In the 18th century, Denmark, poor in natural resources except for its soil, nonetheless made important economic gains in international trade and agriculture. No important industries, on the other hand, developed during this period.

Following mercantilist theory, the government supported trade, particularly shipping, to the benefit of Copenhagen merchants. Denmark, however, lacked the political strength to exploit the strategic position of Copenhagen. In the 1730s eastern Norway was made an outlet for Danish grain, but the grain was inferior and normally could not compete with Baltic grain on the western European markets. Besides grain, oxen, and meat, Denmark had very little else to export, so transit trade predominated.

At the beginning of the century, Danish agriculture, like peasant agriculture elsewhere in Europe, was not very productive. Some 300 landlords controlled 800 to 900 estates—about 90 percent of the arable land. Danish landlords, like all European elites, wanted to participate in the generally rising standard of living. To do so, they needed to increase the incomes from their estates. A price depression beginning in the 1720s enabled the landlords to use their position to pressure the peasants further by increasing the corvée (obligatory work owed by peasants to their landlords) to an average of three days a week and by eliminating villages and turning peasants into landless cottars who worked the lord’s own farmland. While some peasants, especially in western and northern Jutland, continued to own their farms, the vast majority held their farms as copyholds on an estate. So landlords could better control their labor, it became law for male peasants between 4 and 40 years of age to remain on the estate of their birth, unless they had the landlord’s permission to move or they had served six years in the army or navy. Because conscription was controlled by the landlord, he could threaten a young peasant with at least six years of military service if he did not accept a copyhold farm or cottage. Peasants had no right to demand a contract when they took over a holding, nor could they demand payment for improvements they might have made on the holding when the copyhold expired, usually at the death or bankruptcy of the peasant. Each landlord also had the right of petty jurisdiction on his estate. Under this system, despite the changes, productivity remained low. Nevertheless, except for the hog and cattle raisers of Jutland, the estates were the only farms to produce an exportable surplus of agricultural goods.

During the course of the century, influenced by the writings of the French physiocrats, who believed that the wealth of a country came from agriculture, not trade, and by the experiences of Dutch farmers, a reform movement took root and flourished in the kingdom. In 1755 freedom of the press regarding economic and agricultural issues led to a lively debate. It became clear that if agriculture were to become productive, both technical changes—i.e., better tools, farming methods, seed, and stock—and social changes would be necessary. Technical change could occur fairly easily on land under the control of one person, but it was quite difficult in areas of joint tillage. As a consequence, agricultural improvements came first to the estates and then to the glebes (church farmlands) of enlightened Lutheran pastors, although they were not unknown in the peasant villages.

In 1759 some of the first enclosures were instituted—i.e., all the land belonging to one farm was enclosed by a more-or-less-permanent fence, hedge, or stone wall—and the peasants’ corvée was replaced by a monetary payment. Elsewhere similar experiments were carried out by reform-minded landlords, many of them nobles. In 1769 the Royal Danish Agricultural Society was founded to encourage and disseminate information about technical improvements in a number of fields, including agriculture.

The land reform movement reached its apogee between the years 1784 and 1797. Danish politics of those years were led by the foreign minister Bernstorff; Christian Ditlev, Greve (count) Reventlow; and Ernst Schimmelmann, all from the landlord class. The politics were also led by the Norwegian jurist Christian Colbjørnsen and the crown prince Frederick (later King Frederick VI), whose father, King Christian VII, was incapable of ruling. Between 1784 and 1788 the Great Agricultural Commission studied the Danish agricultural situation, and its recommendations led to a number of sweeping reforms. Its recognition of the importance of peasant ownership of land led to the availability of low-interest, government-backed loans as well as to a law ending adscription (the tying of the peasants to the estate of their birth). The work of the commission also stimulated a relatively rapid enclosure of farmland in Denmark. Between 1790 and 1814 all but a few villages were surveyed for enclosure, and the majority of the farms became freeholds. (The remaining copyholds were converted later in the 19th century.) Landlords were compensated for the rights they lost, and, together with the new landowning farmers, they were assured a stable labor force by strict legislation of the small tenant farmers.

The land reforms were possible because of a continuous rise in grain prices between 1750 and 1815 and because the politicians of 1784 had carried out successful reforms on their own estates. These leaders also had an insight into the benefits of a mild inflation and a liberal allocation of state credit, with which they guided the transition to peasant landownership. The land reforms ultimately led to an effective agricultural sector that delivered high-quality products for domestic use and for export.