Technology Adaptation: Agricultural Revolution in 17th–19th-Century Britain 261than passive through farmer-to-farmer extension mechanisms; and there is consid-
erable evidence that technologies, once adopted, were the focus of experimenta-
tion so as to make the appropriate adaptations to suit local conditions.
Farmer-to-farmer Extension
Farmers spread technical knowledge through rural tours and surveys, publications,
farmers’ groups and societies, open days and informal training.
Farmer tours, visits and surveys
The first systematic attempt to survey farming practice in Britain was undertaken
by the Royal Society in 1664. In order to investigate ‘what is known and done
already ... and ... what further improvements may be made in all the practice of
husbandry’, a questionnaire of some 50 open-ended enquiries was circulated to
farmers throughout Britain (Lennard, 1932; Thirsk, 1985). Only 11 replies sur-
vive, and these describe the various ploughs in use; the uses of different mixtures
of lime, marl, seasand, seaweed and manures for different soils; the many varieties
of cereals; the use of clover, and the preference of farmers for using ‘seed grown in
a ... soil ... at least different from the nature of that ground where they intend to
sow it’ (Lennard, 1932).
A step forward from this academic exercise was for the principal investigators
to make rural visits themselves. The 1700s were an age of global exploration and
colonial expansion, and travel itself became a symbol of intellectual growth and
moral discovery (Rogers, 1971). Travel became easier too, with improved roads,
more comfortable coaches and improved supply of fresh horses at inns. However,
even the fastest stagecoaches could travel at only 12–15km/hr, and the smaller par-
ish roads were frequently impassable during winter and in wet conditions (de La
Rochefoucauld, 1784; Addy, 1972). In the early part of the 1700s surveyors tended
to focus on urban life, particularly the activities of the royal courts and aristocracy,
but by the end of the century the focus had shifted to the countryside and to the
method of surveying itself.
Daniel Defoe toured Britain in the 1720s and wrote of the economic and
social conditions he observed (Defoe, 1724). Despite his eye for detail, his focus
was at regional rather than farm level and he commonly missed local diversity;
parts of Suffolk, for example, were ‘applied chiefly to corn’ or ‘wholly employed in
dairies’. In addition, his ‘Tour through the Whole Island’ was probably a compi-
lation of visits made over many years – it lacks, for example, the detail about
daily weather conditions that obsesses later tourers. In contrast, Samuel Johnson
studied ‘rural salt processing industries whilst his contemporaries studied castles’
(Curley, 1976). Johnson insisted that to know life well, he had to see it first
hand, regarding travel as essential ‘to test the principles had from books’ and to