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Agricultural History, Rural History, Or Countryside History? Author(S): Jeremy Burchardt Source: the Historical Journal, Vol Agricultural History, Rural History, or Countryside History? Author(s): Jeremy Burchardt Source: The Historical Journal, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Jun., 2007), pp. 465-481 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4140139 . Accessed: 30/09/2014 16:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Historical Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 210.212.93.44 on Tue, 30 Sep 2014 16:44:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheHistorical Journal, 50, 2 (2007),pp. 465-481 ? 2007 Cambridge University Press doi:Io.IoI7/Sooi8246Xo7oo6152 Printed in the United Kingdom AGRICULTURAL HISTORY, RURAL HISTORY, OR COUNTRYSIDE HISTORY?* JEREMY BURCHARDT Universityof Reading A B S T R AC T. This articleassesses the state of modemrnEnglish rural history.It identifiesan 'orthodox' school,focusedon the economichistory of agriculture.This has madeimpressive progress in quantifyingand explainingthe outputand productivityachievements of Englishfarming since the 'agriculturalrevolution'. Its celebratoryaccount was,from the outset,challenged by a dissidenttradition emphasizing the social costs of agriculturalprogress, notably enclosure.Recently a new school, associatedwith thejournal Rural History, has brokenaway from this narrativeof agriculturalchange, elaborating a wider social histoy. The workofAlun Howkins, thepivotal figure in the recenthistoriography, is locatedin relationto thesethree traditions.It is arguedthat Howkins, like his precursors,is constrainedby an increasinglyanachronistic equationof the countrysidewith agriculture.The conceptof a 'post-productivist'countyside, dominatedby consumptionand representation,has beendeveloped by geographers and sociologistsand may havesomething to offerhistorians here, in conjunctionwith thewell-established historiography of the' ruralidyll'. The article concludeswith a callfor a new countrysidehistory, giving full weight to the culturaland representational aspects that have done so much to shape twentieth-centuryrural England. Only in this way will it be possibleto movebeyond a historyof the countrysidethat is merelythe historyof agriculturewrit large. The historiography of nineteenth- and twentieth-century rural England predominantly treats agriculture and the countryside as if they were one and the same thing. Recent changes in the rural economy have made it easier to see that the conjunction is in fact temporally specific. Tourism now generates more income than farming in the countryside, as the Foot and Mouth epidemic of 2001 graphically revealed.1 This came as no surprise to rural sociologists, who developed the concept of a 'post-productivist' (or consumption) countryside in the early 199os, emphasizing a shift in focus from agricultural output to consumption, lifestyle, and leisure.2 Whilst they may have become more central, these Departmentof History, Universityof ReadingRG6 [email protected] * I would like to thank ClareJacksonand an anonymous referee for their very helpful comments on this review. Remaining errorsare, of course, my own responsibility. 1 Rural tourismwas worth nearlyD?14 billion in the UK in 2001. Tourism supported38o,ooo jobs in England in that year, compared to 374,000 in farming. The Wye Group Handbook, Ruralhouseholds' livelihoodand wellbeing (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 2005). 2 R. Munton, 'Farmingfamilies in upland Britain: options, strategiesand futures' (paperpresented to the Associationof American Geographers,Toronto, April i99o); D. Symes, 'Changing gender roles Rural in productionist and post-productionist capitalist agriculture', Journal of Studies,7 (I991), pp. 85-90; Terry Marsden, Jonathan Murdoch, and S. Williams, 'Regulating agricultures in deregulating economies: emerging trends in the uneven development of agriculture', Geoforum,23 (1986),pp. 333-45; Philip Lowe,Jonathan Murdoch, Terry Marsden, R. Munton, and Andrew Flynn, 'Regulating the new rural spaces: the uneven development of land', Journalof RuralStudies, 9 (1993), 465 This content downloaded from 210.212.93.44 on Tue, 30 Sep 2014 16:44:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 466 HISTORICAL JOURNAL aspects of the countryside were far from new in the 199os, yet they have been largely ignored by social and economic historians. The consumption countryside is closely con- nected to the cultural production and reproduction of landscape, to which historians have devoted a wealth of attention. Unlike contemporary sociologists (and some geographers), however, they have rarely linked this to social change. It is time for rural historians to review the assumption that has hitherto informed and given coherence to the sub- discipline: i.e. that rural history is agricultural history writ large. Equally, it might be argued that cultural history would benefit from moving beyond tired generalizations about the countryside and national identity, based almost entirely on high culture, around which discussion has thus far centred. We need a cultural history of rural society and a social history of the rural idyll. Agricultural historians, although few, have made a distinguished contribution to the his- toriography of modern Britain, arguing that rising farm output and productivity enabled and sustained the industrial revolution. Initially, the contribution of agriculture to capital formation was emphasized. Landowners like Francis, third duke of Bridgewater, or William, fourth earl Fitzwilliam, used surpluses from rising rent rolls to finance investment in canals, mines, and industry. More recently, attention has focused on the role of agri- culture in prising open the Malthusian trap, in research, for example, by Tony Wrigley and Mark Overton.3 Had Britain not achieved a breakthrough in agricultural productivity, rising population would have led to higher food imports and prices and diverted resources from industry back into agriculture. Perhaps because of the centrality of agriculture to understanding the industrial revolution, several of the most distinguished historians of modern Britain have written on the subject, including, in addition to those already men- tioned, D. McCloskey, F. M. L. Thompson, and Patrick O'Brien.4 There is, then, a good case that it is the economic significance of agriculture at least in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that gives the subject its wider relevance. Accordingly, many fine histories of the countryside have put agricultural change at their core. Obvious examples include Lord Ernle's Englishfarming past and present (1912), J. D. Chambers and Gordon Mingay's The agriculturalrevolution (1966), and, to take more recent examples, Overton's Agriculturalrevolution in England (1996), and Michael Turner, John pp. 205-22; N. Ward, 'The agriculturaltreadmill and the rural environment in the post-productivist era', SociologiaRuralis, 23 (1993),PP- 348-64. E. A. Wrigley, Continuity,chance and change:the characterof the industrialrevolution in England (Cambridge, 1990); idem, Poverty,progress and population (Cambridge, 2004); M. Overton, Agriculture revolutionin England:the transformation of the agrarian economy, 15oo-185o (Cambridge,1996). 4 Donald N. McCloskey, 'The enclosure of open fields: preface to a study of its impact on the efficiency of English agriculture in the eighteenth century', Journalof EconomicHistory, 32 (1972), pp. 15-35; idem, 'English open fields as behaviour towards risk', Researchin EconomicHistory, I (1976), pp. 124-70; idem, 'The open fields of England: rent, risk and the rate of interest', in David W. Galenson, ed., Marketsin history:economic studies of thepast (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 5-49; F. M. L. Thompson, 'The second agriculturalrevolution', EconomicHistory Review, 2nd ser., 21 (1968),pp. 62-77; idem, 'An anatomy of English agriculture,1870-1914', in Michael E. Turner and B. A. Holderness, eds., Land,labour, and agriculture, 1700-1920: essaysfor GordonMingay (London, 1991), pp. 211-40; Patrick K. O' Brien, 'Agricultureand the industrialrevolution', EconomicHistory Review, 2nd ser., 30 (1977), pp. 166-81. This content downloaded from 210.212.93.44 on Tue, 30 Sep 2014 16:44:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS 467 Beckett, and Bethanie Afton's recent books.5 In the course of the twentieth century, this approach was progressively refined in terms of the range of sources used and the sophis- tication with which they were analysed and interpreted. Ernle, for example, relied on accessible sources such as government inquiries and painted a broad-brush picture of the late nineteenth century as an era of almost unmitigated depression. Subsequent research drew on a much wider range of sources. The systematic analysis of probate inventories, associated especially with Overton, allowed a later generation of historians to glean much more detailed information about farming methods and technology, crop yields, and wealth before the early nineteenth century. Turner,
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