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"The author opens a powerful dialogue between agricultural history on the one hand and environmental history on the other... a brilliant and provocative synthesis of a thousand years of coastal farming." Tim Soens, University of Antwerp, Belgium. The fascinating story of how the North Sea coast has been farmed is ever changing. Long before the industrial revolution, the inhospitable fens and marshes of the low-lying coastal wetlands on both sides of the Sea had been transformed into one of the most productive agricultural regions in Europe. Agriculture in the coastlands reached its apogee during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as is witnessed by the many impressive farm buildings es...
Showcases the latest research on Scotland's rural economy and society. Early modern Scotland was predominantly rural. Agriculture was the main occupation of most people at the time, so what happened in the countryside was crucial: economically, socially and culturally. The essays collected here focus on the years between around 1500 and 1750. This period, although before the main era of agricultural "improvement" in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was nevertheless far from static in terms of agrarian development. Specific topics addressed include everyday farming practices; investment; landlords, tenants and estate management; and the cultural context within which agriculture was "imagined". The disastrous famine of 1622-23 is analysed in detail. The volume is completed by a comprehensive survey of recent historiography, setting agricultural history in its broader context.
WINNER of the British Agricultural History Society's 2022 Thirsk Prize WINNER of the 2022 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award An investigation into farming practices throughout a period of seismic change.
Brings to life a fascinating page of history in a scholarly but highly readable account of the "tithe war". Co-WINNER: 2025 Thirsk Prize (British Agricultural History Society) During the 1930s, farming communities waged a campaign of "passive resistance" against Tithe Rentcharge, the modern version of medieval tithe. Led by the National Tithepayers' Association, farmers refused to pay the charge, disrupted auctions of seized stock and joined demonstrations to prevent action by bailiffs. The National Government condemned their "unconstitutional action", ruled out changes in the law and mobilised police to support the titheowners. Meanwhile, the Church of England and lay titheowners - includin...
An examination of how farming expertise could be shared and extended, over four centuries. All kinds of knowledge, from traditional know-how to modern science, are socially contingent and the product of an age-long and permanent social struggle. This book unravels the creation and the exchange of agronomic knowledge in rural Europe, from the early eighteenth century up until the end of the twentieth. It explores the spreading of knowing through the lens of "knowledge networks" where did agricultural knowledge come from and how did one learn to run a farm? Who was involved in this process of knowledge exchange? Which strategies and communicative methods were employed and what kind of networks...
Analyses how book-keeping and estate accounting transformed attitudes and practices in farm management over three centuries of European history. From the eighteenth until well into the twentieth century, an ideal model developed of a farmer as accountant, who would record economic transactions meticulously; tidy book-keeping was regarded as the basis of sound management, and only those who accurately dealt with finances would survive and thrive. It is clear that this happened in both theory and practice, with growing numbers of farmers (men and women) keeping increasingly formalized records of their businesses during this period; a wide range of valuable documentation, originating from large...
This book, first in a series of three, examines the social elites in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, and which social, political, and cultural resources went into their creation. The elite controlled enormous economic resources and exercised power over people. Power over agrarian production was essential to the elites during this period, although mobile capital was becoming increasingly important. The book focuses on the material resources of the elites, through questions such as: Which types of resources were at play? How did the elites acquire and exchange resources?
This volume aims to balance the traditional literature available on medieval feuding with an exploration of other aspects of vengeance and culture in the Middle Ages. A diverse assortment of interdisciplinary essays from scholars in Europe and North America contest or enlarge traditional approaches to and interpretations of vengeance in the Middle Ages. Each essay attempts to clarify the multifaceted experience of vengeance within a specific medieval context—a particular region, a particular text, a particular social movement. By asking what relationship a distinct factor like authorship or religion has with the concept of vengeance, each author points towards the breadth of meanings of me...
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