Social and Economic History - AP European History

The British Agricultural Revolution took place from roughly from 1700 to 1800, the eighteenth century. The British Agricultural Revolution witnessed great technological advancements and political reform which caused the supply of food to increase dramatically. One of the most important social and economic consequences of the revolution was that because of the Enclosure Acts—which granted British lords the right to purchase common land—many small scale farmers were forced to migrate to urban centres. This provided the raw manpower to fuel the Industrial Revolution in the next century.

The British Agricultural Revolution took place over the entire eighteenth century and was largely spurred by the introduction of crop rotation to the British Isles and the increased use of turnips and clover in fallow fields. This increased the crop yield in Britain exponentially, which allowed the population to nearly double in a century. This effect was a key instigator for the start of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, as many more people could be sustained without having to work in agriculture.

The Norfolk four-course system was an important part of the British Agricultural Revolution of the eighteenth century. It was a crop rotation system designed to grow different crops in the same soil at different times of the year. It generally involved a rotation of wheat, turnips, barley, and clover. The advantages were numerous: it allowed farmers to make a much healthier profit, it allowed livestock to be kept and fed year-round, it kept the soil fertile, and it provided greater protection against blights.

Prior to the signing of the various enclosure acts, much of British farming was done on a very small scale. Most farming was merely subsistence farming, done to support the family with a small amount left over as surplus. The land was generally commonly owned, or rather, was organized in an open field system in which land was divided into small patches worked by peasants. Enclosure Acts made this land private and led to the rise of large-scale agricultural production. This had numerous consequences for British society. It led to a massive surge in agricultural production and a decline in the number of people needed to work the fields to feed the population. This in turn caused many farmers to move either to the colonies (providing the raw manpower for British colonialism) or to move to cities (providing the raw manpower for the Industrial Revolution).

Robert Bakewell is widely considered one of the most influential figures of the British Agricultural Revolution in the eighteenth century. He was one of the first people known to selectively breed livestock, which led to healthier, sturdier, and more useful sheep, horses, and cattle. The effect of this cannot be understated, for it led to far fewer animals being lost to disease and greatly improved the quality and quantity of meat provided by farm animals.

To let a field "lie fallow” means to leave it unsown and uncultivated for a period of time so as to restore the soil's fertility and ensure that the nutrients in the soil can be replenished. Human civilization has long understood that using the same land over and over again, without interruption, will cause the nutrients in that soil to be depleted and ensure starvation in the long term. To get around this, people often let fields lie “fallow” for a period of time. One of the innovations of the British Agricultural Revolution was the realization that by rotating four particular crops, those crops would use different nutrients and some would even replenish the nutrients in the ground, leading to much less wasted time and space, and less frequent famine and disease.

Charles “Turnip” Townshend was a long-time British politician who upon retiring from public office popularized the use of turnips to keep soil fertile and prevent farmers from having to spend large periods of each year leaving their land fallow. This was an important step in the British Agricultural Revolution.

Jethro Tull was a British agriculturist who helped contribute a great deal to the advent of the British Agricultural Revolution in the eighteenth century. He was a deep thinker who wanted to apply the principles of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution to improving the practice of agriculture in Britain. To this end, he pioneered the horse-drawn seed drill and advocated for the use of horses instead of oxen. He also scientifically demonstrated the importance of frequent hoeing to keep the soil healthy.

The Waasland region of Belgium was historically a region with very poor-quality soil that led to frequent famine and starvation. It also led to necessary innovation, however. It is from the Waasland that the British imported ideas about the Norfolk four-course system of crop rotation and where Charles Townshend got the idea to use turnips to keep soil fertile and prevent it from needing to lie fallow.

The potato, originally a South American plant, had been a staple part of European agriculture for centuries by the time of the Irish potato famine in 1845. Estimates put two-fifths of the Irish population as solely dependent on the potato for sustenance, with the other proportion being largely dependent as well. After a blight decimated the Irish potato crop, people starved in large numbers, with the problem exacerbated by slow help from the British government. One million people died during the famine, while another million fled Ireland for other countries, lowering the island's population by about 25%.

The potato is said to have first been brought back to Europe by Sir Walter Raleigh, though this fact may be apocryphal. The potato grows easily in a wide variety of climates and terrains and was quickly adopted and grown across a diverse area of Europe. In countries like Ireland, it led to a dramatic growth in population in a relatively short time. Potatoes are susceptible to disease, and when a potato blight affected Ireland, much of the population died or was forced to emigrate.

Cornelius Vermuyden was a Dutch engineer who in the seventeenth century introduced Dutch land reclamation projects to Yorkshire and Lancashire in Northern England. This project turned land in Yorkshire and Lancashire into some of the most fecund and productive land area in England and was an important part of the massive increase in food production in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The Enclosure Movement took place gradually in England beginning around the thirteenth century, but really accelerated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries during the British Agricultural Revolution. The process involved consolidating all the small agricultural landholdings that existed under the “open field” system into a smaller number of much larger farms. This would have many consequences, but the most notable were the dramatic increase in food production and the forced migration of peasants from the countryside to urban areas in search of work.

Richard Arkwright developed the water frame in the second half of the eighteenth century. Along with the flying shuttle and the spinning jenny, it quickly revolutionized the textile and agricultural industries.

The term “Gentleman farmers” describes a class of people who own so much land that they no longer have to work it for either sustenance or profit.

During the Agricultural Revolution, the population of England more than doubled. The Agricultural Revolution meant that fewer workers could produce a greater surplus of food. A much higher population could be supported by a smaller number of workers than ever before. Many of the displaced rural population moved to cities providing the raw human manpower to spur the Industrial Revolution.

Coal had always been in abundant supply in Britain and its properties as a source of fuel had long been understood; however, it was genuinely considered too inefficient and harmful to the environment to be worth the effort it took to mine it. This was until Britain’s forests and supply of wood became depleted and the nation was forced to experiment with other means of fueling machinery. This led to several innovations in the mining of coal and the conversion of coal into fuel.

The flying shuttle was developed by John Kay in the 1730s and quickly revolutionized the textile industry in Britain. Along with the spinning jenny and the water frame, the flying shuttle encouraged the budding industrial revolution and gave extra life to cottage industry, as textiles became immensely cheaper and quicker to produce.

The spinning jenny was invented by James Hargreaves in the middle of the eighteenth century. It was an extremely important invention of the early period of industrialization. It mechanized the spinning wheel and made textile production far cheaper and more efficient.

Of course the steam engine would eventually be employed to match all of these purposes, but it was first envisioned, developed, and used to try and pump water from coal mines more effectively. In those days, coal miners were often delayed by water for long periods of time or else forced to work in even more dangerous and deplorable conditions. The invention of the steam engine helped in this regard immensely, particularly as it was improved over the course of the eighteenth century.