Product Description

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 todays 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, rabbit warrens were specially guarded to rear rabbits as a luxury food for rich mens tables; whilst houses had moats not only to defend them but to provide a source of fresh fish. In the 1500s we find Catherine of Aragon introducing the concept of a 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 images of past lives, Joan Thirsk reveals how the forces which drive our current interest in alternative forms of agriculture a glut of meat and cereal crops, changing dietary habits, the needs of medicine have striking parallels with earlier periods in our history. She warns us that todays decisions should not be made in a historical vacuum: we can find solutions to our current problems in the experience of people in the past.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #867310 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Review
"Thirsk writes with relish about the successes and failures of alternative agriculture. Her book is a delightful guide to a subject that has perhaps not been treated in the past with the seriousness it deserves. Certainly, no one has ever written such a clever synthesis as this."--Historian
"Thirsk's brilliant study of six centuries of British agriculture affirms her status as the preeminent scholar of the subject...Thirsk's fascinating study is rich in detail about the successes and failures of experimentation, and it stresses the importance of regional specialization, the clear patterns that characterized each period, the lessons learned that permanently influenced British agriculture, economy, and diet, and the lessons forgotten only to be learned again. Highly recommended to readers and libraries interested in British studies, agricultural history, and the history of diet and nutrition."--Choice
"It presents a detailed and moving account of the energy, initiative, vision, courage, success, and failure that went into the quest to wrest a living from the land during those times when mainstream agriculture's ability to grow wheat and meat outstripped the market's ability to absorb them....rich in example and understanding."--Albion

About the Author
Dr Thirsk, CBE, FBA, was Reader in Economic History at Oxford University from 1965-1983, and has twice been President of the British Agricultural History Society