enclosure movement
Fencing common fields
The enclosure movement was the centuries-long process in England of consolidating and fencing common agricultural lands into privately owned plots.
What had been open fields farmed collectively became individual property, displacing peasants who had relied on common grazing and farming rights.
The movement peaked in the 18th and 19th centuries, driving rural populations into cities and factories.
The enclosure movement transformed the English countryside and created a landless working class.
- private propertyIndividually owned assets
- property lawRules about ownership rights
- Acts of ParliamentEnacted legislative measures
- cottagersRural small-home occupants
- capitalismPrivate profit-based economy
Industrial Revolution · displacement · poverty · crop rotation · tenant farming · dispossession · peasant revolts · feudalism · commodification · class conflict · rural exodus · serfdom · land speculation · mechanization · yeoman · agrarian society · fencing · privatization
- 1700sMozart, Voltaire, colonial period, French Revolution, William III
- Early ModernRenaissance, 1500s, 1600s, Reformation, sixteenth century
- economic historystock market crash, Industrial Revolution, trade routes, Great Depression, gold standard
- livestockcow, cows, cattle, bull, bulls
- trade historycommerce, merchant, trade routes, traders, colonial economy
- displacementdislocation, dislodging, relocation, displacing, uprooting
enclosure movementcommon land
Collectively held open ground
open-field system · commons · village commons · collective farming · commonage
enclosure movementcommoning
Shared resource governance
open access · public domain · right to roam · freedom to roam · creative commons