Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 2 (2006), pp. 257–273

his paper provides a comparative analysis of economic evolution in the upland communities of Switzerland, Scotland, France, Italy and Spain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the start of European industrialisation, these communities were mainly composed of peasant families which combined the income and resources from their small farms with the earnings from off-farm activities. Industrialisation brought into play three mechanisms which substantially transformed these economies: farm specialisation, the emergence of employment opportunities in industry and services, and rural-urban migration. The timing of the impact of these mechanisms is shown to have varied from region to region. 

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