Introduction

The problem with the description of the Agricultural Revolution in the last lesson is that it may be wrong!

The idea of an 'Agricultural Revolution' was popularised by the historian Arnold Toynbee in a series of lectures in 1880; the idea was so powerful that, when I started teaching a century later, school textbooks were still describing a period of "epoch-making inventions" which revolutionised agriculture in the late 18th century. 

The facts on this page will allow you to challenge this traditional view that there was an 'Agricultural Revolution' after 1750.

Before you start, consider Sources 1 and 2.  Referring only to the traditional account on the Agricultural Revolution in the last lesson, suggest a date for the two illustrations.

Then read Sources 3-10.

After you have studied this webpage, answer the question sheet by clicking on the 'Time to Work' icon at the top of the page.

Links:

The following websites will help you research further:

An Agricultural Revolution?

• BBC Bitesize 

3  

Jethro Tull was an eccentric man.  He invented the horse-hoe, not to weed the crops, but because he thought that plants grew by absorbing the soil.  He broke up the soil so that the roots could absorb it more easily.

4  

'Turnip' Townshend was a failed politician.  He got his nickname more as a political joke (when he had to go home to his country estate) than because of his farming achievements.

5  

Bakewell charged so much for his rams that ordinary farmers could not afford them.  For many years 'selective breeding' was just a rich man's hobby.  

6  

The real revolution in farm machinery came after 1945, when farmers began to use tractors in large numbers.

7  

Only a quarter of the farmland in England and Wales was enclosed by Act of Parliament during the 18th century.  Most of England had already been enclosed long before 1750.

8  

Few farmers outside Norfolk used the Norfolk Four-Course rotation.  Most farmers rested their land by sowing it with grass and putting animals out to graze (which manured the land).  

9  

Turnips were of limited importance.  They cannot be grown on acid soil or on heavy soils.  Turnips rot in wet soil, and they are easily killed by frost. 

10  

Clover was brought over from Holland, not after 1750, but after 1688.  It was well known by the time of 'Turnip' Townshend.

Introduction (continued)

It may surprise you to learn that the last plough team of oxen (their names were Joey and Jim) worked until 1957.  And the photo of the man sowing broadcast in Source 2 was taken in 1941. 

In the last lesson, you made a list of all the keywords associated with the traditional account of the 'Agricultural Revolution'; as you studied Sources 1-10, you will have realised that almost everything you were told about the Agricultural Revolution was at best questionable ... and at worst false.

The Historiography of the Agricultural Revolution

In the 1970s, historians began to question the traditional picture of an 'agricultural revolution' which started in 1750.  They found that the changes in farming had started much earlier, and that change had happened much more slowly than had been thought.

By the 1990s, when this Options in History series was written, some historians were arguing that there was no large upturn in output until after 1850, and that there was no agricultural technological 'revolution' until after the Second World War ... so much so that in 1991 Gregory Clark declared: "there was no agricultural revolution between the early 18th and mid-19th centuries".

Nowadays, historians have begun once again to acknowledge that the 18th Century was a time of 'Agricultural Revolution'.  There is growing statistical evidence that yields increased faster than the amount of land under cultivation, suggesting a significant increase in productivity ... due to enclosure and new ways of farming.

Nevertheless in 1794, a dry summer, followed by a harsh winter – in the middle of a war – led to period of failed harvests, famine, high prices and bread riots all over the country (see Source 11).  People died of hunger in Britain in the winter of 1799-1800.

One of the arguments for an 18th Century 'Agricultural Revolution' is that agricultural production must have grown to feed the growing population.  To the people of 1795-97, it must not have seemed so.

11  Bread Riots of 1795-1800

12  What do we mean by 'Agricultural Revolution'?

An extract from King & Timmins, Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution, 2001.

Part of the process of re-establishing [the idea of] an agricultural revolution is to understand the notion of 'revolution' in the round – including social, institutional and cultural as well as more traditional economic factors.

Productivity numbers and stories of agricultural change ... provide only a partial index of the degree to which rural society as a whole changed for those who lived in it during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.