ABSTRACT
Rural society was a topographical and social patchwork in which the fortunes of rich and poor alike were bound up with the quality of the harvest, itself dictated by patterns of soil type and the rhythms of climatic change. Throughout the early modern period, agriculture remained central to the everyday concerns of most European families. A more sophisticated classification of rural society into farming regions should distinguish not only lowland fielden zones from upland pastoral zones, but also different types of pastoral activity practised in woodland or bocage, in fenland and marshes and in moorlands. Each of these might be in turn associated with a distinctive agrarian order. Local agrarian economies were gradually becoming integrated by processes of specialization and interdependence into regional, national and ultimately even international markets for food and consumer goods. An understanding of relations within rural society depends upon recognition of the relationships between various groups within the rural economy.
