The writings of Arthur Young, William Marshall, the Annals of Agriculture and the publications of the Board of Agriculture created an image of later eighteenth-century English agriculture that was distinctive by comparison with the more local and diverse writings of societies in Continental Europe. Ostensibly seeking to establish and ...
(Show more)The writings of Arthur Young, William Marshall, the Annals of Agriculture and the publications of the Board of Agriculture created an image of later eighteenth-century English agriculture that was distinctive by comparison with the more local and diverse writings of societies in Continental Europe. Ostensibly seeking to establish and propagate best practice within Britain, this literature also functioned to represent the “English model” to European nations. My paper will seek to establish first of all how the conception of “best practice” was constructed, contrasting in particular Young’s peripatetic reporting with Marshall’s local studies; and secondly, consider how this “best practice” was projected to both domestic and foreign audiences. James Anderson was a farmer who also read and wrote; but it can be assumed that there were few such “farmer-scholars” with the time, or the money, to purchase and read contemporary publications on farming. What then were the local mechanisms through which “good practice” was communicated, and how was this then reflected back in the County Reports and the texts of William Marshall?
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