Product Description
Prices affect the living conditions of millions of people, hence their importance for an understanding of the past. In "Irish Agriculture: A Price history", Liam Kennedy and Peter Solar consider what was until relatively recently the principal means of livelihood for the majority of the country's population, shedding light on some major controversies in Irish history: the impact of the French wars, the significance of the Great Famine and the origins of the Land War.Prices and price change offer insights into people's behaviour in the past, and not just their economic behaviour. They help illuminate issues as diverse as production patterns, prosperity and famine, political and agrarian agitation and even such intimate detail as the timing of marriage. As the historian David Fischer has asserted: 'The history of prices is a history of change. 'The underlying data in this work, the product of more than ten years of archival research, are some 20,000 bimonthly price observations from the period 1755-1914 that have been processed into annual price series.The prices and price indices presented here furnish building blocks for historians and historically minded social scientists engaged in writing Ireland's history. This work also opens the way to more systematic comparisons of Irish and European economic experience, be it in terms of price inflation, living costs, market integration or market disintegration. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This book an EXACT reproduction of the original book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "Agriculture," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have Agriculture in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with Agriculture when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name Agriculture, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more

Product Description
People like to believe in a past golden age of "traditional" English countryside, before large farms, machinery, and the destruction of hedgerows changed the landscape forever. Yet crops from the past like flax, hemp, rapeseed, and woad are gradually reappearing in the "modern" countryside. Thirsk reveals how the forces which drive the current interest in alternative forms of agriculture--a glut of mainstream meat and cereal crops, changing patterns of diet, the needs of medicine--have striking parallels with earlier periods of English history, emphasizing that solutions to current problems can still be found in the hard-won experience of people in the past. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Historical Perspective Relevant to the Local Food Movement
Though written as an academic publication, this book moves quickly to document changes in agricultural practice caused by fluctuations in population and food demands.Thirsk's basic premise is that at several points in British history (incuding after the black death, and during the agricultural depression of the late 19th century) overproduction of commodity crops (such as corn and grain) has been followed by an "alternative agriculture" that involves diversification of crops to include industrial crops and expanded production of fruits and vegetables.When farms switched from grain to vegetables they got smaller, more productive, and more labor-intensive, and introduced new and healthful foods to local populations. New foods were often adopted by the elite before becoming available to the lower and middle classes.
Reading this book in 2008, eight years after it was originally published, it is all the more relevant.The state of agriculture is changing quickly: a glut of low-priced commodity crops could have inspired more diverse farming, but a movement to production of fuel crops then increased commodity crop prices.At the same time, however; the locavore movement is demanding a transition to the type of alternative agriculture that Thirsk documents.Although Thirsk focuses her research solely on British agricultural history, her book provides terrific perspective on all of these issues. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
The book may have numerous typos or missing text. It is not illustrated or indexed. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website. You can also preview the book there.Purchasers are also entitled to a trial membership in the publisher's book club where they can select from more than a million books for free.Volume: 5 Original Publisher: Clarendon Press Publication date: 1887Subjects: Agriculture; Prices ... Read more