This paper introduces the agricultural interest structures of Germans in Austrian Silesia in the latter half of the 19th century as an element of modernisation of the countryside which significantly contributed to its economic, class and political emancipation, from the point of view of their gradual organisational construction and the principles of peasant association. It can be surmised that the milieu of agricultural associations, which were connected with other agricultural-economic structures in terms of their membership and interest, had the potential to advance the ideological elements of the nascent German agrarian movement at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The paper focuses on the key agricultural non-political associations along with their developmental trends which created this base in the region of Austrian Silesia. The author primarily relies on printed sources, because although the archive material devoted to agricultural associations in the region may seem very rich, it does not provide the necessary amount of relevant data. Given the current state of research, when the interest structures of associations are not given attention considering their role in the development of rural areas, this article seeks to enrich the professional discourse surrounding the issue.
Extensive medieval and Early Modern field systems have been preserved in English countryside. The article aims at achieving synopsis on English research for the purpose of explaining similar traces of past agricultural activities in the Czech Republic. In England, majority of preserved field systems consist almost exclusively of ridge and furrow, whilst in the Czech Republic strip lynchets and field boundaries are mostly detected. However, local ridge and furrow is mentioned many times in Bohemian documentary evidence. Comparison with British field systems already helped to put Czech research into a broader context (Dohnal 2003; 2006). The author therefore recommends employing British research in explaining Bohemian archive and iconographical materials on local ridge and furrow. The article describes the main results of exploring English ridge and furrow, its appearance, date of origin, purpose and variations. Other remnants of medieval landscapes (strip lynchets) are discussed as well. Special attention is paid to “reversed S” shape of many medieval fields, hardly explained phenom-enon related probably to complicated maneuvering with plough teams.