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6. Politics, society, economy and culture in the 18th century
UNIT 6. POLITICS, SOCIETY, ECONOMY AND
CULTURE IN THE 18TH CENTURY
1. THE POLITICAL CONTEXT
1.1. The Hanover Dynasty
In the 18th century, the House of Hanover succeeded the House of Stuart as monarchs of
Great Britain and Ireland, and held that office until the death of Victoria in 1901. It was
British determination to maintain a Protestant succession that led to the accession of the
House of Hanover. This dynasty was of German origin and provided the monarchs George
I, George II, George III, George IV, William IV, and Victoria.
Under the Act of Settlement of 1701, the succession would pass to the ruling family of
Hanover on the death of Queen Anne, since the crown was to go her following William’s
death. This Act declared Sophia, granddaughter of James I and great-granddaughter of
Mary, Queen of Scots, to be the next in line to the crown of Great Britain. However,
Sophia, electress of Hanover, died in June 1714, and Queen Anne died in August of that
same year, so Sophia’s eldest son, George Louis, elector of Hanover, arrived in England
in September to become George I, king of Great Britain.
1.2. The Jacobite Rebellions
George I was the first of the Hanover dynasty and his accession to the throne was
peaceful although controversial. He could speak no English and preferred Germany to
England. His accession has been considered the beginning of the Augustan Age for the
political stability and power that characterised it, as well as a flowering of the arts that was
reminiscent of the Roman period.
However, as in 1688, the succession was a political issue between Whigs and Tories.
Some Tories still yearned for a return to the direct line of the Stuart kings. The infant
whose birth had sparked the crisis in 1688, was now living in France as James Stuart,
known in English history as the “Old Pretender”. He was supported in his aim by a small
but passionate minority faction, who remained loyal to James II and now to James his son.
They became known as the Jacobites (from the Latin Jacobus for James). The Jacobite
feeling was strong in the Highlands of Scotland, and it was there, in September 1715, that
the Earl of Mar launched the Jacobite uprising with the aim of overthrowing the Hanoverian
succession and placing the “Old Pretender”, James II’s son, on the throne.
The failure of this uprising of 1715 reaffirmed the Hanover dynasty on the English throne.
However, the Jacobite cause remained passionately held and in 1745, there was another
unsuccessful attempt, this one led by Charles Edward Stuart, popularly known as Bonnie
Prince Charlie, who persuaded a number of Scottish clans to join him. The Jacobites, who
remained loyal to the main Stuart line in exile, constituted a real, if intermittent threat to the
British state, until they were beaten in 1746.
As a consequence of their support for the Jacobites, the British treated the Scots cruelly.
Many Highlanders were killed or sent to America and a law was passed that prohibited
most of their traditions, such as wearing the kilt or playing the bagpipes.
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6. Politics, society, economy and culture in the 18th century
1.3. The Political Parties
In the 18th century the British Parliament had a two-party system: The Tories and the
Whigs. The Whigs represented the financial and mercantile interests of the cities and
towns, pressed for industrial and commercial development, a vigorous foreign policy and
religious toleration, and were opposed to any interference in politics by the monarchy.
They descended from the Parliamentarians and were supported by many of wealthy and
commercial classes. The Tories were conservative and descended from the royalists,
strongly attached to tradition. They believed in the divine right of the monarchy and
opposed religious toleration. The Anglican Church and landowners supported them.
From 1714 to 1784 the Whigs were pre-eminent. The first British Prime Minister was
Robert Walpole (1676-1745), a Whig. He was in power for over 20 years. The financial
crisis of 1720, the “South Sea Bubble”, brought him to power.
From 1720 to 1750 The Free Market and Wage Economy triumphed. There was a policy of
expanding trade and acquisition of foreign markets. In the British Isles, a home market was
being formed during this period. A transport infrastructure was built, roads were
constructed, capitalist methods of marketing were imposed, and people were forced into
the wage economy and off their lands. Under Walpole, coal was mined extensively and
cloth-making was a national industry.
Walpole’s policy kept England from foreign conflict so that trade could flourish and taxes
could be kept down. Walpole failed to prevent Britain from going to war with Spain in 1739.
This conflict merged, the following year, with the broader War of the Austrian Succession.
Walpole resigned during the war, in 1742, and retired to Houghton Hall, in Norfolk.
His most important political enemy was William Pitt “the Elder”, later Lord Chatham, who
thought that Britain had to beat France in the race of an overseas trade empire. Chatham,
a Whig statesman achieved his greatest fame as Prime Minister from 1756-61, during the
Seven Years’ War. When Chatham came to power, he decided to make a very strong
British navy and directed British efforts to destroy French trade. When George III (17601820) came to the throne in 1760, he made peace with France since he did not want to
continue with an expensive war. The Treaty of Paris (1763) ceded Canada, Mississippi
and India to Britain.
In 1784, the Tories recovered a significant role in British politics when the young William
Pitt, known as Pitt the Younger, became Prime Minister and started a mercantilist policy, to
make England a strong and competitive country. In this period England expanded its
possessions in India, North America, and the Caribbean.
The situation of Ireland changed when it was united with England in 1801, and the
Parliament in Dublin was closed. George III refused to give equal voting rights to
Catholics, with the support of most Tories and Protestant Irish landlords.
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2. COLONIAL EXPANSION AND THE FORMATION OF THE
BRITISH EMPIRE IN NORTH AMERICA
2.1. The origins of the rise of the British Empire
In the 18th century, Great Britain became a major power in the world. A series of wars left
England the dominant colonial power in North America and India. With the Treaty of
Utrecht (1713), the British Empire was territorially enlarged. Among the causes that made
Britain become a great empire were trade, which made money for British companies,
politics, religion, ambition, and adventure.
Britain’s empire really began and grew first in North America and the Caribbean. As early
as 1497, the adventurer and explorer John Cabot sailed to the northern part of present day
Canada and called the new territories Newfoundland. By the early 1600s, this Virginia
settlement was well established and Britain began to set up settlements in Bermuda and in
the Caribbean, and throughout the 1660s the British presence in North America grew. In
the 1660s and 1670s the British established territories further north. From Virginia they
established a series of colonies along the eastern coast of America. By the mid 1700s,
there were thirteen colonies and Britain and France were bitter rivals.
From 1756 to 1763, they fought the Seven Years War both in Europe and in America. This
was the first war waged on a global scale, fought in Europe, India, North America, the
Caribbean, the Philippines and coastal Africa. The signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763)
had important consequences for the future of the British Empire.
By the end of the war, Britain was emerging as the main force in North America. British
forces captured Quebec and ruled the lands of Upper and Lower Canada. France was
defeated in America, and British predominance was asserted, leaving Britain as the
world’s leading power. However, Britain lost the American colonies after the American
Revolution.
2.2. Immigration and Population in the American Colonies
The 18th century, especially after the defeat of France in America in the 1760s, and the
end of the Seven Years War, saw the formation of the First British Empire with a major
expansion in America.
In the 16th century, English people had begun to settle on the northeast coast of North
America, in Newfoundland, which was now part of Canada. In 1583, Queen Elizabeth I
claimed the sovereignty of these lands for the English Crown.
The first permanent English settlement was established in 1607 in Jamestown, led by
Captain John Smith and managed by the Virginia Company. This set the pattern for
English colonization. In the first decade of the seventeenth century, England started a
second round of colonizing attempts using joint-stock companies to establish settlements.
In 1620, the Mayflower landed in America, bringing Puritan separatists who were escaping
from religious persecution in their homeland, so that they could build new settlements,
practise their religion as they wanted, and found a colony based on their own religious
ideals, purified of the ills they saw in the Church of England.
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These Puritans, who later became known as the Pilgrim Fathers, settled in New England,
establishing a colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The principle founder of the colony was
William Bradford.
Fleeing from religious persecution would become the motive of many English would-be
colonists who risked the arduous Trans-Atlantic voyage: Maryland was founded as a
haven for Roman Catholics, Rhode Island as a colony tolerant of all religions and
Connecticut for Congregationalists. The province of Carolina was founded in 1663. In
1664, England gained control of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (renamed New York)
via negotiations following the Second Anglo-Dutch War, in exchange for Suriname.
In 1681, the colony of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, as a refuge for English
Quakers. Charles II awarded Penn a charter making him the only proprietor of that area.
The American colonies had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted great
numbers of English immigrants, who preferred their temperate climate. The British used a
lot of slave labour. At first they used European slaves, captured in wars or sentenced as
criminals. Over the next 150 years, they increasingly used African slaves. The profits from
this helped fund the industrial revolution and the huge country houses built by the owners
of the plantations.
Some of the settlers hoped to practice their religion without interference from the royal
government and Church. Others wanted to farm new land and escape from the
landowners in England. Merchants hoped to make money from trade. Others, especially in
the 17th-18th centuries, were deported criminals. The result was a series of colonies along
the eastern coast of what is now the United States and Canada. After the union with
Scotland, Scottish people also settled in these colonies and the Empire could be described
as British. By the late eighteenth century British traders, soldiers, sailors, administrators
and settlers could be found all over North America.
In colonial America, land was plentiful and labour was scarce. Most American colonists
worked on small farms. In the southern colonies, there was a system of slavery, and black
people worked on large plantations. From the beginning, slavery was the basis of the
British Empire in the West Indies. Until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, Britain was
responsible for the transportation of a third of all slaves that were transported across the
Atlantic from Africa. In the Thirteen Colonies, the percentage of the population of black
people rose from 10% to 40% from 1650 to 1780. For the slave traders, the trade was
extremely profitable, and became an economic mainstay for such western British cities as
Bristol and Liverpool, which formed the third corner of the so-called triangular trade with
Africa and the Americas. By 1770, there were urban centres. Philadelphia was the largest
city, followed by New York, Boston and Charleston.
There was a representative government in the colonies since Britain was too far away to
control the colonists directly. The English king appointed colonial governors who had to
rule in cooperation with an elected assembly. Voting was restricted to white males who
owned lands.
By 1733, there were 13 colonies along the Atlantic coast. After the Seven Years’ War, a
royal proclamation denied the right to settle West of the Appalachian Mountains in order to
avoid conflict with the Native Americans.
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6. Politics, society, economy and culture in the 18th century
2.3. The Loss of the American Colonies
Relations between the British Government and the people who lived in the Thirteen
Colonies got steadily worse in the 1760s and 1770s, primarily because of resentment of
the British Parliament’s attempts to govern and tax American colonists without their
consent, to pay for their defence. Taxes were levied on sugar, coffee, textiles and other
imported goods, and smugglers were punished. The colonists looked to the ideas of
important figures such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Charles Louis de Second at,
Baron de Montesquieu, as they attempted to assert their guaranteed Rights as
Englishmen. Growing discontent turned to violence and, in 1775, the outbreak of the
American War of Independence.
The main sources of grievance began in 1764, when Parliament enacted the Sugar Act, in
an attempt to raise revenue in the colonies through a tax on molasses. The tax was to be
enforced and consequently the colonists carried out several effective protest measures
that focused on boycotting British goods.
With the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, special stamps had to be attached to all
newspapers, legal documents created in the colonies, pamphlets and licenses. This tax
affected practically everybody and extended British taxes to domestically produced and
consumed goods. There was a strong reaction against the tax in the colonies and this
developed into a crisis. Colonial Americans thought that only their own colonial assemblies
should tax them. The Stamp Act led Americans to ask themselves about the relationship
between their colonial legislatures, which were elected bodies, and the British Parliament,
in which Americans had no elected representation, and this led to the slogan “No taxation
without representation”.
On June 6, 1765, the Massachusetts House of Representatives resolved to propose an
inter-colonial meeting to take a stand against the Stamp Act. On October 19th, 1765, in the
Stamp Act Congress, representatives from nine colonies, which later took part in the
Revolution, spoke out against the new tax. Most colonists refused to use the stamps so
that the British Parliament was forced to repeal the act.
There were other grievances that affected the colonies. For instance, due to the
Quartering Act of 1765, it was compulsory for colonial assemblies to house and supply
British soldiers. The Quartering Act was enforced and taxes were enacted on tea and
other goods. Custom officers were sent to Boston to collect those tariffs but the Colonists
refused to pay, so British soldiers were sent to Boston. Many colonists objected to the act
and to the presence of an army in the colonies.
In 1767, Parliament also enacted the Townshend Duties. These were taxes on paper,
paints, glass and tea, goods imported into the colonies from Britain.
The British also established a board of customs commissioners, whose purpose was to
stop colonial smuggling and the corruption of local officials involved in such illegal trade.
On September 5, 1774, a meeting of colonial leaders, the First Continental Congress, met
in Philadelphia and urged Americans to disobey the “Intolerable Acts” and boycott British
trade.
In December 1775, the British Parliament passed the Prohibitory Acts, which declared
Britain’s intention to force American colonists into submission. These acts blockaded
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American trade, placing an embargo on American goods and authorizing the seizure of
American ships. As a result, the colonists pushed forward a decision for independence.
However, it was not until July 2, 1776 that Congress voted for independence.
Thomas Jefferson prepared a first draft of the Declaration of Independence. With some
alterations suggested by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, the text was accepted by the
committee on July 4, 1776.
During the first two years of the Revolutionary War, most of the fighting between the
American colonists and the British took place in the North. At first, the British generally had
their way because of their far superior sea power. Despite Washington’s victories at
Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey, the British still retained the initiative. The FrenchAmerican alliance signed in 1778, marked the turning point of the war and was decisive to
the eventual American victory.
Between 1778 and 1781, British military operations had focused on the South because the
British assumed a large percentage of Southerners were loyalists who could help them
subdue the American colonists. The British were successful in most conventional battles
fought in that region, especially in areas close to their points of supply on the Atlantic
coast. Even so, American generals Nathaniel Greene and Daniel Morgan turned to
guerrilla and hit-and-run warfare that eventually stymied the British.
For nearly the next two years, Washington would maintain his efforts to continue military
preparations in order to ensure that the Continental Army was intact, and ready to fight if
that became necessary.
Meanwhile, peace talks between British and American diplomats got underway in Paris in
May 1782 and continued into the fall. In September, the American negotiators (John Jay,
John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin) discovered that the French foreign minister had sent
his secretary on a secret trip to London. After two months of difficult negotiations, the
British and American diplomats signed the Preliminary Articles of Peace on November 30,
1782.
Until the definitive peace treaty was signed in 1783, the United States was still at war.
British and French fleets continued to fight on the high seas and in the Caribbean, but no
land actions took place on the North American continent.
The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, recognized the independence of the United States
and fixed for the nation all the territory North of Florida, South of Canada and East of the
Mississippi River.
The loss of the Thirteen Colonies in North America in 1783 after the war of independence
deprived Britain of its most populous colonies and marked the end of the “First British
Empire”. Despite this setback, British rule continued in the Caribbean and in Upper and
Lower Canada. Following the defeat of Napoleonic France in 1815, Britain enjoyed a
century of dominance, and expanded its imperial holdings across the world. The loss of
the American Colonies is considered as the event defining the transition between the “first”
and “second” empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to
Asia, the Pacific and later Africa.
3. SOCIETY, CULTURE AND RELIGION
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6. Politics, society, economy and culture in the 18th century
3.1. Society and Culture
During the 18th century, philosophy and science increased in prominence and the ideals of
the enlightenment were embraced. The People of the Enlightenment believed in human
knowledge and defied the traditions and the pre-established thoughts of the past.
Enlightened thinkers such as John Locke, Joseph Addison and David Hume, rejected the
strict and pessimistic values of Puritanism. They believed in the new view of the world
which affirmed free will, salvation for all, the goodness of mankind, and its capacity for
progress.
In England, the two main characteristics of the Enlightenment, namely the defiance of
tradition and the search for knowledge as the practical, useful power to control nature,
were more emphatically visible than in other countries. The Philosophy of the
Enlightenment in England is normally called British Empiricism. In the Arts there was a
desire for balance, symmetry and refinement, in an imitation of nature.
The political institutions remained hierarchical, hereditary and privileged. Politics and the
running of the government were limited to a small number of wealthy people, the so-called
Oligarchy. By the end of the eighteenth century, some people, later called radicals, were
questioning if this was the best method of government.
The most important radical writer at this time was Thomas Paine. He wrote a book called
The Rights of Man, which said that everybody should have the right to be involved in
government.
Inspired by these ideas, groups of radicals formed societies in some larger towns. They
began to meet during the late 1780s and the 1790s. The government in Britain was
worried that these societies might start a revolution like in France, and many radicals were
arrested and laws passed to forbid societies and unions.
In the 18th century, society championed individualism, seizing opportunities in the
economic sector which provided scope for initiative, enterprise and enrichment. Many
people claimed the right to personal fulfilment, gaiety and fun. As regards virtue, it
acquired the meaning of disposition of benevolence towards oneself and others, and the
culture of the heart, sensibility and private judgment.
The expansion of the middle class continued throughout the century.
At the beginning of the 18th century the population of England and Wales came to five and
a half million and by 1750 it had increased very little. In the second half of the century,
however, there was a considerable increase, and by the end of the century there were
about 8.8 million people. If we include Scotland and Ireland, the total population was about
13 million, a third of which lived in south-eastern England. The birth rate rose slowly
because diseases such as smallpox, scurvy and typhus affected the poorest areas and
half of the children born died before they were five years old.
Shortage of food, inadequate housing conditions and also excessive drinking of cheap gin
had disastrous effects on the poorest classes. The rich were hardly less exposed to
disease due to a general ignorance of basic hygiene. However, throughout the 18th century
important improvements in living conditions were made. This was mainly due to increased
production of food, including potatoes, cheese, and fresh meat. Thanks to the availability
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of coal, homes could be warmer in winter. In general, clothing and soap were cheaper than
previously. Nevertheless, about 80 per cent of the population remained poor.
Great Britain and Ireland was still a land of small villages. The majority of people still lived
in the countryside and their main occupations were agriculture and rural crafts. Most
farmers were smallholders renting up to 8 hectares of land. Freeholders owned their land
and were socially superior to smallholders.
At the bottom of the social structure were the landless labourers who worked on large
farms, especially in summer; in winter they were often out of work. At the top of the social
hierarchy were the nobility, who held the highest offices and accumulated the greatest
wealth, and the gentry, who included the major landowners in a county but were not
necessarily of noble birth.
Most towns at this time were small and were centres of diseases. There were no drains
and no lighting, although, throughout the century, efforts were made to make them
healthier places to live. In addition, in 1734, London was provided with a lightening system
and after 1760, many towns taxed their citizens to provide services such as cleaning and
street lamps.
There were four main classes of people who lived in towns: unskilled workers, skilled
craftsmen, wealthy merchants, and ordinary traders and merchants.
In places like London, entertainment was provided by coffeehouses. Their functions were
very similar to that of the theatre in Elizabethan Age. They were also business centres.
As far as the family life was concerned, 18th century parents still decided on a suitable
marriage for their children, who often used to marry against their wishes. The condition of
women was especially difficult since, once they married, they did not have many rights and
were financially dependent on their husbands. An average wife spent some 15 years either
in a state of pregnancy or in nursing a child for the first year of its life. However, there was
an increase in the importance of affection as a result of the idea of kindness. In general,
women had little access to education.
The middle class experienced a growing individualism that was the result of political and
economic strength.
In the 18th century, probably half the population lived at subsistence or bare survival level.
There was forced labour, slave labour, bonded labour, convict labour, indentures labour,
incarcerated labour, craft labour, pressed labour and child labour. A longer working week,
a longer working day, the abolition of holidays, mechanization, and reduced wages
between 1690 and 1720 speeded up the twin processes of profit and capital accumulation
in the hands of the elite.
From 1690 to 1720, there was a Period of Finance Capital, which was also the triumph of
monetization of the economy and law. A new morality had emerged among the capitalist
class by the end of the 17th century. Labour, which had been the curse of the fallen man,
had become a religious duty, a means of glorifying god. Poverty had ceased to be a holy
state and was associated with wickedness.
The poverty in London had reached significant proportions in the 1690s. Starving people
were everywhere and crime and prostitution were at historic levels. There were shortages
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of coal and bread. Crime boomed, highwaymen roamed the roads robbing the wealthy. It
was in this environment that the criminalization of the poor occurred with the death
penalty. People convicted of property crimes were hung.
When industry started to develop, between 1750-1776, the population either had to accept
a drastically lowered standard of living or else move to the cities to work as cheap
exploited labour in the developing factory economy. Things got so bad for the working
class that there were many insurrections, mutinies and urban riots throughout the 1760s.
3.2. Religion: John Wesley and Methodism
In the 18th century there was a new religious movement which met the needs of the
growing industrial working class, led by a man called John Wesley. He was a clergyman of
the Church of England, who founded and led a religious renewal movement with a social
involvement that came to be known as “Methodism”. This was a successful evangelical
movement in the United Kingdom, which encouraged people to experience Christ
personally. It was organised in small groups or “chapels” all over the country. By the end of
the 18th century, there were over 360 Methodist chapels in the country.
Since the Church of England could not control this new movement, Wesley was forced to
leave the Church of England and begin a new Methodist Church. He decided to go to
America, where he carried out the foundations of Methodist policy.
John Wesley was a powerful preacher and also a fluent writer with a shrewd appreciation
of the techniques of mass communication. His preaching was mainly to poor people and
his great influence was among the emergent manufacturing and industrial workers. Little
by little, the middle class in the industrial areas began to come into Methodism and to
dominate the meetings.
Methodism was identified with the religious life of the lower and middle classes. Its
ministers made no apology for concentrating their energies on the poor. This new religion
made rapid headway in areas with a long Dissenting tradition, Bristol, the West Riding,
Newcastle and Manchester. Wesley’s talent for organizing as well as inspiring the poor
made him an outstanding figure of great interest. He wanted to conquer sin, not social
deprivation. The poor were suitable cases for treatment because they lacked the diversity
of opportunity for sin, which was available to the rich.
The Methodists had a sense of community and a social structure for its members in Bible
classes, sewing circles and money-raising activities. Wesley helped to organise and form
societies throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The societies, with their
confessional band meetings, classes, watch-nights and visiting, made up a lay order within
which there was a spiritual police constantly alert for any sign of relapse.
Wesley broke sharply with the traditions of Dissent in his opposition to local autonomy and
in the authoritarian rule of himself and his nominated ministers. Some dissenting ministers
and their congregations joined the Methodists and by the 1790s, dissent was enjoying its
own evangelical revival. The transmission to working-class societies of forms of
organization was peculiar to the Methodist connection.
Methodism also imbued its followers with ‘methodical’ habits: attention to instructions,
fulfilment of contracts, punctuality and the sinfulness of stealing materials. This helped the
Industrial Revolution and helped to create a factory labour force, which was amenable to
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instructions. The factory system demanded a transformation of human nature. Methodism
provided the impetus for that change. Methodist theology was better suited than any other
to serve as the religion of the working classes. Wesley abandoned the Presbyterian idea of
‘election’ and substituted the universality of sin. Any man who came to a conviction of sin
might be visited by grace and be ransomed in Christ’s blood. As a religion of the heart,
Methodism could appeal to the simplest and least educated, so opening its doors to
become the religion of the poor.
Methodism as a faith for the working classes was ideally suited to the needs of middleclass utilitarianism. The Methodist was taught to bear his cross of poverty and humiliation;
the Cross was the pattern of his obedience. Work was the Cross, from which the
transformed industrial worker hung. Eternal damnation might be the consequence of
indiscipline at work, and God was the most vigilant overseer of all. The utility of Methodism
as a work-discipline is obvious, but Methodism successfully performed a dual role as the
religion of both the exploiters and the exploited because of indoctrination: the Methodists
inherited from Wesley the conviction that children were sinful, and that their sinfulness had
to be broken.
4. THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION
The Agricultural Revolution, in spite of the term, was a gradual process rather than a
single event. It refers to a series of circumstances that produced an improvement in
agriculture, a sustained improvement in crops, agricultural methods and output, that took
place in the United Kingdom during the 18th and 19th centuries.
During the eighteenth century there was a fast growth in population in Britain and Ireland.
This population had to be fed, which led to improvements in the techniques and a change
in the organisation of farming and crops. This change of crops and better methods of
farming led to a higher productivity enabling the population to be fed, and produced a shift
of excess labour to the towns to work in the new industries.
One of the processes that led to this change was the enclosure of the medieval common
fields. This process had started in the 16th century and became common in the 1740s. It
was a mutually agreed arrangement between landowners and tenants, by which lands
were enclosed, parceled and divided up.
The enclosure movement restricted the ownership of public farmlands specifically to the
wealthy landowners. As a result of this movement, there was an exodus of unemployed
farm workers from the country into the cities, adding to the strength of Britain’s work force.
Another important aspect of the Agricultural Revolution was the improvement in crops and
crop rotation. Cole seed, sainfoin, and nitrogen-fixing plants such as legumes, clover and
trefoil were introduced to improve grazing and soil fertility. These improvements made
fallowing unnecessary, allowing more land to be used for agriculture.
The development of agricultural machinery with the production of machines such as seeddrill for sowing, along with the introduction of mechanical reapers and threshers and a
horse hoe, and the production of a series of husbandry manuals, were of major importance
at this time. These and other devices greatly increased farm production in Britain,
promoting the growth and trade of the country. The improved cultivation of healthier fruits,
vegetables, and other foods grown on British farms using the new inventions, bettered the
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health and growth of the population, which meant there were more workers to help run
industrial factories. Great Britain was also rich in natural resources such as water and coal.
These could provide an ample energy supply for trains, factories, steam ships, and other
devices, which increased transportation and also the movement of workers and new
industrial ideas. Moreover, Britain’s American colonies played an important role in
providing the country with such vital raw materials.
In Scotland there was a similar enclosure process but to a lesser degree than in England.
After the Jacobite rebellions, clan leaders dismissed their tenants and cotters and sent
them to the coast to find employment. These lands were mainly put to grazing and apart
from crops, sheep were the main asset.
In Ireland the economy tended towards dairy products, beef, butter, and salted pork, which
were sent to colonies in Newfoundland. But overall, it was the poorest part of the British
Isles and poverty was widespread. The introduction of the potato relieved many peasants
as it was a source of food and a soil-improving root crop, but increasing reliance on it
made the Irish population too dependant and the potato blight of the 1840s proved
disastrous, causing widespread famine.
Agriculture felt the changes brought about by technological improvements and the
industrialization of textile manufacturing. To meet the increased demand for textiles and
other products, landowners began raising raw materials rather than food on their land. The
size of farms increased. Many farms were organized along industrial lines. There was a
large increase in capital investment in agriculture. Standards of farm management
improved. The quality of livestock and crop seed also improved greatly.
The Agricultural Revolution improved transport and communications, and as a
consequence, there was more surplus of food. This helped to develop a market of imports
and exports that grew considerably and paved the way to the Industrial Revolution.
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