Farmers, landlords and landscapes - Susanna Wade Martins

Rather than an economic history of 18th- and 19th-century
Britain, Susanna Wade Martins presents a rural history that
places the farmer, and the landlord, at the centre of change.
Industrial and urban expansion and a rising population brought
pressure to bear on the countryside, something that was
shouldered largely by the farmer and it is with this in mind that
Martins examines the transformations that were taking place in
rural areas of Britain. Full of examples and case studies, she
looks at the philosophies and technologies that drove change, the
obligations and motives of landlords who provided the
infrastructure, and his relationship with his tenants. Enclosure,
the advent of new farming practices, intensification,
reclamation, drainage, new reaping and threshing machines, the
construction of new farmsteads and so on, all had a major impact
on rural life with machines taking over from horsepower and
science taking over from farming tradition.