England's Rural Realms Landholding and the Agricultural Revolution

by Bujak, Edward

• ISBN13: 9781845114725
• ISBN10: 1845114728
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-12-15
• Publisher: Tauris Academic Studies

Summary

The English countryside in the nineteenth century experienced the shifting power struggle from the great landed estates towards democratization. Challenging received scholarship that the landed estates declined in power and patronage Bujak places the Victorian globalization of trade alongside the democratization of the English countryside. By doing so he reveals that the economic decline of the great landed estates was balanced by their continued social and political influence in the countryside up to the Great War. With its focus on Suffolk, a county at the forefront of agricultural improvement and thus hardest hit by the agricultural depression, the patterns revealed by England's Rural Realm demonstrates the durability of the great estate system across the English countryside.

Author Biography

Edward Bujak is Assistant Professor of British Studies at Harlaxton College, the British Campus of the Universtiy of Evansville, Indiana.

Table of Contents

List of Tables	p. vi
List of Maps	p. vii
Acknowledgements	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
The Great Victorian Estates & Their Owners	p. 8
Agriculture & the Great Estates 1837-1901	p. 35
The Landed Interest & the Land Question	p. 61
Landowners & the 'Lock Out'	p. 87
Landowners and Local Government	p. 106
The Landowner and the Tenant-Farmer	p. 127
Debt, Country Seats and Country Pursuits	p. 148
The Great Estates Before the Great War	p. 171
Conclusion	p. 193
Notes	p. 199
The Great Landowners of Late Victorian Suffolk	p. 235
Bibliography	p. 239
Index	p. 255
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.