Agricultural Treatises Research Articles

Tulips: An Ornamental Crop in the Andalusian Middle Ages

Tulips: An Ornamental Crop in the Andalusian Middle Ages. The authors are working on the project “Crop Flora of al-Andalus,” which aims to recover the crop diversity of the Middle Ages in western Europe during the Islamic period. The documental sources of this study are all the agricultural treatises written in this territory and culture between the 10th and 14th centuries. Al-Andalus was the territory occupied by Islam between the 8th and 15th centuries, varying over time on varying regions on the Iberian Peninsula. In this period, a genuine agricultural revolution took place, as well as the incorporation into the Western world of many Eastern agricultural species. When we focused on the study of ornamental species used in gardens, courtyards, and houses, tulips could be identified in several texts, the main one being the ‘Umda, a botanical work written at the end of the 11th century or beginning of the 12th, probably by the agronomist Abu l-Jayr. Tulips are mentioned in this text 500 years before the first known references to their introduction into Europe, traditionally asserted to be from the Ottoman Empire to Holland via Austria, always in the 16th century. Thus the route of these ornamental bulbs in their passage from East to West must be modified.

Eighteenth-Century Editions of Virgil's Georgics: From Classical Poem to Agricultural Treatise

Eighteenth-Century Editions of Virgil's Georgics: From Classical Poem to Agricultural Treatise

The nature of authority: villa culture, landscape, and representation in eighteenth-century Lombardy

Italian villas are generally regarded as beautiful havens where a privileged elite, fleeing the harsh realities of the city, found peace and harmony amid buildings and gardens framed upon classical ideals of proportions, balance, and the natural. In her interdisciplinary book, Dianne Harris presents a view of villa life as it developed during the 18th century on the vast estates dominating the fertile Lombard plain. Governed by Vienna by a Habsburg regime bent upon increased tax revenues, the great landowning families lived lives fraught with tensions and contradictions. Although they retained many privileges and indulged in shows of wealth and social distinction, they faced mounting demands for reform and progress froman absolutist state. This book employs what Harris calls panoramic history to trace the mingling of enlightened reform and a culture of display in the design and functioning of villas and villa life in eighteenth-century Lombardy. Cadastral maps are juxtaposed with Marc Antonio Dal Re's famous prints of the delights of villa life; both are woven in to a wide-ranging investigation of the villas, their gardens,and crop-bearing fields and their representation in visual and written sources from agricultural treatises to books of etiquette. Combing this diverse material with a sharp focus upon the organization of space and class privilege, Harris shows how the villas served as centres of complex cultural and sociopolitical transactions, fashioning a landscape that was once a beguiling vista and a tool in the enforcement of a strict hierarchy of use and value. The book aims to reveal the complicity of landscape in the formation of culture and the structures of everyday life. It also elucidates the significance of Lombardy as a testing ground for Habsburg policies of enlightened reform in the social and natural orders.

Concepts of cost and profit in Chinese agricultural treatises: with special reference to Shengshi Nongshu and Pu Nongshu in the seventeenth century

This article analyses the use of the concepts of cost and profit in Chinese agricultural treatises. Special attention is given to the agricultural works Shengshi Nongshu and Pu Nongshu in the seventeenth century. The analysis shows how Chinese people applied the concepts of cost and profit to agricultural production. This paper also analyses the reasons for the lack of further progress of Chinese accounting in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It concludes that Chinese accounting reached its peak in the Ming and Qing dynasties under a feudal framework and that accounting development has been strongly associated and constrained by its social environment, including political and cultural constraints.

From the Encyclopédie to the Tableau économique : Quesnay on freedom of grain trade and economic growth

This paper investigates the evolution of Quesnay's economic thought between his Encyclopédie articles and the first edition of the Tableau économique. The rediscovery of a forgotten piece Quesnay included in an agricultural treatise — the Essai sur l'amélioration des terres — leads us to reconsider the origins of the first edition of the Tableau. This forgotten piece of writing is the missing link between Quesnay's first economic writings and the Tableau. It improves on the theory of grain trade liberalization Quesnay presented in his first writings on two levels. First, it reconstructs of his previous argument in order to give it a more coherent shape. Second, this text complements the Encyclopédie articles by a growth mechanism. Through a reconstruction of Quesnay's growth mechanism, we show that his argument is a significant analytical step toward the first edition of the Tableau.

Columella's attitude towards wine production

The purpose of this paper is to show that Columella was attempting to balance quality and quantity in Italian wine production during the 1st century AD. The economics of ancient viticulture, based on the figures of Columella, have been discussed elsewhere (Duncan‐Jones, 1974; Purcell, 1985) and will not form a part of this article. In his 12‐book agricultural treatise,De Re Rustica, Columella insists that neither quantity nor quality should be sacrificed, and that old varieties, especially theAminean, should not be discarded for new, more fertile cultivars from overseas.

Un moulin chinois du XIIe siècle

The mill presented in this article appears in a 12th century wall painting preserved in a Buddhist temple located at the foot of Wutai shan, in Northern China. As a whole, this piece belongs to the landscape painting tradition of the Song dynasty. Several of the scenes adjacent to this one illustrate the legend of Hariti, the child-eating ogress converted by the Buddha Sakyamuni. It is difficult, however, to establish a connection between this famous legend and the mill theme. This mill is very interesting in the history of techniques. It is one of the oldest paintings of a Chinese hydraulic facility that had survived to the present day. This painting is also older than all the pictures of hydraulic machines appearing in known technical and agronomic treatises. Finally, it uses a technology that is fairly complex for that time: the mill is equipped with a vertical driving wheel which actuates a dual mechanism consisting of a grinding mill and several trip-hammers. The painting, which seems to have been based on an original piece of equipment, shows the various mechanisms with extreme realism, care, and accuracy, thus allowing a detailed technical study. A comparison is necessary with the machines studied and shown in books printed at a later date, more specifically with those of Wang Zhen's Agricultural Treatise (Nongshu, 1313), since this book contains the machines that were copied over and over by all the treatises and encyclopedias until the 18th century. This comparison not only concerns the mechanical aspects, but it also applies to the evolution of the illustration style over the centuries. Apparently, this evolution is not toward greater technical accuracy. Finally, the article recalls the evolution of pounding and grinding processes in the history of techniques. It focuses on the linkage between the needs and the social and dietary customs on the one hand, and technical processes on the other. This linkage explains the differences between China and the West with respect to the chronological order of inventions and the relative importance of each of the grain processing techniques.

Les outils agricoles dans la Chine du XIVe siècle d'après le Nongshu de Wang Zhen

Olivier Guyonvarch : Agricultural Tools in Fourteenth-Century China in the Light of Wang Zhen 's Nongshu. This paper is a partial and annotated translation of the chapters (juan ) describing agricultural tools in the Agricultural Treatise of Wang Zhen. This study is not philological or litterary, but resolutely technical. The author is dealing with agronomical relevance of the text, compared with present knowledge. The tools that axe chosen are the most representative and of the most interest for non-specialist readers : the plow for plowing ; hoes, harrows, and rolls to prepare the seed-bed ; the drill ; small hoes and rakes for weeding ; knifes, scythes, and cradle-scythes for harvesting. Readers have thus an access to the technical environment of the Chinese peasant In other respect, the text presents clearly the specialization of the tools and die way of using them, according as they are used in dry farming or in irrigated paddy-fields.

A preliminary discussion of Chinese agricultural treatises in the style of "monthly ordinances" yueling

Cet article présente et analyse un type de traités d'agriculture, les yueling ("préceptes mensuels"). Partant des ouvrages les plus anciens, l'auteur considère successivement l'ensemble de la littérature existant sur ce thème et en montre les prolongements contemporains.

The Potteries of Vibienus and Rufrenus At Arretium

In the early history of Rome, commerce and industry were not considered respectable sources of income. The word locuples meant land-holding, and a senator's wealth was measured exclusively in terms of land1). By the first century these conventions were breaking up ; many senators had business interests in Sicily, Africa or the East, several are known to have been moneylenders, and some at least of the old Campanian trading families reached senatorial rank at Rome. 2) If commerce and finance had lost their stigma, perhaps industry too was becoming socially more acceptable. Small-scale industry developed naturally for domestic purpose on the estates of landowners, which were made as far as possible self-supporting. A character in Varro's agricultural treatise remarks in passing that one might keep spinners, weavers and other artifices on one's farm, and Varr? goes on to discuss the writings of the elder and younger Saserna, who stressed the importance of having claypits, presumably for the manufacture of bricks and tiles. 3) Tiles were apparently made at Asinius Pollio's villa at Alba, where examples bearing his name have been found, at the home in Bruttium of Q. Laronius cos. suff. 33, and perhaps at Cicero's

Some Effects of Selected Policy Programs on Agricultural Labor Mobility in the South

A review of major agricultural policy treatises written over the last two decades would suggest that economic policies of the type designed for agriculture generally have (or have had) the effect of slowing down farm-labor mobility.2 Nationally, this may be the instantaneous or short-run effect of such clearly designated agricultural policies as production control (under its various pseudonames) and price-support programs. But these conclusions are not so apparent if we examine individual regions such as the South, and if we concern ourselves with long-run effects. In addition, other policies (viz., monetary, fiscal, national defense, research, educational, etc.) and programs related to agriculture may be much more important and override both production control and price supports in their positive or negative effects on farm-labor mobility in the South. Relative to those other policies (e.g., monetary, fiscal, research, etc.), both those designed specifically for agriculture and those relating to the general economy, the net effects of agricultural production and price policies on labor mobility have not been too important in most areas of the South.

The New Agriculture in Lower Normandy, 1750–1789

ACCORDING to Lord Ernie, the period from 1750 to 1789 was, in spite of many dark features, the brightest period hitherto reached in the history of French husbandry, a period during which ‘we turn, as it were, from the sombre etchings of La Bruyère to the smiling pictures of Watteau’. It certainly was a time when the spirit of agrarian reform which was prevalent throughout Western Europe was blowing strongly in France, arousing great enthusiasms and aspirations. From the presses of France poured a spate of agricultural treatises, books and pamphlets deploring the existing agricultural system, proclaiming the virtues of the English system of capitalist farming, urging the emancipation of property and of sale from all restrictions in order to achieve increased production, higher profits, and the investment of more capital.

Some Economic Data from Cil, Volume XV

Previous articleNext article FreeSome Economic Data from Cil, Volume XVTenney FrankTenney Frank Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Classical Philology Volume 13, Number 2Apr., 1918 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/360157 Views: 24Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.