This article examines the local economy of a parish in south-east Essex during a period when economic, social and technological factors were transforming rural Britain. Record linkages are used to construct a microhistory of Hockley to analyse the exploitation of the landscape and rural livelihoods. Agricultural and occupational change reflected many national economic and social influences, but there are also counter examples to regional patterns of farming practice and large scale agrarian capitalist landownership. The agricultural depression of c.1875–96 effected a shift from arable to livestock farming and the development of market gardening facilitated by the railway. A reduction in agricultural employment opportunities, and the absence of a cottage industry for women, led to a significant out-migration of working-age people. The microhistory demonstrates that local factors, such as access to a tidal river, the timing of the arrival of the railway, the availability of brick-making clay and new trades provided livelihood opportunities and influenced the structure and operation of the rural economy.

Enclosure disputes have long attracted attention given their perceived political motivations, the importance of custom and customary practices in legitimising action and various forms of protest. Based on research undertaken at local and national record offices and the study of both written records and maps, this paper explores a series of disputes over common land in the wood-pasture countryside of Shropshire, placing them within the wider historiography concerning enclosure riots and popular protest. It complements the existing body of local and regional studies which have provided insight into the national historical context of the enclosure process. Historians need to examine economic and social developments at a local level to ascertain the causation of enclosure protest and the motivation of those involved. This evidence suggests that disputes arose between lords and tenants over the loss of customary rights and also neighbouring manorial lords as a result of ownership or boundary disputes.

Through a case study of dairy products in Spain, this article discusses the evolution of what economist Louis Malassis called ‘food consumption models’ in the West from the Second World War. Two distinct consumption models are identified: a first model based on the massification of milk consumption, and a second model featuring decreasing dairy consumption, an increasing role for second-degree processed products and the emergence of new consumer segmentations. Rather than a sudden shift from the first to the second model, there was a punctuated sequence comprising an intermediate transition period in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Using an evolutionary political economy approach, I argue that the key to this transition was a transformation in consumer preferences resulting not only from changes in nutritional discourse, but also from changes in the profit making strategies of dairy agribusinesses and from the interaction of both trajectories of structural change with consumer agency.

This article considers the Dukeries estates of north Nottinghamshire in the heyday of aristocratic power and prestige, from the mid Georgian to the mid Victorian period. It poses a contrast between visitors' impressions of the area as one of constancy and continuity, a point of reassurance in an age of political and social upheaval, and the reality of internal changes from within. Closely crowded as these estates were, their aristocratic owners competed with one another to fashion the most economically viable and aesthetically pleasing symbol of status and power. The article pays close attention to the hold which picturesque principles exercised on individual owners and considers the role of plantation, animals and water in parkland management and improvement. Finally, the article considers the extent to which the estates were sites of contestation. Owners attempted to keep unwanted plebeian incursions at bay, whilst carefully controlling access on set-piece occasions such as coming-of-age festivities.

This article does not purport to provide an exhaustive overview of the history of rural high school education in New Zealand. Such information can be readily obtained from a number of existing historical studies in education. Rather, it seeks to identify and analyse the complex ways whereby those associated most closely with these schools, the students, teachers, and parents, steadfastly and successfully resisted the determined and repeated efforts of the Department of Education, its Directors, and successive Ministers of Education to introduce and popularise a highly ‘practical’, non-academic, agriculturally oriented curriculum in New Zealand's rural (district) high schools on the grounds of education and social efficiency. What becomes abundantly clear is that the educational demands and expectations of rural communities were markedly different from the official discourse. Rural communities expected, and sought access to, the same high status knowledge and highly prized public school examinations that offered ambitious urban youth the opportunity to gain enhanced economic, geographical, social, and vocational mobility. Consequently, the elevated status of traditional academic subjects meant that preparation for examinations came to dominate, and quickly overshadow, the curriculum offerings of the district high schools and this persisted for more than a century.

The prevalence and persistence of labor contractors in China’s mining industry during the first half of the twentieth century is frequently attributed to foreign management’s avoidance of directly managing Chinese laborers. However, in Japanese-controlled Fushun Coalmine, Japanese management’s reliance on labor contractors over four decades (1907−1945) represented an expansion in management’s reach in labor management. In this article, I examine the period of Japanese control (1907−1932), during which Japanese mine managers resorted to bureaucratic means to control labor contractors. Using labor process theorists, particularly Richard Edwards, to read company archival documents, I argue that salient features of the Chinese labor market, namely Chinese migrant labor’s mobility and international competition for Chinese labor, compelled Japanese managers to extend control over labor contractors.