The twenty years surrounding the regulation of Ashdown Forest in 1885 reveal locally complex tensions and interactions. Designed to ensure the environmental protection of the Forest and to end internal dissent among those connected to it, regulation failed. Instead, protracted in-place conflict continued, as working families rejected new legislation which threatened their livelihoods. So the new body of conservators was faced with balancing such protection with the customary uses by commoners, with the working practices of ‘foresters’, with resurgent calls for small-scale farming, and with the ever-increasing residential numbers by the 1880s, many seeking ‘nature’ and ‘the primitive’, but also social tone. And increasingly, from beyond the locality, came the calls for environmental protection, especially from the newly formed Commons Preservation Society, urged on by newspaper articles recommending the fresh air and ‘natural’ beauty of Ashdown to townsfolk as a rural idyll or for moral improvement.

After the Franks settled in the Levant, they sought a permanent logistic alternative to provide them with food. The first half of the twelfth century was the most significant challenge for the Franks when they sought to contribute to agricultural work in the Levant and participate in its economic system. Therefore, they were bound to deal with two natural and indispensable parallel aspects: First, entering into relations with the neighbouring Islamic environment and handling the positive or negative implications and second establishing settlement bases in this environment. This paper delves into Arab sources and rereads European narratives, trying to highlight the role of the Islamic countryside in providing a share of the food supplies of the Crusader cities, a matter that scholars have not addressed properly yet

Leicestershire experienced a uniquely pronounced shift from pastoral to mixed arable agriculture during the Second World War, with changes to farming practice being overseen and enforced by the County War Agricultural Executive Committee. The invasive powers of such Committees have led them to be criticised in recent historiography as an affront to individual freedoms. Opposition and resentment towards these policies would surely be most pronounced where they caused the greatest change – in Leicestershire. This article studies oral testimonies, alongside corresponding farm surveys from the period to provide a more objective basis for comparison, to reveal contemporary farmers did not share the negative historiographical characterisation of wartime policy. By the mid-1950s, agriculture in Leicestershire had embraced the ‘modern’ scientific methods demanded by the committees, but farmers’ recollections of the committee appear to span from favourable to, at worst, ambivalent. They considered the committee’s demands and methods necessary and for the most part, entirely reasonable.

The aim of this study is to observe the ability of Southern Italian municipalities to respond to and redefine the management of common lands following the national privatisation and partition policies promoted by the State during the second half of the nineteenth century. The hypothesis tested is whether, through the analysis of new archival sources such as management rules, it is possible to identify good practices of management of common lands, along with the presence of resilience on the part of local communities during a period defined as one of uncontrollable ‘decline’ for these resources. Three Apennine areas (Campania Region) were identified as the observation sample. The analysis revealed that for these specific cases, it is imprecise to speak of decline and a lack of propensity to develop good management practices, but rather of institutions that are attentive to the protection and preservation of their commons through specific rules.

This article analyses the views of experts and political discourse on river regulation, its objectives, and flood prevention in the rural Demer-Dijle catchment areas, the 1840s–1880s – a period marked by climatological extremes and agricultural transition. Via a close read of state archives and parliamentary discussions, we unravel different opinions and interests and find that not all flooding was unwanted. While the Ministry of Public Works, at first, aimed to better regulate water discharge and to improve watercourses for navigational purposes, it later prioritised agricultural interests. However, managing rivers coherently and efficiently was challenging because river powers were dispersed over ministerial departments, provinces, and municipalities that made coordinating upstream and downstream river works difficult. Floods often resulted in the drawing up of new plans, but their implementation often failed to materialise because the government had other worries and insufficient resources available while parliamentarians prioritised the interests of their constituencies.

Most studies of gamekeepers focussed on poaching and the role of the gamekeeper in society or were gamekeeper’s memoirs, but recently, Osborne and Winstanley and the current author have examined gamekeeper numbers in England at the county level, demonstrating variation across location and time, with significant differences between counties. This study undertakes, for the first time, a detailed examination of one county (Norfolk) from 1851 to 1921. Analysis of census returns revealed how the numbers and locations of gamekeepers varied between and within districts over time. Several factors that might influence gamekeeper numbers were examined, and the results suggested that geology, agricultural economics, and fashion were more important influences on numbers than poaching. The major employers of gamekeepers were concentrated in the west of Norfolk, in areas of sandy, acidic soils, where agricultural pressures drove the creation of large estates, readily converted to shooting.

Through an in-depth exploration into the Norwich weavers’ riots in 1829 and Swing Riot protests in Swanton Abbott, Norfolk, in January 1831, this article shows urban and rural protests were linked together in multifaceted ways. When these two protests are situated in the context of urban-rural relations, it becomes clear that the participants were part of an active renegotiation of the relationship between city and country brought on because the pressures of industrialization were pushing the two together in ways that many found threatening. Each of those involved had a different vision for what this relationship should look like, as well as a vested interest in ensuring this vision prevailed. By foregrounding how these participants approached the boundaries between urban and rural worlds, this research emphasizes the ways this boundary could be a crucial point of contention in early industrial Britain.

Ruminant livestock farming is predominant in England’s grassland regions, including the south-west of England (SWE). The common farming view that such regions are only good for growing grass amounts to a simplistic ‘traditionality of grasslands’ (TOG) narrative, which may discount the potential of these regions to align food production with diverse, sustainable consumption. We interrogate the assumptions underlying the TOG narrative through the analysis of contemporary and historical agricultural data sources and recent interviews with SWE food producers to reveal an SWE traditionality of mixed farming and diverse food production. By unsettling the TOG narrative, we draw attention to multiple elements intertwining physical limitations of land with powerful but mutable human-made limitations of the wider food system as drivers of land use in the SWE, underscoring the role and responsibility of policymakers to ensure wider dynamics of the food system enable the transition to diverse, sustainable food production in England’s grassland regions.

This paper examines the rise and fall of cottage nursing, a controversial approach to rural healthcare that was championed across the United Kingdom from the 1880s to the interwar period. Defying the strategies being used to professionalise nursing in urban centres, cottage nursing supporters argued that nurses for the rural poor should be recruited from the lowest social classes, given only the briefest training, and prepared to do both nursing and menial domestic work. Their critics espoused the noble ideal of providing the rural poor with only the best-trained lady district nurses from the apparent moral high ground, persuasively arguing that the ‘little knowledge’ given to cottage nurses was a ‘dangerous thing’ – both for patients and for the nursing profession. And yet, cottage nursing supporters boldly challenged this position, arguing that noble ideals and excellent standards could simultaneously be pursued on behalf of rural patients and at their expense.

The research reconstructs and analyses the role played by livestock associations in Italy during the 20th century. The article initially focuses on local associative experiences before World War II and subsequently on national associations, whose formation also depended on the goal of promoting the application of technical innovations. Their impact, specifically that of artificial insemination and semen freezing, has indeed influenced the production process in the livestock sector since the 1940s with genetic changes in animals for productivity purposes. Focusing on specific case studies (mainly Associazione Italiana Allevatori, but also ANAFI, ANARB, and ANABIC), the paper analyses the motivations behind the establishment of the associations, the relationships with members and public institutions, and finally, support strategies for breeders.