Oliver Goldsmith: Historical Context of 18th Century Britain
Oliver Goldsmith
1 Historical Background
- Between 1760 and 1790, it was clear that there were two worlds: the old and the new.
- The new world was the product of technological change and was certain to produce a new and strange Britain.
- The age of Walpole had witnessed a rapid expansion of British trade and the opening of new markets, both at home and abroad.
- There was a demand for increased productivity, and merchants had sufficient capital to invest in industrial enterprises.
- The most influential developments were in technology and transport.
- The textile industry was revolutionized, and the transportation of goods improved dramatically, breaking the isolation in which most Englishmen lived.
- In agriculture, the changes taking place and their extent can be best expressed in figures: These figures express a profound revolution with the supersession of open fields by enclosed fields.
- The enclosure of fields and common land had been going on steadily from the 15th century, but the face of England had hardly been changed.
- The nature of enclosure changed in the later 18th century:
- At the beginning of the period, enclosure was often undertaken by agreement within the village. The process did not usually involve tension, for it was often in areas with a good supply of grazing land.
- In the later 18th century, enclosure increasingly relied on parliamentary procedures which forced through change against the opposition of significant elements in the community. At this stage, enclosure was more likely to cause tension, for it applied above all to the Midlands, where pasture was in short supply and grazing on the open fields after harvest was crucial.
Enclosure meant the destruction of various property rights, which was bitterly resented. It meant that more families became dependent on the wage of a male, landless laborer who was seasonally unemployed and dependent on the poor law for support. Enclosure also meant that existing leases were cancelled, and landlords could introduce short leases with rack rents.
As a result, landlords were the major beneficiaries of the rise in prices in the late 18th century. They rearranged their estates to create larger tenant farms on rack rents, with a decline in small farmers with customary tenure. These changes provoked the anger of many who wished to return to a golden age when England was still a land of prosperous farmers.
This idealized vision could appeal to Tory squires, resentful of the great landed magnates in their palaces and with access to the resources of City finance, and to radicals demanding the return of land to the people. In defense of the great landowners, it could at least be argued that they invested some of their rents back into the land as well as into parks and houses.
This was a controversial change that some wanted to present as a beneficial search for efficiency, while others saw it as a grim record of dispossession and greed, trampling on the rights of the poor.