Peat Bogs, Marshes and Fen as Disputed Landscapes
83
architecture – bizarre, disorderly, unenlightened practices?
33 Instead,
suggested the adepts of Voltaire and Montesquieu, look to England for
inspiration in order to reform both agricultural and social regimes. In
terms of agriculture at least, nothing epitomizes more clearly the prevailing mood of Anglomania than François and Alexandre de La
Rochefoucauld’s tours of southern England in 1784 and 1785. Their
father, the duc de Liancourt, Master of the King’s Wardrobe, was already a keen Anglophile as well as a social reformer, having established France’s first “École des Arts et des Métiers” on his estate to
the north of Paris.
34 His sons followed his practical example, taking a
house near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk in January 1784 and frequenting the great English agronomist, Arthur Young, whose farm stood
nearby. Their short agricultural tours of Suffolk and Norfolk in the
July and September of that year, in the company of Young, convinced
the brothers of the superiority of English agricultural methods: its innovative crop rotation system which did not require land to lie fallow,
its comprehensive use of enclosure, its novel use of carrots and turnips
as fodder crops on reclaimed fenland, and its consequent concentration of livestock farming. In fact, François de La Rochefoucauld, in
his journal of this 1784 tour, explicitly links English agricultural progress to its advanced form of political government, specifically to a
lack of state interference in farming, an equitable tax system which
“makes itself severely felt by the rich and very little by the poor”, citing also the great respect shown towards farming because “the highest
in the land engage in it”.
35 This last point, he notes, also has the advantage of an economy of scale: “Experiments are made on a big scale
by the [noble] amateurs and they are promptly taken up by the farmers”.
36 Sons of one of France’s oldest noble families, it is little surprise
that the La Rochefoucaulds favour this “top-down” model of agricultural Enlightenment. Yet, as François remarks, English agricultural reform works on all social levels because it is ultimately profitable for
___________________________
33 For more on this anti-“feudal” movement, see J. Q. C. Mackrell, The Attack on
“Feudalism” in Eighteenth-Century France (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1973).
34 Norman Scarfe, Innocent Espionage: The La Rochefoucauld Brothers’ Tour of England in 1785 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995), p. 1.
35 François de La Rochefoucauld, A Frenchman in England in 1784: Being the
“Mélanges sur l’Angleterre” of François de La Rochefoucauld, ed. Jean Marchand,
trans. S. C. Roberts (London: Caliban Books, 1995), pp. 197-98.
36 La Rochefoucauld, A Frenchman in England, p. 197.
83
architecture – bizarre, disorderly, unenlightened practices?
33 Instead,
suggested the adepts of Voltaire and Montesquieu, look to England for
inspiration in order to reform both agricultural and social regimes. In
terms of agriculture at least, nothing epitomizes more clearly the prevailing mood of Anglomania than François and Alexandre de La
Rochefoucauld’s tours of southern England in 1784 and 1785. Their
father, the duc de Liancourt, Master of the King’s Wardrobe, was already a keen Anglophile as well as a social reformer, having established France’s first “École des Arts et des Métiers” on his estate to
the north of Paris.
34 His sons followed his practical example, taking a
house near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk in January 1784 and frequenting the great English agronomist, Arthur Young, whose farm stood
nearby. Their short agricultural tours of Suffolk and Norfolk in the
July and September of that year, in the company of Young, convinced
the brothers of the superiority of English agricultural methods: its innovative crop rotation system which did not require land to lie fallow,
its comprehensive use of enclosure, its novel use of carrots and turnips
as fodder crops on reclaimed fenland, and its consequent concentration of livestock farming. In fact, François de La Rochefoucauld, in
his journal of this 1784 tour, explicitly links English agricultural progress to its advanced form of political government, specifically to a
lack of state interference in farming, an equitable tax system which
“makes itself severely felt by the rich and very little by the poor”, citing also the great respect shown towards farming because “the highest
in the land engage in it”.
35 This last point, he notes, also has the advantage of an economy of scale: “Experiments are made on a big scale
by the [noble] amateurs and they are promptly taken up by the farmers”.
36 Sons of one of France’s oldest noble families, it is little surprise
that the La Rochefoucaulds favour this “top-down” model of agricultural Enlightenment. Yet, as François remarks, English agricultural reform works on all social levels because it is ultimately profitable for
___________________________
33 For more on this anti-“feudal” movement, see J. Q. C. Mackrell, The Attack on
“Feudalism” in Eighteenth-Century France (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1973).
34 Norman Scarfe, Innocent Espionage: The La Rochefoucauld Brothers’ Tour of England in 1785 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995), p. 1.
35 François de La Rochefoucauld, A Frenchman in England in 1784: Being the
“Mélanges sur l’Angleterre” of François de La Rochefoucauld, ed. Jean Marchand,
trans. S. C. Roberts (London: Caliban Books, 1995), pp. 197-98.
36 La Rochefoucauld, A Frenchman in England, p. 197.