Agricultural History Review, Volume 58 Part 1 (2010), p. 145

Many historians, especially in Britain, France and Germany, have extolled the importance of large landowners in using wealth and knowledge to introduce innovations in the countryside, but other scholars, notably in Spain and eastern Europe, have viewed large estates as obstacles to ‘agricultural progress’. In recent years, historians at the Université du Maine (Le Mans) have focused attention on the conception and manifestation of progress in the countryside, choosing to place their own experience of western France in a wider perspective by organizing two sessions at international conferences in Amsterdam (2006) and Lisbon (2008). The present volume seeks to provide a nuanced view of large estates by paying less attention to the landowning elite as a class and concentrating more on the aspirations and actions of individuals, sometimes acting in isolation but often as members of agricultural societies. It brings together thirteen essays – overviews and case studies – which cover strikingly different areas and span the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Guiding themes include the composition of the ‘farming elite’, the methods its members introduced to modify agricultural production, and the impact of these endeavours. Clusters of chapters look at the varied motivations of large landowners from 1500 to the twentieth century, the constitution and activities of improving agricultural societies from 1750 onwards, and the wider diffusion of knowledge among farmers and landowners after 1850.

Richard Hoyle introduces the first cluster with a lengthy review of the role of some members of the landowning elite in transforming aspects of rural England from 1500 to 1750. In similar fashion, Laurent Bourquin argues that not all large landowners in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France were opposed to innovation, despite the largely negative record left by contemporary observers from across the Channel. These overviews are followed by Ursula Schlude’s tightly-focused discussion on the work of Electress Anna of Saxony to stimulate agricultural change between 1567 and 1571, and by Jean-Marie Constant’s analysis of structural changes in seventeenth-century Beauce, which enabled local farmers to take advantage of rising Parisian demands for cereals in the following century. Four case studies in the central section of the book explore the membership and activities of agricultural societies between 1750 and 1850 in very different parts of the world; New England (Lucien Néraud), Upper and Lower Canada (Daniel Samson), France (Nadine Vivier), and part of Lower Normandy (Nicolas Rago). This latter discussion of the Société Royale d’Agriculture d’Alençon provides a detailed discussion of lofty ambitions and limited achievements, and would be replicated in the experience of other societies elsewhere in France. Despite important modifications following the 1789 Revolution, it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that the wealthy, landowning elite in France was matched by a new managerial elite whose members possessed the necessary practical knowledge to improve large properties. The volume concludes with five, largely nineteenth-century, case studies; the great estates of the Hungarian Plain (Andras Vári), routine and innovation on large properties near Mexico City (Alejandro Tortolero), modest improvements on some great – but highly fragmented – estates in Spain (Juan Carmona), agricultural penitentiaries and farm schools in France (Ivan Jablonka), and the role of ‘social catholicism’ in stimulating groups of young French farmers to innovate, especially after 1950 (Brigitte Waché).

This very varied array of information is drawn together in a courageous conclusion by Professor Vivier, who elaborates on the three ‘guiding themes’ that she identified in the introductory pages. She reiterates how members of the traditional land-owning elite of early modern Europe were complemented by physiocrats and others ‘improvers’ who founded agricultural societies after 1750, published learned articles and treatises, but had limited impact on changing farming activity. Only after 1850 did innovating theory and improving practices become increasingly widespread in parts of Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, in the other areas studied. Then she draws attention to the gradual diffusion of printed information on improved crop strains, livestock breeds, cultivation techniques and structural modifications. Enclosures in England are contrasted with the long survival of small family farms in France, whose significance was reinforced after 1789. In short, some members of large land-owning elites were innovative from the sixteenth century onwards, but the majority were not – not until very much later, when reconfiguration of market conditions associated with population growth, changing dietary patterns, and the transport revolution of the steam train and the steel-hulled steamship occurred. Élites et progrès agricole demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of interweaving material presented at international conferences with more cohesive information presented by members of a home team, in this case based at Le Mans. Breadth is most certainly achieved but at the expense of sharpness of focus. Many readers will appreciate the inclusion of long, English-language summaries of chapters and also of the very full translations of the editor’s introductory remarks and concluding digest. Once again, the Presses Universitaires de Rennes must be congratulated for producing a substantial book at a very reasonable price.