Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk: Agrarian Conditions and Inheritance Law (1887)

Böhm-Bawerk’s paired book review assesses August von Miaskowski’s study of inheritance law and landed-property distribution in Germany, followed by F. von Reitzenstein and Erwin Nasse’s accounts of agrarian conditions in France and England. Its organizing claim is methodological: amid widespread agricultural distress and competing reform proposals, sound policy requires reliable knowledge of actual conditions.

Erst wenn man die wahre Lage der Dinge kennt, kann man die Bedürfnisse, die aus dieser Lage entspringen, und weiter die richtigen Mittel der Abhilfe beurtheilen.

English translation: Only when one knows the true state of affairs can one judge the needs that arise out of that state, and further the right means of remedy.

The sequence matters: ascertain conditions, identify needs, then judge remedies. Böhm-Bawerk values the reviewed works chiefly as foundations for informed debate, rather than endorsing a particular reform of inheritance or landholding.

Miaskowski receives praise for assembling evidence under unusually difficult conditions. Germany’s political fragmentation had produced fragmented legislation and factual materials, while official statistics offered limited assistance. Böhm-Bawerk emphasizes the author’s comprehensive use of legal and scholarly sources and impartial presentation of opposing arguments. The resulting study provides a substantial basis for discussing agrarian questions in Germany and, through its comparative references, Austria. Its cumbersome scale is treated as a consequence of the material:

Dass das Operat auch etwas dickleibig und schwerfällig gerathen ist — wie der Verf. selbst einmal (II, 475) entschuldigend zugesteht — wird man gerne nicht dem Verf., sondern der grossen Sprödigkeit des Stoffes zur Last legen.

English translation: That the work has also turned out somewhat bulky and ponderous — as the author himself once apologetically concedes (II, 475) — one will gladly lay to the charge not of the author, but of the great intractability of the material.

The second part contrasts these research difficulties with the extensive official inquiries available to Reitzenstein for France and Nasse for England. France receives only brief treatment; England commands the reviewer’s attention both for its distinctive agrarian structure and for Nasse’s presentation. Böhm-Bawerk highlights concentrated landownership, cultivation largely by tenants, and the severe agricultural crisis associated with seven successive bad years, 1875–1881, and American competition. England’s especially direct exposure to that competition makes its experience instructive for continental economies confronting the same pressure.

Nasse’s achievement is also intellectual and expository: he transforms unwieldy inquiry materials into an intelligible account.

Nasse hat es verstanden, aus dem unförmlichen ungeschlachten Enquête-Materiale ein wahres Cabinetsstück an Klarheit und Uebersichtlichkeit herauszuarbeiten, dessen Lecture erfreut und fesselt.

English translation: Nasse has known how to work up out of the shapeless, unwieldy material of the inquiry a true cabinet piece of clarity and perspicuity, the reading of which delights and captivates.

Across the two notices, Böhm-Bawerk’s standards remain consistent: evidentiary thoroughness, impartial comparison, and clarity. The review’s significance lies in its insistence that agrarian reform be grounded in carefully organized empirical knowledge, with cross-national experience helping to distinguish local institutional conditions from wider economic pressures.