Agricultural Enlightenment: Knowledge, Technology, and Nature, 1750-1840
Peter M. Jones
Abstract
This book explores the knowledge underpinnings of agricultural change and growth in early modern Europe, building on the growing recognition among historians that ‘what people knew and believed’ had a bearing on their economic behaviour. Until recently researchers resisted arguments rooted in non-quantitative explanations of economic change which place the emphasis on cultural agents. The book focuses on the period circa 1750–1840 when an unprecedented amount of agricultural information was put into circulation which facilitated its consumption and incorporation into the practices of cereal an ... More
This book explores the knowledge underpinnings of agricultural change and growth in early modern Europe, building on the growing recognition among historians that ‘what people knew and believed’ had a bearing on their economic behaviour. Until recently researchers resisted arguments rooted in non-quantitative explanations of economic change which place the emphasis on cultural agents. The book focuses on the period circa 1750–1840 when an unprecedented amount of agricultural information was put into circulation which facilitated its consumption and incorporation into the practices of cereal and animal husbandry. In Scotland, England, and Denmark this precursor Agricultural Enlightenment triggered a modernization of the rural economy which can be labelled an Agricultural Revolution. Elsewhere the impact of the supply of agricultural knowledge was muted and it is hard to separate out the ingredients of the changes under way by the 1830s and 1840s. Adopting a continental perspective on agricultural growth, the book weighs up the effects of cultural factors by analysing the mechanisms governing knowledge production, diffusion, and adoption by farmers. Issues involving the transfer of knowledge and skill receive particular coverage. But equally the book explores the impact of demographic change, urbanization, and evidence that European agriculture was moving towards market-driven production by the end of the period. Governments were as influenced by the knowledge project of the Enlightenment as landlords and their tenants, and the book examines the proposition that institutional change ‘from above’ was the single most powerful catalyst of agricultural growth before industrialization transformed the European economy.
Keywords:
Enlightenment,
Agricultural Revolution,
the knowledge economy,
circulation,
institutions,
innovation,
agricultural productivity,
agricultural science,
landscape planning
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198716075 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198716075.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Peter M. Jones, author
Emeritus Professor, Department of History, School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham
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