The Enclosure Act of 1801 was one of many Enclosure Acts. According to the UK Parliament, “between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 Enclosure Bills were enacted by Parliament which related to just over a fifth of the total area of England, amounting to some 6.8 million acres.” To understand why the Enclosure Act of 1801 was different than the others, the term “enclosing land” must be understood. Back before the 12th century, there were open fields where anyone can farm. However, after the 12th century, holdings were consolidated into individually owned or rented fields. This means that people were essentially setting up yards, or boundaries, to increase farming or renting for their own gain as a landowner. The issue with this is that it displaces all those people using the common land. Many of these people were the lower class with no other options, leading to more and more citizens without jobs.
Before the Enclosure Act of 1801, landowners were essentially meeting up together to draw these boundaries. The issue with that is that many landowners were thinking about their own gain with the land they were enclosing and not of the rural workers who survived of the common lands. In consequence, poor farm workers were forced to leave and find a new way of income. In 1801, Parliament passed the act so that 3/4ths of the town had to agree on the land they were enclosing. While this may have helped some towns where there were more farmers on common land than not or citizens who did not want to displace the poor farmers, enclosing was still very popular and many more Enclosure Acts were passed after 1801. This is due to the fact that even though the Enclosure Acts were removing workers from their income, it was growing agricultural production and inventing new practices in agricultural production. Efficiency increased as well as the availability which made the upper class believe that this consequence was a sacrifice that had to be made for the rest of the country.
The Enclosure Acts and their displacement of poor farmers is important to note because of what it did to society in the Industrial Revolution. It is widely understood that the Industrial Revolution caused poor laborers out of the countryside and into urban factories to work for extremely small wages with poor working conditions. The Enclosure Acts were part of this drive out of the country into the urban city. After losing income and food to feed themselves, laborers were left with little options. One option, they could work as tenant farmers as a servant for large landowners. Another option, to move to the crowded cities where the wages were being lowered as more desperate workers came in and where jobs were becoming limited fast. Many chose the second option. This does not mean that the Enclosure Acts directly caused all the negatives aspects of the Industrial Revolution; however, it was a major contributing factor as more and more peasants became displaced while landowners continued the competitive race to gain land for farming and renting.
Works Cited
McElroy, Wendy. “The Enclosure Acts and the Industrial Revolution.” The Future of Freedom Foundation. 2012. https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/enclosure-acts-industrial-r…
Sharman, Frank. “An introduction to the enclosure acts.” The Journal of Legal History. 1989. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01440368908530953
“Enclosing the Land” UK Parliament, https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/tow…