Britain

The “Agricultural Revolution’’ as a stimulus to the Industrial Revolution remains a much-debated topic. Some historians consider the label a misnomer that contributes to the myth that dramatic and far-reaching agricultural changes in the 18th century influenced to no small degree the launching of the Industrial Revolution. Other scholars have argued that the agrarian developments beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries and reaching fruition in the mid-1700s did indeed provide a solid foundation upon which industrial growth could be sustained until the late 19th century. This debate essentially is centered on whether one supports an evolutionary or revolutionary interpretation of the relationship of agricultural developments to the onset of industrialization. Despite the persistence of criticisms over the use of the term Agricultural Revolution, the fact remains that by 1750 significant political, economic, and social changes and the adoption of new farming techniques related to crops and livestock significantly boosted agricultural production, fed Great Britain’s growing population with a smaller agrarian work force, and helped in some degree to prepare the way for the Industrial Revolution.

Until the middle of the 18th century, agriculture was the most basic technology of Western society, and on its success rested the survival and continuity of the communities that it supported. The landscape had long been characterized by fields that lay open and uniform all the way to the horizon broken only intermittently by hedges, stone walls, fences, or clusters of trees. The typical scene at the turn of the 18th century revealed several groups attempting to survive off the land. There was a patchwork of small plots marked out by small boundary stones. Larger holdings were usually not continuous but rather scattered around the agricultural district. The small tenant farmers and cottagers who worked such land more often than not had the right to graze their few animals and gather firewood on the large expanse of common land throughout the countryside. Below these groups were the poorest families owning no land but who eked out a living by farming whatever parcel they could work in the commons where they built their shacks. By its very nature, agriculture had remained a very conservative endeavor, rarely entertaining changes that might create risk to traditional practices and thereby reduce yields. Thus, for more than a millennium following the fall of the Roman Empire, basic agricultural practices had remained virtually unchanged and provided little more than subsistence for the population. The important modifications to agricultural techniques that did appear in the Middle Ages such as the iron-tipped plow, the three-field system, the use of heavy manure for fertilizer, and the cultivation of narrow, rectangular strips had indeed increased yields, but these changes generally remained within the scope of the long-established cooperative village community.

Beginning in the 17th century, several major developments paved the way for the agricultural transformation that occurred in Great Britain. Europe once again experienced favorable climatic conditions that persisted well into the 18th century, a trend that proved beneficial to the newly emerging farming practices and techniques that greatly enhanced agricultural productivity. Furthermore, political developments occurred in Great Britain that, after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, gave impetus to agricultural changes that appeared over the next century. Parliament took action to free larger landowners from their previous heavy dependence on the monarchy, allowing them to gain absolute ownership of their estates. The last feudal tenures were abolished, and the government began to rely on revenues from excise taxes rather than taxes on land, a burden that fell increasingly on the poor. These shifts in land tenure and revenue collection served to free up capital so that larger landowners could make long-term planning and investment the cornerstone of their estate management. As a result, many of the historical agrarian relationships between landowners and their tenants, already in the throes of a long, visible change, eventually evaporated and the market place emerged as a major impetus for growth and prosperity.1

The changes on the land occurred slowly and gradually until the middle of the 18th century. Because of the fixed amount of British land, the only means to provide larger returns from the farms was to squeeze additional output from the existing land or to cultivate land previously seen as inadequate for agriculture. The classical economists of the 18th century—Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus—all concluded that sustained growth was not possible, as the state of agricultural productivity was static because the land needed to feed a growing population would eventually run out. This view centered on the notion that the food supply of a nation was directly proportionate to the amount of available arable land. It is understandable that this opinion was arguable in their eyes in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. However, it did not materialize because the massive changes wrought by the transformation of British agriculture proved more than sufficient to nourish its booming population.

What new approaches and practices stimulated these significant changes to British agriculture? It should be emphasized that during the late 18th and early 19th century, no radical agricultural inventions set the stage for the transition. The improvements that did occur were merely within the scope of existing technology, such as a modification of the moldboard on the plow to bury weeds, the introduction of the all-iron plow by the end of the 1700s, and then, shortly thereafter, interchangeable parts for plows. Rather, the significant development was that British landowners employed aggressive management and investment techniques. British farmers increased the land acreage under cultivation by reclaiming wetlands and cultivating lands previously not farmed. The British were certainly influenced by the Dutch example in the 17th century but took the approach to significantly greater heights. Many powerful and influential landowners aggressively pursued the consolidation of smaller, dispersed plots into larger ones. In many cases, livestock raising and the growing of crops became intertwined pursuits. Grain production more than doubled in the period 1600 to 1800 and new fodder crops appeared, and both trends meshed to support livestock through the winter months. The survival of additional livestock resulted in more manure for fertilizer and thus more enriched land and higher yields. In addition, selective animal breeding became an obsession, and the size and quality of herds increased significantly and provided further nutritional advances for the populace. These advances in agriculture found their impetus in the changing organization and ownership of the land brought about by a trend known as the Enclosure Movement.