The Contribution of the Propagandist to Eighteenth-Century Agricultural Improvement

1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Horn
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Rural Economy ◽  
Agricultural Improvement

Were the knowledge of the ablest farmers in the best-cultivated parts of the island collected, - English Agriculture would be found, at this day, to be far advanced towards perfection… In short, the art of agriculture must ever remain imperfect while it is suffered to languish in the memory, and die with the practitioner: RECORD, only, can perpetuate the art; and SYSTEM, alone, render the science comprehensive. William Marshall, The rural economy of Norfolk, 1 (London, 1787), vi–vii.

scholarly journals Chambly Mills, 1784‑1815

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-116
Author(s):  
Françoise Noël
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Rural Economy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Rural Society ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Lower Canada ◽  
Traditional Structure ◽  
The Village ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract The study of Gabriel Christie's investments in, and operation of, Chambly Mills in the late eighteenth century provides insight into the role of a small-scale seigneurial enterprise in the rural economy. Despite the sizable investment involved, the flour mill employed only a small number of permanent wage workers, and other cash expen- ditures were minimal. The mill can therefore be seen to have operated within a traditional structure of rural society rather than as a force for change. The mill, however, also depended on artisanal labour and a link between the establishment of the mills and the growth of the village is suggested. Seigneurial investment may have been a major factor in the increasing number of villages in Lower Canada between 1815 and 1831. A need for further study of the role of seigneurial capital in the wider economy is indicated, an area which the focus on centralized and large-scale industries has left virtually unexplored.

A New Look at the Scottish Improvers

2012 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. C. Smout
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Agrarian Change ◽  
Supply Side ◽  
Agricultural Change ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
Agricultural Improvement ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
New Look

Scotland in 1700 was, in European terms, backward in the study of agronomy, but in the course of the eighteenth century the ‘improvers’ became a leading force in the study and practice of agricultural change. Nevertheless, over the course of the century they changed significantly: the early Honourable Society of Improvers, aristocrat-led and amateurish, gave way to a broader-based movement incorporating the rural middle-class, especially clergy and successful farmers, diffusing information through locally-based reports, magazines and societies. While unable to influence the course of agrarian change in the adverse demand circumstances before 1760, the improvers arguably had a profound impact on the response of the supply side between 1760 and 1820. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the growth of literature on agricultural improvement in the long eighteenth century, to look at its changing character, to form a judgement as to whom the improvers were, and to assess their impact.

The Country Attorney in Late Eighteenth-Century England: Benjamin Smith of Horbling

1990 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert J. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Rural Economy ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
British History ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Justices Of The Peace ◽  
Georgian England

Three themes crucial to understanding eighteenth-century British history converge when one writes about the country attorney: the professions, which had a remarkable development in Georgian England; the rural practitioner as distinct from his urban, principally London, counterpart about whom much more has been written; and the local economy in which attorneys performed as conveyancers, money lenders, managers of landed properties, copyhold court holders, and clerks—for justices of the peace, at the assizes, on turnpike, enclosure, and drainage commissions, for charities, and for law and order associations. Popular literature notwithstanding, country attorneys were not so often knaves using their skills to cheat unwitting clients as indispensable cogs in the rural economy where they served the interests of the landholding classes.

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