Economic Change and the Expansion of the State (^) ‹ 93
• For a while, population would continue to rise, but eventually, as the number of people
far outstripped the agricultural yield, food became scarce and expensive.
• Scarcity and high prices eventually caused the population to decline.
• When the population was safely below the possible productivity, the cycle began again.
In the eighteenth century, several developments related to new wealth combined to
break this cycle:
• Agriculture became market oriented.
• Rural manufacturing spread capital throughout the population.
• Increased demand led to technical innovation.
The new market orientation of agriculture created a shift from farming for local
consumption to a reliance on imported food sold at markets. The introduction of rural
manufacturing put larger amounts of currency into the system and made the working
population less dependent on land and agricultural cycles, thereby breaking the natural
check on population growth.
Market-Oriented Agriculture
The increase in population created more mouths to feed. The existence of a vast colonial
empire of trade created an increasingly wealthy merchant class of individuals who both
bought land from, and affected the behavior of, traditional landholding elites. The result
was the destruction of the traditional manorial system in which landowning elites (lords
of the manor) held vast estates divided into small plots of arable land farmed by peasants
for local consumption and vast grounds, known as commons, where peasants grazed their
livestock. That system was slowly replaced by a market-oriented approach in which cash
crops were grown for sale and export.
The shift to a cash-crop system created pressure that led to the reorganization of the
social structure of the countryside. The traditional landowning elites abandoned their feudal
obligations to the peasantry and adopted the attitude of the merchant class. Cash crops cre-
ated a demand for larger fields. Landowners responded by instituting a process known as
“enclosure,” because of the hedges, fences, and walls that were built to deny the peasantry
access to the commons, which had been converted to fields for cash crops. Later, the land-
owners extended enclosure into other arable lands, breaking traditional feudal agreements
and gradually transforming much of the peasantry into wage labor. By the middle of the
eighteenth century, three-quarters of the arable land in England was enclosed informally or
“by agreement” (though the peasantry had not, in fact, been given any choice); after 1750,
the process continued more formally as land was enclosed via acts of Parliament.Rural Manufacturing
The increase in population also created greater demand for the other necessities of life, par-
ticularly clothing. In the feudal system, all aspects of textile production had been under the
control of guilds (which were organizations of skilled laborers, such as spinners and weav-
ers), which enjoyed the protection of town officials. Membership in a guild was gained only
through a lengthy apprenticeship. In that way, the guilds kept competition to a minimum
and controlled the supply of textiles, thereby guaranteeing that they could make a decent
living. In the eighteenth century, merchants faced with an ever-expanding demand for
textiles had to find a way around the guild system; the result was a system of rural manu-
facturing, known variously as cottage industry or the putting-out system.14_Bartolini_Ch14_089-098.indd 93 27/04/18 1:54 PM