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agricultural revolution « Top of the Campops: 60 things you didn't know about family, marriage, work, and death since the middle ages

Top of the Campops: 60 things you didn't know about family, marriage, work, and death since the middle ages

Posts Tagged ‘agricultural revolution’

How important was agriculture before and during the Industrial Revolution?

Thursday, December 12th, 2024

Leigh Shaw-Taylor

What proportion of the male labour force do you think worked in agriculture at the beginning of the 18th century? Was it around 80 percent? Or 60 percent? Or 40 percent? The Occupational Structure of Britain c.1379-1911 project has shown that for England and Wales the correct figure is around 47 percent. This makes the English and Welsh economy much less agricultural (and much more industrial) than historians have previously believed.  

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The first urban society

Thursday, October 31st, 2024

Romola Davenport

In 2007 the United Nations announced an historic milestone: the world had become decisively urban, with half the global population living in towns and cities. This represented a dramatic reversal of historic norms, when 80-90 percent of people worked and lived in the countryside. And this unprecedented shift from rural to urban areas shows no sign of abating – indeed, the UN predicts that all future population growth will be urban 

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Why were Hansel and Gretel not English?

Thursday, August 29th, 2024

Romola Davenport

Berhardina Midderigh-Bokhorst and Smith’s Fine Arts Publishing N.V. – The Hague. Hansel and Gretel (1937). Image credit: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum.

In the story of Hansel and Gretel, a famine drives a father to abandon his children in the woods, where they discover a house made of gingerbread and a cannibal witch. In the Magic Porridge Pot tale, a young girl forced by poverty to search for food in the woods and hedgerows is given a magic pot that produces abundant staple food on command.

These types of stories about hunger and famine abound in the folklore of most European societies, and embody folk memories of food scarcity. However, as the historian John Walter noted, these tropes are curiously absent from English fairy tales. Why? 

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