Twentieth‐century rural England: A case for ‘peasant studies'?

Reed and others have argued for the continuing existence of a peasantry in nineteenth‐century England. The present article uses the instance of an upland Yorkshire area to suggest that a ‘peasantry’ continued there until the mid‐twentieth century sustained and to some extent re‐shaped by trends in the national agricultural economy. Family‐centred farming on small acreages, low rents and capital inputs, flexible attitudes to work and the dual economy proved efficient mechanisms for surmounting economic conditions which were often disadvantagous to larger farmers. Investigation of other areas of England for similar phenomena is invited.