Chalk and Cheese?‘Fielden’ and ‘Forest’ Communities in Early Modern England |
| |
| Authors: | NEIL DAVIE |
| |
| Affiliation: | NEIL DAVIE is a senior lecturer in British studies at the Department de Langues Etrangeres Appliquees, Universite de Paris 12. He is currently working on the institutional role of the parish church in village life in the early modem period through an examination of church court archives. |
| |
| Abstract: | Abstract This article argues that the conventional division of early modern rural England into 'fielden' and 'forest' regions serves well neither agrarian nor social historians. It is suggested that the 'fielden-forest' model is too blunt an instrument to analyse the diversity of regional farming systems, social structures and landholding patterns. Drawing upon an alternative seven-way classification of agricultural regions, a more open-ended and flexible 'continuum' model is proposed. It is further argued that the new schema offers a more satisfactory way of examining local differences in social and cultural structures than a division into two opposing regional blocks. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
|
|
