THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION

By: Michael C. Metzger

During the high Middle Ages, approximately from 1200-1400 c.e., European society was predominately organized around an economic unit know as a manor. These manors were typically granted from a high-ranking lord or king. At the center of the manor not always geographically, though metaphorically was the castle where the lord or king resided almost always surrounded by a defensive wall. Attached to the manor was land as well as surfs. Spreading out from the castle one could find villages arranged in no particularly manner. Intertwined in this area surrounding the castle was also the agriculture fields, which were divided among the serfs. Perhaps the most important area in this arrangement was the common land. This area everyone could use for animals, to graze their cattle among other uses. The manor was designed for the most part due to the necessity to produce everything that was needed for consumption. Though items such as salt and coffee could be attained through foreign trade, which was very dangerous, making the price of the good very expensive, more realistically if there was a small surplus this could be traded in the rare town.

Towns in this period started off very small. Their incentive to trade with the manors was the due to towns not being able to effectively produce food. Housed in towns were craftsmen as opposed to surfs. The town folk can be loosely characterized as very early members of the bourgeoisie. The recognition of towns for the most part was done by Lords who would grant “town charters.”

During this period there is a major desire by kings to build powerful armies. Most European powers had to be good at fortification otherwise conquest was very easy. Therefore, there was a large search for money. Kings found allies in towns which during this period could raise a great deal more money than manors. To get the money kings were more than happy to assume the role of the town champion - fighting for town rights, against the local lords. This was the case across much of Europe.

One large exception could be found in Britain due to its geographic nature. As an island, conquest by a continental European power was highly unlikely, since there was no truly effective way to bridge the English Channel with a conquest force. This meant, England could turn its energy to other concerns. Lords put their energy into figuring out how to make the manor more productive. Their solution was wool, the “get rich quick” scheme of the day. To truly capitalize on wool, lords began to enclose common land. The ensuing agriculture revolution placed a great deal of pressure on peasants as common land was crucial to their rural existence. No doubt the biggest looser of this movement was the marginal cottagers and small holders. Eric Hobsbawm writes in his book Industry and Empire, that enclosure “transformed them and the labourers from upright members of a community, with a distinct set of rights, into inferiors dependent on the rich.” As the overall production of wool increased land lords made increasingly larger profits. This resulted in more and more peasants being thrown off their land entirely. These now landless peasants moved into towns.

This development for the most part of a landless class would lead one to believe that there some type of aid would be distributed. Peter Lindert illustrates in his book Growing Public that this was far from the case. He demonstrates very quickly that relief in most countries was non-existent. The leader of poor relief was England and Whales which he showed on page eight at the height of its poor relief provided 2.66 percent shares of gross national product towards poor relief. Most other European states excluding France, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands were grouped under the category of “all other countries” with “zero or negligible” percent shares of gross national product towards poor relief.

If any relief was provided to the poor Lindert writes it came from mainly three sources “direct government subsidies, direct spending by private charities, and the agency’s own asset incomes.” (p 43). In regards to relief from the church, Lindert writes “[s]uch non-government flows of poor relief were probably below a half of a percent of national product … except in the Netherlands.”

The creation of this large landless class, which had little support, caused many to look for solutions. One more interesting idea of the day, the "new world." Here Englanders could find that scarce resource, land, in abundant quantites.

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Metzger, Michael C. The Agricultural  Revolution. 21 October 2005. <http://www.hocuspocustours.com/> Date that you access this page.

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