MDMD2: Enclosures

[Dave Monroe]

"'On the other hand, Surveyors are runnin' about numerous as Bed-bugs, and 
twice as cheap, with work enough for all certainly in Durham at present, 
Enclosures all over the County, and North Yorkshire,-- eeh!" (M&D, Ch. 3, p. 
17)

>From Frances Ferguson, Solitude and the Sublime (New York: Routledge,
1992), Ch.6, "In Search of the Natural Sublime: The Face on the Forest
Floor," pp. 129-45 ...

"The advance of the enclosure movement ... had increased the amount of
land that gave evidence of new ownership in new fences and hedges.  And 
while new fences clearly bespoke active owners, they also bespoke the 
relative interchangeability of the humans connected with the land
through that ownership.  The steady progress of enclosures in the
countryside led to the rise of farming ... and the proliferation of the 
steam engine after the 1775 patent of Boulton and Watt expired in 1800 
promoted the accumultaion of people in cities ....  The generic
equivalence of one person's ownership and another's, of one person's
technical knowledge and another's, and of one person's connection on
one place or another produces the satisfactions of visible productivity." 
(p. 134)

Ferguson cites as a source ...

Mantoux, Paul.  The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth
   Century: An Outline of the Beginnings of the Modern Factory
   System in England.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.

See esp. pps. 136-85, 189-219.  Which I guess I'll have to look up now.  
Damme ...

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp