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Rural Society - Agrarian economies

5 important questions on Rural Society - Agrarian economies

What is important to emphasize regarding the agrarian economy?

The centrality of the harvest of the rhythms of rural life notwithstanding, it is important to emphasize that the agrarian economy and the rural social relations to which they gave rise were not uniform even within (let alone between) most European states, and that there were a great many distinctive pays, or 'countries', scattered across the Continent, in which specialized local and regional farming patterns prevailed.

What geographical diversity resided?

The geographical diversity of this vast terrain of interlinked and overlapping rural economies cannot be exaggerated: soil type, topography and climate varied immensely and minutely, and never exercised a purely deterministic influence over patterns of settlement, tenure or labour.

Why was the landscape in large measure a product of human initiative?

After all, the landscape was in large measure a product of human initiative: the natural environment was made and remade by the decisions of men to drain marshes, clear forest or cultivate marginal land.
Indeed, with the growing pressure of population on the resources of the agricultural sector, men were forced from the mid-sixteenth century to make war on forest and fen with zeal unknown for three hundred years.

What would a sophisticated classification entail?

A more sophisticated classification of rural society into farming regions should distinguish not only lowland fielden zones from upland pastoral zones, but also different types of pastoral activity practised in woodland or bocage, in fenland and marshes and in moorlands.

How did local agrarian economies integrate?

Local agrarian economies were gradually becoming integrated by processes of specialization and interdependence into regional, national and ultimately even international markets for food and consumer goods.
These links were provided first by markets for agricultural produce but increasingly too by the demand for new consumer goods.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

Early Modern History

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