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Rural industry developed quickly in China before 1978. One main factor was the massive programme of Third Front construction, which focused on creating modern industry in rural areas in western China. Rural industrial growth was given a further boost by the establishment of many state-owned enterprises in China’s counties during the 1960s, and by the growth of commune-run industry in the 1970s. Chinese rural industry may not have taken off before Mao’s death, but it was firmly established thanks to these state-led industrialization processes.

By the late 1970s, Guangdong’s industrial and skills base was more rural, less geographically concentrated, and less dominated by traditional light industry than it had been at the time of the Revolution. The expansion of manufacturing capability in rural Guangdong under Mao provided the province with a solid foundation for the industrialization of the 1980s and 1990s. Inflows of foreign investment and foreign trade undoubtedly helped to promote growth in Guangdong, much more than in other Chinese provinces. Nevertheless, the pivotal role played by Guangdong’s Maoist inheritance is apparent. Even in this coastal province, where the flows of foreign capital and migrant labour were enormous, inherited industrial capability was a key influence on the rural industrial growth rate.

The death of Mao was a climacteric in both a quantitative and qualitative sense for China’s rural industrial sector. After 1978, the pace of industrialization accelerated, the pattern of ownership became much more diverse, and perhaps most important of all, rural industrialization led the ascent out of poverty by the rural sector. No country has industrialized at such a pace or with such success as post-1978 China. Nevertheless, there has been considerable variation in the pace of growth, and therefore a theory is needed which can explain both the overall acceleration and the spatial patterns of rural industrial growth.

There is an extensive literature which discusses the growth of rural industry in China. However, these focus on the role played by changes to government policy. In doing so, historical factors are largely ignored. This book rectifies this by documenting the extent of rural industrialization and learning-by-doing that had already occurred by 1978. It then tests the hypothesis that Maoist skill legacies played a crucial role in the post-1978 growth process using data on all of China’s 2,000 plus counties and with more detailed data on three provinces (Guangdong, Sichuan, and Jiangsu).

The stereotypical picture of Germany with an industrial West and an agrarian East ignores the phenomenon of rural-based industry in the East. This chapter found a surprisingly dense network of (mostly small-scale) industrial establishments, averaging about one unit for every 2 ½ sq. km in the seven eastern provinces. The density decreased by about 15 per cent as German industrialization proceeded apace in the late 19th century. From industrial censuses and tax records, the chapter details the extent of excise-taxed industry on rural estates. Further sections of the chapter deal with location of industrial enterprises, as well as analysing whether different types of owners tended to specialize in different types of industries, and revealing which individual owners had the most industry on their properties. The chapter ends with a consideration of factors affecting the location of these rural-based industries, using regression analysis of a simple linear probability model.

This chapter focuses on hunting and land use in woodland societies in medieval England. It examines the impact of deer parks, rabbit warrens, fishponds, and dovecotes upon the landscape, and shows why they were conducive to social conflict and unlawful hunting. The chapter explains that during the sixteenth century, the population increased because of the expansion of rural industries, and that this was accompanied by disparkment and disafforestation of game reserves and an increase of game consumption of the aristocracy.

This chapter challenges the view of the pre-1952 period as bereft of meaningful governmental reform programs, while revealing women's social reform activism in Egypt during these years to have transcended upper class urban issues. In its revisionist approach based on painstaking research and extensive interviews with Aziza Hussein and her colleagues, this chapter examines the Cairo Women's Club under Aziza Hussein, which founded the country's first rural day-care center and spearheaded literacy campaigns, family planning, and rural industry. As against the notion of decaying social organs and an unconcerned government, the project involved active cooperation between the private and public sector, while setting a new standard for women's activism by empowering rural women as development agents. Not only does this chapter expose readers to Aziza Hussein as a pioneer in Egyptian social reform, but it also shows how these activities set a pattern of social reform followed after 1952.

This chapter argues that late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artists seem to have been especially attracted by quarries, treating them as a means of exploring modernity through the lens of rural romanticism. Quarries regularly appear in paintings in many of the artists associated with rural modernity: William Rothenstein, Edward Wadsworth, Walter Bell, Roger Fry, and J. D. Fergusson, among them. Appreciating that there is no single way of categorising and representing quarries, this chapter (the first ever study of this important subject) explores many of the common themes to be found in paintings of quarries in the first half of the twentieth century. It considers a wide range of artists and art-works — the majority of which are owned by rural art galleries — in close relation to the history of rural industries in such regions as Cornwall, West Yorkshire, and Edinburgh.

The parish database shows major variations in trends and timings of population changes in less urbanized areas of Scotland. Even within parishes, people increasingly concentrated into larger villages and towns at the expense of more remote areas. The critical minimum size for settlements increased over time, but depended on distance from other larger places and on whether a locality became more than just a centre for agricultural activity. Mining and factory industry were key sources of growth even in many rural areas but caused major legacy problems as they collapsed. Fishing and its related activities increasingly concentrated on a small number of large centres. Transport hubs, administrative and school infrastructure, and large-scale retail facilities were dependent on, but also supported, population size. Agrarian systems varied widely across Scotland and each produced its own pattern of population sex ratios, migration, and change.