The enclosure movement (13th–19th centuries) in Britain privatized common land, driven by landowners seeking higher efficiency, profitability, and, particularly from the 16th century, the increased value of sheep grazing. This shift, moving from subsistence to commercial farming, replaced communal fields with fenced, individual holdings.
Wikipedia +4
Key Drivers for Enclosure:
- Increased Productivity: Landowners argued that enclosed fields, which allowed for better techniques like crop rotation and selective breeding, were far more efficient than open-field systems.
- Profit Maximization: The rise of the wool trade made converting arable land to sheep pasture highly profitable, incentivizing the consolidation of land.
- Social and Political Control: Enclosures allowed wealthy landowners to gain exclusive, legal ownership over land previously accessible to villagers, removing the rights of the common people.
- Agricultural Revolution: Large, fenced farms were integral to the adoption of new, more efficient farming practices, such as growing turnips and potatoes, which significantly increased food production.
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Key Effects:
- Dispossession and Migration: Many villagers lost their livelihoods, forcing them to move to cities to work in the factories of the Industrial Revolution.
- Rise of Capitalism: It transformed traditional, communal agriculture into a capitalist model of private, managed farming.
- Protests: Enclosures, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries, resulted in significant social disruption and protests known as "enclosure riots".
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Common use and productivity/efficency are not compatible.
Productive, competent individuals co-operating is not the same as a communal venture. Especially after three generations.