Welsh Journals

crops, at the expense of an evaluation of novel livestock features and a neglect of consumption patterns, specialisation and inter-regional movements of agricultural commodities.2 Moreover, impressive and bulky as completed studies have been, they have almost invariably proceeded in a vacuum in the sense that the role of the rural labour force, its size, its mobility, its structure and contribution to total demographic patterns, has persistently either been ignored completely or else been given but summary treatment. 3 Such comment as does emerge on the condition of the rural population is frequently confined to the context of wages and prices, or alternatively has been constricted by the use of certain types of source material. Arthur Redford4 writing in the 1920s, like Engels before him, relied greatly upon contemporary (that is, early nineteenth-century) writings and the various parliamentary reports of the Reform period, the evidence from which, while specific, tended to be piecemeal rather than truly comprehensive. On the other hand, more recent authors, who have had the benefit of more detailed data, have possibly granted the early Census returns more attention than perhaps they deserve.5 As far as the myriad aspects of the agricultural population problem are concerned, it would appear logical to attempt to penetrate beneath the often archaic administrative framework, within which Census data were collected, and to explore the topic at its roots, that is at the level of individual farms or groups of farms. Moreover, by its very nature, the Population Census is not a particularly helpful source if one is concerned with critical issues such as the annual pattern of labour demand and its implications for seasonal unemploy- Among the few exceptions are D. B. Grigg's The Agricultural Revolution in South Lincolnshire (1966), and Joan Thirsk's English Peasant Farming (1957). Another work worth consulting is J. D. Chambers, 'Enclosure and Labour Supply in the Industrial Revolution', Econ. Hist. Review, 2nd series, V (1952-53). An admirable review of data sources relevant to rural studies is contained in D. B. Grigg, 'The Changing Agricultural Geography of England: a Commentary on the Sources Available for the Reconstruction of the Agricultural Geography of England, 1770-1850', Transactions and Papers, Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 41 (1967). One serious reservation, however, is that this article refrains almost totally from comment on the manpower situation and that the source of such material-archive collections-receives only brief mention, though Grigg does make the point that nation-wide generalisations about this evidence are virtually impossible, partly because it has been so neglected in the past. The broad survey set out in J. D. Chambers and G. E. Mingay, The Agricultural Revolution, 1750-1880 (1966), does at various stages touch upon certain aspects of labour conditions and employment (e.g., pp. 118-121 and 133-147), largely as background to the revolt of 1830, but in general these themes are given less prominence than might be expected. A. Redford, Labour Migration in England, 1800-1850 (1926). J. A. Sheppard, 'East Yorkshire's Agricultural Labour Force in the mid-nineteenth Century', Agric. Hist. Review, IX (1961); W. S. G. Thomas, 'The Agricultural Labour Force in some South-West Carmarthenshire Parishes in the mid-Nineteenth Century', ante, III, no. 1 (1966).