Agricultural Revolution, Productivity And Economic Growth

Throughout history a so-called agricultural revolution has been detectable in every age. From the Neolithic period, from historical Egypt, via to Rome, thirteenth century England, Britain in the 1860’s, and once more within the 1950’s, are all given dates to when agricultural revolutions have taken place.

In this essay, nonetheless, the time period `agricultural revolution’, is used to discuss with the, roughly, one hundred years after 1750.

In fact, the term itself is considerably deceptive, because the word `revolution’ means a full circle, or a cyclical return to an original starting point, whereas in this context the term is used to point a series of related events occurring in linear style, and according to some historians, stretching back some centuries earlier than 1750 and being part of, and central to, the economic revolution.

What did the `agricultural revolution’ consist of

As is usually the case, the answer is multi -causal, however there are a quantity of recognisable factors that can be pointed to. Firstly, and essentially the most contentious by dint of the distinction of opinion amongst historians, the elimination of frequent property rights to land, or `enclosure’.

The enclosure process of denying entry of cottagers and labourers to the farmlands and `commons’ of the parish, and the rights of use of those lands by personal acts of Parliament was a serious blow to the agricultural poor who relied on the commons for a serious part of their livelihood. The gathering of wooden and kindling for gasoline, the cutting of turfs and peat for the same objective, along with the pure resources of vegetation and game, plus the grazing rights for what, if any, cattle they might have had were all taken away.

It is essential to level out that whatever the influence that enclosure had, it was mainly regional in impact, only round a quarter of the country’s wastes and commons had been involved, and whereas there may be little doubt that individuals in sure parts of the country have been affected, some critically; it was on no account a national phenomenon and its significance greatly outweighs its results. It is worth noting, nonetheless, that another side of enclosure meant the `rapid accession to the cultivated area of huge tracts of commons and waste, and for the widespread fields a rapid conversion to the circumstances necessary for extra environment friendly farming’.

So that whereas enclosure was important in making ready the bottom for a more environment friendly means of producing meals, with out which the inhabitants could solely attain a sure dimension, as in accordance with the speculation that land being a set useful resource, there was a natural inhabitants ceiling that only allowed development when a sure food/person ratio was achieved,6 enclosure on this sense, refers to `official’ acts of pressured Parliamentary enclosure, while enclosure amongst small farmers as a matter of consent and mutual profit had been happening for some time.

Of equal significance is the impression of recent know-how and methods of considering which turned an basically organic and backward peasant economic system into a progressive and profitable trade. “For many years the agricultural revolution in England was thought to have occurred due to three main modifications: the selective breeding of livestock; the removal of common property rights to land; and new techniques of cropping, involving turnips and clover. All this was thought to have been because of a bunch of heroic people, who, based on one account, are `a band of males whose names are, or ought to be, family words with English farmers: Jethro Tull, Lord Townshend, Arthur Young, Bakewell, Coke of Holkham and the Collings.””

These males are seen by some, as having a major half within the transformation of the English agricultural system from a `peasant subsistence economic system to a thriving capitalist agricultural system, capable of feeding the teeming millions within the new industrial cities’.’ The twin impact of enclosure and the new ways and systems of working both contributed to the identical end, but in numerous ways. Enclosure had turned some, however not all; cottagers and labourers, into wage earners alone, without the supplementation that entry to the common land may deliver to their lifestyle.

While the brand new efficiency of farming strategies meant that much less man power was required to supply higher portions of meals than previously, this in flip meant that the degrees of agricultural workers as had been beforehand required, were required now not.

A consequence of falling agricultural wages and standards of living was the rising dependence on the demeaning system of poor relief that operated at this time.9 The poor were successfully tied to the parish, which controlled the system of reduction, so have been thus denied the chance to journey elsewhere to search out work. The vagaries of the `Poor law’ system contributed to creating a nasty scenario worse for those caught up in its complexities.

This together with high food prices, particularly through the Napoleonic wars, as properly as the widespread despair at the finish of those wars, due to amongst different components the huge demobilisation of an army that was not required, all contributed to the rural riots and unrest that took place particularly between 1816-1831.10

So how had been the agricultural poor to respond

Any authorized or official type of redress was denied to many, if not all of the agricultural labouring class. Given that any opposition to Parliamentary acts of enclosure have been to be heard in London, and that almost all of the poor never went successfully past their own parish boundary, meant that such acts were typically passed without any opposing voices heard by the fee responsible. Also, it would be a rare workingman, (it would invariably be a man) who may afford either the time or the expense of travelling to the capital from where ever within the nation he occurred to reside.

Given that literacy, and indeed articulacy, was a rarity amongst the poor, it would be a rare man who confronted with a room of M.P’s or commissioners may state the case effectively, or creditably, for either himself or the villagers he claimed to talk for. That left only one other course of action, protest.

• But who did, or might, the rural poor protest against?
• And what form could such protest take?

The historical past of the `agricultural revolution’ is suffering from several phases of unrest, riot and revolt. From the Luddite motion from round 1810-1815, to the Welsh `Rebecca’ protestors, the Galway `Levellers’ and the `Captain Swing’ riots and destruction of the 1830’s, there has been a sequence of decrease class, agrarian rebel actions.

In the case of the Luddite’s and the `Swing’ protests these took the type of the destruction of property, acts of vandalism in opposition to the machines that had been seen because the destroyers of livelihoods, and of the need for labour. Other types of protest have been additionally utilised, as within the case of the opposition to enclosure. But it is within the `Captain Swing’ riots of 1830-31, that’s seen as the agricultural poors ultimate and possibly inevitable, reply to the plight and misery they invariably found themselves in.

“The first threshing machine was destroyed at lower Hardres, close to Canterbury in East Kent, on the night time of 28 August 1830. The precise date is value recording, as the breaking of machines was to become the characteristic characteristic of the labourer’s motion of 1830, which, beginning in Kent, spread over a score of counties within the next three months. And yet machine breaking, whereas essentially the most vital, was only one of many numerous varieties that the labourer’s movement assumed. Arson, threatening (or `Swing’) letters; wages conferences; attacks on justices or overseers; riotous assemblies to extract money or provisions, or to enforce a reduction in rents or tithes -or even of taxes -all performed their part.”12

While `Swing’ protests have been violent, the only goal for the labourer’s ire was mechanical or inanimate, hayrick burning, or the smashing of machines. Not a single occasion of demise or extreme injury was recorded in the accounts of the time; various individuals could have been roughed up, or run out of the parish, however none significantly. In truth, some accounts of the later protests had been said to be almost festive in aspect!

This did not appear so to the authorities nevertheless; whose response to anybody caught or in any other case implicated was typically harsh, with imprisonment, transportation, and in some instances dying, being the outcome. In widespread with earlier protest actions, the `swing’ rioters were a motion with none recognisable leader; the very anonymity of signing threatening letters with the pseudonym `swing’ was a assure of that. Because there was no one to level to or accuse, the very name `swing’ took on an elusive, virtually supernatural aspect to it, including an air of concern and mystery to the letters, the recipients of which, might have in all probability attested to.

Although spread throughout several of the Southern counties, the unrest was not a half of a nationwide motion, the entire `swing’ phenomenon was strictly regional in nature and utility, and as such, was not likely to have any lasting effect, not lasting much past 1831.

Regardless of the actions of the agricultural poor, the `agricultural revolution’ could not be undone, the new methods that utilised less manpower to produce extra food than ever before couldn’t be solid aside, nor would the mass of the populace who were not affected by them permit them to be. The changes the `revolution’ introduced, allowed Britain to feed and help a major enhance in its inhabitants that it will not otherwise have been able to. The proven fact that this was achieved with a much smaller workforce enabled the excess to be diverted to the cities and the factories to kick-start another `revolution’, however this time an industrial one.