| Although the statistical movement has been a well-rehearsed part of Victorian historiography, economic statistics have generally been overlooked and agricultural statistics have attracted very little attention from historians. The campaign for agricultural statistics took more than thirty years until a permanent system was established in 1866. This dissertation explores how their evolving form reflected this generation-long debate. In addition to published testimony to Select Committees and argument in Parliament, the dissertation draws upon Board of Trade papers, articles in newspapers, periodicals, and learned journals, and, above all, upon the archive of the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland. This has not hitherto been used by historians of statistics. The dozen letter books consisting of some 10,000 holograph pages and annual Sederunt books, relating to the experimental collection in Scotland in the 1850s, together provide a detailed picture of the negotiations required to make the statistics possible. The argument in this dissertation is fourfold. First, it is suggested that economic statistics took a distinctive course of development because of their uses and on account of the interest groups involved. Unlike the better known social and moral statistical campaigns, in agricultural statistics there was no single central elite. Secondly, until the 1850s, a primary role in this area was taken by such institutions as the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, otherwise marginal to the statistical movement. Thirdly, agricultural statistics raised issues with their own meanings at local, national and international levels. And fourthly, throughout the nineteenth century, it was recurringly argued that agricultural statistics would help prevent short-term fluctuations in prices particularly at times of crisis, prove long-term improvement and demonstrate agriculture's enduring preeminence in the face of industrialization. The dissertation concludes that the anticipated uses of "the knowledge" were seen to affect the balance of power in relationships between farmers, landowners, industrialists and merchants. This awareness framed the formulation of the statistics and determined the way they were collected. |
