Enclosure Movement

the english enclosures were a wrenching change for english society they've been described as a revolution of the rich against the poor and although they happen in england they have broader relevance england was becoming the first industrial society it was becoming a market economy and it was a colonial power so much of what happened in england happened elsewhere later today the metaphor of enclosures often applied to the expansion of copyright and patent law now in feudal times land was owned by the nobility and peasants used land that wasn't theirs in order to grow food to survive and in return for using the lord's land they owed duties to the lord they would provide him with a certain proportion of their crop and they would also have to work with him and obey him in other ways even freed needed access to resources such as firewood in the forest in order to make a living and over time these rights to access land were codified and became traditional and so when feudalism faded away peasant villages still used shared and common land such as shared pastures shared cropland sharing access to forests and fans for pete nonetheless despite the fact that this regime was successful for hundreds of years ultimately the commons were extinguished they were eliminated they were transformed into private property owned by individuals and the question i want to address is why well one of the primary arguments given at the time was that the commoners were lazy these were masterless men in a class society they worked for nobody but themselves when they grown enough food to live they had holidays they had festivals celebrations our forests and great commons make the poor that are upon them too much like the indians being a hindrance to industry and our nurseries of idleness and insolence so said john bellers a quaker reformer who was trying to help the poor and yet you can see his condescending attitude toward them now beyond these justifications one of the primary motives for enclosure was wool the nobility had not been very good with making a profit with their land that wasn't their goal they wanted prestige but with the onset of capitalism landowners realized they could make a lot of money in textiles which was one of the driving industries of capitalism but the problem was the land they'd like to raise their sheep on was occupied by the commoners if they could take that land back and raise sheep they could make a lot of money but there was a problem typically the commons were not actually owned by just a landlord they were divided up with different pieces owning uh belonging to different people often a peasant might own a little garden or a strip of the shared field now if all the people in a district agreed to enclose they could just amicably separate things up an individual might choose to enclose a little bit that he had but that might be a thin strip a farmland which isn't very practical to fence although it did happen apparently but where not everybody wanted to enclose there had to be another solution and that was parliament which was a representative at that time not of everybody but of the wealthier landowners now if parliament passed laws mandating that a district enclosed then even those who didn't want to go along with it would have to that's what happened what they did is they look at the proportion of ownership in a district if eight if the owners of eighty percent of the land wanted to enclose parliament would pass a law obliging the other twenty percent to go along and enclose also you can imagine who the eighty percent were and who the twenty percent were the eighty percent would typically be wealthy landowners and the 20 are probably the poor who are getting along with just barely enough to eat furthermore the peasants were at a disadvantage because they were illiterate and this was a time when law was becoming written in the past had been traditional common law often agreements were oral now things were written down and if a poor man was asked to prove that he had a common right to use land he couldn't produce any documents tenants were in the worst position of all they had had a right for hundreds of years to use land but the government when they were looking at rights looked at ownership of land so in the case of enclosures owners of property could be compensated for the loss of common right but tenants weren't they were left high and dry now in many cases enclosure acts required the owners of land to actually physically enclose the land with fences for a poor peasant this could be an expensive proposition he would have to build a fence and to do that he often had to sell some of his land to afford the cost once he'd done the enclosure he would discover in many cases that he didn't have enough land left to survive to live on and he had to sell the rest and go elsewhere looking for a way to make a living the injustice of the enclosures was fought hard by the poor who did things like destroying the crops of enclosers here's a peasant complaining should a poor man take one of your sheep from the common his life would be forfeited by law but should you take the common from a hundred poor men's sheep the law gives no redress the landlord to whom he is writing said you're being rude i'm not going to talk to you and presumably he lost his common right this produced a huge increase in populism that is destitution extreme poverty in england which was one of the major social problems of the time harsh laws were passed trying to deal with this some of them made it so that a man without work could be forced obliged to work for anybody who could take him sometimes these people were imprisoned even maimed a second charge of vagrancy after a first offense could result in execution well the industrial revolution was happening at this time and the factories in the cities had a great need for cheap labor and so the peasants the former peasants were perfect for this but what they found was a life very different from what they'd had before the peasants before had grown enough food to eat and then when they could they'd taken it easy in the factory the hours were very long 14-hour days were not untypical children had to work many of the machines were built to the height of children because that's who their workforces were and the pay was very very little it was just barely enough to survive here's alexander bearing a banker complaining to the government about the price of bread the laborer has no interest in this question he says whether the price be 84 shillings or 105 shillings a quarter he will get dry bread in the one case and dry bread in the other in other words for the industrialist if the price of bread goes up he's going to have to pay more to his workers because the workers will be paid barely enough to eat

Channel: tclim988

Views: 54,343

Keywords: Transition, to, capitalism, enclosure, movement

Id: YhZ7UruxRBs

Length: 7min 13sec (433 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2013