Ducats were issued for the first time in the second half of the thirteenth century. Although practically invisible in Western Europe nowadays, they are still hoarded and used by the rural population of the Balkans. The wealth stored in them is considerable; its level does not show signs of structural decline yet, even in the age of the almighty euro. The history of the use of ducats in the Balkans can be divided into three distinctive periods. Using a descriptive economic-historical approach, the characteristics of these periods, their main evolutionary aspects and particularities are being observed and explained. An overview of countries issuing ducats in the Balkans is given and some economic comparisons used to illustrate the significance of ducats as an economic phenomenon. Finally, the very important question of the use of ducats in jewelry in the Balkans is considered.

Translated by Laura Cunniff

Scholars tend to interpret the European peasantry's incorporation into mass politics at the beginning of the twentieth century in terms of two equally extreme situations, citing either the peasantry's support for traditional oligarchies, or its anti-capitalist radicalism. By contrast, this article explores how the confluence between a broad network of peasant families and leased agricultural properties in the Valencian region of Spain helped generate mass support for an anti-liberal (and eventually Francoist) legal system. The authors highlight the uniqueness of the social and productive context of Valencian agriculture during the late 1800s and early 1900s, as well as the tensions that existed between landowners and tenants. Such tensions, they argue, did not stop these two groups from efficiently collaborating in favour of an economic orientation that was both developmentalist and politically anti-liberal.

Using the 1881 census, we have tracked 1172 individuals who left their birthplaces in the villages of Billingsley, Chelmarsh, Highley and Kinlet in south-east Shropshire. This has allowed us to investigate the destinations and motivations for rural migrants in the second half of the nineteenth century. Half the migrants (fifty-two per cent) remained in rural environments; a further eighteen per cent moved to rural market towns. Thus only thirty per cent of the sample moved to truly urban destinations. Furthermore fifty per cent of the adult male migrants remained as agricultural labourers or in closely related occupations; even in the urban cohort twenty-one per cent followed agricultural-related occupations. Using the Armstrong classification of social status, it was not possible to measure any significant increase in status following rural to urban movement. Thus most rural migrants in this sample did not move to urban locations; instead rural to rural movement, making use of traditional skills, was apparently perceived as the most beneficial strategy.

Poaching is commonly portrayed as the archetypal nineteenth-century ‘rural’ crime, particularly associated with agricultural districts of southern and eastern England. This study argues that this interpretation is misleading. Judicial statistics collected from the mid-nineteenth century suggest that poaching was much more widespread in the North and Midlands than has previously been acknowledged. These industrialising regions largely determined the national trends in poaching in the second half of the century which have usually been considered to be characteristics of rural society in the South. The South shared neither the national peak in prosecutions of the mid-1870s nor the dramatic decline in prosecutions thereafter. It considers a range of possible explanations for these different regional trends. These include a discussion of the potential motivation of so-called ‘steam age poachers’ but also the growing regional specialisation in game preservation during the period and the different opportunities, and obstacles, this presented for poaching.

This article will discuss the background to opposition to hunting within the Labour Party before the Second World War, and in particular the role of the Humanitarian League and its successor the League Against Cruel Sports. It will highlight internal tensions of class and ideology that are still current today. It will examine the fate of two private members bills introduced in 1949 designed to prohibit hunting and coursing. Both bills were heavily defeated after the intervention of the Labour Government. This article will examine the reasons the post-war Labour Government used to oppose the bills before drawing some general conclusions about the Labour movement and blood sports. It will be argued that the primary reason why the bills were defeated was the strong desire of the Government to preserve its relationship with the farmers and the wider rural community.