Agricultural specialisation and rural patterns of development
Edited by Annie Antoine
In agricultural history, specialisation is usually considered as progress, turning peasants into market-orientated farmers and allowing them to escape from self-sufficiency. Recent developments in the field of productivist agriculture and the recent rise of alternative agriculture cast doubt on this conventional concept of agricultural specialisation. Several questions arise: Did specialisation necessarily mean that farms concentrated on a single product? Was it always a great step forward? Did it occur in the same form in earlier centuries as in contemporary economies? The chapters of this book draw attention to several factors relevant to processes of specialisation, such as markets, transport, and the natural environment. The contributions deal with regions in 10 countries of Europe, from Sweden to Spain and from England to Bulgaria, and with periods between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries. They suggest several conclusions. Specialisation can take place in various forms, ranging from focussing on a single major cash crop to giving preference to a combination of products. This is true both at the level of an individual farm as at a regional level. Specialisation did not always improve the farmers’ standard of living. And it was neither a linear nor an irreversible process. This can be observed in periods of war, but also in recent developments in post-communist countries.
In agricultural history, specialisation is usually considered as progress, turning peasants into market-orientated farmers and allowing them to escape from self-sufficiency. Recent developments in the field of productivist agriculture and the recent rise of alternative agriculture cast doubt on this conventional concept of agricultural specialisation. Several questions arise: Did specialisation necessarily mean that farms concentrated on a single product? Was it always a great step forward? Did it occur in the same form in earlier centuries as in contemporary economies? The chapters of this book draw attention to several factors relevant to processes of specialisation, such as markets, transport, and the natural environment. The contributions deal with regions in 10 countries of Europe, from Sweden to Spain and from England to Bulgaria, and with periods between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries. They suggest several conclusions. Specialisation can take place in various forms, ranging from focussing on a single major cash crop to giving preference to a combination of products. This is true both at the level of an individual farm as at a regional level. Specialisation did not always improve the farmers’ standard of living. And it was neither a linear nor an irreversible process. This can be observed in periods of war, but also in recent developments in post-communist countries.
- Edited by Annie Antoine
Other Titles in this Series
Rural Societies and Environments at Risk
Ecology, Property Rights and Social Organisation in Fragile Areas (Middle Ages-Twentieth Century)
Volume 9
Property Rights, Land Markets and Economic Growth in the European Countryside (13th-20th Centuries)
Volume 1
The Formation of Agricultural Governance
The Interplay between State and Civil Society in European Agriculture, 1870-1940
Volume 19
Integration through Subordination
The politics of Agricultural Modernisation in Industrial Europe
Volume 8
From Breeding & Feeding to Medicalization
Animal farming, veterinarization and consumers in the 20th c. Western Europe
Volume 17
Agriculture in the Age of Fascism
Authoritarian Technocracy and rural modernization, 1922-1945
Volume 13
Contexts of Property in Europe
The Social Embeddedness of Property Rights in Land in Historical Perspective
Volume 5
Inheritance Practices, Marriage Strategies and Household Formation in European Rural Societies
Volume 7
The Golden Age of State Enquiries
Rural Enquiries in the Nineteenth Century. From Fact Gathering to Political Instrument
Volume 14
Agrosystems and Labour Relations in European Rural Societies
(Middle Ages-Twentieth Century)
Volume 3
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