Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

the title, and rarely extends to the processes of consumption. Specialists will want to consult this book, and some of the contributions to the first part, in particular, show the way in which sport can be a useful point of entry into social analysis. However, as it stands there is little justification for putting the contributions between the same covers. A stronger editorial hand might have done more with the material. NEIL EVANS Coleg Harlech THE AGRARIAN HISTORY OF ENGLAND AND WALES, Vol. VI, 1750-1850. Edited by G. E. Mingay. Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp. xxii, 1215. £ 90.00. This, the sixth volume of the Agrarian History of England and Wales, covers a century which, in the writer's overview, was to see the 'remarkable' achievements in agricultural progress. Although the preceding volume demonstrated that the technical advances of 1750-1850 must in some instances be seen as merely the extension and popularising of innovations made in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, nevertheless volume six leaves us in no doubt that under the vital stimulus of an unprecedented fast expanding home market great strides were made in increasing the efficiency and output of British farming. Not only were earlier innovations such as cropping rotations made more widespread and improved upon, but there were new innovations belonging to this period such as the introduction of new varieties of root crops and new strains of wheat and barley, new fertilizers, improved breeds of livestock, and improvements in drainage, implements and machinery. All-important in facilitating these improved techniques in cultivation was the enclosure of common fields and commons and wastes. The progress made permitted a rise in total output over the century 1750-1850 of something over 100 per cent and it was a considerable achievement that most of the food consumed by the fast rising population over these years was produced at home. While recognising this important progress, the editor in his valuable concluding chapter points to certain technical and structural weaknesses that remained in 1850, shortcomings which invite the reader to think in terms of an 'agricultural revolution' incomplete. Professor Mingay thus draws attention to the lack of effective drainage, the limited use of the new fertilizers, the time-lag in adopting improved implements, the limited knowledge of how to combat pests and plant diseases, certain drawbacks arising from the landlord-tenant system and, the most serious weakness, the low level or labour productivity. Moreover, he cautions, if modernization had certainly occurred over the years 1750-1850, the hundred years following were to see the pace of change accelerating. The volume contains ten chapters, each written by a specialist, and the first six cover the strictly agricultural aspects such as the changing rural landscape, farming ecnniques, prices, productivity and output, markets and marketing, agricultural Servicing and processing industries, and landownership and estate management. At e heart of every innovation and drive towards increased output lay the revolutionary