Parliamentary Enclosure essays

Parliamentary Enclosure essays Enclosure (inclosure) is the conversion by any means, legal, extra-legal or illegal, of open (common) lands; arable, meadow, pasture or waste into individual ownership, tenancy and use serveral(ty). (Tate, pp. 187) Parliamentary enclosure was a specific kind of enclosure initiated by Parliamentary act. Enclosure acts appointed commissioners to carry out the enclosure. They established who the landowners were and appointed a surveyor to value the property. The commissioners redrew boundaries to create consolidated holdings. All proprietors (including those opposed to the enclosure) received land in proportion to the value of their holdings in the open fields and their grazing rights on the commons. Enclosures were going on in England for many years but as the government began to believe that enclosing increases productivity, nearly all Parliamentary enclosures occurred between 1750 and 1850. By the late nineteenth century the class of the small farmer/landowner had disappeare d and this has become a controversial point discussed by many historians/economists attempting to evaluate the impact that Parliamentary enclosure played on this phenomena. This essay is not an attempt to provide a definite answer to the effects of Parliamentary enclosure on the small farmer, but rather to provide a reasonable argument that proves that enclosure did in fact have some effect on small farmers, and more precisely had negative social consequences on the already declining small holder population. This will be achieved through firstly discussing and evaluating the direct impact which Parliamentary enclosure had on the decline of the small farmer, namely the costs (expense and income) incurred. Following this my argument will be proven through analyzing the ensuing indirect impact on the decline of the small farmer provided by the opportunity for the larger farmers to capitalise. Lastly, I will present two recounts of the effects of s...