Fen drainage enriched wealthy landlords while destroying peasants’ common-supported livelihoods

Evidence

The economy of the fenlands had been maintained by an ecological balance between human needs, animal grazing, crop yields, and soil fertility for hundreds of years of peasant tradition. Each peasant had free access to the common regardless of his or her wealth. The drainers destroyed this balance and threatened the means of support of the fen dwellers without supplying alternative employment. Although the gentry generally supported the draining, which would mean larger land areas to rent and increased income, an occasional lord saw that the draining “instead of helping the general poor … would undo them and make those that are already rich far more rich.” — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 296

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Fen drainage transformed both ecology and inhabitants’ livelihoods through struggle — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 293; Contemporaries opposed fen drainage on ecological rather than merely economic grounds — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 301; Rentier classes accumulate savings through usurious exploitation of underfed peasants (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Landowning strata profit directly from keeping peasants impoverished and degraded #corroborates (0.82)
• The enclosure movement destroyed rural community through theft of common land #corroborates (0.80) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 101
• The English enclosure movement dismantled rural communities by seizing common land. #corroborates (0.80) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 101
• Rentier classes accumulate savings through usurious exploitation of underfed peasants #expands (0.75)
• Bourgeois landed property recast peasant customary rights as theft requiring punishment #expands (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 141