📖 I've got a new chapter out on accounting as a technique of labour management in C18th English capitalist agriculture

In this volume of Farm Accounts @boydellandbrewer.bsky.social >>

When we imagine rural England on the cusp of industrialisation, therefore, we should include the thousands of poor youth who lived and worked on farms as unfree servants - they did not choose their master, and they could not choose to leave until adulthood.

When you picture exploitative child labour in C18-19th century England, you might think of a sooty-faced chimney sweep, or a small boy or girl crawling between machines in a cotton mill.

But the green and pleasant countryside was also populated by poor children working in oppressive conditions.

This focuses on a case study of Awliscombe, Devon, in which a relatively small group of yeomen used their powers under the poor law to systematically bind poor children to each other as servants (rather than provide relief to parents).

My new article on pauper apprenticeship is online and open access!

Bound to the soil (Part I): the origins of compulsory apprenticeship schemes in South-West rural England c.1670–1750

doi.org/10.1017/S026...

In the post today: a little article on the history of enclosure I wrote for an A-Level history magazine

A very helpful look at "Deep Research" apps and a sober conclusion:

leonfurze.com/2025/02/15/h...

Thanks to AI, we now know what the real Ned Ludd looked like

In an ironic twist that will surprise nobody, the history of the Luddites is now the subject of mass produced AI videos on youtube

In the world of Blinkist, billionaires acquire their wealth by developing a regular habit of reading synopses