Enclosure Movement

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As enclosure (of English enclosures " enclosures " and movement "Movement"), the resolution is Allmenderechte in British agriculture referred was enclosed with the previously common property from the country by the private sector and used more intensively. The Enclosure Movement drove the commercialization of British agriculture. On land and forest areas that were formerly used jointly, high-yield farms emerged, especially in the field of livestock, without which the growing population could only have been fed by imports.

Historically, the first approaches can already be found between 1450 and 1630. In England they were characterized by considerable economic growth and increased social differences. The English Civil War in the middle of the 17th century accelerated the enclosures considerably. In parliament, the great landowners, the gentry , assumed an increasingly strengthened position vis-à-vis the king, which culminated in the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641. This also clearly weakened the rights of the commoners. Around 1650, land use also changed as wool prices stopped rising. The application of new agricultural techniques and the development of large farms, an early agricultural revolution began. The peak of enclosures was between 1760 and 1832, after which medieval structures in Great Britain had all but disappeared.

This development led to the impoverishment of some of the small farmers who could not afford to buy the land and so had to forego the usable areas that were previously available to all. Sometimes, also in connection with the enclosures in Wales and Scotland (see Highland Clearances ), there was also talk of “inner colonization ”, entire village communities were forcibly deported to Australia and North America or forced to emigrate. A similar tendency, especially in northern Germany and Prussia, the peasant laying , came about later historically and was partially thwarted by royal legislation (see subjection to inheritance ). The structure of Brandenburg colonies overseas came over smaller approaches in West Africa not out, it was the face of growing population of more recognition of colonization and a so-called Peuplierung tracked inside.

In southern Germany, which is characterized by small states, the development due to the real division , the poor soils in many places and the poor development in the low mountain range and the Buntsandstein came into effect even more slowly. In the 19th century there was also increased emigration here after the failure of the democracy movement in 1848 . A reorganization of the field to economically more efficient field sizes to be managed only came about in the 20th century through land consolidation .

Political implications

According to Susan JB Cox, the enclosures were primarily a result of the overuse of common areas by large farmers and feudal lords. In doing so, Cox takes up the classic left-wing criticism, which was already expressed by Friedrich Engels in 1882 and which was thematized by Karl Marx under original accumulation or "expropriation of the rural people from land". The parallel modernization, considerable expansion of production and further liberation from the "idiocy of rural life" were not called into question in this criticism. Engels urged the small farmers to join the social democracy.

The problem of overexploitation of jointly cultivated areas is explained in the social sciences using the tragic common land model . According to Joachim Radkau , forerunners of the model concept were found in the literature of the early agricultural reformers. Since the 18th century "the withered cows of the commons" rattled through a variety of writings. An alleged common land problem was used as an example for the abolition of traditional forms of common property in favor of capital-intensive individual businesses. Joachim Radkau sees the true tragedy of the commons through a general overuse of the common areas also by the traditional farmers in the sense of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The professionalization of agriculture in the 19th and 20th centuries made it possible to put the common land economy, which lasted much longer in southern Germany and the Alpine countries than in Great Britain, on a new basis. Today it is being discussed again as a model for the common economy, also in and for developing countries. Instead of a strict, model-like distinction between private and state property, commons and completely free availability, a co-management between the different forms of use and property and the people involved is increasingly recommended, as was also the case with the British Commons.

literature

  • Roger JP Kain, John Chapman, Richard R. Oliver: The Enclosure Maps of England and Wales 1595-1918: A Cartographic Analysis and Electronic Catalog. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2011, ISBN 978-0-521-17323-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hartmut Zückert: Commons and repeal of commons. Comparative studies on the late Middle Ages up to the agricultural reforms of the 18th and 19th centuries. Century (= sources and research on agricultural history. Volume 47). Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-8282-0226-8 , pp. 136ff.
  2. ^ Elisabeth Fehrenbach : From the Ancien Regime to the Congress of Vienna . 4th edition. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-49754-5 , p. 6.
  3. ^ A b Barrington Moore Jr .: Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World . Beacon Press, Boston 1966, pp. 19-29 (German edition: Social origins of dictatorship and democracy. The role of landowners and farmers in the creation of the modern world . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-518-27654-9 ).
  4. ↑ The designation of the lower house as the House of Commons goes back to the communities ("congregations") and not to the commoners (the "common ones")
  5. ↑ von der Löhe: Inner colonization in Prussia and England. In: Schmoller's yearbook for legislation, administration and economics. Volume 43, 1919, p. 291.
  6. ^ Susan JB Cox: No Tragedy on the Commons. In: Environmental Ethics. An interdisciplinary journal. Volume 7, 1985, ISSN  0163-4275 , p. 49, p. 58. (PDF; 836 kB)
  7. ↑ Friedrich Engels: The Mark. In: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Works, Volume 19 . 4th edition. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1973 (unaltered reprint of the 1st edition 1962, Berlin / GDR), pp. 315–330.
  8. ↑ a b Joachim Radkau: Nature and Power. A world history of the environment . CH Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-48655-X .
  9. ^ Tony Banks: Property Rights Reform in Rangeland China. Dilemmas On the Road to the Household Ranch . In: World Development. Volume 31, No. 12, 2003, ISSN  0305-750X , pp. 2129-2142.