This was an utterly fascinating book on a area that I've read about in fiction but didnt understand how the land ended up that way and now I do! A great resource!

Living in North Yorkshire for about 20 years I had always heard strange stories about 'The Fenmen' from Lincolnshire and none of them were very kind, and usually very derogatory.

After reading this intriguing and revealing book from James Boyce the seed of this regional rivalry became very clear.

Imperial Mud explores the vast regions of southern and eastern England (Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and Lincolnshire) that if not for massive human intervention would revert to swathes of fenlands with islands of solidity peppered throughout, back to how it was pre-Norman invasion.

There were a couple of real surprises reading this book, the first of which was huge in that the Fenlands could support quite a large population as they were extremely 'productive'. I'm loathe to use that word as that was the idea behind the draining and enclosure of common land, but the common residents of the fens were unusually 'rich' in livestock and other foodstuffs.

The other was the politicising of the enclosure and how long it took, and how the othering of the Fenmen was used to garner sympathies from outside the area, and this othering was so strong it's still common in 21st century North Yorkshire.

A brilliantly written and explained piece of research, so many insights into how common land worked in fen areas and how politicians were still extremely self-serving throughout history.

I received a copy of this on NetGalley in exchange for a review.

What a fantastic read. Often when reading various books about other topics from this era, one hears about the beginnings of the enclosure process and some of the elements that went into it, but I have never read a book that so fully explains the drainage projects and their purpose.

Not only is this a well organised book with a lot of crucial detail, but the author has a style of writing that is friendly to readers who may not be scholars or have deep familiarity with the subject at hand. I really enjoyed reading this book and found myself stinging a bit from the overall sense of loss whilst thinking about what was once wildlands, and nature being replaced by what would be considered progress by our modern minds.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in the Fens, and furthermore to anyone who would like a glimpse at what was.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

It's very interesting to have this discussion of colonialism so close to home and I think it's a great weapon in the arsenal of any geographical historian and general knowledge seeker.

Too many corrupt folks at the top of British society in the past. It's called the Napolean syndrome (but I believe that was initially applied to us persons of short stature) , I like to think of it applying to little islands with powerful people who see themselves as head roosters (my ancestors were driven out in Clearances.) Serves them right if they their little scheme backfired on them and left them with nothing. Great book! Makes me happy to read another about another plague on their house! Poor fens and their folks...it must please them to some degree as well!

Down the drain...

When most people think of the Fenland of eastern England they tend to think in terms of isolation, backwardness, incest and damp. A once-barren swamp made useful through drainage.
However, as this work by Australian historian James Boyce shows, while the Fens were transformed by drainage this was not to truly improve them, rather to 'improve' them by systematically changing them, through legal enclosure backed by force, from a sustained and sustainable community of collective land management that had existed for nearly a thousand years – based on a deep understanding of the ecosystem – to a private-profit system benfiting large landowners.
Taking place between the late 16th to 19th centuries – as mercantile power supplanted blood and title as the prime mover of the economy – this process took the familiar form of depriving the indigenous people of those common lands and customs that enabled a healthy self-sufficiency, thus forcing them into the new processes of waged labour and a debt-based economy. As part of this policy, those disenfranchised people were then persecuted and criminalised for being disenfranchised – a process that was repeated across Britain and its colonies..
There,was, however, spirited and organised resistance – albeit doomed to failure when an increasingly centralised force was brought to bear, and a legal system was codified and manipulated by the very people who sought to steal the land – across the Fenlands. Also, it soon became apparent that the drainage process was, in fact, counter-productive, leading to a gradual erosion of fertility. Ultimately, though, this wasting of the Fens might lead to their reverting to a landscape managed in tune to it's own rhythms – for steady yield - rather than against them for short-term profit.

Thanks to Icon Books and Netgalley for this ARC.

This book is very informative and interesting as used the fens as though it was a foreign or native land and the use of drainage and colonisation of the fens by outsiders in an imperial way