KC
11-07-2013, 11:17 AM
Were the Enclosure Acts of 18th and 19th Century Britain necessary for the first industrial revolution or simply an example of exploitative public policy by Parliament?
Among the results of the Enclosure Acts was the movement of many peasants from the rural countryside to urban population centers. This excess in the supply of new labor certainly drove down factory wages, leading to the poor working conditions we often hear about in history textbooks about the Industrial Revolution. My argument is that without this act of Parliament, urbanization and industrialization still would have occurred, but wages and living conditions in urban centers would not have been so poor, since peasant farmers would have to decide for themselves whether it would benefit them to move to the city.
Excerpt from historian Joseph Stormberg's essay English Enclosures and Soviet Collectivization:
A typical round of enclosure began when several, or even a single, prominent landholder initiated it. In the great spurt of enclosures in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, this was done by petition to Parliament. A Parliamentary commission would be set up to work out the details and engineer the appearance of local consensus. Since, as Mantoux points out, the commissioners were invariably of the same class and outlook as the major landholders who had petitioned in the first place, it was not surprising that the great landholders awarded themselves the best land and the most of it, thereby making England a classic land of great, well-kept estates with a small marginal peasantry and a large class of rural wage labourers. Those with only customary claim to use the land fell by the wayside, as did those marginal cottagers and squatters who had depended on use of the wastes for their bare survival as partly independent [p. 35] peasants. In addition, better situated men often succumbed to the legal costs built into the enclosure process. The result was – in the words of J. L. and Barbara Hammond – that
The enclosures created a new organization of classes. The peasant with rights and a status, with a share in the fortunes and government of his village, standing in rags, but standing on his feet, makes way for the labourer with no corporate rights to defend, no corporate power to invoke, no property to cherish, no ambition to pursue, bent beneath the fear of his masters, and the weight of a future without hope. No class in the world has so beaten and crouching a history.20 (http://praxeology.net/SEK3-AQ-3.htm#AQ-3.n20.1)
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Given the role of political power in the process of enclosure, it does not seem unfair to view enclosure as collectivization of agriculture for the benefit of a narrow class. Whether or not it was the only way to increase agricultural efficiency or whether it did increase it to the degree often supposed are probably open questions. Folke Dovring writes that the enclosures “depended primarily on the de facto power of the landlord class.”25 (http://praxeology.net/SEK3-AQ-3.htm#AQ-3.n25.1) This naturally raises the question of whether or not England did not – at least in the agrarian sphere – follow a path closer to the “Prussian road” to capitalism than is usually believed.
http://praxeology.net/SEK3-AQ-3.htm
Among the results of the Enclosure Acts was the movement of many peasants from the rural countryside to urban population centers. This excess in the supply of new labor certainly drove down factory wages, leading to the poor working conditions we often hear about in history textbooks about the Industrial Revolution. My argument is that without this act of Parliament, urbanization and industrialization still would have occurred, but wages and living conditions in urban centers would not have been so poor, since peasant farmers would have to decide for themselves whether it would benefit them to move to the city.
Excerpt from historian Joseph Stormberg's essay English Enclosures and Soviet Collectivization:
A typical round of enclosure began when several, or even a single, prominent landholder initiated it. In the great spurt of enclosures in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, this was done by petition to Parliament. A Parliamentary commission would be set up to work out the details and engineer the appearance of local consensus. Since, as Mantoux points out, the commissioners were invariably of the same class and outlook as the major landholders who had petitioned in the first place, it was not surprising that the great landholders awarded themselves the best land and the most of it, thereby making England a classic land of great, well-kept estates with a small marginal peasantry and a large class of rural wage labourers. Those with only customary claim to use the land fell by the wayside, as did those marginal cottagers and squatters who had depended on use of the wastes for their bare survival as partly independent [p. 35] peasants. In addition, better situated men often succumbed to the legal costs built into the enclosure process. The result was – in the words of J. L. and Barbara Hammond – that
The enclosures created a new organization of classes. The peasant with rights and a status, with a share in the fortunes and government of his village, standing in rags, but standing on his feet, makes way for the labourer with no corporate rights to defend, no corporate power to invoke, no property to cherish, no ambition to pursue, bent beneath the fear of his masters, and the weight of a future without hope. No class in the world has so beaten and crouching a history.20 (http://praxeology.net/SEK3-AQ-3.htm#AQ-3.n20.1)
------snip------
Given the role of political power in the process of enclosure, it does not seem unfair to view enclosure as collectivization of agriculture for the benefit of a narrow class. Whether or not it was the only way to increase agricultural efficiency or whether it did increase it to the degree often supposed are probably open questions. Folke Dovring writes that the enclosures “depended primarily on the de facto power of the landlord class.”25 (http://praxeology.net/SEK3-AQ-3.htm#AQ-3.n25.1) This naturally raises the question of whether or not England did not – at least in the agrarian sphere – follow a path closer to the “Prussian road” to capitalism than is usually believed.
http://praxeology.net/SEK3-AQ-3.htm