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# Agricultural Development Constraints

## Definition

The institutional, legal, and social barriers that prevented agricultural improvement including primogeniture, entails, servile labor systems, insecure tenure, arbitrary taxation, and trade restrictions that collectively kept European agriculture below its potential productivity.

## Source Chapter

Book III, Chapter 2

## Context

Smith presents these constraints as the comprehensive system that discouraged agricultural investment and improvement throughout medieval Europe, arguing that their gradual removal through legal reform and economic development was essential for the agricultural revolution that preceded the industrial revolution.

## Economic Domain

Production

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