The Story of Enclosure and the Industrial Revolution 1

Enclosure and the Industrial Revolution, Part 1

- 2023.4.20 Nam Sangmin

I plan to publish a serialized account breaking the story of the Industrial Revolution into smaller pieces. The Industrial Revolution was a historical turning point that changed the way humanity lived. It is also a period of history that has been attacked by the old conservative order and later socialist revolutionaries, with many misunderstandings passed down about it. Let us clear up some of the widespread misconceptions about the Industrial Revolution by understanding the circumstances of the time.

- The Plague and the Collapse of the Manorial System

The Black Death that struck in the mid-14th century killed 60% of Europe’s population. In England, the population fell by one-third, from 6 million to 2 million. Rural areas, where 90% of the population lived, were hit especially hard. This raised the status of serfs and led to the collapse of the manorial system, the foundation of feudalism. As serfs were transformed into tenant farmers, wages rose and landlords’ incomes declined.

To keep the surviving serfs from leaving, lords began granting them freedom and paying them for their labor. From this point on, serfs began handling money for the first time. Between 1340 and 1380, during the Black Death period, the purchasing power of rural laborers rose by 40%. Later, inflation and the development of commerce and industry further increased the financial burden on nobles trying to keep peasants tied to the land. To stop endless wage increases, the landowning nobility responded through legislation. In 1349, two years after the plague reached London, the Ordinance of Labourers was proclaimed, introducing wage ceilings for almost all occupations, and by 1359 provisions were even introduced to punish workers who left their place of residence. These legal provisions would later inflict suffering on many of the poor in the period just before the Industrial Revolution. In any case, from the late 14th century through the 15th century, this was a golden age for English peasants. Peasants grew powerful enough that peasant revolts broke out rejecting government measures and taxation imposed by the nobility. It was also during this period, thanks to improving economic conditions among the lower strata of society, that large cathedrals and various church buildings of the late Middle Ages were erected and the Renaissance emerged.

- The Price Revolution That Spurred Productivity Growth

After discovering the New World in 1492, Spain went on to discover an enormous silver mine at Potosí in South America in 1545. Then, in 1563, mercury needed for silver refining was discovered at Huancavelica, near the port of Lima, and the amount of silver flowing annually from South America to Spain surpassed 200,000 kilograms. Although massive quantities of silver poured into Spain, Spain squandered 70% of it on a series of religious wars, causing an enormous amount of silver to spread throughout Europe. As a result, Europe experienced a prolonged inflation over 100 years, during which the price of silver fell to less than one-third of its previous level. This is known as the “Price Revolution.” As asset values gradually declined, merchants and industrialists came to play a greater role across Europe.

As this inflation known as “a price revolution” advanced, landlords (= nobles), faced with declining real income, responded actively in order to restore returns from their land. Because fixed rents led to diminishing income under inflation, a trend emerged in which, once contracts with tenant farmers expired, the land was reclaimed and re-contracted, thereby making the landlord’s ownership of the land explicit. At the same time, in response to demand for woolen cloth, a popular export at the time, the enclosure movement began, converting farmland into pasture. The land enclosed and turned into pasture was mainly common arable land that had long been cultivated by custom. As the serfs under them became independent tenant farmers under contract and landlords faced declining income, they began asserting ownership more clearly over the land under their control in order to increase returns from it.

“The 16th-century enclosure movement involved the conversion of common arable land into pasture and was coercively pushed forward by landlords, but it too was a form of response taken by landlords facing declining real income in order to increase returns from their land. In that process, the differentiation of the peasantry advanced.”

In the next installment, we will examine each of the enclosure movements that unfolded over three periods.

▶ Join the liberalism reading group:

https://open.kakao.com/o/g4Nn1uud

▶ Enclosure and the Industrial Revolution, Part 1:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0UGfYD-B64_S7jmL9mqPEDJDr3qfWQoZrLcn5HhFXc/edit

▶ Liberalism Resource Archive:

https://band.us/band/76473539/post/175

▶ The Enclosure Movement and the Industrial Revolution:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eJrRVSbtMx7NlkQi7QsBb2FhwVIxiQTPoF_Onmmc1tA/edit

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Original title: 인클로저와 산업혁명 이야기 1

Author: Jayujuui Ibmun Dokseo Toron Moim

Date: 2023-04-20

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=reading01&pn=3&idx=25542