The Beginnings of the Industrial Revolution 361

Measuring land in preparation for enclosure.

tion to the British gross national product reached a peak of 45 percent in
1770, and then only slowly was overtaken by English manufacturing as its
place in the economy rose remarkably. Increased farm profits provided capi­
tal not only for further investment in agriculture but also in manufacturing
(although landowners were still more likely to invest in government bonds
than in speculative ventures).
One of the impediments to the expansion of agricultural production in
England had been the widespread existence of open fields or common
lands, which made up about half of the arable land in 1700. Beginning in
the sixteenth century, on request from landowners, acts of Parliament per­
mitted the “enclosure” of common land, transforming open fields or land
that was communally owned into privately owned, fenced-in fields that could
be more intensively and profitably farmed by individual owners (see Chapter
5). Between 1760 and 1815, 3,600 separate parliamentary acts enclosed
more than 7 million acres of land, more than one-fourth of the farmland of
England. Over two centuries, enclosure acts forced perhaps half of English
small landholders from the land, swelling the ranks of agricultural labor­
ers. Small tenant farmers, too, suffered, as many could not afford to pay
rents that rose rapidly after about 1760. The poorest members of the rural
community lost their age-old access to lands on which they had gleaned
firewood, gathered nuts and berries, and grazed animals. Before enclosure,
it was said, a “cottager” was a laborer with land; after enclosure, he was a
laborer without land. The Irish-born writer Oliver Goldsmith commented
with playful, bitter irony:

The law locks up both man and woman

Who steals the goose from off the common,

But lets the greater felon loose

Who steals the common from the goose.

Agricultural change came far more slowly on the continent. Most produc­

ers remained at the subsistence level, farming small plots without an agri­

cultural surplus that they might have used to expand their holdings or