Rural history
Encyclopedia
Rural history is historical research into rural life. Agricultural history
handles the economic and technological dimensions, while rural history handles the social dimension. Burchardt (2007) evaluates the state of modern English rural history and identifies an "orthodox" school, focused on the economic history of agriculture.
Important scholarly journals include Histoire & Sociétés Rurales
in France, Agricultural History in the U.S. and Agricultural History Review and Rural History in Britain.
as well as those found in the new urban history.
Modernization came in the 20th century, with the arrival of mechanization, the model T, and the agricultural agent--as well as radio.
. Its journal Annales focuses attention on the synthesizing of historical patterns identified from social, economic, and cultural history, statistics, medical reports, family studies, and even psychoanalysis.
History of agriculture
Agriculture was developed at least 10,000 years ago, and it has undergone significant developments since the time of the earliest cultivation. The Fertile Crescent of Western Asia, Egypt, and India were sites of the earliest planned sowing and harvesting of plants that had previously been gathered...
handles the economic and technological dimensions, while rural history handles the social dimension. Burchardt (2007) evaluates the state of modern English rural history and identifies an "orthodox" school, focused on the economic history of agriculture.
Important scholarly journals include Histoire & Sociétés Rurales
Histoire & Sociétés Rurales
Histoire & Sociétés Rurales is an academic journal dedicated to rural history from pre-history to the present day. It was established in 1994 and is published biannually by the Association d'Histoire des Sociétés Rurales....
in France, Agricultural History in the U.S. and Agricultural History Review and Rural History in Britain.
Britain
Burchardt (2007) evaluates the state of English rural history and focuses on an "orthodox" school dealing chiefly with the economic history of agriculture. The orthodox historians made "impressive progress" in quantifying and explaining the growth of output and productivity since the agricultural revolution. A challenge came from a dissident tradition that looked chiefly at the negative social costs of agricultural progress, especially enclosure. In the late 20th century there arose a new school, associated with the journal Rural History. Led by Alun Howkins, it links rural Britain to a wider social history. Burchardt calls for a new countryside history, paying more attention to the cultural and representational aspects that shaped 20th-century rural life.United States
In the U.S. most rural history has focused on the South—overwhelmingly rural until the 1950s—but there is a "new rural history" of the North as well. Instead of becoming agrarian capitalists, farmers held onto preindustrial capitalist values emphasizing family and community. Rural areas maintained population stability; kinship ties determined rural immigrant settlement and community structures; and the defeminization of farm work encouraged the rural version of the "women's sphere." These findings strongly contrast with those in the old frontier historyFrontier Thesis
The Frontier Thesis, also referred to as the Turner Thesis, is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that the origin of the distinctive egalitarian, democratic, aggressive, and innovative features of the American character has been the American frontier experience...
as well as those found in the new urban history.
Modernization came in the 20th century, with the arrival of mechanization, the model T, and the agricultural agent--as well as radio.
France
Rural history has been a major specialty of French scholars since the 1920s, thanks especially to the central role of the Annales SchoolAnnales School
The Annales School is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and...
. Its journal Annales focuses attention on the synthesizing of historical patterns identified from social, economic, and cultural history, statistics, medical reports, family studies, and even psychoanalysis.
Britain
- Butlin, R. A. The Transformation of Rural England, c. 1580-1800: A Study in Historical Geography (1982)
- Hanawalt, Barbara A. The Ties That Bound. Peasant Families in Medieval England (1986)
- Hilton, R. H. The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (1975).
- Howkins; Alun. Reshaping Rural England 1850-1925 (1992)
- Howkins; Alun. The Death of Rural England: A Social History of the Countryside since 1900 (2003) online edition
- Kussmaul, Anne. Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (1981)
- Mingay, G. E., ed. The Victorian Countryside (2 vol 1981)
- Taylor, Christopher. Village and Farmstead. A History of Rural Settlement in England (1983).
United States
- Cyclopedia of American agriculture; a popular survey of agricultural conditions, ed by L. H. Bailey, 4 vol 1907-1909. online edition highly useful compendium
- Baron, Hal S. Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930 (1997) online edition
- Bowers, William L. The Country Life Movement in America, 1900-1920 (1974).
- Brunner, Edmund de Schweinitz. Rural social trends (1933) online edition
- Danbom, David B. Born in the Country: A History of Rural America (1995)
- Gjerde, Jon. The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917 (1997)
- Goreham, Gary A. Encyclopedia of Rural America (2 vol 1997); 438pp; 232 essays by experts on arts, business, community development, economics, education, environmental issues, family, labor, quality of life, recreation, and sports.
- Hurt, Douglas, ed. The Rural South Since World War II (1998)
- Kirby, Jack Temple. Rural Worlds Lost: The American South 1920-1960 (1987)
- Kulikoff; Allan. From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers (2000) online edition
- Lauck, Jon. "'The Silent Artillery of Time': Understanding Social Change in the Rural Midwest," Great Plains Quarterly 19 (Fall 1999)
- Schafer, Joseph. The social history of American agriculture (1936) online edition
- Weeden, William Babcock. Economic and Social History of New England, 1620-1789 (1891) 964 pages; online edition
Historiography
- Atack, Jeremy. "A Nineteenth-century Resource for Agricultural History Research in the Twenty-first Century." Agricultural History 2004 78(4): 389-412. Issn: 0002-1482 Fulltext: in University of California Journals and Ebsco. On a large computerized database of individual American farmers from manuscript census.
- Bogue, Allan G. "Tilling Agricultural History with Paul Wallace Gates and James C. Malin." Agricultural History 2006 80(4): 436-460. Issn: 0002-1482 Fulltext: in Ebsco
- Burchardt, Jeremy. "Agricultural History, Rural History, or Countryside History?" Historical Journal 2007 50(2): 465-481. Issn: 0018-246x
- Burton, Vernon O. "Reaping What We Sow: Community and Rural History," Agricultural History, Fall 2002, Vol. 76 Issue 4, pp 630–58 in JSTOR
- Dyer, C. "The Past, the Present and the Future in Medieval Rural History". Rural History: Economy, Society, Culture 1:1 (1990), pp. 37–49.
Primary sources
- Phillips, Ulrich B. ed. Plantation and Frontier Documents, 1649–1863; Illustrative of Industrial History in the Colonial and Antebellum South: Collected from MSS. and Other Rare Sources. 2 Volumes. (1909). online vol 1 and online vol 2
- Rasmussen, Wayne, ed. Agriculture in the United States: A Documentary History (3 vol 1975) 2800 pages of primary sources
- Schmidt, Louis Bernard. ed. Readings in the economic history of American agriculture (1925) online edition
- Sorokin, Pitirim et al., eds. A Systematic Sourcebook in Rural Sociology (3 vol. 1930), 2000 pages of primary sources and commentary; worldwide coverage
External links
- Agricultural History Society
- The Rural History Confederation (RHC) is an association of nineteen museums and historic sites
See also
- History of agricultureHistory of agricultureAgriculture was developed at least 10,000 years ago, and it has undergone significant developments since the time of the earliest cultivation. The Fertile Crescent of Western Asia, Egypt, and India were sites of the earliest planned sowing and harvesting of plants that had previously been gathered...
- History of agriculture in the United StatesHistory of agriculture in the United StatesThe history of agriculture in the United States covers the period from the first settlers to the present day. In Colonial America agriculture fund a livelihood for 90 percent of the population; most towns were shipping points for the export of agricultural products. Most farms were geared toward...
- Histoire & Sociétés RuralesHistoire & Sociétés RuralesHistoire & Sociétés Rurales is an academic journal dedicated to rural history from pre-history to the present day. It was established in 1994 and is published biannually by the Association d'Histoire des Sociétés Rurales....
- Social historySocial historySocial history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
- Urban historyUrban HistoryUrban history is a field of history that examines the historical nature of cities and towns, and the process of urbanization. The approach tends to be multidisciplinary, crossing boundaries into fields like social history, architectural history, urban sociology, urban geography and archaeology.At...