Commoners Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700}}}1820 [Paperback]

One of the most important and original contributions to English rural history to be published in recent times.Challenging the view that England had no peasantry or that it had disappeared before industrialization, this text shows that common right and petty landholding shaped social relations in English villages. Their loss at enclosure sharpened social antagonisms and imprinted a pervasive sense of loss.Challenging the view that England had no peasantry or that it had disappeared before industrialization, this text shows that common right and petty landholding shaped social relations in English villages. Their loss at enclosure sharpened social antagonisms and imprinted a pervasive sense of loss.This is a paperback edition of one of the most important and original contributions to English rural history published in the past generation. Winner of the Whitfield Prize of the Royal Historical Society in 1994, Commoners challenges the view that England had no peasantry or that it had disappeared before industrialization: rather it shows that common right and petty landholding shaped social relations in English villages, and that their loss at enclosure sharpened social antagonisms and imprinted on popular culture a pervasive sense of loss.Introduction; 1. The question of value; Part I. Survival: 2. Who had common right? 3. Threats before enclosure; 4. Ordering the commons; 5. Enforcing the orders; 6.The uses of waste; Part II. Decline: 7. Two villages; 8. Decline and disappearance; 9. Resisting enclosure; Part III. Conclusion: 10. 'Making freeman of the slave'; Appendices; Bibliography; Index. Commoners....will transform the understanding of [eighteenth-century] agrarian and social history. Customs in Common Little can be said in criticism of this wonderful book....Commoners is a major contribution to an emerging view. Journal of Economic History