This article discusses the research potential of rubbish dumps for the study of rural household market access during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By investigating the global commodity networks associated with four rubbish dumps excavated by the authors in the East Anglian region, at Hempstead (Norfolk), Kirton and Falkenham (Suffolk) and Holme Hale (Norfolk), the article will show how these archives can be used to locate individual rural households within the international capitalist system. This article also discusses the potential challenges faced when analysing the historic rubbish dump archives.

The coppice and underwood trades in north Hampshire lasted almost unchanged for over one thousand years, yet the conspicuously wooded landscape of today is no more than three hundred years old. The landscape is an outcome of the enclosure of the common fields and replacement of their temporary dead-hedges by permanent living hedges, together with a radical reorganisation of the methods by which both wood and timber were grown, managed and marketed. These processes abolished the old extensive, open landscape, comprised of coppices, underwood, timber and rough grazing: the land-use system now termed wood pasture. It created the closed landscape of intensively managed woodland that prospered between 1750 and 1870. Evidence is drawn from the records of Crown, church, college and lay estates, besides contemporary comment, interpreted in the light of experience in restoring and managing an area of wood pasture.

On two cool mid-summer nights in 1884 the small west Kent market town of Sevenoaks was disturbed by what one of the County newspapers, echoing the Chief Constable's words, called ‘riotous and tumultuous proceedings’. During the evening of Thursday 18th June a large crowd of townspeople broke down obstacles blocking the entrance to Knole Park and ceremoniously and noisily dumped them in front of the main door of Lord Sackville's large Tudor mansion. On the next night an even larger crowd, reported as numbering 1,500 or more, also invaded the park and besieged the house. A dispute over rights to use a bridle way across the Park which had dragged on for many months united many of the people of Sevenoaks and neighbouring villages against what was seen as the obstructive, illegal and high-handed behaviour of a wealthy and arrogant aristocrat. Attempts by the Local Board to find a resolution to the dispute had been rebuffed by Sackville and in the end the people of Sevenoaks took the law into their own hands.

This article considers how depictions of the migrant poor in English landscape art changed between 1740 and 1900. A painting by Edward Haytley (1744) is used to illustrate some prevailing themes and representations of the rural poor in the early eighteenth century, with the labouring poor being shown ‘in their place’ socially and spatially. This is then contrasted with the signs of a restless and migrant poor which appear in a few of Gainsborough's paintings, culminating in the poverty-stricken roadside, mobile, vagrant and sometimes gypsy poor who are so salient and sympathetically depicted in George Morland's work between 1790 and 1804. While there were clearly British and European precedents for such imagery long before this period, it is argued here that English landscape art after about 1750, and especially from c. 1790, witnessed a marked upsurge of such restless and migrant imagery, which was related to institutional and demographic transformations in agrarian societies. By George Morland's death in 1804, ‘social realism’ had become firmly established in his imagery of the migrant poor, and this long predated the 1860s and 1870s which are normally associated with such a movement in British painting.

On paper the forestry service of Old Regime France looked impressive. Backed by wide-ranging legislation, officers of the Eaux et Forêts enjoyed extensive powers; like other public officials of the time, they exercised both judicial and administrative functions. Their rich records of offences and disputes have attracted the attention of forest historians, although we know much less about their other role, as overseers of a national plan for woodland management. This article seeks to remedy that neglect by focusing on the effectiveness of the forest administration in south-western France, where most of the woodlands were private property. Evidence is drawn from the forms used by landowners to notify the Eaux et Forêts of an intention to cut mature timber. Various details suggest that the forestry officials' information was far from complete, especially given the problems of distance and a lack of standardised units for measurement. Examination of marginal comments provides a closer insight into landowners' attitudes. Overall, increasing numbers of woodland proprietors may have complied with the foresters' reporting regime, but many relied on misinformation to prevent the central state and its agents from interfering in the exploitation of their timber.

This article considers rusticated memorials in many churchyards and cemeteries in England and Wales, between c. 1850 and the present day, analysing their forms, chronology, and their wider social and artistic significances. These memorials have hitherto been a neglected form among British memorial styles. The discussion here focuses on the English Midlands, Kensal Green Cemetery (London), and Montgomeryshire in Wales. It appraises how such memorial rustication may relate to changing attitudes to rurality, ‘natural’ landscapes, and secularisation over time. As an analysis of shifting memorial tastes, the article assesses the chronology of rustication against the periodisation of two more dominant memorial types: namely Gothic memorials, which prevailed in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Art Deco memorials, which gained popularity from the 1920s. It appraises regional differences in memorial style change, showing little English and Welsh variation in this after the mid-nineteenth century. There is attention to the hitherto little studied decline of the Gothic, and to the wider significance of the more secularised memorial forms that followed it. The role of these Gothic, rusticated, and Art Deco memorials for an understanding of social, attitudinal, religious and secularising change is emphasised.

It is now roughly a quarter of a century since the proponents of a new social history of early modern England offered students of the period a novel agenda and an unprecedented opportunity. Prior to the 1960s social history had been variously understood as the history of everyday life, of the lower classes and popular movements, or as a junior partner in the relatively recently-established firm of economic and social history (occupied in the main with the study of social institutions and social policy). As such, it had produced more than a few pioneering works of outstanding quality and lasting value (some of them about to enjoy a revived recognition after decades of relative neglect). But it was not a field close to the centre of historical preoccupation. It was at best contextual, at worst residual.

From the early 1960s, however, came a call for a social history of a new type, one conceived as the history of social relationships and of the culture which informs them and gives them meaning. The new agenda was deeply influenced by the social sciences and envisaged an ever closer relationship with sociology, social anthropology and demography. Peter Laslett wrote of ‘sociological history’ or ‘historical sociology’ and Keith Thomas of the need for a ‘more systematic indoctrination’ in the concepts and methodologies of the social sciences. As applied to history, all this was both radical and liberating. In the face of an established curriculum which appeared in many respects restrictive and in some dessicated, it proposed a massive and necessary broadening and deepening of historical concern: the creation of a range of historical enquiry appropriate to the preoccupations and understandings of the late twentieth century.

It is arguable that what has most bedevilled the recent academic practice of history in Britain has been the triumph over integrative history - or that mode of history which seeks to reconstitute and to explain the multi-dimensional nature of past experience - of what might be called the disintegrative historical approach, that is, specialised thematic history. The former mode includes local history, national history (by which here is meant much more than the political or constitutional history of the Nation State), international history - even histories of ‘civilisations’ or of the world - and takes ‘society’ as the central organising principle over time. The latter mode comprises, for example, political history, demographic history, economic history and so on through to such exotic sub-species of the so-called new social history as the histories of class, gender, sex, crime or leisure. Put crudely, if this second type of historical approach concerns itself with particular categories of persons or activities, with pre-selected processes and with highly specific tendencies in the relatively short term, then the first has to do with the fluctuating development of recognisable social entities in the round, and with their changing interrelationships usually over longer time scales. Instructive and fascinating as is undoubtedly the detailed thematic approach, and vital as it continues to be as the indispensable technical preliminary to the accurate reconstruction of the past in a multi-dimensional sense, it is hardly deniable that - as the Victorians recognised - it is the broader interdisciplinary approach which should represent the ultimate aspiration of the historical practitioner, simply because it is that which is most culturally relevant to the education of the citizen. It is equally clear, however, that few professional historians today are seeking either to construct their undergraduate syllabuses on such lines or to write connectedly for a wider public about such matters over periods much longer than a century or two.

During the last two decades interpretations of agrarian modernisation have been the subject of critical debate. In neo-classical tradition, agrarian economists and economic historians have traditionally laid emphasis on the diffusion of technology and on the commercialisation of production. They have customarily been interested in the development of agricultural output and incomes, and basically understood modernisation as an evolutionary process by which commercial, market oriented production was substituted for traditional, subsistence production. During the 1970s and the 1980s agrarian sociologists and historians posed the question in more social and historical terms, seeking to determine which type of producers, large farmers or family farmers, were the bearers of modernisation. The traditional Marxian standpoint, as is well known, was that capitalist farming — in spite of delays and problems inherent in agricultural production — would come to dominate the agrarian sector through technical innovation and large scale production. Opposing this, neo-Marxian/neo-Chayanovian interpretations claimed that family farming, due to the innate characteristics of that particular production form, provided family farmers with a competitive advantage in relation to large scale production. According to this, more ‘social’ historical tradition, the social organisation of family based production was the key to understanding the viability, or even superiority, of family farming in the industrialised and urbanised societies of western Europe and North America.

There has in recent years been a considerable focus on migration by historians. We now know far more about rural/urban migration patterns within Britain, both short term and long term. This is particularly so for the period since the mid nineteenth-century censuses. But evidence suggests that mobility, notably among the young and single, was very high from the seventeenth century. Long before the first censuses a steady flow of population from rural areas to towns and cities had begun. ‘Rural depopulation’, we are told, ‘is common to most mature industrial societies of the twentieth century’. In fact, experience of the last half century in the Third World, as well as in pre-industrial England, suggests such movement precedes the development of a ‘mature industrial society’. In parts of England, it was the ‘major urban phenomenon in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries’. Many areas of the Third World have experienced very rapid urbanisation particularly since 1950 when the vast majority of the population still lived in rural areas.

Enclosure disputes have long attracted attention given their perceived political motivations, the importance of custom and customary practices in legitimising action and various forms of protest. Based on research undertaken at local and national record offices and the study of both written records and maps, this paper explores a series of disputes over common land in the wood-pasture countryside of Shropshire, placing them within the wider historiography concerning enclosure riots and popular protest. It complements the existing body of local and regional studies which have provided insight into the national historical context of the enclosure process. Historians need to examine economic and social developments at a local level to ascertain the causation of enclosure protest and the motivation of those involved. This evidence suggests that disputes arose between lords and tenants over the loss of customary rights and also neighbouring manorial lords as a result of ownership or boundary disputes.

The ‘land question’ occupies a central role in the history of Highland Scotland. The system of estate ownership and tenure introduced in the aftermath of the battle of Culloden (1746) commodified the land as private possession. In its wake came mass evictions of tenants in large-scale ‘Clearances’ designed to convert crofting-lands to other agrarian or sporting uses. During the main period of Clearances (1780–1855), protest by the crofters remained spontaneous and sporadic. It was not until the last part of the nineteenth century, especially during the so-called Crofters' War (1881–96), that a resurgent crofting community engaged in sustained protest. The threat of civil unrest prompted some ameliorative measures, most notably the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886. This stabilised the situation and gave protection from further mass evictions but did not restore lands to the landless population from which their ancestors had been displaced. The demand for restitution, therefore, remained a powerful rallying cry.

This study looks at the role of hiking in the development and the identity of a French region. Both rural and agricultural, Brittany saw a reorganisation of its territory during the 1970s, partly due to activities such as hiking. By becoming a political focus, the activity contributed to making paths, only previously used for field labour, a tool for territorial development. It also rejuvenated Brittany’s regional identity as it explored a forgotten heritage. The course of action adopted aimed to bring new populations, particularly urban ones, to rural areas. Behind the attention focused on paths, as an essential requirement for hiking, lay a concern for environmental and social sustainability with effects on lifestyles, tourism, and the shaping of a region in transition.

As the armed forces continued to siphon away labour from the land following the outbreak of the war, the Ministry of Agriculture's County War Agricultural Executive Committees were hard put to meet the demand for labour to sustain the plough-up campaign. While schoolchildren made a major contribution, there were few prisoners-of-war before the North African campaign and volunteers from all walks of life were sought to attend harvest camps, weekend farm clubs and other land-based activities. At the end of the war the Ministry of Agriculture turned to mainland Europe for volunteers to work towards the solution of the British and pan-European food shortages. They were supplemented by members of the Polish Resettlement Corps, German prisoners who had opted to defer repatriation and volunteers from the British zones of Austria and Germany. The article raises the issue of how far the enterprise promoted international understanding as was assumed at the time or, indeed, whether the home volunteer experience narrowed the so-called rural-urban divide as opposed to reinforcing entrenched prejudices.

The welfare state emerged in 1948 when the National Assistance Act finally abolished the New Poor Law Forty-two years later, as politicians and bureaucrats struggle to keep increasing expenditure within bounds, the existence of the welfare state in its present form is under threat. Just over 150 years ago, the Old Poor Law was presenting parish ratepayers with a similar problem of rising costs, leading in 1834 to a fundamental reorganisation into the New Poor Law It may therefore be profitable to see how effective in practice the New Poor Law was when it replaced a system widely regarded as profligate, and to consider the extent to which benefits payable through the welfare state were available a hundred years or more ago.

This study examines in detail how the New Poor Law, and other forms of relief, affected the whole population of the rural parish of Colyton, in south Devonshire, during the thirty years from 1851 to 1881. It will first describe the sources from which a poor person in Colyton in the mid nineteenth century could look for relief; next discuss how widespread poverty was and who the poor were; then look at what kinds of relief were available, under what conditions; and finally assess the comparative importance to the poor of the different agencies providing assistance.

This article uses the surviving correspondence between the Marquis of Anglesey and his land agent William Castleman to explore the relationship which existed between landowner, tenant and agent. The aim of this research has been to examine how these affiliations worked in practice through five broad but interconnecting themes which include: an investigation into the men who became agents, a survey of the changing patterns of land tenure, an evaluation of the estate's reaction to economic downturn, a study of the schemes used to alleviate tenant distress and an analysis of how these estate interactions were reflected in the repairs and improvements undertaken. Castleman was already an experienced attorney and land manager when he began to work for the estate and he and the Marquis developed, over time, a deep and trusting business partnership. Consequently their correspondence has created a historical prism which this article has used to illustrate the working partnerships within this West Country locality.

Between the last decades of the eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth century, a large number of new markets were established in the Flemish countryside. The multiplication of rural markets tends to be seen as part of the process of market integration, with rural producers responding to the opportunities provided by increasing external demand, such as that from the growing towns. However, an analysis of the motivation behind new establishments, based on the files treating the requests for new markets, reveals that markets were more often established for entirely different reasons. In this period, markets were expected to permit households to intensify their activities in order to overcome increasing economic difficulties. Developments within rural society, particularly rising population pressure, the need to produce and sell more, and deteriorating informal exchange networks among countrymen, coupled to a decline in demand for rural industrial products, were the main drives behind the multiplication of markets. This contribution shows it is important to pay attention to how new markets and market integration in general fitted within the goals and strategies of the country dwellers themselves.

Poverty is the consequence of not having sufficient income to sustain lives and ways of life. While there are many papers addressing poverty in today’s Poland, no comprehensive study was done to explain and describe rural poverty also in a historical aspect. Therefore, this article attempts to synthetically identify the patterns and particularities of rural poverty in Poland between the wars, and to present the multifaceted and diverse nature of Polish poverty in the initial years of national independence. The authors’ main objective is to indicate the changes in the scope of Polish poverty and to describe the adaptive mechanisms and the discomfort involved in the depreciation of needs. Before independence, the situation varied across the Polish territory. The relatively worst socio-economic conditions were experienced in Galicia due to absence of non-agricultural activities. The population of Prussian rural areas found themselves in a more advantageous situation because of industrial development and working outside agriculture. The situation of peasants was exacerbated by the destructive and resource-draining First World War, whereas rural misery was made even worse by the combination of unemployment and underdevelopment of the country. In the Second Polish Republic, the situation of the rural population did not improve even though the country made great progress at that time. Note that rural poverty varied across employee groups, with cultural and lifestyle differences, limited competences and passive attitudes playing an important role.

This article comprises the annual Birthday Lecture of the Richard Jefferies Society as it was delivered in October, 2004. The text sketches the economic, social and environmental history of Jefferies' period (the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s), drawing inter alia on his works and referring especially to his home district in north-east Wiltshire. It alludes, firstly, to the fortunes and environmental effects of both intensive and ‘tumbledown’ arable farming. Second, it describes the creation of sporting estates and the letting of sporting rights as swift responses by some landowners to falling cereal prices. Third, the text points to under-investment in education and non-agricultural activities as hampering adjustment to the depression, and shows that Jefferies was a free trader who grasped that rapid and extensive food importation and labour emigration would have been a proper response. A related paper, Eric L. Jones, ‘Richard Jefferies’ Writing Criticised and Defended', is to appear in the Richard Jefferies Society Journal in April, 2005.

When writing his final report in 1823 on the current state of affairs in the county of Kopparberg in Sweden, its governor, Hans Järta, made a short digression to ponder upon the differences between England and Sweden. According to Järta, England had been unfortunate in that it had deprived a large proportion of its rural population of the land on which they could otherwise have supported themselves. They had now, Järta remarked, no other choice but to work in the factories, and were the first to suffer when these had to close down. In some parts of Sweden, efforts were at this time being made to organise agricultural production in accordance with similar ideas, that is, through the use of wage labour. Järta was deeply sceptical about these experiments however, claiming that they led to nothing but poverty and social problems.