Description
Book SynopsisFarmers 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
Trade Review'This is an excellent, well-presented book that will richly repay detailed study.' Journal of British Studies ’...a pot-pourri of rich pickings. At its heart lies a series of compelling lifestories of individual farmers, which, to borrow the words of Crowe (p. 292), give ’a texture, warmth, personality and life which is otherwise missing in generalisation’. In helping us to see the history of farming through the eyes of the key players-the farmers themselves-this is a welcome volume.’ English Historical Review
Table of Contents1: Introduction: Recovering the Farmer; 2: A New View of the Fells: Sarah Fell of Swarthmoor and her Cashbook; 3: Why Was There No Crisis in England in the 1690s?; 4: The Farming and Domestic Economy of a Lancashire Smallholder: Richard Latham and the Agricultural Revolution, 1724–67; 5: The Seasonality of English Agricultural Employment: Evidence from Farm Accounts, 1740–1850; 6: Farmers and Improvement, 1780–1840; 7: Farmers of the Holkham Estate; 8: The Landowner as Scientific Farmer: James Mason and the Eynsham Hall Estate, 1866–1903; 9: The ‘Lady Farmer': Gender, Widowhood and Farming in Victorian England; 10: ‘Murmurs of Discontent': The Upland Response to the Plough Campaign, 1916–1918; 11: Rex Paterson (1903–1978): Pioneer of Grassland Dairy Farming and Agricultural Innovator; 12: Compost in Caledonia: The Work of Robert L. Stuart, Organic Pioneer
