Others settled in the English colonies. English Poor Laws were enacted to help these newly poor. Some practices of enclosure were denounced by the Church and legislation was drawn up against it. However, the large, enclosed fields were needed for the gains in agricultural productivity from the 16th to 18th centuries.
This controversy led to a series of government acts, culminating in the General Enclosure Act of , which sanctioned large-scale land reform.
The Act of was one of many parliamentary enclosures that consolidated strips in the open fields into more compact units and enclosed much of the remaining pasture commons or wastes. Parliamentary enclosures usually provided commoners with some other land in compensation for the loss of common rights, although often of poor quality and limited extent.
Voluntary enclosure was also frequent at that time. Conjectural map of a medieval English manor. William R. After , the problem of untended farmland disappeared with the rising population. There was a desire for more arable land along with antagonism toward the tenant-graziers with their flocks and herds. Increased demand along with a scarcity of tillable land caused rents to rise dramatically in the s to mid-century. There were popular efforts to remove old enclosures and much legislation of the s and s concerns this shift.
Angry tenants impatient to reclaim pastures for tillage were illegally destroying enclosures. The primary benefits to large land holders came from increased value of their own land, not from expropriation. Smaller holders could sell their land to larger ones for a higher price post enclosure. Protests against parliamentary enclosures continued, sometimes also in Parliament, frequently in the villages affected, and sometimes as organized mass revolts.
Enclosed land was twice as valuable, a price that could be sustained by its higher productivity. While many villagers received plots in the newly enclosed manor, for small landholders this compensation was not always enough to offset the costs of enclosure and fencing.
Many historians believe that enclosure was an important factor in the reduction of small landholders in England as compared to the Continent, although others believe that this process began earlier.
Enclosure faced a great deal of popular resistance because of its effects on the household economies of smallholders and landless laborers. Common rights had included not just the right of cattle or sheep grazing, but also the grazing of geese, foraging for pigs, gleaning, berrying, and fuel gathering.
During the period of parliamentary enclosures, employment in agriculture did not fall, but failed to keep pace with the growing population. Consequently, large numbers of people left rural areas to move into the cities where they became laborers in the Industrial Revolution. Enclosure is considered one of the causes of the British Agricultural Revolution.
Enclosed land was under control of the farmer, who was free to adopt better farming practices. There was widespread agreement in contemporary accounts that profit making opportunities were better with enclosed land. Following enclosure, crop yields and livestock output increased while at the same time productivity increased enough to create a surplus of labor.
The increased labor supply is considered one of the factors facilitating the Industrial Revolution. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Search for:. The Enclosure Act Learning Objective Interpret the consequences of enclosure. Key Points Common land is owned collectively by a number of persons or by one person with others holding certain traditional rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, collect firewood, or cut turf for fuel.
In English social and economic history, enclosure was the process that ended traditional rights on common land formerly held in the open field system. Once enclosed, these land uses were restricted to the owner, and the land ceased to be for the use of commoners. Chemical Trespass, Community Rights, Events.
The Enclosure Movement or inclosure is the process which was used to end traditional rights, and has historically been accompanied by force, resistance, and bloodshed. The Enclosure Movement was a push in the 18th and 19th centuries to take land that had formerly been owned in common by all members of a village, or at least available to the public for grazing animals and growing food, and change it to privately owned land, usually with walls, fences or hedges around it.
The most well-known Enclosure Movements were in the British Isles, but the practice had its roots in the Netherlands and occurred to some degree throughout Northern Europe and elsewhere as industrialization spread. Some small number of enclosures had been going on since the 12th century, especially in the north and west of England, but it became much more common in the s, and in the next century Parliament passed the General Enclosure Act of and the Enclosure Act of , making enclosures of certain lands possible throughout England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.
The English government and aristocracy started enclosing land claiming it would allow for better raising of crops and animals particularly sheep for their wool. They claimed that large fields could be farmed more efficiently than individual plots allotted from common land — and the profit could be kept by the aristocrats who now owned the legally confiscated land.
Some claim this was the beginning of commercial farming.
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