The Agricultural Revolution of the 1700’s and the Enclosure Movement

1. Mr. Regan The Agricultural Revolution of the 1700’s and the Enclosure Movement

2. Other Agricultural Revolutions Neolithic Agricultural Revolution (10,000 B.C. – 3, 000 B.C.)

3. Other Agricultural Revolutions • The Agricultural Revolution of the Middle Ages • Two field system to a three field system (1/3 of the land remains fallow each year) • Use horses rather than oxen to pull plows • Iron plow replaces wooden plow

4. The Agricultural Revolution – 1700’s • Three field system still highly inefficient and acted as a brake on European population growth. • Primitive agricultural techniques left little margin for error, often plunging regions into famine (1690’s --“The Famine Decade”) • Begins in the Netherlands and England (as most trends do) and involved the introduction of new crops and the application of new farming techniques. • “scientific agriculture” describes the bundle of changes in crop and livestock farming.

5. Charles “Turnip” Townshend (1674 – 1738) • Supports the use of nitrogen replenishing crops such as turnips, clover, and alfalfa. • These “fodder” crops proved useful as feed for livestock, whose manure was in turn used to further increase the output of fields.

6. The Potato • Introduced from the Americas • Easy to grow, rich in vitamins and versatile • Became the staple of the peasant diet in Ireland, Prussia, and Russia • A large family could subsist on as little as one acre of potatoes

7. More Land Cleared for Use • Terracing allows the Dutch and the English to reclaim swamps and bogs for crop growing. • Jethro Tull -- advocated the use of soil aeration through the use of the hoe. • Also invented the seed drill, which pushed the seed safely beneath the soil

8. Selective Breeding of Livestock • Breed the healthiest animals of each gender with each other to produce healthier, larger animals. • English government granted awards to those who could produce the fattest, meatiest cattle.

9. Agriculture • Scattered, open strips of land for farming are gradually abandoned • Had been under way in England since the 16th century • 1700’s -- Parliament passes the Enclosure Acts • Allows wealthy landlords to buy up “common land” and enclose it within larger manors which they controlled. • The destruction of the common lands produced an unequal system of landholding in England • A few,. large landholders at the top, some independent yeoman farmers in the middle and a mass of landless laborers at the bottom. • The loss of their common lands left the last group dependent on earning wages and drove many of them eventually into new urban, industrial areas as an unskilled labor force

10. Agricultural Revolution to Industrial Revolution • Britain’s advances in scientific agriculture represents an important cause of the Industrial Revolution, which we will discuss later. • Increased productivity “liberated” small farmers from the land • Many of these small farmers saw themselves as victims of the enclosure movement, “thrown from their land” into “hellish factories.”