On the road again with Arthur Young : English, Irish, and French agriculture during the Industrial Revolution

In their day Arthur Young's tours of England, Ireland, and France represented a revolutionary approach to agricultural research. Here we avail of one part of the wealth of statistical data collected by Young-that on grain yields- to provide a comparative perspective on agricultural technique and progress in these countries around 1770 to 1850. We show that, ironically, Young's carefully assembled data do not always support some of his best-remembered generalizations.