Living with the land : introduction

Abstract

The histories of agriculture and rural life in the twentieth century, fields long dismissed by many historians as irrelevant or old-fashioned, are currently receiving renewed attention. Increasing urbanization and the growing importance of industries have moved attention away from what happens in the countryside. Yet neither has the countryside disappeared, nor have the numerous ways of living with the land lost importance for the various actors involved. On the contrary, as this volume shows, the number and variety of interactions between people and land have continuously grown over the course of the twentieth century. As editors of a handbook that aims to contribute to this refreshed interest, we have asked ourselves the following questions: “Why, why now, and why us?” The overall absence of rural spaces and the human and non-human actors inhabiting them from histories of contemporary Europe can (or might) be seen as an important motivation for a growing number of scholars to write rural histories, us included. Historical accounts narrating the history of (Western) Europe’s allegedly continuous modernization or liberalization, the centers of which nearly always were believed to be urban spaces, bring in rural spaces merely as theatres of war, exploitation, and attrition. While reading them, one might almost forget that Europe has consisted predominantly of rural regions for centuries. That three-quarters of the world population at present are living in cities, towns, and suburbs isarather recent phenomenon. In the not-so-distant first half of the twentieth century, most European citizens lived in rural areas; in 1960, rural dwellers still amounted to around forty percent of Europe’s population. Writing these rural and agricultural actors into contemporary European history by showing how they helped to shape it is what this handbook sets out to do. This means not only looking at the lifestyles of people living in the countryside but also recognizing them as activists fighting for their interests and lobbying for political recognition of their views on social inequality, nutrition, environment, or wildlife, to mention only some of the heavily politicized issues that bring rural populations into focus.