Agromania

These were the years of agromania, the efflorescence of interest in all aspects of the rural economy – a passion that was easy to caricature but that betrayed a genuine shift in notions of political economy and priorities and values as well as in loftier and more superficial forms of sensibility.

A wave of ‘agromania’ was triggered by the sudden appearance in the immediate aftermath of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle of numerous tracts on improving farming – after more than a century of conspicuous silence on this front.