Overview

First published in 2006. This book contributes towards a more just appreciation of the relative importance of the different major social groups in the life of the country. It deals in the main with the economic history of the landed interest, and with its role as a social group and includes much agrarian and some industrial history as seen from the landowners' point of view. The first seven chapters of the book aim to present an analysis and description of the main elements in the institutions and way of life of the landed classes, suggesting their significance for society at large, and emphasizing the forces of change which were at work within an order which in many ways presented a remarkably stable appearance to the outside world. The last five chapters take up the theme of change and examine the dynamic elements in the economic social and political life of the group, in a sequence of chronological subdivisions of the century and a half with which this book is concerned.