The price of improvements: agrarian contracts and agrarian development in nineteenth-century eastern Spain

Abstract

Fixed-rent contracts do not free landlords from the need to supervise the land if it is of high value and fragile fertility, nor do they free them from the costs of monitoring farmers if they are poor peasants prone to fall into arrears. In such cases, however, compensation for improvements will encourage tenants to farm with care and act as a bond against non-payment of rent. This article studies the repercussions of these kinds of situations by analysing what happened in nineteenth-century Valencia, where being the owners of the improvements led to tenants eventually becoming the owners of the land.