a parody, indeed, of both their idealized and their actual
forms. In Guha’s words: ‘The Permanent Settlement assumed the character of a pre-capitalist system
of land ownership, mocking its own original image as visualized by Philip Francis and Thomas Law’
(Guha 1963, 186). The spirit of an ‘English model’, based on the creation of a progressive landlord
class in colonial India, did not come to pass. It was a fantasy conjured up by a form of world-historical
necromancy. The necessary accumulation in India was thwarted. The part of the surplus appropri-
ated by zamindars that went to the land revenue – to the colonial state – did not fuel Indian
accumulation. Rather, it helped to maintain the colonial state and the law and order necessary to
its existence, and with some of it accruing in Britain. Nor did the part retained by the zamindars
or appropriated by moneylenders. That was used unproductively. The peasantry was stripped of
any surplus that they might use on any scale. Moreover, colonial fortunes were made by servants
of the colonial state, and were remitted to Britain. It was the accumulation that was central to Britain’s
capitalist transformation and progress (in both agriculture and industry) – that proceeded in England
and Scotland – that was, in part, fuelled by Indian surpluses.4
The Permanent Settlement attracted considerable criticism among those who administered India,
even from its beginning. In its immediate wake, the British imposed a fundamentally different land
settlement mainly in south and western India, but also elsewhere. This was the Ryotwari Settlement. It is
instructive to consider it here, but not as an instance of world-historical necromancy. It was clearly
not that. On the contrary, its major architect firmly rejected the applicability of European models to
India. Rather, it suggests that, with colonialism deeply rooted, the structural conditions were such as
to pre-empt any possibility of an emerging agrarian capitalism that might emulate European paths.
Its difference lay in the change from zamindars to ryots, from landlords to peasants, as the class in
the Indian countryside that would best meet the needs of the colonial state. It would, it was intended,
in contrast with the Permanent Settlement, release productive impulses from below: it would (in my
terms) effect a kind of transformation from below. It had three basic features: first, it would be a
system of peasant proprietorship, rather than tenancy; second, the revenue would be paid directly by
individual ryots (i.e. peasants) and not via zamindars (i.e. landlords) – or, indeed whole villages;
and, third, it was not fixed in perpetuity, but would be reassessed at regular intervals. It was
established, eventually, in Bombay (later Maharashtra and Gujarat), Southern Madras, parts of
Madhya Pradesh, and Assam. Its Scottish main progenitor and active proponent, Sir Thomas Munro,
strongly resisted the lure of world-historical necromancy. In a lengthy Minute, on the State of the
Country, and the Condition of the People. 31st December 1824 (Gleig 1830, vol. 3, 319–90), he wrote:
‘We must not be led away by fanciful theories founded on European models, which will inevitably
end in disappointment’ (p. 320). Rather: ‘We must proceed patiently, and as knowledge of the
3
The classic work on the Permanent Settlement remains Guha (1963). It was published more than half a century
ago, but remains the pre-eminent text on the origins and nature of the Permanent Settlement. It is a work of consid-
erable scholarship, that is analytically incisive, and written with rare elegance. Attempts have been made to question
the preceding judgement on Guha’s book. See, for example, Arnold (2005). I would maintain it. See my forthcoming
book for a treatment of the considerable Scottish influence in the instituting and operation of the Permanent
Settlement.
4
This flow of colonial surplus that I discuss, with respect to Scotland, in my forthcoming book.

manners and customs of the people and the nature and resources of the country increases frame
gradually from the existing institutions such a system as may advance the prosperity of the country
and be satisfactory to the people’ (p. 320). That system, very firmly, would be based on the ryots.5
It was no more successful in engineering an agrarian transformation than the Permanent
Settlement. In his excellent book, a work of meticulous scholarship, Mukherjee (1962, 44–5) draws
attention to a reply by the Principal Collector, Garrow, in Coimbatore, in 1805, in response to a
government questionnaire. Garrow pointed to the existence of three classes of peasants in
Coimbatore: first, a rich peasantry, ‘men of substance who cultivated the land to a considerable
extent and enjoyed a handsome profit’, ‘the wealthiest kind of farmers’; second, a middle peasantry,
‘those with a very moderate capital [who] made a very moderate profit on the produce of their fields’,
and the most numerous ryots; and, third, a poor peasantry, ‘those who looked to nothing beyond the
maintenance of themselves and their families for the year’. It is a clear statement of differentiation.
That peasantry did not proceed beyond the point of quantitative differentiation. It did not yield a
class of capitalist farmers. One might have anticipated that the first stratum could have flourished.
They did not. The vision of a class of sturdy, independent peasants enjoying a growing prosperity
was not realized. In fact, as the nineteenth century progressed, peasants began to sublet their land
and two broad classes emerged as population rose and pressure on land increased: a class of larger
landlords and a class of petty landlord rentiers. Here the role of moneylenders, the sowcars and vanis,
was prominent among these processes, and there was the growth of a class of moneylender-landlords,
who appropriated land from indebted peasants and kept them on as tenants from whom heavy rents
were appropriated.6
As Stein has observed, for Munro:
the task of ryotwar, as for the colonial regime then generally in formation, was not to replicate
a European capitalism and state … but to create the conditions for a durable colonial state
within a capitalist empire. This was a distinction that Munro never permitted to be lost in
his own thinking nor, when he could affect them, the thoughts of others in Madras and in
London. (Stein 1989, 217)
In the agrarian structure that emerged, no class came to prominence that was geared seriously to
accumulation. Moreover, by the very nature of colonialism and the colonial state, an agrarian
transformation was pre-empted. Here was a colonial state devising the means that would secure
maximum surplus appropriation, while those who administered it and were its servants were intent
on amassing as much as possible in the way of colonial fortunes; but not only that, both state and
colonial servants were determined to remit as much as possible back to Britain and did so with
conspicuous success. This ensured that the means of accumulation in India, in both agriculture
and industry, was severely constrained. Thereby, a replication of European capitalism was impossible.
Indeed, rather, colonialism and colonial surpluses contributed to capitalist accumulation in Britain
5
There is an abundant literature on the instituting of the Ryotwari Settlement and its history up to 1827 (the death
of Thomas Munro). See the early biography of Munro, by Gleig (1830), which is reverential, but useful; and excellent
works of scholarship by Mukherjee (1962), Beaglehole (1966) and Stein (1989). See also McLaren (2001), who draws
on these. I discuss Munro, in my forthcoming book, as a Scot who attempted to bring about an agrarian transition in
India.
6
I suggested such an outcome in an earlier paper (Byres 1974, 231 n. 2), basing my account on literature then avail-
able. The relevant references can be seen there. Clearly, these are old references. Moreover, I did not stress the role of
moneylenders. On moneylenders see, for example, Kumar (1965, 634, 618–19), Catanach (1970, 19–20),
Charlesworth (1972, 406–10 and passim). Charlesworth strikes a sceptical note on the influence of moneylenders.
There has been much relevant scholarship since the 1970s. This includes Charlesworth’s book (1985), in which he
continues to question the role of moneylenders. I think, however, that the outcome I have suggested, with respect
to the agrarian structure that emerged, and the importance of moneylenders, might be plausibly argued.

(in the case that concerns me, Scotland). The logic of colonialism was inescapable. I return to colonial
surpluses below.
To discuss that thwarting of capitalist transformation by colonialism, even where such
transformation was the avowed aim of colonial administrators, is instructive. My argument is that
today, unlike the colonial experience discussed, the structural conditions necessary for accumulation
do exist, and that there are indigenous classes (‘national capital’) capable of securing such
accumulation. Globalization, I suggest, does not preclude such an outcome. That, however, needs
to be tested against the available evidence.
SOME KEY ASPECTS OF THE SCOTTISH EXPERIENCE OF AGRARIAN

TRANSITION
In examining the Scottish path of agrarian transition, I seek to investigate the relationships between
Scottish capitalist transformation and the Scottish Enlightenment. My concern with any possible
contemporary relevance of agrarian transition in the past continues. It is joined, however, by a
concern with bringing past transitions to the Scottish example: as a source of hypotheses, or
questions, that might help illuminate the Scottish experience. Historians of Scotland occasionally
pay lip service to the value of comparative history. But they seldom practise it seriously.
So I continue this, the most recent part of my conversation with Bernstein, by noting a little of
what has emerged from my latest concern with the historical experience of agrarian transition and
how I have approached Scottish agrarian transition. The following are some of the relevant themes,
expressed as succinctly as possible. I proceed with the barest of referencing. Referencing may be seen
in copious detail in my book. This I offer as part of the ongoing conversation, and as an indication of
how, in general terms, one might pursue instances of possible contemporary transformation.
Crucial aspects of Scottish agrarian transition are discussed but are not treated here: for example,
the reciprocal relationships of agrarian transformation and capitalist industrialization, and the
development of the productive forces in agriculture.
A central concern is with the intermeshing of change/transformation and the analysis/theorizing
of change. I have divided the book into two distinct halves. In the first, I use the analytical approach
deployed in my previous writing on agrarian transition: a political economy in which the focus is on
the processes at work and the underlying logic, and individual figures are considered when they
appear in the analysis, but without detailed treatment. Focal in that is careful treatment of the
landlord class in its different components, and the emergence of a capitalist landlord class; of the
peasantry, its differentiation into different strata, and the formation of a class of capitalist tenant
farmers; and of the class of agricultural labourers. In the second I consider, in separate chapters,
and at length, five individual figures, all of whom were powerful analysts of change. This brings alive
the political economy and the class agency that lay behind it. Four of them were both agents of
agrarian change and analysts of change (Alexander Fletcher of Saltoun, Henry Home Lord Kames,
James Hutton and James Anderson). It is revealing to see that combination of agent and analyst in
a single person. It is the personification of ‘capitalism and enlightenment’. The fifth (Adam Smith) supplied
the fullest Enlightenment view of agrarian change and cannot possibly be ignored. These, however, I
do not discuss here.
The Concept of Transition

Most of the writing on agrarian transition, including my own, proceeds without considering the
notion of transition itself. I think it helpful to depart from that practice: to reflect on the idea of
transition, if only in elementary terms, and to break it up into its component parts.
The book is concerned largely with the capitalist agrarian transformation of Lowland Scotland:
with the agrarian component of the transition from a social formation dominated by feudalism to
one dominated by capitalism. The development of capitalist agriculture is a central part of overall
capitalist transformation. Its other critical component is capitalist industrialization. The two are
unlikely to proceed simultaneously. The first is likely to precede the second, and to create its
basis, in several respects. I consider the agriculture–industry relationship within capitalism, which
runs both ways (the dependence is reciprocal). An overall transition to capitalism – to capitalism’s
dominance, however one defines that – will probably come first in agriculture. I consider how
best to approach and conceptualize transition. In so doing, while my major concern is with the
emergence of capitalist agriculture, an adequate treatment and full clarity require that one
proceeds within the framework of overall capitalist transformation and with some regard for
capitalist industrialization.
There are two broad approaches to transition. In the first, it is seen as having deep roots in the
past: as a prolonged process, proceeding over la longue durée (over centuries). Here we have an
evolutionary process, with all its apparent anticipations and embryonic/isolated capitalist forms. In
the second, one confronts that far shorter and more concentrated period when a process of transition
proceeds on a broad front, when capitalist forms become common: when the process gathers
momentum and intensity, and approaches completion. Here is a revolutionary process. One finds
elements of both approaches in Marx, most notably when, brilliantly, he embodies his treatment
of transition in the notion of ‘primitive accumulation’ (Marx 1961, 713–74; Marx 1962, 63–937);
and in Dobb’s classic work Studies in the Development of Capitalism (Dobb 1963, ch. 1). I favour the
concentrated approach. It may be instructive to consider the former, but it is the latter that is
more revealing.The former one may see as the preliminary to the transition era: when economic
forms appear that may seem to be capitalist, but are few and scattered; or are forms that clear
the way for capitalism, but are not yet fully capitalist; that are harbingers of capitalism. It comes
to an end as the concentrated era of transition approaches. The era of transition I divide into two
phases. The first I identify as the initial phase of transition, when the forces of change quicken
perceptibly, but capitalist dominance is not yet fully secured, and capitalism continues to exist
cheek by jowl with feudalism. As this first phase proceeds, and if it is successful in sweeping away
feudal relationships, in part at least, so it gathers momentum and intensity, until a pivotal point is
reached. It then becomes an apparently more sudden and concentrated, process, with more developed
and more widespread capitalist forms in evidence. This latter is the second phase of transition, the
true breakthrough phase of transition, when capitalist dominance strictly prevails: the phase when
one sees an unshackled capitalism in full spate. This may seem excessively formalistic. It has, I think,
a certain heuristic value.
I view the era of transition as proceeding over Scotland’s long eighteenth century: between c.
1690 and c. 1820. The initial phase of transition stretches from roughly 1690 to perhaps 1750.
The second, that of capitalism in full spate, proceeds from c.1750 to c. 1820. The Scottish
Enlightenment progressed over the same broad overall period, gathering pace in the 1740s and
reaching imposing maturity by the third quarter of the century.
7
Both Marx and Dobb focus on England. See Marx’s ‘The So-Called Primitive Accumulation’, part eight of vol-
ume one of Capital; and, in a continuation of this, his ‘Genesis of Capitalist Ground-Rent’, chapter 47 of volume
three, in part six, entitled ‘Transformation of Surplus-Profit into Ground Rent’. In his 2014 paper, Bernstein refers
to Marx’s ‘sketch of primitive accumulation’ (2014, 1037). It is far more than a ‘sketch’. I come back to it below.
Saville observes: ‘It is unusual in Marx’s historical writings that we have such a complete and explicit account of a ma-
jor historical transformation … The fact that we have such a complete model … makes it all the more surprising that
British historians, with the notable exception of Maurice Dobb, have paid so little attention to the questions that Marx
raised, and to the way that he shaped his generalizations’ (Saville 1969, 265).

Scottish Feudalism
We cannot understand the character of Scotland’s agrarian transition without grasping the nature of
the base from which it emerged. That base was feudalism. When the notion of feudalism is invoked it
is often done loosely, and with no clear indication of what is meant. As has been observed by a
distinguished Scottish medievalist, ‘unfortunately there is no full-scale Marxist analysis of medieval
Scotland’ (Grant 1994, 17). There is, then, no serious Marxist analysis of Scottish feudalism. That I
seek to pursue.
Most of the serious writing on Scottish feudalism, by historians, does, of course, have a defined
view of feudalism. It deploys a feudo-vassalic definition, which sees Scottish feudalism as the
Anglo-Norman version that was introduced in the years that followed 1124; and considers relations
within the landlord class between lords and vassals. Within that view, military feudalism is of special
import. That I reject.
I deploy, rather, a political economy view, which proceeds in class terms and concentrates on relations
between lord and peasants. I take the mode of surplus appropriation as decisive and see feudalism as
coercive rent-taking and with it the coercive taking of other surpluses through private jurisdiction. The latter
included banalités – that is, monopoly dues such as, inter alia, being thirled to the landlord’s mill8 –
and profits from landlord courts (the baron courts and the courts of regality). Feudal rent was clearly
important. But I stress, too, the role of non-rental surpluses. This has not been given, in Scottish
historiography, the prominence it deserves. Both of them were very lucrative. These together
constituted what Bois has termed the total seigneurial levy (Bois 1984 [1976], 210–12), which we
might refer to as the feudal landlord levy. Feudalism, in this sense, is of far older vintage. Scottish
feudalism, in the political economy sense, included an established serfdom until 1370. Thereafter,
feudalism continued to exist, in the indicated sense, until the later seventeenth century.
The feudal landlord class consisted of two strata: a noble stratum of large landlords; and a stratum of
lairds, smaller but often powerful. Their nature was critical in the transition era. I examine both in
feudalism’s final stage. By then, lairds had grown in presence (both absolutely and relatively). They
would be decisive in the era of transition. The eighteenth century would be ‘the century of the lairds’
(Whyte 1997, 279). The roots of their influence lay in feudal Scotland. One must grasp the nature of
their feudal antecedents.
There also existed a peasantry, which was differentiated. Peasant differentiation has been largely
ignored by historians of Scotland. But it surely existed in feudal Scotland. To ignore it is to obscure
the nature of the Scottish transition. Seeing its nature and importance in England signals its possible
role in Scotland. I consider the English case in Byres (2006). It is not difficult to find evidence of
feudal differentiation in the Scottish secondary literature. The rich peasantry that existed in the later
seventeenth century would prove crucial to the agrarian capitalism that followed. From it would
emerge a class of capitalist tenant farmers that would be a powerful driving force in capitalist agrarian
transition.
I devote close attention to the feudal landlord levy, and hypothesize that as feudalism proceeded
so, as in England, in France and other European countries, the proportion of the landlord levy
constituted by surpluses taken by private jurisdiction rose (cf. Duby 1974 [1973], 229–30, 248–9;
8
In feudal Scotland, the tying of tenants to landlord services such as the mill or the brewery was known as thirlage.
Tying to the mill was especially common. Charges were excessive and were a lucrative source of income for landlords;
and labour services, for the upkeep of the mill, were onerous. Both features were much resented, and were a continu-
ing source of struggle for all strata of the peasantry. Indeed, the miller was a detested figure across Europe. Such
thirlage persisted in Scotland throughout the eighteenth century.
9
Whyte is one of the outstanding social and economic historians of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scotland.
The title of his 1997 book is Scotland’s Society and Economy in Transition, c.1500–c.1760. His span of transition is far lon-
ger than mine (he sees it in evolutionary rather than revolutionary terms), while he brings it to a close well before I do.
His 1979 book Agriculture and Society in Seventeenth Century Scotland is of seminal importance.

Hilton 1990, 160). Eventually, however, the total feudal levy approached a limit, given by
agriculture’s low productivity. Feudalism could no longer deliver a satisfactory surplus. Both strata
of the landlord class experienced considerable indebtedness. Their survival required that a new mode
of production be ushered in. This was central to feudalism’s terminal crisis in the seventeenth
century. The old mode of production had to give way to the new. Within the peasantry, the rich
peasant stratum waged a struggle to free itself from the shackles of the old mode of production. I stress
the significance of examining modes of surplus appropriation as a way of identifying feudalism; and
how the road to agrarian capitalism was opened up by the failure of feudal modes to provide an
adequate surplus.
Class Struggle
Throughout my work on agrarian transition, I have stressed the potential force of class struggle.
Eighteenth-century Lowland Scotland is routinely portrayed, by a range of historians, as being
devoid of class struggle. Writing that relates to agrarian transition either ignores it, or points to its
absence in the Scottish countryside. This, I argue, is mistaken.
Certainly, at the outset of transition, there was a clear instance of such struggle in Galloway, in
1724, with the eruption of the Levellers’ Revolt. Galloway had a previous history of turbulent unrest
in the seventeenth century, associated with the Covenanters. The Levellers’ Revolt was, however, a
distinctively new phenomenon. The Covenanters were drawn from all classes in the countryside.10
The Levellers’ Revolt was a class phenomenon: a movement of poor peasants who had been
dispossessed, or faced dispossession, by capitalist landlords who enclosed the land with stone dykes
to create large grazing parks for cattle. It encompassed ‘fringe’ participants – ministers, rich peasants,
outsiders of one kind or another, and tinkers/gipsies (‘masterless men’). From their ranks came
leaders, who provided organization, discipline, ideology, fiery rhetoric and techniques of levelling
dykes. The Levellers were, however, overwhelmingly, poor peasants. It was the first major instance
in Scotland of resistance to capitalist transformation, as transition got under way. The Levellers were
defeated. But the Revolt merits close scrutiny. Such organized resistance to the predations of
capitalism did not recur in the eighteenth century. The Levellers’ Revolt, however, was taken
seriously by the landlord class. Landlords feared a recurrence of such action. I focus on one in
particular, Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk. He feared the possibility of a repetition, in Aberdeen-
shire, of the Levellers’ Revolt. He envisaged much that might give rise to revolt. He was making
himself ready for it. He was exercising class vigilance.
10
The Covenanters were Presbyterian participants in a tumultuous and determined movement in seventeenth-cen-
tury Scotland to resist attempts by the British Crown to transform the liturgy of their Church, the established Church
of Scotland. Presbyterian was to be replaced with episcopal practice. It lasted effectively from 1638 to 1688, in two
broad phases. In the first, the Covenanters subscribed to covenants (a notion deriving from the Old Testament) –
the National Covenant of 1638 and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 – in which they pledged to maintain
the forms of worship and church government that Charles 1 sought to change. This involved vigorous protest and
some limited armed resistance. After the Commonwealth, in the second phase, resistance proceeded against Charles
II, who made resolute efforts to change the liturgy, and to enforce conformity. Resistance intensified, and this brought
a draconian response. In the 1660s, 270 ministers of the Church (a quarter of the ministry) abandoned their churches,
taking many of their congregations with them. They were replaced by recently qualified ‘curates’. Deprived of the
authority to hold services, these ‘outed ministers’ held secret ‘conventicles’ (field services) where worship, baptisms
and marriages were held. Fines were imposed on those who failed to attend parish churches; torture was resorted
to; and participation in conventicles was subject to the death penalty. There was further armed rebellion. In the
1680s, Covenanters were savagely repressed, during the so-called ‘killing time’. Over a short period in 1685, around
100 Covenanters were summarily executed. The movement was uneven in its regional incidence, and was most in-
tensely pursued in the south-west: in Galloway (i.e. Wigtownshire and Kirkcudbrightshire), Ayrshire and Dumfries-
shire. This was no jacquerie. Members of all social classes participated: landlords and tenants, both noble landlords
(including a veritable galaxy of earls) and lairds, all strata of the peasantry. There was a blurring of class relations.
Women were active in the movement, sometimes in defiance of their husbands, and across the class spectrum.

Grant is generally portrayed as one of the great pioneers of ‘improvement’. He was a substantial
laird and a single-minded capitalist landlord, with a ruthless determination to maximize his income
from his estate, and who treated his tenants unreservedly to this end. We have a detailed treatment of
the Monymusk estate records between 1713 and 1755 by Henry Hamilton (1945, 1946). Hamilton
treats Grant all too reverentially, but the ‘estate records’ are nothing like so ‘curiously bloodless’ in
Hamilton’s hands as one writer has suggested (Carter 1981, ix). They include the very revealing
Minutes of the Baron Court, reproduced by Hamilton in his 1945 volume (Hamilton 1945,
185–242), which illustrate vividly the tenants’ responses to Grant’s improving activities. They show
an active class struggle on the Monymusk estate. Grant’s tenants resisted: the eradication of runrig11;
the hated mill thirlage services; the detested carriage service12; enclosure; dispossession; Grant’s own
improvements (his plantations and dykes); and Grant’s constant efforts to impose ‘improved’
methods on them. The account to be derived from the Baron Court Minutes, and which Hamilton
himself more than hints at, is far from bloodless. What is revealed is a constant struggle between
Grant and his tenants that shows defiance and resistance. Here were clear forms of class antagonism
and class struggle. Here, at Monymusk, was no docile tenantry. I hypothesize that close scrutiny of
the records of other estates would reveal similar struggles.
There was a general struggle against mill service in the seventeenth century, and throughout the
eighteenth century. It continued to persist as a common means of surplus appropriation until
remarkably late in the transition era. We find James Anderson writing a strong attack on it, as it
existed in Aberdeenshire, in 1794 (Anderson 1794, 45–9). Thirlage, and especially to the mill,
continued to exist pervasively in Lowland Scotland throughout the eighteenth century, until the
Thirlage Act of 1799 introduced procedures by which it might be eliminated, through negotiation
between tenants and landlords. These procedures were followed on a substantial scale, although it
was only in the 1840s that thirlage had largely gone. There was persistent opposition to it, a matter
of dogged class struggle between tenants and landlords; and a proliferation of litigation, which was a
weapon in that opposition, from the 1740s onward. Despite this, it has attracted little attention from
historians of eighteenth-century Scotland.
I have noted the struggle of rich peasants against landlords, to free themselves from feudal
constraints. That continued into the eighteenth century, and was a vital part of the transformation
of this stratum of the peasantry into a class of capitalist farmers, as they sought to secure more land
on better terms. There was a change in the form of leases, with the emergence of long (19-year)
improving leases. The improving lease did not become a dominant feature until the second part of
the transition era, with prohibitive conditions for tenants. It was, indeed, a means of landlord control.
A form of class struggle was waged by rich peasants: for long leases (but not necessarily improving
leases with their coercive conditions), single-tenure as opposed to multiple-tenure, abolition of
runrig, and abolition of thirlage.
11
Runrig was a central feature of feudal agriculture in later medieval and early modern Scotland. It consisted of the
systematic intermingling of strips across the arable, with the strips supposedly allocated, regularly, by ‘lot and rotation’.
It was a complex and variegated arrangement, which was deeply rooted and lasted for at least four centuries. It was
predominantly associated with the major form taken by tenancy, that of multiple-tenure (tenancy runrig), although
it was found, also, among those who owned land (proprietary runrig). In later feudalism, it constituted a powerful ob-
stacle to a more productive agriculture – to an effectively functioning capitalist agriculture. Rich peasants (potential
capitalist tenant farmers) were especially concerned to see its end, and to work their land in compact blocks. It was
a minority phenomenon by 1750.
12
Carriage services, or carting, were an onerous burden on tenants: at once time-consuming and sometimes involv-
ing long journeys from home, inconvenient and expensive. They were a powerful source of antagonism, and were
performed grudgingly, often provoking open defiance of the laird. They involved, for example, the transport of
in-kind rent, with a cart or pack horse supplied by the tenant, along with sacks; the cutting and drying of peats and
their carriage (sometimes upwards of 20 loads of peat per year); the carriage of wine; the delivery of letters; and the
bringing back of items from the nearest borough. Persistent recalcitrance might result in seizure of assets. On such ser-
vices, see Whyte (1979, 35–6) and Hamilton (1945, xxiv, 128, 199–200).

Colonial Surpluses
I have drawn attention already to the flow of colonial surpluses from India to Scotland in the
nineteenth century. But that flow started before then, and was considerable in the eighteenth
century. Moreover, surpluses flowed into Scotland, too, from the Caribbean: less than those from
India, but significant nevertheless. With colonial surpluses, we enter the realm of Marx’s primitive
accumulation; in this instance, its external dimension. I consider internal primitive accumulation
elsewhere in the book.
The external/colonial form of primitive accumulation is given considerable stress in Marx’s
treatment of the genesis of industrial capitalists: and encompasses the creation of colonial captive markets
and, pre-eminently, the remittance of colonial surpluses and the use of some of these remittances to
further domestic capital accumulation. Fortunes, often large, were made in the British colonies
(especially in India) and were remitted home. So it was that the British in the colonies (including
disproportionate amounts of Scots, although Marx does not mention this): ‘cleverer than the
alchemists, made gold out of nothing. Great fortunes sprang up like mushrooms in a day; primitive
accumulation went on without the advance of a shilling’ (Marx 1961, 752, my emphasis). In a vivid
formulation: ‘The treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslavement, and
murder, floated back to the mother-country and were there turned into capital’ (Marx 1961, 753–4, my
emphasis). The remittances included, too, sums that were the outcome of less dramatic, if no less
telling, colonial involvement. According to Marx, colonial primitive accumulation enabled, on a
large scale, and speeded up capital accumulation in industry – capitalist industrialization – in England.
But there is no reason, in principle, why it should not have been strategic with regard to agrarian
capitalism, whether through the landlord class or the class of agrarian capitalists, in securing the
growth and development of capitalist agriculture. It is likely to have played a role in the development
of capitalist agriculture in eighteenth-century Scotland, both in the initial phase of transition and in
the second.
These flows of colonial surplus, and the role they played in Scotland’s capitalist transformation,
have received remarkably little attention from social and economic historians of Scotland. Two
books on Scotland have pointed the way to their assessment, providing some evidence on their size
and possible impact. The first is on the Caribbean (the West Indies) (Hamilton 2005), between 1750
and 1820; and the second is a path-breaking study on India (the East Indies) in the eighteenth
century, which focuses on patronage by the East India Company, and the fortunes to which it gave
rise for Scots (McGilvary 2008). India is the more substantial of the two. The former provides a
relatively brief treatment in its final, substantive chapter, which is suggestive but unsystematic. The
latter gives estimates of the size of fortunes made, the overall flows into Scotland and the amount that
was available for investment. McGilvary provides a strong presumption that large and increasing
amounts of wealth flowed from India between the 1720s and the 1780s, and especially from the
1750s. Both authors stress the importance of these surpluses in Scotland’s capitalist transformation
(although neither uses that term), but neither unravels their role comprehensively.13
In my book I seek, first, to consider, as systematically as possible, the estimates made, using
evidence from other sources to flesh out the size of individual fortunes, the manner in which they
were amassed and the background of those that earned them. I attempt, second, to provide a more
complete examination of the part these flows may have played in agrarian transformation; that is, in
securing Scotland’s agrarian transition: in the purchase of estates or their extension; their
‘improvement’, in whatever form that ‘improvement’ took; and the financing of capital
accumulation (whether through direct investment by landlords or loans to tenants).
13
For my review of the former, see Byres (2009b); and for a review essay on the latter, see Byres (2010).

That these flows were important in both Scotland’s capitalist industrialization and its capitalist
agrarian transformation seems likely. The speed of Scotland’s agrarian transformation has, justifiably,
attracted attention. I suggest that it would have been less if, in the absence of colonial surpluses,
Scotland had been forced to rely exclusively on domestic sources of accumulation.
Conclusion
I would note, simply, that the treatment of the Scottish case serves two purposes. The first is in
focusing on a number of possible hypotheses that one might, with due care, bring to the study of
contemporary transitions. The second is that it illustrates the nature of my approach to the study
of transition.
THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO APPROACHES

In conclusion, we may consider two basic differences between the approaches espoused by myself
and Bernstein. The first one might term a theoretical difference, inasmuch as a particular outcome,
or set of outcomes, is ruled out on general grounds, or by theory itself (Bernstein); or, alternatively, held
to be possible, on different general grounds (Byres). The second is a methodological difference that
follows inexorably from the first, and turns on whether there is a need to investigate if, or in what
manner, or how far, transition may have proceeded, in particular instances.
The first difference, shorn of reservations and qualifications, is as follows. Bernstein allows that the
historical experience, in the substantive diversity I have suggested, may be valid. But he argues
unequivocally that in contemporary poor countries agrarian transition cannot be replicated, in any form,
old or new, because of globalization. Globalization, quite simply, has taken such a ‘classical’
resolution of the agrarian question off the historical agenda. It is, then, a ‘closed’ situation. So it is
pointless to investigate empirically, for any contemporary poor country, whether an agrarian
transition is in motion. It has been ruled out on theoretical grounds. I argue, equally uncompromisingly,
that such ‘closure’, with its accompanying ‘world system determinism’, is unacceptable. The
outcome cannot be read off from theory. The situation, then, is ‘open’. Resolution of the agrarian
question is possible, but not inevitable. To establish whether it is proceeding, careful empirical
investigation, within an appropriate theoretical framework, is necessary. I will not repeat the
arguments that support these divergent positions. The reader can find them, at length, in our
respective writings, and decide which are more convincing.
Both approaches are informed by theory. Both, indeed, have theory as their starting point, the
theory associated with Marxist political economy: although within that theory a different position
is taken with respect to the possibility of transition. They differ, moreover, in the significance they
attach to empirical analysis. Here lies the second basic difference. I suggest that theory does not
establish a hard-and-fast outcome. On the contrary, it points to hypotheses that need to be tested.
For Bernstein, theory dictates, in this instance, iron-clad outcomes. Such outcomes do not, in
contemporary circumstances, include capitalist agrarian transition. There cannot, therefore, be
particular instances of agrarian transition, or the substantive diversity I have stressed in my historical
treatment. It is pointless, then, to seek them out. They do not need to be investigated. They are,
quite simply, ruled out.
By contrast, I maintain an open stance on whether agrarian transition is today possible, on the
conceivable contemporary relevance of historical instances, and on whether transition is proceeding.
I posit that answers to these questions can only be established through the painstaking, theoretically
and conceptually informed analysis of specific cases.
I have pointed to Marx’s treatment of primitive accumulation. Amid the powerful theoretical
structure of Capital, there is much empirical treatment; to support, to complement and to illustrate
the theoretical propositions. That is not mere decoration. The two levels interpenetrate, with the
one informing the other. A great deal of it relates to England. The examination of primitive
accumulation, which represents, in effect, Marx’s treatment of transition, is especially detailed and
particularly fruitful, and is brilliantly empirical. It focuses on a single country: England. Through that
single historical case, Marx casts a penetrating light on transition in a general sense, while capturing
the particularity of the English experience and bringing it vividly alive. I have sought to follow his
example, however imperfectly, in considering the nature of different ‘paths’ of capitalist agrarian
transition; and, most recently, and in considerable detail, in seeking the distinctiveness of the Scottish
‘path’. These I see as fruitful instances of concrete analysis. My working principle in considering the
possible contemporary relevance of historical instances of transition, or whether such transition is
possible, and is in process, is that such relevance or such possibility cannot be established a priori.
Therein lies my difference with Bernstein. They can only be revealed or rejected by empirical
treatment.I started by referring to the paper by Oya (2013), and have drawn on it thereafter, as well
as to another of his papers (Oya 2007). I finish by quoting him again. The ‘classical theory’ with
respect to capitalist agrarian transition is well established. It generates an analytical apparatus with
which to approach the ‘agrarian question’, and within that a whole series of interrelated questions.
Oya emphasizes this and insists that it takes us to the point at which ‘these are largely empirical
questions’ (2013, 1554). Whether such a transition is proceeding, in sub-Saharan Africa or anywhere
else, it is these empirical questions that must be addressed. The difference between my approach and
Bernstein’s hinges on this. Theory is crucial. We would both agree on that. Where we part company
is with respect to the proposition that its culmination lies in concrete treatment of individual
instances.
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Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 16 No. 3, July 2016, pp. 432–451.

In Pursuit of Capitalist Agrarian Transition

This is a contribution to a long-standing ‘conversation’ between Henry Bernstein and Terry

AN ONGOING ‘CONVERSATION’ ON AGRARIAN TRANSITION

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd doi: 10.1111/joac.12176

ELEMENTS IN THE BERNSTEIN–BYRES CONVERSATION AND SOME

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

WORLD-HISTORICAL NECROMANCY AND COLONIALISM2

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

SOME KEY ASPECTS OF THE SCOTTISH EXPERIENCE OF AGRARIAN

The Concept of Transition

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO APPROACHES

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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