During the last quarter century, China's agricultural sector has undergone a dramatic transformation from collective to private production, resulting in marked improvements in quality of life for most rural citizens. However, economic development in the countryside has been highly uneven,...

This book applies an economic and environmental perspective to the history of landscape and the rural economy, highlighting their inter-connections through specific case studies. After explaining how the author made his discoveries and when they started, it analyses relations between documentary...

Part 1. Preliminaries -- Chapter 1. Strategic Locations -- Chapter 2. Sources: Artefacts -- Chapter 3. Sources: Documents -- Chapter 4. Post-war Time Shift -- Part Two: Localities -- Chapter 5. Chalk Downs -- Chapter 6. Heathland -- Chapter 7. Lot Meads -- Chapter 8. Drove Roads -- Chapter 9....

This chapter considers the linkages between agricultural development and rural non-farm activities. The chapter is motivated by growing evidence that non-farm activities provide an increasingly important share of rural incomes in many low-income questions, questions about whether increasing...