By scrutinizing the key question of property rights and of market in land, the book will provide some keys to understand economic change in Europe in the long run. It gives serious consideration to institutional constraints as key explanations for the slowness or absence of growth between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries. It intends to assess the significance of institutions as decisive factors in explanations for the relatively slow development of certain countries. The problem is rather acute insofar recent researches have added nuanced perspective to the issue of 'institutional determinism', a concept which has been accused of failing to take full account of the variety within processes of evolution. In so doing, the book will explore the conditions which permitted the progress of agriculture in Europe and the emergence of capitalism in the countryside. It helps to demonstrate that changes in the market (demand, relative prices, etc.) promote changes in property rights but that it is very doubtful that these changes always take the same direction, towards the inevitable individual and exclusive rights described by the 19th century liberal paradigm.