22 pages, via online journal, Past explanations of why rural people respond as they do to external development interventions have emphasized the role of key limiting factors or critical characteristics (wealth, education, land tenure, etc.) which are thought to influence peoples' behavior in predictable ways. Efforts to promote tree planting and soil conservation in eight neighboring villages in the Philippines revealed that variation in participation did not reflect clear patterns based on existing household or village characteristics. Instead, specific responses to interventions reflected a complex, but interpretable interaction between existing socio-economic factors and historic trends or events. Characteristics like the degree of local knowledge, security of land tenure and community cohesion affected peoples' participation, in general, but their specific influence was neither predictable nor consistent between, and even within, individual villages. An appreciation of the specific historic context was often sufficient to explain these variations. The following historic trends and events were found to have important consequences for peoples' participation: migration and settlement history; family and group lineages; history of socio-political organization and conflict; history of physical isolation; labor history; economic–ecological history; environmental history; and past exposure to development agents. The paper concludes with a preliminary checklist of questions intended to assist researchers and development agents to discover relevant and interesting historical information about rural villages.
