This book interrogates the inevitability and practicability of full-scale, land-intensive capitalist agriculture in China, whilst analyzing the labor-intensive industrious revolution as an alternative rural development path. It presents a critical account of the recent rise of agrarian...

List of tables -- List of figures -- Introduction / Leen Van Molle, Yves Segers, and Paul Brassley -- The international perspective -- Natura non fecit saltus : the 1930s as the discontinuity in the history of European agriculture / Giovanni Federico -- International trade in agricultural...

In agricultural history, specialisation is usually considered as progress, turning peasants into market-orientated farmers and allowing them to escape from self-sufficiency. Recent developments in the field of productivist agriculture and the recent rise of alternative agriculture cast doubt on...