ABSTRACT
The nineteenth-century growth in the global trade of commodities stimulated demographic change on an unprecedented scale, and transformed people's experience of their environment. As nineteenth-century people moved, however, villages stayed in their minds. In 1820s England, Mary Russell Mitford authored a popular series of 'sketches of rural character and scenery', known collectively as Our Village. As print commodities, Mitford's tales travelled easily. They were especially popular in America and the British dominions, and were read by British residents in India. Henry Sumner Maine discussed village communities in his book Ancient Law. His belief that native society, preserved in village communities, was in its foundations 'diametrically opposed' to modern society, according to Karuna Mantena, 'provided an alibi for permanent, protective rule'. As with Ancient Law, Village Communities addressed a more general reader than its academic apparatus might suggest. Maine's ideas about village communities had a wide sphere of influence.
