Overview

This book examines how European farmers responded to the economic and political challenges created by the First World War and the Great Depression. The difficulties of interwar Europe have been frequently explored, but rarely from the perspective of the agricultural sector, where two-fifths of the population earned their livelihood, mostly as small, family farmers. The traditional literature argues that the landed elites conspired to undermine many of Europe's young democracies after the Great War. This book shows instead that by the early 1920s most had either sold their land or seen it confiscated following the widespread land reforms of Eastern Europe, leaving the family farm as the dominant unit of production. The book advances several theories that place the family farmer at the heart of change and explores why some proved to be enthusiastic supporters of liberal democracy, while others preferred political ideologies as diverse as social democracy in Scandinavia or fascism in Germany and Italy. It explores the nuanced and evolving links between family farms and government interests, showing how this relationship varied in different countries and contexts across Western and Central Europe. The book discusses the impact of family farms on agricultural market trends, the influence of collective action on government policies, and the increasing politicization of farmers and rural populations more broadly. The book also sheds light on how agrarian problems and their solutions differed in industrial, agrarian, and transforming societies in interwar Europe. This book will be an illuminating read for scholars of economic history, comparative history and European history interested in agriculture and rural communities.

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9783031672835

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Reviews

“Simpson has distilled the essences from an enormous range of reading in both the agricultural and political literatures, written in the interwar years and since. Historians of individual European countries will find this book invaluable for setting their studies in comparative context. But more than that, it explains the impact of agrarian politics on rural economies and societies, and of agricultural structures and economics on the turbulent politics, across the whole of interwar Europe. It is a major achievement.” (Paul Brassley, Agricultural History Review, Vol. 73 (2), 2025)

Author Information

James Simpson is Emeritus Professor of Economic History at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain. He has published extensively in economic history, Spanish economic history, agricultural history, the history of the wine industry, and economic development in Spain and Europe.

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