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that it is possible to find "proof that transhumance is dependent upon climatic conditions by comparing the position of other countries of southernEurope which offer physical conditions similar to those in Italy" (p. 40). Perhaps it is this unanalytical approach to the roles of physical factors on the one hand and to social and economic (including cultural and political) factors on the other that leads to a rather cavalier treatment of the physical facts and economic assessments of individual regions.

The disappointment of this book, then, lies in its reliance on, and uncritical acceptance of, persistent stereotypes and in its failure to define its terms. It is founded on ill-defined and often out-dated economic, social and geographical concepts and--where it strays beyond the classical texts--on sometimes inaccurate facts. Even where the relevant literature is cited, the key messages seem to have been mislaid. What has happened to interdisciplinary research? The topic of sheep-rearing in Mediterranean Europe through- out history is long overdue for reassessment and for riddance of those 'Victorian modes of thinking' that, we have been shown here, still bedevil it. It demands, however, a scholarly treatment of many subject areas and reference to all historical periods. While such an approach is just as relevant to the present study of sheep-farming in Roman Italy, it is noticeably absent from it.

University of Nottingham CATHERINE DELANO SMITH

T. M. DEVINE (Ed.) Farm Servants and Labour in Lowland Scotland 1770 1914 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1984. Pp. xix+ 262. s

Perhaps the most cogent means of evaluating the peculiarities of agrarian labour relations in Lowland Scotland is to compare them with conditions in the English corn belt. The southern English model is one of disequilibrium: population pressure and the decline of domestic industry produced a glut in the labour supply creating a landless proletariat largely dependent on the vagaries of the cereal harvest. By contrast, the mixed character of Scottish farming distributed work across the year while industry competed locally for labour. The structural resilience of farm service allowed it to perform a bridging role in the 1780s and nineties, when subtenants were eradicated from an increasingly capitalized system, and to function as adjustment mechanism in the later nineteenth century so averting any crisis then. Adaptability was the key, the pervasive- ness of long-hire arrangements and payments in kind constituting an important prop to agrarian transformation. The survival of servants in husbandry cannot be dismissed as recalcitrance; rather, it represented a dynamic and integral component of the transition to agrarian capitalism.

Mapping data from their computer analysis of the Scottish Poor Law Report of 1844, I. Levitt and T. C. Smout quantify regional differentials in farmworkers' incomes. Scotland was a dual economy in the 1840s: the south was economically sophisticated, oriented around textiles and heavy industry; the north was characterized by a rooted, and often desperate, peasant desire for landholding. However, information on wage rates between 1790 and 1892 indicates a pattern of growing regional convergence. As A. Orr notes, although the southeastern Lowlands presented a showpiece of agrarian improvement, large farms and massive capital investment, "relations of production remained stubbornly traditional" (p. 29). Neither changes in living standards nor mechanization wrought profound developments in social relations. Instead, gradual and relentless shifts in customary arrangements engendered social polarities. The moral control of the 'gudeman's' family table gave way to a situation where the 'master' ate separately from the servants. In Aberdeenshire ploughmen lived apart from their wives and children as farm cottages became scarce, a loosening of bonds later exacerbated by the decline of rural trades in the face of factory competition. The small family farm nevertheless remained a crucial element. R. H. Campbell shows how the physical problems of milking large herds twice daily ensured the perpetuation of an extended

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family system of labour in Ayrshire, whilst M. Gray finds that in the Northeast farm service filled a life cycle stage between a peasant upbringing and acquiring one's own small plot. Recognition of this process underpins Ian Carter's critique of earlier writers' failure to comprehend the absence of sustained trade union organization in terms other than those incorrectly assuming proletarian false consciousness. Because wage-labour- ing was but a phase in a peasant son's career, resistance to over-arduous working conditions lay in the adaptation of traditional cultural forms such as the sardonic bothy ballads, or in rhymes like the "only commandment" from Fife:

Six days shalt thou labour and do all That you are able;

On the Sabbath-day wash the horses' legs And tiddy up the stable

Care of the horses, indeed, increasingly determined the hierarchy and routine of the farm. Sexual divisions of labour became clearer; women very rarely worked with horses whereas it was beneath a ploughman's dignity to pull turnips. By comparison with England, girls were extensively employed as outworkers and, where holdings were small and sons went into service, reliance upon versatile, but invisible, family labour was considerable. Society nevertheless regarded female servants as dependents, thereby justifying payments set at a moiety of the male rate. Innovation created imbalances in labour demand. Whilst changes in harvest technology served to demote women to ancillary tasks, in the Lothians the spread of turnip and potato cultivation drew migrant Highland girls into fieldwork and a sizeable body of Irish immigrants, particularly in the Southwest, performed seasonal and casual tasks.

A. Fenton illustrates geographical preferences for married and single servants in the changing spatial relationships between corresponding types of accommodation, namely cottar houses and bothies and chaumers. The demographic buoyancy inherent in such arrangements crumbled as depopulation took hold in the later nineteenth century. Since the 1830s the manufacturing sector had siphoned off young men from the countryside. By the 1890s shortages of female labour became a universal complaint as an army of girls joined the exodus to the towns. Scarcity prompted wage rises and improvements in living conditions, but rising expectations and new opportunities intensified apprehen- sions of a restricted social life on the land. Reflecting on the watershed years of 19 t zp 18, James Leslie Mitchell once remarked that "The ancient strange whirlimagig of the generations that enslaved the Scots peasantry for centuries is broken". The present volume elucidates not the final, though protracted demise of the small tenant, but the robust continuity of agrarian productive systems largely reliant upon hired family labour for their momentum. The two were, nonetheless, indissolubly interconnected. Herein we find the scaffolding for this seemingly diverse collection of essays.

Bedford College, London J . A . D . BLAIKIE

MARTIN WYNN (Ed.), Planning and Urban Growth in Southern Europe (London: Mansell, 1984. s

The countries of southern Europe have suffered long and serious neglect in social and economic research compared with those in the north and west. Now there is a quickening of interest. The history of urban planning has been as neglectful as other disciplines. Martin Wynn's book is therefore especially welcome. In it he has assembled a series of essays on the evolution of urban planning since the mid-eighteenth century in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Turkey. Each is written by an expert in the country concerned, fully conversant with the local literature and well able to place it in the context of the overall development of European urban planning. The text is well edited and only marred by the rather poor quality of the maps and photographs.