Enclosure and the Yeoman

Enclosure and the Yeoman
Author: Robert C. Allen
Publisher: Oxford [England] : Clarendon Press ; Toronto : Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 1992
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Exploring the shift from medieval to modern institutions in English agriculture and their importance for productivity, distribution, and their contribution to British economic growth, Allen's pioneering study shows that, contrary to the general assumption of many historians, small-scale farmers in the open-field system were responsible for a considerable proportion of the productivity growth achieved between the middle ages and the nineteenth century. The process of enclosure and the replacement of these yeoman farms with large-scale tenant farming relying on wage labor had relatively little impact on the agricultural contribution to economic development during industrial revolution. Enclosures and large farms enriched landowners without benefiting consumers, workers, or farmers. Thoroughly grounded in archival sources, and underpinned by rigorous economic analysis, this book is a scholarly and challenging reassessment of the history of English agriculture.

Enclosure and the Yeoman

Enclosure and the Yeoman
Author: Robert C. Allen
Publisher: Oxford [England] : Clarendon Press ; Toronto : Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 1992
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Exploring the shift from medieval to modern institutions in English agriculture and their importance for productivity, distribution, and their contribution to British economic growth, Allen's pioneering study shows that, contrary to the general assumption of many historians, small-scale farmers in the open-field system were responsible for a considerable proportion of the productivity growth achieved between the middle ages and the nineteenth century. The process of enclosure and the replacement of these yeoman farms with large-scale tenant farming relying on wage labor had relatively little impact on the agricultural contribution to economic development during industrial revolution. Enclosures and large farms enriched landowners without benefiting consumers, workers, or farmers. Thoroughly grounded in archival sources, and underpinned by rigorous economic analysis, this book is a scholarly and challenging reassessment of the history of English agriculture.

The Enclosure Maps of England and Wales 1595-1918

The Enclosure Maps of England and Wales 1595-1918
Author: Roger J. P. Kain
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2004-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521827713

This book offers the first comprehensive study of the enclosure mapping of England and Wales. Enclosure maps are fundamental sources of evidence in many types of historical inquiries. Although modern historians tend to view these large-scale maps essentially as sources of data on past economies and societies, this book argues that enclosure maps had a much more active role at the time they were compiled. Seen from this perspective of their contemporary society, enclosure maps are not simply antiquarian curiosities, cultural artefacts, or useful sources for historians but instruments of land reorganisation and control which both reflected and consolidated the power of those who commissioned them. The book is accompanied by a fully searchable, descriptive and analytical web catalogue of all parliamentary and non-parliamentary enclosure maps extant in public archives and libraries and offers an essential research tool for economic, social and local historians and for geographers, lawyers and planners.

The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer

The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer
Author: James L. Huston
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2015-05-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807159204

Drawing on the history of the British gentry to explain the contrasting sentiments of American small farmers and plantation owners, James L. Huston's expansive analysis offers a new understanding of the socioeconomic factors that fueled sectionalism and ignited the American Civil War. This groundbreaking study of agriculture's role in the war defies long-held notions that northern industrialization and urbanization led to clashes between North and South. Rather, Huston argues that the ideological chasm between plantation owners in the South and family farmers in the North led to the political eruption of 1854-56 and the birth of a sectionalized party system. Huston shows that over 70 percent of the northern population-by far the dominant economic and social element-had close ties to agriculture. More invested in egalitarianism and personal competency than in capitalism, small farmers in the North operated under a free labor ideology that emphasized the ideals of independence and mastery over oneself. The ideology of the plantation, by contrast, reflected the conservative ethos of the British aristocracy, which was the product of immense landed inequality and the assertion of mastery over others. By examining the dominant populations in northern and southern congressional districts, Huston reveals that economic interests pitted the plantation South against the small-farm North. The northern shift toward Republicanism depended on farmers, not industrialists: While Democrats won the majority of northern farm congressional districts from 1842 to 1853, they suffered a major defection of these districts from 1854 to 1856, to the antislavery organizations that would soon coalesce into the Republican Party. Utilizing extensive historical research and close examination of the voting patterns in congressional districts across the country, James Huston provides a remarkable new context for the origins of the Civil War.

The Origin of Capitalism in England, 1400–1600

The Origin of Capitalism in England, 1400–1600
Author: Spencer Dimmock
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2014-06-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004271104

Incorporating original archival research and a series of critiques of recent accounts of economic development in pre-modern England, in The Origin of Capitalism in England, 1400-1600, Spencer Dimmock has produced a challenging and multi-layered account of a historical rupture in English feudal society which led to the first sustained transition to agrarian capitalism and consequent industrial revolution. Genuinely integrating political, social and economic themes, Spencer Dimmock views capitalism broadly as a form of society rather than narrowly as an economic system. He firmly locates its beginnings with conflicting social agencies in a closely defined historical context rather than with evolutionary and transhistorical commercial developments, and will thus stimulate a thorough reappraisal of current orthodoxies on the transition to capitalism.

The English Revolution and the Roots of Environmental Change

The English Revolution and the Roots of Environmental Change
Author: George Yerby
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2015-08-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317391659

This study brings a new perspective to a pivotal debate: the causes of the English Revolution. It pinpoints the economic motives behind the opposition to the crown, and shows their connection to the changing mind-set and political transitions of the time. Distinctively, it identifies the radicalism of the mercantile sphere, and the developing claim of "freedom of trade," the basis on which parliament challenged the king’s fiscal prerogative. Freedom of trade was associated with rights of consent, which were asserted as a guarantee of economic interests, and as a political principle. This informed the constitutional changes pushed through by parliament early in 1641, establishing freedom of trade by parliamentary control of the customs, and giving the assembly an automatic place at the center of affairs, the first requirement of representative government. Crucially, it was not the crown but parliament that appropriated the state interest, through an independent definition of national priorities. As England coalesced into a political and commercial unit, the open and communal patterns of medieval times were overlaid. The land itself came to be perceived and used in a different way. Freedom of trade had an agrarian aspect. An extended class of gentry and yeomanry occupied consolidated farms, displacing the smallholders from the common lands. With intensified marketing, the old moral restraints on trade and property died away. A more exploitative ethic undermined the balance of relationship with the land. The book makes an original connection between the English Revolution and the processes of environmental change.

Industrieentwicklung

Industrieentwicklung
Author: Franz Bosbach
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2009
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3598214278

Die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der eigenen Industrie war (spätestens) seit dem 19. Jahrhundert immer wieder Gegenstand sorgenvoller Blicke auf eigene Schwächen und fremde Stärken. Am Beispiel britischer und deutscher Debatten der jüngeren Vergangenheit untersucht der Band Erfolg und Misserfolg unterschiedlicher Strategien von Maßnahmen zur Steigerung individueller Leistungsbereitschaft bis hin zu großen Reformprojekten wie dem "Thatcherismus".

The Industrial Revolution: A Very Short Introduction

The Industrial Revolution: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Robert C. Allen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2017-02-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191016772

The 'Industrial Revolution' was a pivotal point in British history that occurred between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries and led to far reaching transformations of society. With the advent of revolutionary manufacturing technology productivity boomed. Machines were used to spin and weave cloth, steam engines were used to provide reliable power, and industry was fed by the construction of the first railways, a great network of arteries feeding the factories. Cities grew as people shifted from agriculture to industry and commerce. Hand in hand with the growth of cities came rising levels of pollution and disease. Many people lost their jobs to the new machinery, whilst working conditions in the factories were grim and pay was low. As the middle classes prospered, social unrest ran through the working classes, and the exploitation of workers led to the growth of trade unions and protest movements. In this Very Short Introduction, Robert C. Allen analyzes the key features of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, and the spread of industrialization to other countries. He considers the factors that combined to enable industrialization at this time, including Britain's position as a global commercial empire, and discusses the changes in technology and business organization, and their impact on different social classes and groups. Introducing the 'winners' and the 'losers' of the Industrial Revolution, he looks at how the changes were reflected in evolving government policies, and what contribution these made to the economic transformation. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Parliamentary Enclosure in England

Parliamentary Enclosure in England
Author: Gordon E Mingay
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2014-06-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317890337

Enclosure transformed the old open fields and common lands of England to create the modern rural landscape. It changed forever the life of many villages, but provided food for a rapidly rising population. Its methods and consequences were controversial - many rural poor lost their access to land - and the subject is still a cause of dispute. Gordon Mingay's authoritative survey guides the reader through the complexities of the topic. He describes the processes by which land was reorganised and analyses the impact of enclosure regionally. Throughout he stresses the extent of local variation which make the subject so complex.

Farm to Factory

Farm to Factory
Author: Robert C. Allen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2009-07-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0691144311

To say that history's greatest economic experiment--Soviet communism--was also its greatest economic failure is to say what many consider obvious. Here, in a startling reinterpretation, Robert Allen argues that the USSR was one of the most successful developing economies of the twentieth century. He reaches this provocative conclusion by recalculating national consumption and using economic, demographic, and computer simulation models to address the "what if" questions central to Soviet history. Moreover, by comparing Soviet performance not only with advanced but with less developed countries, he provides a meaningful context for its evaluation. Although the Russian economy began to develop in the late nineteenth century based on wheat exports, modern economic growth proved elusive. But growth was rapid from 1928 to the 1970s--due to successful Five Year Plans. Notwithstanding the horrors of Stalinism, the building of heavy industry accelerated growth during the 1930s and raised living standards, especially for the many peasants who moved to cities. A sudden drop in fertility due to the education of women and their employment outside the home also facilitated growth. While highlighting the previously underemphasized achievements of Soviet planning, Farm to Factory also shows, through methodical analysis set in fluid prose, that Stalin's worst excesses--such as the bloody collectivization of agriculture--did little to spur growth. Economic development stagnated after 1970, as vital resources were diverted to the military and as a Soviet leadership lacking in original thought pursued wasteful investments.