This essay will discuss whether the good effects of enclosure outweighed the bad effects.

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HISTORY ESSAY By Alex Nathan                         March 2001

“THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF ENCLOSURE OUTWEIGHED THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS”

This essay will discuss whether the good effects of enclosure outweighed the bad effects.

In Britain in 1750, the farming system was changed from the open field system to the enclosure system by the government because there was not enough food being grown in the open field system. The open field system consisted of every farmer having his own strips of land, scattered about a few different fields. The number of strips the farmer had depended on how rich he was, so the poor peasants would have no more than four strips. The name open field system comes from the fact that there were no fences between the strips, just mounds of soil (which could have been used for growing crops). The peasants had just enough land to survive, and everyone (rich or poor) kept their cattle on common land. So, sometimes the peasant’s thin cattle, mated with the rich people’s fat healthy cattle, giving the peasants a chance to bring up fat healthy animals.

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But, when the open field system was abolished and the enclosure system brought in, there were many changes. Each farmer’s land was put together into a plot. The common land was also used for plots, so everyone had to keep their cattle on their own land, giving them less space for growing crops and giving the peasants no chance of having their animals mating healthier ones. The mounds of soil were replaced by fences, making the land enclosed, hence the name enclosure. The last period of the enclosure system was helped by a series of Acts of Parliament allowing ...

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