1st Edition

Agrarian Reform and Resistance in an Age of Globalisation The Euro-American World and Beyond, 1780-1914

Edited By Joe Regan, Cathal Smith Copyright 2019
    246 Pages
    by Routledge

    246 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book investigates the causes and effects of modernisation in rural regions of Britain and Ireland, continental Europe, the Americas, and Australasia between 1780 and 1914. In this period, the transformation of the world economy associated with the Industrial Revolution fuelled dramatic changes in the international countryside, as landowning elites, agricultural workers, and states adapted to the consequences of globalisation in a variety of ways. The chapters in this volume illustrate similarities, differences, and connections between the resulting manifestations of agrarian reform and resistance that spread throughout the Euro-American world and beyond during the long nineteenth century.

    List of Figures Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction ‘Agrarian Reform and Resistance in Global Perspective’ 1. Agricultural Modernisation during the Long Nineteenth Century: Connections, Comparisons, and Commodity Frontiers (Joe Regan and Cathal Smith) Section I ‘Land and Labour in the Americas’ 2. Living with Sugar: Small Farmers and the Challenge of Expanding Sugar Plantations in Campinas – Brazil, 1774-1830 (Laura Fraccaro) 3. "The General Strike": W.E.B. DuBois’s Interpretation of Slave Resistance during the American Civil War (James Oakes) 4. Agrarian Modernisation in Chiapas, Mexico: Reform, Resistance, and Revolution, 1876-1911 (Sarah Washbrook) Section II ‘Transatlantic Agrarian Comparisons and Connections’ 5. Agrarian Resistance to Modernisation and Nation-Building in the Confederate South and Southern Italy: East Tennessee vs. Northern Terra di Lavoro in 1861 (Enrico Dal Lago) 6. Natural Harmony and ‘True Civilisation’: The Ideological Impact of the Irish Land League on Anglo-American Liberalism( Andrew Phemister) 7. Books and Dirt in a Transatlantic World: Negotiating Agricultural Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Maine and Westphalia (Justus Hillebrand) Section III ‘Agronomy Within and Beyond the Euro-American World’ 8. Agricultural Education in Nineteenth-Century Hungary: A Response to the Challenges of the ‘Age of Modern Globalisation’ (Zsuzsi Kiss) 9. From European Roots to Australian Wine: International Exchanges of Agricultural Knowledge in the Nineteenth-Century Australian Wine Industry (Chelsea Davis) 10. From the Western to the Eastern Model of Cash Crop Production: Colonial Agronomy and the Global Influence of Dutch Java’s Buitenzorg Laboratories, 1880s-1930s (Florian Wagner) Section IV ‘European Rural Politics and Institutions’  11. What is a Peasant Movement For? Making Sense of Rural European Political Responses to Globalisation Between the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Daniel Brett) 12. Turning the Landless into Socialists: Agrarian Reforms and Resistance as Drivers of Political Mobilisation in Finland, 1880-1914 (Sami Suodenjoki) 13. Learning to Make Irish Agriculture Modern: Civil Society Elites, the State, and Learning Coping with the Challenges of Globalisation in the 1890s (Tony Varley) 14. Horace Plunkett, Co-operation, and an Irish Solution to the Transnational Problem of Rural Life, 1894-1921 (Patrick Doyle) Index

    Biography

    Joe Regan is an independent scholar and specialises in the history of Irish immigrants in the United States during the nineteenth century. He received a PhD in History from the National University of Ireland, Galway, in 2016.



    Cathal Smith is a Lecturer of English-Speaking Cultures and History at Zhejiang International Studies University (ZISU), Hangzhou, China. His research focuses on the investigation of American slavery and Irish landlordism from a comparative and transnational perspective.

    'Much of the history of capitalism focuses on industry and on cities. This important volume brings agriculture back in, showing that many of the world historical changes of the nineteenth century were rooted in the global countryside and its transformations. Marx infamously described peasants as "sacks of potatoes." This volume instead shows how the laboring, organizing, suing, striking, and mobilizing of tenant farmers, sharecroppers, slaves and debt peons shaped global capitalism in decisive ways.'

    Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of History, Harvard University, USA