ABSTRACT
The debate regarding the role of agriculture in the processes of economic development is a sound example of the cross-fertilisation between economic history and economic theory. In the 1950s, the economic history of English agriculture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries helped to a great extent to shape the views of many theoretical narratives. In these pioneer studies, agriculture appears as a crucial factor for industrialisation and that idea was for a long period of time very popular among economic historians. The relevance of historical analysis in the formulation of theories and the design of economic policies is the principal raison d’être for this book. We provide a large number of case studies to both help economic historians to understand the place of agriculture in modern European economic growth and to make a wide-ranging and long-term vision of this subject available to development theoreticians, agricultural economists and social scientists in general. This is useful not only for the understanding of the present and, above all, for the discussion of the most appropriate policies for the future of developing countries, in which the agricultural sector is still a significant part of the economy. The contributions in this book offer a renewed perspective, removed from the paradigms of interpretation which were especially predominant in the 1950s and the 1960s. While in the field of economic history these have been subjected to great debate, they still greatly influence researchers in other disciplines. Our aim is thus to describe the latest interpretations of agricultural development in Europe and, above all, its interactions with other economic sectors.
