The English Enclosure Acts forced peasants off commons land into factory labor.

Evidence

But beginning in the thirteenth century and accelerating in the eighteenth century, the landowners began to realize they could make more money by using the land in ways other than tenant farming, such as raising sheep or doing large-scale farming, so they began to pass laws—“the Enclosure Acts,” allowing them to “enclose”—literally put up fences around—both the tenant-farmed land and the commons land. This, of course, left the peasants with no way to make a living, forcing them off the land and devastating communities. As refugees in their own country, peasants had few options but to go to the cities and work in the rapidly growing factories for very low wages, thus feeding the growing industrial system. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1365

Categorization

• SHARE: Good concrete narrative for teaching enclosure’s mechanism.
• XREF: connects to: What Hardin called the tragedy of the commons is really the tragedy of enclosure — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1375; The English enclosure movement dismantled rural communities by seizing common land. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory: A Marxist…, 101; Capitalism’s birth required peasants to lose autonomous access to common lands. (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• The enclosure movement destroyed rural community through theft of common land #corroborates (0.95) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 101
• The English enclosure movement dismantled rural communities by seizing common land. #corroborates (0.93) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 101
• Capitalism’s birth required peasants to lose autonomous access to common lands. #corroborates (0.92)
• Fifteenth-century British peasants had free entry to common land for subsistence. #qualifies (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 66
• The Times led demands to execute and transport English machine-breaking workers #complicates (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 261
• Serfdom’s abolition split the peasant’s fused roles into pure owners and pure laborers #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 601
• Machine-breaking revolts spanned a century and a half of English labor history #complicates (0.72) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 232