The Farmer in England

Farmers held a pivotal role in the capitalist agriculture that emerged in England in the eighteenth century, yet they have attracted little attention from rural historians. Farmers made agriculture happen. Our ignorance of the farmer might be justified by the claim that they are ill-documented, but in fact farmers were normally literate and kept records - day books, journals, accounts. As the essays in this volume show, farm records offer invaluable insights into the farming economy; the records included in this volume are published here for the first time and will help to restore farmers to their rightful position in history as rural entrepreneurs.