Preface

Summary

Agrarian history is currently split into two camps: one primarily concerned with the activity of farming (sometimes referred to as ‘cows and ploughs’ agricultural history), and the other with a rural history that is more concerned with the wider social and cultural aspects of the countryside. Studies of the ‘agricultural revolution’ (and most of my own research) have fallen into the ‘cows and ploughs’ category and this has undoubtedly influenced the approach of this book. But despite these influences I have tried to extend from the agricultural (‘the science and art of cultivating the soil’) to the agrarian (‘relating to the land’), in order to widen the terms of reference for considering the ‘agricultural revolution’. This has meant that I have relied on the work of others for many parts of the book, and I am grateful to those historians whose ideas I have absorbed since the 1970s. They are too numerous to list; some of them appear in the bibliography, but there are many others.

The day after the text of the book was completed the editor of a wellknown historical journal asked me to referee a manuscript for publication. It took the form that many articles do: an opening paragraph setting out the established view, followed by new ideas and evidence overturning that view. The opening paragraph of the article was almost identical to a paragraph in this book.