First published in 1975, this book provides a straightforward examination of regional differences and regional development in the countries of Western Europe. Professor Clout divides this into two parts. The first examines a series of themes with reference to the whole of Western Europe, and the second part discusses regional development in individual countries or groups of countries. Contributions by experts from the UK and from mainland Europe present an essentially geographic approach, combining thematic and country-by-country discussions.

First published in 1984, Hugh Clout's work contributes to one of the most debated and important topics of the time, the European Economic Community. Starting from the Mid-20th century, Clout explains the profound socio-economic and environmental changes that effected the countryside of Western Europe. This work shows how the EEC's wide-ranging Common Agricultural Policy added a measure of uniformity to farm policies. Clout reveals that the transformation however was not an entirely healthy one. The broad process of agricultural modernisation reinforced the numerical decline of farm workers throughout Western Europe, weakened many rural communities, and served to accentuate depopulation. Clout's work ultimately argues forcibly that to produce such a programme for managing rural Europe would be a major challenge for the EEC in the future.

First published in 1980, this compact and useful book uses the earliest volumes of government-published statistics, and with the aid of computer-generated cartography, transforms the numbers there reported into an arrondissement-by-arrondissement comparative picture of French agriculture in the mid-1830s. Clout reviews problems of rapid population growth, scarcely adequate domestic food supplies and primitive systems of transportation, while attention is drawn to spatial variations in agricultural activity and productivity. Commercial, high-yielding farming was best developed in a northern multi-nuclear region, comprising of Ile-de-France, Normandy and Nord, with smaller foci of commercial orientation along an eastern axis from Alsace to Marseilles and in western areas from the Loire to the middle of the Garonne valley. Clout concludes that the revolutionary promise of national economic unity was far from being realised in the 1830s and was not to be achieved until national systems of transport and education were firmly established later in the nineteenth century.

This book provides a cohesive set of research statements on critical related issues in British rural geography, as well as echoing the priorities identified by an influential figure in British rural geography, Richard Munton. This book demonstrates that the rural world needs to be seen in a far wider perspective than that of agriculture/ food production, in order to comprehend how resources are being appraised and exploited in new ways, and to respond to the pressing challenges of sustainability for the decades ahead.

Chapters adopt a time perspective to explore a series of key themes:

• the rise of productivist farming
• ways of conceptualising agricultural change
• the evolution of landownership and property rights
• rural and urban agendas for nature conservation
• the gap between policy and action for sustainable development.

The final set of chapters is devoted to policy-related issues associated with agricultural change and the profound challenge of rural diversification for the future. The last chapter traces the prominent career of Richard Munton.

This book provides a cohesive set of research statements on critical related issues in British rural geography, as well as echoing the priorities identified by an influential figure in British rural geography, Richard Munton. This book demonstrates that the rural world needs to be seen in a far wider perspective than that of agriculture/ food production, in order to comprehend how resources are being appraised and exploited in new ways, and to respond to the pressing challenges of sustainability for the decades ahead.

Chapters adopt a time perspective to explore a series of key themes:

• the rise of productivist farming
• ways of conceptualising agricultural change
• the evolution of landownership and property rights
• rural and urban agendas for nature conservation
• the gap between policy and action for sustainable development.

The final set of chapters is devoted to policy-related issues associated with agricultural change and the profound challenge of rural diversification for the future. The last chapter traces the prominent career of Richard Munton.

After the Ruins uses both official and unofficial records to explore a relatively ignored aspect of recent rural history: how the fields, farms, villages and market towns of Northern France were restored during the 1920s in the aftermath of the Great War. The book contains illustrations and many detailed maps and makes use of both official reports and unofficial critical commentaries.

This new edition retains the fundamental objectives of earlier versions by attempting to set a range of geographical issues into context than concentrating on their most recent manifestations, and it embraces 18 western states.