By reference to a wide range of sources and with an especial, but deliberately not exclusive, concern for events in Northern Durham, an attempt is made to reconstruct basic patterns of coalmining, population and enclosure. A second major task is to provide a framework of explanation for these patterns: to examine the factors which may have created and, in turn, destroyed them, and to explore ways in which the patterns may have been interrelated or interdependent. Rising demand for coal throughout the period 1551-1810, emanating chiefly from London, stimulated population growth within the mining districts, and the rise of an increasingly specialized industrial work force, in turn, put pressure upon agriculture to reform its technical and organizational structures in order to ease the task'of providing more locally grown food. Developments were not as simple as might be assumed from the above scenario, however. The variable attitudes and actions of decision makers were no less crucial than the uncertainties of natural resource endowment in determining the pace and location of developments through time and space, period and place. Landownership emerges as a dominant factor in understanding contrasts and similarities in the changing economic landscape of Northern Durham. An appreciation of the richness and variety of regional experience is essential to the formulation of descriptive or explanatory models of economic and social change.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:238830 |
| Date | January 1990 |
| Creators | Hodgson, Robert Ian |
| Publisher | Durham University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/961/ |
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