Advances in Livestock Breeding During the 18th Century - An Evaluation of the Achievements of Robert Bakewell in the Light of Modern Population Genetics and Farm Practice

摘要

Robert Bakewell is one of the quintet of entrepreneurs including Jethro Tull, Lord Turnip' Townshend, Arthur Young and Coke of Norfolk whose achievements have become closely identified with the classic agricultural revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Since his death in 1795 historians have frequently paid homage to the pioneer. His biographer H. C. Pawson was the most effusive claiming that Bakewell's work had 'assumed an importance which has not been exceeded by any agriculturistbefore or since his time'. Lord Ernie was also admiring and regarded him as the man who had reduced stock breeding to a science, but in the most recent and scholarly investigation Nicholas Russell concluded that Bakewell's breeding failed to produce livestock with significant improvements in performance. In this present study to mark the two hundredth year of his death an attempt will be made to reassess different claims made about Robert Bakewell, including the degree to which he was genuinely pioneering new approaches or methods in the sphere of animal breeding. Attention will also be focused upon his achievement both in the creation of new breeds and their impact on the quality of livestock. Finally, the relevance of his techniques to the geneticists and livestock breeders of today will also be explored in this re-evaluation of the Bakewell legacy.