Apostles of Inequality

Rural Poverty, Political Economy, and the Economist, 1760-1860

Jim Handy (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

302 Seiten

2022
University of Toronto Press (Verlag)
978-1-4875-6353-0 (ISBN)

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Apostles of Inequality explores how changes to land use and ideas about political economy in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century England drove cottagers from the land and impoverished rural workers.

Between 1760 and 1860, the English countryside was subject to constant attempts at agricultural improvement. Most often these meant depriving cottagers and rural workers of access to land they could cultivate, despite evidence that they were the most productive farmers in a country constantly short of food.

Drawing from a wide range of contemporary sources, Apostles of Inequality argues that such attempts, driven by a flawed faith in the wonders of capital, did little to increase agricultural productivity and instead led to a century of increasing impoverishment in rural England. Jim Handy rejects the assertions about the benefits that accompanied the transition to "improved" agriculture and details the abundant evidence for the efficiency of smallholder, peasant agriculture. He traces the development of both economic theory and government policy through the work of agricultural improver Arthur Young (1741–1820), government advisor Nassau William Senior (1790–1864), and the editors and writers of the Economist, as well as Adam Smith and Thomas Robert Malthus.

Apostles of Inequality demonstrates how a fascination with capital – promoted by political economy and farmers’ desires to have a labour force completely dependent on wage labour – fostered widespread destitution in rural England for over a century.

Jim Handy is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan.

1. Introduction: “The Multiplication of Wretchedness”

Part I: Arthur Young, the Agricultural Revolution, and the Spread of Poverty

2. “The Yoke of Improvement”
3. “The Enchantment of Property”
4. “A Rooted Hatred Between the Rich and the Poor”

Part II: Political Economy and “the Great Lottery of Life”

5. Political Economy and the Rural Poor
6. Nassau Senior and the New Poor Laws

Part III: The Economist and a Political Economy “Ordained by Providence”

7. The Economist: “The Most Elementary Truths”
8. Bad Farming: The Ghost of a Dead Monopoly
9. Ireland: “They Lie Beyond the Pale”
10. Cooked Land, Cotton, and Slavery
11. Conclusion: “The Home-made Civilization of the Rural English”

Erscheinungsdatum	24.06.2022
Zusatzinfo	6 b&w illustrations
Verlagsort	Toronto
Sprache	englisch
Maße	159 x 235 mm
Gewicht	540 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Makrosoziologie
	Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre ► Finanzwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-4875-6353-1 / 1487563531
ISBN-13	978-1-4875-6353-0 / 9781487563530
Zustand	Neuware