Agriculture, Economy and Society in Early Modern Scotland , ed. Harriet Cornell, Julian Goodare and Alan R. MacDonald

Dedicated to the late historical geographer Ian Whyte (1948–2019), this engrossing volume provides an important addition to scholarship in several themes, beyond economic and social history and into cultural, political, and environmental history. The book is inspired by a project on teinds (the Scottish equivalent of tithes), and its eleven chapters are based upon the proceedings of a conference held in Edinburgh in 2017. It is an attractive-looking book, emblazoned with John Slezer’s (1693) engraving of the peri-urban landscape around Dunfermline Abbey on the front cover. Setting out the agenda in the introductory chapter, editors Harriet Cornell, Julian Goodare and Alan R. MacDonald follow Ian Whyte’s ‘middle course’ between the extremes of a revolution and an evolution in agriculture in early modern Scotland. Although that period is the focus of the book, no fixed chronological scope is offered and the volume, refreshingly, looks to avoid rigid periodisation. In an expansive opening chapter, Goodare takes the reader away from traditional sources and explores several different ‘discourses’ (or expressions of opinion) about agriculture. This fascinating chapter draws on literary imagery, proverbs, verse, visual sources and economic writings to elucidate how ‘the cultural meanings of agriculture were articulated’. Its strengths lie in drawing out the importance of arable agriculture and showing that economic concerns gradually overtook discourses on the land and environment, while themes such as women’s work were less prominent.