Agricultural History Review, Volume 74 Part 1 (2026), pp. 27–48

This article explores the socio-economic trajectories of rural labourers in two neighbouring Catalan areas (Empordà and Inner Selva) during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, within the framework debates on the Industrious Revolution. Drawing on dowries, probate inventories, and emphyteutic contracts, it highlights the crucial role of land access in shaping living standards and inequality levels. Empordà is shown to have experienced notable improvements in living standards, driven by bottom-up land acquisition. In contrast, Inner Selva initially had more constrained outcomes due to ecological limitations and continued reliance on forestry, showing the greatest transformations in the nineteenth century when the process of fragmentation and transfer of land to labourers intensified, mirroring what had happened in Empordà some decades earlier. The study challenges consumption-centred interpretations of the Industrious Revolution by emphasizing land hunger as a key factor to explain labour intensification and rural change.