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Alternative Agriculture: A History: From the Black Death to the Present Day

Author

Listed:
  • Thirsk, Joan

    (British Agricultural History Society)

Abstract

People like to believe in a past golden age of `traditional' English countryside, before large farms, machinery, and the destruction of hedgerows changed the landscape forever. However, that countryside may have looked both more and less familiar than we imagine. Take, for example, today's startling yellow fields of rapeseed, seemingly more suited to the landscape of Van Gogh than Constable. They were in fact, thoroughly familiar to fieldworkers in seventeenth-century England. At the same time, some features that would have gone unremarked in the past now seem like oddities. In the fifteenth century, rabbits were reared in specially guarded warrens as luxury food for rich men's tables; whilst houses had moats not only to defence but to provide a source of fresh fish. In the 1500s we find Catherine of Aragon introducing the concept of fresh salad to the court of Henry VIII; and in the 1600s, artichoke gardens became a fashion of the gentry in their hope of producing more male heirs. The common tomato, suspected of being poisonous in 1837, was transformed into a household vegetable by the end of the nineteenth century, thanks to cheaper glass-making methods and the resulting increase in glasshouses. In addition to these fascinating images of past lives, Joan Thirsk reveals how the forces which drive our current interest in alternative forms of agriculture - a glut of mainstream meat and cereal crops; changing patterns of diet; the needs of medicine - have striking parallels with earlier periods of our history. She warns us that today's decisions should not be made in a historical vacuum. We can still find solutions to today's problems in the hard-won experience of people in the past.

Suggested Citation

  • Thirsk, Joan, 1997. "Alternative Agriculture: A History: From the Black Death to the Present Day," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198206620.
  • Handle: RePEc:oxp:obooks:9780198206620
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    Cited by:

    1. Debeljak, Marko & Squire, Geoff R. & Demšar, Damjan & Young, Mark W. & Džeroski, Sašo, 2008. "Relations between the oilseed rape volunteer seedbank, and soil factors, weed functional groups and geographical location in the UK," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 212(1), pages 138-146.
    2. Fraser, Evan D.G., 2011. "Can economic, land use and climatic stresses lead to famine, disease, warfare and death? Using Europe's calamitous 14th century as a parable for the modern age," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(7), pages 1269-1279, May.
    3. Robert Witcher, 2013. "On Rome's ecological contribution to British flora and fauna: landscape, legacy and identity," Landscape History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(2), pages 5-26, November.
    4. Hans Renes, 2010. "Grainlands. The landscape of open fields in a European perspective," Landscape History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(2), pages 37-70, November.
    5. David Stead, 2004. "Risk and risk management in English agriculture, c. 1750–1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 57(2), pages 334-361, May.

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