The ambition of Boydell Studies in Rural History is to publish the best and most influential work in agricultural and rural history, and on the cultural history of the countryside. Whilst anchored in the rural history of Britain and Ireland, it includes within its remit both Europe and the colonial empires of European nations (both during and after colonisation). It does not assume the superiority of any particular approach or methodology: some books in the series will be strongly rooted in the documentary record, others quantitative, and a few will use oral history. All will be aware of the record of landscape and buildings.
The series is as much concerned with productivity and the changing technology of agriculture as the exercise of power in the countryside by both landlords and employers. It acknowledges the importance of the town as the focus of rural activities and the city as the market into which produce was sold. It sees agriculture as never being still for long, but in a constant state of change, reacting to markets. It takes the countryside to be a contested space which landowners and governments, farmers and workers tried to shape for their own advantage. The history which the series wants to tell is not just one of landowners but is equally the story of those who lived and worked in the countryside.
