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Farmers held a pivotal role in the capitalist agriculture that
emerged in England in the eighteenth century, yet they have
attracted little attention from rural historians. Farmers made
agriculture happen. They brought together the capital and the
technical and management skills which allowed food to be produced.
It was they - and not landowners - who employed and supervised
labour. They accepted the risk inherent in agriculture, paying
largely fixed rents out of fluctuating and uncertain incomes. They
are the rural equivalent of the small businessman with his own
firm, employing people and producing for markets, sometimes distant
ones. Our ignorance of the farmer might be justified by the claim
that they are ill-documented, but in fact farmers were normally
literate and kept records - day books, journals, accounts. This
volume goes some way to counter the claim that a history of the
farmer cannot be written by showing the range of materials
available and the diversity of approaches which can be employed to
study the activities and actions of individual farmers from the
sixteenth century onwards. Farm records offer invaluable insights
into the farming economy which are available nowhere else. In this
volume accounts are used in a variety of ways - as the means to
access single farms, but also in gross, as a national sample of
accounts, to reveal regional variation over time. For the later
nineteenth and twentieth centuries the range of sources available
increases enormously and farmers - indeed farmer's wives too -
emerge as articulate commentators on their own position, using
correspondence to outline their difficulties in the First World
War. Some even developed second careers as newspaper columnists and
journalists. This book focuses attention back on the farmer and, it
is hoped, will help to restore farmers to their rightful position
in history as rural entrepreneurs.
Farmers held a pivotal role in the capitalist agriculture that
emerged in England in the eighteenth century, yet they have
attracted little attention from rural historians. Farmers made
agriculture happen. They brought together the capital and the
technical and management skills which allowed food to be produced.
It was they - and not landowners - who employed and supervised
labour. They accepted the risk inherent in agriculture, paying
largely fixed rents out of fluctuating and uncertain incomes. They
are the rural equivalent of the small businessman with his own
firm, employing people and producing for markets, sometimes distant
ones. Our ignorance of the farmer might be justified by the claim
that they are ill-documented, but in fact farmers were normally
literate and kept records - day books, journals, accounts. This
volume goes some way to counter the claim that a history of the
farmer cannot be written by showing the range of materials
available and the diversity of approaches which can be employed to
study the activities and actions of individual farmers from the
sixteenth century onwards. Farm records offer invaluable insights
into the farming economy which are available nowhere else. In this
volume accounts are used in a variety of ways - as the means to
access single farms, but also in gross, as a national sample of
accounts, to reveal regional variation over time. For the later
nineteenth and twentieth centuries the range of sources available
increases enormously and farmers - indeed farmer's wives too -
emerge as articulate commentators on their own position, using
correspondence to outline their difficulties in the First World
War. Some even developed second careers as newspaper columnists and
journalists. This book focuses attention back on the farmer and, it
is hoped, will help to restore farmers to their rightful position
in history as rural entrepreneurs.
A great deal has been written about the acceleration of English
agriculture in the early modern period. In the late middle ages it
was hard to see that English agriculture was so very different from
that of the continent, but by 1750 levels of agricultural
productivity in Britain were well ahead of those general in
northern Europe. The country had become much more urban and the
proportion of the population engaged in agriculture had fallen.
Customary modes of behaviour, whilst often bitterly defended, had
largely been swept away. Contemporaries were quite clear that a
process of improvement had taken place which had seen agriculture
reshaped and made much more productive. Exactly what that process
was has remained surprisingly obscure. This volume addresses the
fundamental notion of improvement in the development of the British
landscape from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.
Contributors present a variety of cases of how improvement, custom
and resistance impacted on the local landscape, which includes
manorial estates, enclosures, fens, forests and urban commons.
Disputes between tenants and landlords, and between neighbouring
landlords, over improvement meant that new economic and social
identities were forged in the battle between innovation and
tradition. The volume also includes an analysis of the role of
women as agricultural improvers and a case study of what can happen
when radical improvement failed. The volume will be essential
reading for scholars of landscape studies, rural and agrarian
history, but will also provide a useful context for anybody
studying the historical legacy of mankind's exploitation of the
environment and its social, economic, legal and political
consequences.
A great deal has been written about the acceleration of English
agriculture in the early modern period. In the late middle ages it
was hard to see that English agriculture was so very different from
that of the continent, but by 1750 levels of agricultural
productivity in Britain were well ahead of those general in
northern Europe. The country had become much more urban and the
proportion of the population engaged in agriculture had fallen.
Customary modes of behaviour, whilst often bitterly defended, had
largely been swept away. Contemporaries were quite clear that a
process of improvement had taken place which had seen agriculture
reshaped and made much more productive. Exactly what that process
was has remained surprisingly obscure. This volume addresses the
fundamental notion of improvement in the development of the British
landscape from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.
Contributors present a variety of cases of how improvement, custom
and resistance impacted on the local landscape, which includes
manorial estates, enclosures, fens, forests and urban commons.
Disputes between tenants and landlords, and between neighbouring
landlords, over improvement meant that new economic and social
identities were forged in the battle between innovation and
tradition. The volume also includes an analysis of the role of
women as agricultural improvers and a case study of what can happen
when radical improvement failed. The volume will be essential
reading for scholars of landscape studies, rural and agrarian
history, but will also provide a useful context for anybody
studying the historical legacy of mankind's exploitation of the
environment and its social, economic, legal and political
consequences.
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