Industrialization and the Social and Economic Structure of Europe 419the middle of the nineteenth century. The average Eu-
ropean diet was poor by twenty-first century standards,
but it had significantly improved since the eighteenth
century, producing better general health, greater resis-
tance to disease, and higher rates of healthy reproduc-
tion.
The improved food supply is best seen in late eigh-
teenth-century Britain, where the population explosion
began. Despite restrictive tariffs on grain imports
known as the Corn Laws, Britain imported an increas-
ing amount of food after 1780, and this provided partial
support for a larger population. British grain imports
stood at 200,000 tons in 1780, rising to 3.7 million tons
in 1800, and then 7.5 million tons in 1840. At the same
time, the improvements in British internal transporta-
tion—canals, toll roads, and railroads—reduced food
prices in urban areas. Food shipment also improved as
new technology allowed the preservation of food for
transportation, beginning with the adoption of a sterile
canning process that a Parisian chef, François Appert,
had invented for Napoleon’s armies in 1804.
The greatest source of an improved food supply in
Britain, however, was an increase in British harvests so
significant that historians have called it an agricultural
revolution. The agricultural revolution involved both
extensive use of land (more acres planted) and intensive
use of the land (higher yields per acre). The stimulus to
both developments was simple: Grain prices rose with
the population, previous bad harvests had left few grain
reserves, and a generation of war with France some-
times interrupted the importation of grain (which fell
from 4.6 million tons to 2.9 million tons in the years
following 1810).
Extensive use of the soil provides obvious possibili-
ties. Land could be reclaimed by draining marshes and
wetlands, such as the fens of eastern England or the
marshes of central Italy. In other regions of Europe, es-
pecially Scandinavia and eastern Europe, sparsely popu-
lated woodlands and wildernesses could be cleared and
planted. Wherever the science of agronomy established
modern crop rotation, the tradition of leaving fields lie
fallow every third year could be abandoned. This alone
produced a 10 percent increase in arable land in some
regions.
The most impressive side of the agricultural revolu-
tion—more intensive use of the land—achieved an un-
precedented rise in European productivity. Scientific
farming, such as improved understanding of fertilizers,
significantly improved the harvest per acre. The begin-
nings of modern farm mechanization—from Jethro
Tull’s development of seed drills to replace the manual
broadcasting of seeds to Andrew Meikle’s invention of
the threshing machine in 1784—produced more effi-
cient harvests. Such developments increased the ratio
of grain harvested to grain sown. In Britain, the wheat
harvest went from a yield of 7-to-1 to a ratio of 10.6 to
1; at that rate, the British harvest was nearly twice as
productive per acre as the rest of Europe and three
times as successful as farming in eastern Europe.
New crops were also an important part of the agri-
cultural revolution. The introduction of winter crops in
some regions, the continuing arrival of new American
crops from the Columbian exchange, and the steady
acceptance of root crops (such as the potato and the
sugar beet) greatly changed European diets. The potato
grew in more northerly climates and poorer soils than
most grains; it had a three-to-four-month cycle to har-
vest, compared with ten months for many grains; and a
single crop yielded twice as much nutrition per acre as
grains did. Consequently, by the early 1840s, one-third
of the population of England and one-half of Scotland
lived on the potato. Even higher rates of potato con-
sumption were found in Ireland and parts of Germany.The Controversy over Enclosure
Clearing forests or swamps and harvesting more crops
per acre were not the only changes by which the agri-
cultural revolution fed the growing population of the
British isles. The greatest source of new acreage being
farmed resulted from a controversial political decision
known as enclosure. This term simply means the en-
closing of farm land within fences. The laws of enclo-
sure, however, had more profound results than that
description suggests, leading some historians to argue
that it was a necessary condition for industrialization.
By ancient tradition, most villages in Britain reserved a
portion of local land called the commons for the use
of all residents. No one could plant crops on the com-
mons, but anyone could graze animals, forage for food
(such as berries or acorns), and gather firewood there.
Enclosure of the commons within fences meant that
the land could be plowed to increase the national
grain production, but the traditional rights of citizens
ended, forcing many of them off the land. Enclosure
in a larger sense ended the open field system of agri-
culture, in which the land was divided into numerous
small strips. In 1700, 50 percent of English farmland,
and most continental farmland, was in open field
strips. By 1850 virtually all of rural Britain was en-
closed.
Each enclosure required an act of Parliament,
and four thousand such acts of enclosure were voted