Historical Geography: Progress and Prospect

Michael Pacione

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135734916
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Historical geography has been a major area of activity in recent years. Much of the recent work and research findings have been extremely valuable to historians and archaeologists and as background to the study of contemporary geography. This reissue, first published in 1987, presents an overview of contemporary developments in all the major branches of the discipline. As such it provides a valuable introduction to the subject, a review of the latest state of the art and a pointer to future research directions.

Chapter Five

AGRICULTURE AND RURAL SOCIETY

J.R. Walton

My purpose is to present an interpretative survey of recent contributions to the historical geography of agriculture and agrarian society for the period 1500 to 1900. Practicalities and the inescapable consequences of my own academic socialisation dictate that the approach be Anglocentric. Had space allowed, it would have been possible to extend discussion beyond Britain or, more accurately, England, to embrace the rest of the world — a piece of conceptual neo-colonialism broadly in sympathy with one important strand in the recent historiography of historical geography and the related disciplines of economic and social history. The so-called world-system approach argues that from the sixteenth century, if not earlier, the global periphery was linked to the countries of the north-west European core, which were ‘miraculously’ spared the limitations upon growth intrinsic to the process of growth itself (Jones, 1981a), by steadily tightening bonds of dependency and subordination. In the ‘pre-modern’ world, trade between cultural regions was for the most part implemented by communities of resident aliens, who were constantly at risk of absorption into the host culture of the countries concerned (Curtin, 1984). There was a degree of equity in the reciprocal processes involved. In the world-system world, European military superiority and the gradual growth of commercial and industrial activity meant that the acquisition, on terms favourable to Europe, of global markets and global supplies of raw materials was both possible and imperative. Hegemony, achieved in a cultural and commercial, as well as political sense, eventually ensured that the destinies of all peripheral areas, and not only those of large-scale European settlement, were increasingly bound up with the core (Wallerstein, 1974; 1980; Wolf, 1982; Harvey, 1983). Take this line of reasoning, even denied some of its reductionist extravagance (Dodgshon, 1977), and a Europocentric view of the past stands legitimised by the very course of the events it surveys.

THE GLOBAL CONTEXT

While my text is narrowly focused on Britain, it may be helpful to outline some of the concerns of toilers in other vineyards. As a framework for surveying this recent work, the world-system has many advantages. But it is not within the analytical context of the approach that most of this work has been produced. Amongst historical geographers generally, truffle hunters still comfortably outnumber parachutists, to borrow Le Roy Ladurie's metaphor (see Whyte, 1984). The overarching world view has increasing appeal, but it belongs to a realm of synthesis which is alien to the largely documentary tradition of research in the subject. There exists a strong and enduring preference for localised research, more and more informed by theory (Gregory, 1981; Butlin 1982), but laid on sound empirical foundations nonetheless. Most accretions to the existing corpus of knowledge and interpretation are based on painstaking documentary or field research. The quantities of data involved are alone sufficient to ensure that the focus is essentially local, albeit more of this work than formerly is now presented as case studies, illustrative of some broader theme or deeper truth.

Much the greatest volume of research on non-European areas of European colonisation or influence concerns North America. As befits a land where present national character was forged in conflicts between the indigenous and the adventitious, and in the interrelationships between different immigrant groups, the cultural tradition remains strong. The study of folk housing as a cultural form, pioneered by Kniffen (1979), lives on in numerous regional surveys. Some see the folk houses as a source of raw data providing access to the mental world of their builders (Glassie, 1975). Others are more concerned to trace particular elements in rural building styles or practice back to the colonial hearth areas of the New World or beyond that to the source areas of migration in the Old (Wonders, 1979; Jordan, 1980; Marshall, 1981; Hewes, 1981; Hewes and Jung, 1981). Other students have been more interested in immigrant culture from the standpoint of social or demographic rather than material evidence, and many studies are now available which reveal that the group identity of migrant communities was often persistent, even when migration levels from such communities were relatively high (Brunger, 1982; Ostergren, 1979; McQuillan, 1978; 1979). It has been suggested that, even on the frontier, pioneers of disparate provenance were not thrown together in the wide embrace of a grand, noble and difficult enterprise, but remained isolated in small, clustered groups which shared primary allegiances to particular countrides, provinces, or, occasionally, parishes of origin (Rice, 1977). The frontier looks less likely to have fulfilled those functions in shaping American destiny which Turner attributed to it, even though the hypothesis continues to stimulate, fascinate and persuade (Walsh, 1981).

In many ways, it is the totality of interaction between cultures and between man and environment which is of greatest interest to North American historical geographers working in the cultural tradition. Only that totality can provide a full or acceptable explanation of the processes underlying the emergence of definable cultural regions, and cultural regions, or regional cultures have traditionally been a major objective in their work. But studies which focus on only a part of this totality have also gained favour and produced pathbreaking results. Several authors have explored the interactions between settlers and Indian society (Sheehan, 1980; Kupperman, 1980; Axtell, 1981). Others have examined the destruction or adaptation of aboriginal environments and the spread of agriculture which accompanied it. Many writers in this latter category are simply concerned to gain an understanding of the chronology and geography of these changes and of the mechanisms which produced them, but evolving personal reactions to the wilderness, its ‘discovery’ by east coast society, have also been examined at some length (Williams, 1982; Bogue, 1982; Clark, 1984; Nash, 1973; Stilgoe, 1982). It is notable that settler-environment interaction is also well represented as a theme in work on the historical geography of Australia (Jennings and Linge, 1980; Powell, 1981).

States of the periphery other than those of large-scale north European settlement have rather less historical geography on offer. So far as Latin America is concerned, much of the work accessible to English-speaking readers reflects the interest of modern-day academic conquistadores from Europe and, especially, North America. Themes which figure prominently include the agriculture and agricultural landscapes of the aboriginal world (Donkin, 1979; Gade, 1979), the nature of the interaction between indigenous and settler society (Newsom, 1976; Hennessy, 1978), production for global markets and its effects upon systems of cultivation (Albert, 1976; Donkin, 1977; Palacios, 1980; Hall, 1982; Galloway, 1982), and the failure of Latin American economies to develop during the nineteenth century in the same way as those of the North (Leff, 1982).

Africa has been less intensively cultivated than Latin America by historical geographers, if not by historians. Geographers working in African states which have gained their independence since the War are beset by other more pressing problems, and the region has attracted fewer overseas scholars than either Latin America or Asia. South African historical geographers, notably Christopher (1976; 1984), have explored the causes and consequences of the European drive into southern Africa from the late seventeenth century, focussing primarily on the landscape impact. Historical geographers are now conscious of the need to transcend ‘the deliberate and dangerous mystification of a powerful racist ideology’, to ‘understand how South Africa's brutal landscapes were forged in subordination and struggle’ (Crush, 1986), although it is an approach which promises more than it has yet delivered.

THE BRITISH RURAL LANDSCAPE: PARADIGMS LOST?

For reasons already outlined, the greater part of this chapter will be concerned with the dynamics of change in the British countryside, where much attention has recently been directed to the circumstances of the decay of feudalism and the gradual advent of new capitalistic systems and methods of production. These were shaped by innovation in technique, product and organisation, changes in market demand, changes in the distribution of ownership, and changes in the relationships between landowner, tenant and labourer. They were also underwritten by a new political economy which underpinned different perceptions of the land and its functions (Tribe, 1978). But not every important facet of recent work in the historical geography of the countryside is comfortably accommodated within this structure. This section surveys recent studies which lie outside it.

Those who completed their initial research training ten or more years ago will find the present landscape of historical geography both familiar and different. Some of the strands which were prominent in historical geography's theoretical and methodological fabric at that time are still there. But the fabric is now differently textured thanks to the novel materials which have been woven into it, many of them sympathetically matched to Baker's (1972) belief that future progress would be contingent upon historical geography being less insulated than it had been from concepts and methods developed elsewhere (Gregory, 1981; Baker and Gregory, 1984). Neither at that period nor this may we speak of historical geography being conducted within one unique methodological frame of reference. The sub-discipline could never be accused of rigid adherence to a single exclusive paradigm, and in this respect it seems to be no different either from geography as a whole, or from any of its other major branches (Stoddart, 1981; Johnston, 1984).

The process of conceptual and methodological development has been partly a matter of extension and importation, and partly a matter of reorientation and redefinition. Within this scheme, the concept of landscape fits much more into the latter category than the former, with both new and old approaches providing exemplars of work concerned with agriculture and rural society. ‘Changing landscapes' was one of the central conceptual props of the histoncal geography of the thirties, forties, fifties and early sixties (Baker, 1972). It was itself supported by the twin notions that the present landscape is not only the end product of an extended process of historical evolution but also, ultimately, a mutual interest, perhaps the mutual interest of all geographers no matter what their specific specialist inclinations. Thus the approach was satisfactorily embedded within the conventionally accepted definitions of geography, from the point of view of both content and method. This was seen as a considerable virtue, inter-disciplinary interaction at that stage still being viewed with suspicion. One might say that contact with other disciplines was regarded not so much as cross-fertilisation but as miscegenation, with malformed and sterile hybrids the likely outcome. Landscape (the present day landscape, that is) served both as a prompt to the sorts of issues which the historical geographer ought to explore, and as a useful vehicle for structuring and organising the presentation of historical geography's substantive research findings. Thus, several academic generations were introduced to historical geography through introductory courses at degree level which had the present day landscape as their organisational focus (if not their only explanatory tool), and through volumes like Hoskins's highly influential Making of the English Landscape (1955), which specifically addressed the themes of landscape evolution and landscape history. Since agriculture has contributed more than any other economic activity to the appearance of the present-day cultural landscape, the approach gave considerable emphasis to this sector, thereby helping to forge a sub-discipline which was widely perceived as ‘rustic at heart’.

The ‘holistic’ landscape approach lives on in the county volumes in the ‘Making of the English Landscape’ series, in the national volumes in the ‘World's Landscapes’ series, and in other studies which focus on particular themes or areas (for examp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Dedication
• Preface
• Introduction
• Theory and Methodology in Historical Geography
• Data Sources in Historical Geography
• The Dark Ages
• Medieval Economy and Society
• Agriculture and Rural Society
• The Historical Geography of Industrial Change
• People and Housing in Industrial Society
• Historical Demography
• Urban Morphology
• Rural Settlement
• Notes on Contributors
• Index