IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v61y2001i03p640-662_03.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Parliamentary Enclosure And The Emergence Of An English Agricultural Proletariat

Author

Listed:
  • Shaw-Taylor, Leigh

Abstract

It has often been argued that parliamentary enclosure decisively increased the wage dependence of English agricultural laborers, primarily by extinguishing their rights to keep cows on common land. Yet the extent to which laborers had in fact enjoyed common pasture rights has never been demonstrated. This article fills that gap, by documenting the extent of laborers' common rights for ten settlements in the south and east Midlands. It finds that most laborers in these villages did not have common rights prior to enclosure and cannot, therefore, have been proletarianized by their loss.

Suggested Citation

  • Shaw-Taylor, Leigh, 2001. "Parliamentary Enclosure And The Emergence Of An English Agricultural Proletariat," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 61(3), pages 640-662, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:61:y:2001:i:03:p:640-662_03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050701030030/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elaine Tan, 2002. "Bull is Half the Herd: Property Rights and Enclosures in England, 1750-1850," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _046, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    2. Sharp, Paul & Boberg-Fazlic, Nina & Lampe, Markus & Martinelli Lasheras, Pablo, 2020. "Winners and Losers from Enclosure: Evidence from Danish Land Inequality 1682-1895," CEPR Discussion Papers 14616, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Aidt, T. S. & Leon, G. & Satchell, M., 2017. "The Social Dynamics of Collective Action: Evidence from the Captain Swing Riots, 1830-31," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1751, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    4. Runge, C. Ford & Defrancesco, Edi, 2006. "Exclusion, Inclusion, and Enclosure: Historical Commons and Modern Intellectual Property," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 1713-1727, October.
    5. Kumon, Yuzuru, 2021. "The Deep Roots of Inequality," IAST Working Papers 21-125, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    6. Tine De Moor, 2009. "Avoiding tragedies: a Flemish common and its commoners under the pressure of social and economic change during the eighteenth century1," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 62(1), pages 1-22, February.
    7. Blakeslee, David & Chaurey, Ritam & Fishman, Ram & Malik, Samreen, 2018. "Structural Transformation and Spillovers from Industrial Areas," IZA Discussion Papers 11886, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Tan, Elaine S., 2002. "'The bull is half the herd': property rights and enclosures in England, 1750-1850," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 470-489, October.
    9. Francisco J. Beltran Tapia & Julio Martinez-Galarrage, 2015. "Inequality and poverty in a developing economy: Evidence from regional data (Spain, 1860-1930)," Working Papers 0078, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    10. Ian Gazeley & Sara Horrell, 2013. "Nutrition in the English agricultural labourer's household over the course of the long nineteenth century," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 66(3), pages 757-784, August.
    11. Groeger, Andre & Zylberberg, Yanos, 2024. "The pick of the crop: agricultural practices and clustered networks in village economies," CEPR Discussion Papers 18804, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Lanot, Gauthier & Tribe, Keith, 2024. "Before Political Economy: Debate over Grain Markets, Dearth and Pauperism in England, 1794-96," Umeå Economic Studies 1025, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    13. José Miguel Lana Berasain, 2006. "Commons For Sale. Economic And Institutional Change In Nineteenth Century Northern Spain," Documentos de Trabajo (DT-AEHE) 0604, Asociación Española de Historia Económica.
    14. Bas Bavel & Auke Rijpma, 2016. "How important were formalized charity and social spending before the rise of the welfare state? A long-run analysis of selected western European cases, 1400–1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 69(1), pages 159-187, February.
    15. Kumon, Yuzuru, 2021. "Wealth Inequality in Pre-industrial Rural England," IAST Working Papers 21-124, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    16. Ogilvie, Sheilagh & Carus, A.W., 2014. "Institutions and Economic Growth in Historical Perspective," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 8, pages 403-513, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:61:y:2001:i:03:p:640-662_03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.