The Master Should Know More: Book-Farming and the Conflict Over Agricultural Knowledge |
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| Authors: | James Fisher |
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| Institution: | Department of History, King’s College London, London, UK |
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| Abstract: | Eighteenth-century Britain witnessed a struggle over knowledge and expertise in agriculture that has been largely neglected. This article uses the social controversies surrounding ‘book-farming’ – the practice of farming with knowledge acquired from books – to highlight the wider conflict over agricultural knowledge. The development of agricultural instructional literature gave rise to tensions between an established labour-based and an emerging book-based system of knowledge, which mapped onto social struggles over control of the intellectual powers of production. Hostility to ‘book-farming’ from practical farmers was partly a response to the threat books posed to the customary knowledge of farm workers of various kinds. |
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| Keywords: | Agriculture knowledge books labour power |
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