Documentary, cartographic and archaeological sources suggest that agrarian practice in the north east of Scotland from the late sixteenth to the mid eighteenth centuries was more diverse, dynamic and targeted than often supposed. The evidence suggests that Strathbogie saw extensive agricultural expansion throughout the entire period, especially in areas demonstrating earlier under-utilisation. Real improvement and expansion occurred as a result of developing existing traditional systems of agriculture, which was socially at odds with the later and much vaunted ‘Improvements’. These practices maximised productivity by targeting the production of a range of commodities at their most appropriate ecological zones within the overall landscape of the estate, the Lordship of Huntly. Such a model for production appears to have influenced the settlement strategy within those individual ecological zones. However, an over-emphasis upon grain production may, ultimately, have resulted in unsustainable practices, contrasting with earlier more ecologically-targeted ones.

The coppice and underwood trades in north Hampshire lasted almost unchanged for over one thousand years, yet the conspicuously wooded landscape of today is no more than three hundred years old. The landscape is an outcome of the enclosure of the common fields and replacement of their temporary dead-hedges by permanent living hedges, together with a radical reorganisation of the methods by which both wood and timber were grown, managed and marketed. These processes abolished the old extensive, open landscape, comprised of coppices, underwood, timber and rough grazing: the land-use system now termed wood pasture. It created the closed landscape of intensively managed woodland that prospered between 1750 and 1870. Evidence is drawn from the records of Crown, church, college and lay estates, besides contemporary comment, interpreted in the light of experience in restoring and managing an area of wood pasture.

This case study focuses on East Riding hiring fairs both as labour markets and popular festivals and considers the vitality of their internal interactions in the mid Victorian years, a time that has been associated with the erosion of traditional practices by urban influences and their reshaping into more orderly and passive forms. The article suggests that mid Victorian rural popular culture proved to be not only adaptive to the forces of urban modernity but robustly dynamic and informed by rural social forces.

The Victorian open space movement is accounted for variously by nostalgia, progress, and a changed conception of national identity, but explanatory factors are generally understood in secular ways which take little account of the pervasive influence of contemporary Christianity. These explanations overlap with discussions of nineteenth-century leisure which stress its links with secularisation. Christianity however was a significant motivation for some open space campaigners whose theology explained how nature was to uplift those who experienced it. This paper considers the Commons Preservation Society, founded in 1865; the preservation of Epping Forest for recreation between 1865 and 1880; and the forest's management in the 1880s and 1890s. It argues that although histories of the Commons Preservation Society and the Epping Forest campaign describe them in secular, rational terms, many prominent campaigners were motivated by religion, in the sense of orthodox Christianity. Practical religion significantly affected the development of mass recreation for the poor in the forest. Explanations of the open space movement which ignore religion thus seem inadequate.

The history of game shooting since the Second World War might be seen as an enigma. In spite of unprecedented changes to the countryside resulting from the intensification of farming which contributed to a rapid decline in the partridge population, the size of the national game bag increased due to the enhanced popularity of the pheasant as a sporting quarry. This article evaluates the reasons for the expansion of the sport in this period, focusing on the management of the countryside, the evolution of game keeping, the growth of artificial game rearing, and the increasing popularity of game shooting.

In 1899 the Victoria County History (VCH) was established as a ‘National Survey’ of England which was intended to show the present day condition of the country and trace the ‘domestic history’ of all English counties to the ‘earliest times’. Natural history was seen as a key component to be included in the first volume for every county. In this paper we examine the reasons for the prominence given to natural history and demonstrate how the expert knowledge of natural historians was marshalled and edited. We use the contrasting counties of Herefordshire and Nottinghamshire to examine key intellectual debates about the role of the amateur and the expert and concern about nomenclature, classification and the state of knowledge about different groups of species. We emphasize the importance of the geography of the natural history and the way in which the VCH charted concerns about species loss and extinction. We examine the reasons why the VCH later abandoned natural history and finally we assess the value of its published output for modern historical geographers, historical ecologists and environmental historians.

Recently, there has been growing interest in the emergence of rural movements in response to rapid changes in the post war countryside. However, little attention has been paid to the reaction of the old social movements to this transformation in rural society. In this paper, I concentrate on the reaction of the Boerenbond (Farmers’ Union) to the altering Flemish countryside in the 1960s and 1970s. The transformation of the Boerenbond in 1971 into a specialised agricultural organisation and a broader rural movement countered the rapid shrinking of the farm population and the strong specialising of modern farmers. Furthermore, by attracting non-farmers, the Boerenbond maintained its support in the countryside. A farmers’ union opening up to non-farming members in a society with emerging new social movements seems progressive at first glance. But the overall prevalence of agriculture in all stages of discussions and implementation is striking. Nevertheless, the emergence of a rural movement with new socio-cultural goals within an old, corporatist and Catholic farmers’ union suggests that this is a unique case in north-western Europe.

In 1976 the RSPCA finally adopted a policy of opposition to fox hunting and the shooting of birds for sport after a long history of highly controversial internal debate and external lobbying by pressure groups. This article explores the possible long-term historical reasons behind the change of policy. It seeks to begin to fill a gap in the historical literature and explain the changes in public opinion towards hunting that occurred during the course of the twentieth century by looking at key episodes in the history of the RSPCA up to the 1970s. It shows there was a decline in aristocratic dominance on the ruling council of the RSPCA after the 1920s, but other reasons for the change in policy included the increasing influence of an urban/metropolitan view of the countryside after the 1950s; changing public attitudes towards farmers, who had been traditional supporters of hunting; and the increasing importance of environmentalism and ecology after 1960. By the end of the twentieth century it was no longer possible to argue that hunting was an essential feature of rural society and culture, despite the continuing popularity and survival of fox hunting with hounds.

This paper explains how technological developments and changes in production encouraged and drove the processes of agricultural modernisation that occurred in the second half of the twentieth century, taking the region of Aragon in north eastern Spain as a case study. The main agricultural macro-variables reveal a surge in output, coincident with a far-reaching restructuring of production, in which livestock and animal feeds played a key role. The relative success of this high speed agricultural transformation was largely due to technological progress and the development of Aragon's trade links before 1936. Meanwhile, the earlier development of irrigation schemes, the capitalisation of farms and experimentation with different seed varieties allowed the region to adapt quickly to the new Green Revolution technologies that came to the fore after 1950. At the same time, established trade links allowed a swift transition to livestock and related produce destined for fast developing agro-industrial regions, like Catalonia and Valencia. As in other countries, technological and trade path dependency also explain the polarisation of agricultural development within Aragon itself, and in particular the success of the provinces of Zaragoza and Huesca in contrast to failure and depopulation in Teruel. The experience of Aragon may thus be useful to understand the dynamics of other less developed regions currently in the throes of transformation.

This article reflects on the striking economic changes recently experienced in a part of peripheral south-west rural Ireland. In 1960, west Cork's economy was largely dependent on low-productivity agriculture and was undergoing long term decline. Unexpectedly the region began to be revitalised from the turn of the 1990s, reflected in a rapid reversal of chronic depopulation and growth of employment in the service sector. Important to this process was the area's ability to capitalise on several familiar national and global socioeconomic changes, including the ‘Celtic tiger’ macroeconomic boom and the rise of counter-urbanisation and rural-urban commuting. A pioneering regional brand network has been one notable local initiative. However west Cork's historic east/west division in affluence persists, and the adverse impacts of the national economic downturn during 2007–9 highlight that the fortunes of the area are somewhat fragile and still linked to those of the macroeconomy.