WEBVTT - The Fencing Of The Commons 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:07.680 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.520 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:17.520 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just trucking along 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:23.960 doing our thing. It's called Stuffy Show. Oh. 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:27.000 Is this the episode on the Great seventies movie Convoy. 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:32.800 No, this is the episode on the Coming Down the 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:35.520 Pike in the Future movie Fencing the comments. 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:37.440 Oh I thought it was Fencing the Convoy. 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:38.360 No. 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:40.400 Boys, a lot of mashups happening. 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:45.000 Yeah, we should probably let's stop joking around. We've had 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:47.880 a lot of fun here, but let's get serious. We're 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:51.880 talking about fencing the Commons. And for anybody who heard 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:56.480 our episode on the Tragedy of the Commons, they're fairly related. 0:00:57.240 --> 0:00:59.600 They're talking about the same thing. The Commons are both 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:04.520 the same thing, but there's radically different stuff going on here. 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:08.959 Just go listen to our Tragedy of the Commons episode. 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:11.720 I won't give a rundown of it. But fencing the Commons, 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:16.160 some people point to it is this process of separating 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:20.119 and extracting land from people to whom it had formerly belonged. 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:23.959 Everyday people literally commoners. 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:27.959 Yeah, or maybe not belong but at least you know, 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:29.440 made use of to survive. 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:32.120 Okay, Well, it depends on who you ask, and it 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:36.880 is possible, say some historians that this is where wealth 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:41.240 inequality came from, that this is where wage labor came from, 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:44.520 that this is where a lot of the really not 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:48.920 great features of the modern world were rooted. And when 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:51.160 you dig into it, you're like, wow, this is a 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.760 decision by a really self interested group of powerful people 0:01:56.600 --> 0:01:59.640 to pull off a really big land grab. J All 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:00.840 the old England. 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:04.520 Boy, I love that self edit there. 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:08.000 Thanks, that's between you and me, Jerry and the lamp post. 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:11.320 That's right. Shall we get on with it? Then? 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:14.520 Yes, I feel like that was a good setup. If 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:15.960 I did say so myself. 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:17.320 I agree, just like the old days. Not that your 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:18.440 setups now are no good, but. 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:20.919 In the old days it would have been like, Chuck, 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:24.600 have you ever eaten grass off of the Commons? 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:28.320 Yeah? I think in that last Commons episode actually mentioned 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:30.720 that the Commons was the area of our high school 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:35.160 in just the big middle open area inside where everyone 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:37.240 would hang out, because that was a common area and 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:39.880 that's what the Commons are in this case too. And 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:42.079 Lyvia did a bang up job with this one. 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:44.920 I think yes she did not, as we. 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:48.760 Say, yeah, out of the commons, and we're going to start, 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:52.959 as Livia suggests, with William the Conqueror, because that makes 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:56.560 sense in this case. The Normans when they conquered England 0:02:56.600 --> 0:02:58.480 in ten sixty six, they said, all right, here's what 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:04.120 we're gonna do. All the the wealthy, noble people of 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:06.400 our land are going to get all the land, and 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:09.320 so let's just divide it all up. They're going to 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:11.920 live there on manners. And if you if you have 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:14.079 a manor house, you are the lord of that manor. 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:19.320 You're you have allegiance to the king, obviously. But on 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:22.080 that land of yours, besides your manor house, there's also 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:24.839 going to be a peasant village. There's gonna be some 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:27.280 some great farmland that they're going to work for you, 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:29.840 so they can give you lots of food. And then 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:34.640 there's also the commons, which all of the peasant people 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:37.880 or commoners can can share. They can divide it up 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:39.640 and share it and live off that stuff. 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:44.080 Yeah, and this land was not the commoner's land. This 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:48.000 is not peasant's land. This is the medieval era. I 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:50.560 guess it kicked off the medieval era, and just to 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:53.400 be clear, this was this was the lord's land like 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:57.040 you were saying, but the commoners had what are called 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:01.280 use of fructory rights, which is basically like they don't 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:05.000 own the land, but they have like actual legal right 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:08.440 to use and to work that land and to take 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:12.119 the products of their work from that land to sustain themselves. 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:15.520 So this is the arrangement like that, and it worked 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:18.440 pretty well for several centuries, it turns. 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.239 Out, yeah, it did. You know. They divided that land 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:24.599 into basically straight strips and we'll get into that in 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.840 a second, for each household. And there was also the waste, 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:30.640 which will come into play. It sounds like a terrible 0:04:30.640 --> 0:04:34.600 word to name basically the forest, but you know, it's 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:37.080 where they couldn't farm, but it was you know, it's 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:39.360 where the rivers were, that's where the trees were, So 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:42.479 that's where they hunted and fished and gathered peat and 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:44.600 wood and stuff like that. So it's still very valuable 0:04:44.640 --> 0:04:48.159 area as far as use goes. But they called it waste. 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:50.480 It was just not a good, good term. 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:51.480 Yeah, I agreed. 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:54.560 But so with the farmland themselves, like you said, they 0:04:54.640 --> 0:04:58.720 cut them up into strips, and just imagine like a 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:03.240 series of fields. One field is just grass. We'll call 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:05.760 that like the meadow. It's where all the sheep and 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:09.039 the cows are grazing. Now there's another field, and that's 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:11.680 where a bunch of cropland is growing. There's another field. 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:14.040 There's more crop land, and if you look very closely, 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:19.560 the crop land is divided up into very long, thin strips, 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:23.480 and each of those strips belongs to a different person 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:28.159 who farms that common land in both fields. And that's 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:30.800 how things were divided up. And you didn't have two 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:33.839 strips next to each other because they didn't want anybody 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:37.120 to get like all the good dirt. Yeah, and then 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:40.120 you would have strips in both fields because there were 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:42.680 different things growing in different fields, and the whole thing 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:47.479 rotated every few years, and a different field would become 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:51.039 the new meadow because the sheep and the cows would peep, 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:55.360 poop on it and fertilize it for next time around 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:56.960 when it became cropland again. 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:00.320 Yeah. So it was just basic crop rotation that made 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:03.839 a lot of sense. They would let it rewild. They 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:06.159 you know, they were straight because they had these very 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:09.440 tough to use plows that did not turn very well, 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:12.400 so they just made these long, straight strips. They would 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:15.200 take care and share the oxen that it took to 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:16.760 pull these plows for everyone. 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:17.960 Yeah, that was a big one. 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:20.400 And it was you know, it was sort of like 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:25.400 a It wasn't like like communism or anything or socialism. 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:27.120 It was just like how it was. It was like, hey, 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:28.960 we're all going to care for this land. We're going 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:31.279 to rotate the crops so the land stays good for 0:06:31.360 --> 0:06:34.160 all of us, and we're gonna all help take care 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:37.000 of the ox and will help each other out. And 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:41.000 we're not going to put up fences because the animals 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:43.839 have to graze around, and we all just have to 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:46.200 agree on how to do this, and they basically did. 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:51.120 Well. That's the big one. Because you are sharing strips 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:54.800 with your neighbors in a single field, everybody has to 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:57.720 do the same farming all at the same time. It's 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:00.719 almost like the group of commoners working those fields were 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:05.760 collectively one single farmer making these decisions on when to harvest, 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:08.800 when to plow, when to do all that stuff. And 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:11.880 like I said, it worked pretty well. It's important because 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:16.720 these people are the losers in this situation, and we 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:19.080 usually root for the underdog. So we have to be 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:24.480 careful not to overidealize life in a medieval English peasant 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:28.320 village like it was tough. Good point, like if if 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:32.000 your crops failed and it turned out that your your 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:35.600 neighbors thought you worshiped some new knows, they might burn 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:37.840 you at the stake. Like it was. It was not 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:41.760 necessarily the easiest life, but it seems to be a 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.680 life that was very satisfactory to the peasants because when 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:47.680 it came time for them to be forced to give 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:49.520 it up, they did not want to give it up. 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:52.360 They wanted to keep living like that because the alternative 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:57.600 that they were given was not preferable to peasant village life. 0:07:57.880 --> 0:08:00.240 Yeah, it's like, hey, go move to the same and 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:05.080 work in a textile mill. So they didn't necessarily also 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:09.440 divide this up evenly. It was, you know, it was 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:13.440 divided up according to like a lot of like inherited 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:15.440 steaks that had been around for a long long time 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:18.480 in the families. There were people that did not get 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.119 any land at all and basically were just the hired 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:25.240 farm hands even within the peasant village. But they did 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:29.559 get resources that could generally hunt and fish and things 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:33.600 like that. In the waste after the harvest. If they 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:36.480 were like you know, crops that were leftover or not 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:41.000 completely utilized, they a lot of times could had access 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:45.040 to those, So you know, they were getting along okay. 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:47.880 You know when you look at the alternative, which is 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:51.360 having no land at all to farm, I guess. 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:54.640 Yeah. And although there was inequality, you could still work 0:08:54.679 --> 0:08:57.520 your way up. There were people who had more land 0:08:57.520 --> 0:08:59.840 than they necessarily needed. Yeah, so if you were land 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:02.720 you could sublet that land, work that land, and start 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:05.640 giving yourself a foothold and maybe eventually buy that strip 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:10.520 or those strips of field for yourself. So it seems like, yes, 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:14.080 there were some people who were wealthier than others, but 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:21.360 the difference in income equality and social equality is much closer, 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:24.359 right than it would become in the next few centuries. 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:27.320 Yeah, for sure. And they also, you know, thought ahead, like, hey, 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:30.840 you within this system, you can't just get so rich 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:34.040 and still be here. So they had an income cap basically, 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:36.439 so if you went above that, they're like, sorry, you're 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:39.040 you're not a commoner anymore. You can't farm this land. 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:41.840 And they did this in a pretty democratic way. They 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:44.720 had a local council that they elected that you know, 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:47.360 every year they would allocate these strips for different households 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:49.839 and stuff like that. They would set fees for like 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:53.040 you know, grazing and pasturing and stuff like that and 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:57.400 get their agricultural calendar and order. And yeah, that's just 0:09:57.400 --> 0:09:58.880 how it went for a long time. And like you said, 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:02.079 for a couple hundred years, it wasn't it worked out 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:02.600 pretty well? 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:08.600 It did so apparently around twelve thirty five, so people 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:10.520 have been farming like this for a couple hundred years. 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:15.000 By then, there was a statute passed, and I don't 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:17.680 know the ins and outs of it, but it was 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:19.080 called the Statute of Merton. 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:22.320 I wonder if the statute was named for the famously 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:25.680 long necked defensive back for the San Francisco forty nine ers, 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:26.760 Merton Hanks. 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:30.520 Obviously it was, but regardless of who it was named after, 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.680 the Statue of Merton said that if you were the 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:36.560 lord of a manor and you want to like close 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:40.000 off your whole, well, I guess manner. If you want 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:41.719 to close off some of it, you can do that 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:45.160 legally from now on, but you have to make sure 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:48.360 that there's plenty of common land left for the peasants 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:52.000 to work and live on. And I guess whoever that 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:55.040 was passed for was like yes, and everybody else didn't 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:58.360 pay much attention to it for about one hundred or 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:01.959 so years, and then something happened in England and Europe 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:05.760 in general that really altered the trajectory of history, and 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:08.480 that was the Black Death, when as much as half 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:13.120 half of the people in England died off from this 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:15.440 one plague in just a couple of years. 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:19.600 So this it's interesting to see how things like this 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:22.440 in history can just change the course of history, right, 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:25.880 because had the Black Death not happened, obviously a lot 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:29.320 of people would have still been alive. But aside from that, 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:32.800 like this may have never gone down that way because 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:36.240 it was just a radical shift in the way the 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:39.080 country looked and how they had to operate moving forward. 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:42.760 Because obviously, when half the people go away and leave 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:43.320 the planet. 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:47.760 Is that how I'm saying this now, I think I 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:49.080 sniffed up the case forever. 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:51.720 Yeah, like it was the snap or something. There's gonna 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.080 be a labor shortage, just the nuts and bolts of 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:55.720 it is, there's gonna be far less people to do 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:58.840 that kind of work, which was kind of good for 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:00.520 the peasants at the time, because all of a sudden 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:03.000 they had some bargaining power and they said, hey, maybe 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:06.480 we should get paid a little more. We also don't 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:08.520 need as much food because there's only half the people. 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:12.480 And so that all of a sudden paved the way 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:17.640 for more sheep grazing because England started realizing, hey, there's 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:20.360 a lot more money and a lot easier money to 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:26.000 be made in textiles and shearing the sheep and selling 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:28.920 wool in the wool trade than there is this farming, 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:31.000 Like that's for the birds, right. 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:35.480 So, because sheep are much less labor intensive, require way 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:39.200 fewer farmers, but more land, the people who are wealthy 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:43.240 started going after enclosure more and more. They started following 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:48.120 that statute of Merton Hanks and saying like, oh, yeah, 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:49.840 I want to enclose this. I'm going to enclose this 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:54.120 and turn it into grazing land for sheep. And people 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:58.679 were actually displaced. Some people were some entire villages were displaced. 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:01.439 And it was as simple is that it was, you 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:05.200 don't live here anymore, get out, and don't forget I'm 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:06.760 the lord of the manor so what are you going 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:10.160 to do about it? Sometimes there were armed people who 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:13.240 would show up and tell them to leave. It was 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:16.760 just as illegal and indefensible as that. But that's exactly 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:19.600 what happened. People were moved out for sheep because they 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:22.560 could make more money off of wool than they could 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:24.800 off of crops, because there weren't that many people who 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:27.320 needed the crops in the first place. So this huge 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:31.000 land grab first started because the price of wool was 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:35.480 pretty expensive, and that started the first what you would 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:38.920 call really the first wave of enclosure back in the 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:40.680 fourteenth fifteenth century. 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:43.760 Yeah, and you know what we mean by fencing an 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:47.640 enclosure is literal fencing because they had to keep those 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:49.760 sheep there. If not, the sheep were going to go away, 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:55.439 so they had to physically construct barricades to keep these 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:58.120 fences in. Sometimes they were literal fences. Sometimes there were 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:00.920 these hedges. But yeah, if you're thinking, like you know 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:06.160 topiari type, you know, finery of a English garden, it's 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:09.600 more like a hedge that they train to grow so 0:14:09.760 --> 0:14:12.600 thick and then vines attached to that that it essentially 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:13.480 acts as a fence. 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:15.880 Yeah, like you just can't get through it. There's too 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:18.840 many brambles and blackberries and all that stuff. So, yeah, 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:22.320 these hedges. If you're British, you are probably pretty fond 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:26.720 of your hedges. They're part of British culture. But outside 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:30.520 of Britain, it's worth going to Britain just to see 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:32.680 the hedges. So the hedges have like two or three 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:34.760 Michelin stars, I can't remember. 0:14:34.920 --> 0:14:38.320 That's right. The other thing we have to point out 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:42.160 here is that sometimes it was a little more like 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:45.280 how it was supposed to work officially is different than 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:48.560 how it went down in practice. Officially, you were supposed 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:51.080 to get unanimous consent of all the stakeholders of the 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:53.560 Commons in order to sell that often fence it up 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:56.560 for your sheet, but it obviously didn't always work out 0:14:56.560 --> 0:14:59.080 that way. Like you said, sometimes he just took it. 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:02.560 Sometimes they forced them to move to a very much 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:05.600 less desire. They're like, here, take this land. It's not 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:09.640 nearly as fertile, but look I gave you something. And 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:12.160 sometimes yeah, it was just completely illegal. 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:15.480 Yeah, so some people were like, hey, this is kind 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:19.680 of messed up. One of the most well known voices 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:24.040 was Thomas Moore, who wrote his book Utopia in fifteen sixteen, 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:28.840 and he was pretty clearly against the sheep. He called 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:34.720 them the great devourers who devoured entire communities. And you know, 0:15:35.040 --> 0:15:37.320 obviously it wasn't the sheep's fault. They were just doing 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:41.240 what they do, which is kind of a yeah, I know, 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:44.280 they really took the brunt of it. But it was 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:48.040 because of this, the raising sheep that became so profitable 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:51.680 that that's what was really devouring the communities. And it 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.400 got the ear of Henry the seventh. Remember he was 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:57.600 the guy who killed Richard the third and took over. 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:01.560 He was the first Tudor king. He said, hey, I 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:03.960 am hearing what you're saying. So let's kind of slow 0:16:04.040 --> 0:16:08.840 down these enclosures because we don't want to uproot the peasantry. 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:10.800 We want them to keep doing what they do, because 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:13.400 that is England as far as anyone thinks of England. 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:17.000 Yeah, so that's sort of the first bucket of enclosure, 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:20.120 the first wave, I guess, the first tronch, the first trunch. 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:22.480 That's right. So maybe we should take a break and 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:26.480 we'll come back with a little more intense enclosure right 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:26.840 after this. 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:30.800 And things A job in job. 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:57.120 All right, So, as promised, we talked about the first 0:16:57.160 --> 0:16:59.360 wave of enclosure, and now the second wave a couple 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:02.640 of hundred years later comes back in a much more 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:07.320 intense form because the government, like the whole government of England, 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:08.639 said all right, this is how we're going to do 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:11.760 things now, because in the last couple of hundred years, 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:16.480 textile making has really become the thing. Although we're getting 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:19.960 most of our wool and cotton and stuff from our 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:22.679 various colonies all over the world, it's not like we 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:26.240 need all this for sheep. We think this is just 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:28.640 the way to go because we really need to make 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:33.119 our whole agricultural operation much more efficient, and it was 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:35.840 not efficient when people were just doing their own thing 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:38.439 with these little strips of land. Like one person or 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:41.040 one entity needs to kind of be in charge of 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:43.439 all of this so it'll be more efficient and smooth. 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:48.040 Right ideally, and in practice, a peasant could support himself 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:51.640 and his family and you know, maybe have enough leftover 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:54.600 to sell or something like that, but you can't really 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:58.879 support a growing workforce, a labor force that you're creating 0:17:59.200 --> 0:18:03.200 basically out of whole cloth. With the industrial Revolution started 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:07.120 in England thanks to these wool factories, converting them into textiles. 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:09.560 You need a bunch of people for that. So you 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:11.640 need to figure out how to take the people off 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:13.720 the land and put them in the factories. And then 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:15.560 you have to figure out how to feed those people 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:18.320 from the land that you just move the people from, 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:21.439 and you can pay them so that they actually have 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:25.520 to buy the food from the land that you just 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:27.920 forced them off of. Yeah, you can start to see 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:30.480 what a bad deal it was. But because there was 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:32.360 so much money to be made, because there was such 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:35.160 a huge leap forward just waiting to be taken through 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:41.680 the Industrial Revolution, the powers that be guided steered railroaded 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:46.200 England and the English into the cities and the factories 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:46.960 in the cities. 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.679 Yeah. And one of the biggest sort of pillars of 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:56.360 this new system was the Norfolk four course system. And 0:18:56.440 --> 0:19:02.040 a guy named Lord Townsend nicknamed Turnip. I believe he 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:06.000 brought this over from the Netherlands. His nickname was Turnip. 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:07.960 And wouldn't you guess turnips are part of this four 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:13.199 course system. It involved crop rotation, in this case wheat, turnips, barley, 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:16.120 and clover. You might be wondering, like clover, what good 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:16.359 is that? 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:16.720 Clover? 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:17.720 Was good for the grazing. 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:20.240 It's good for the bees, so honey, yeah, it's. 0:19:20.040 --> 0:19:22.520 Good for the bees, it's good for the soil. And 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:24.720 it also meant that they didn't need to let those 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:28.000 fields go down for a season and rewild. They could 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:30.560 just kind of keep rotating things and you could use 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:33.520 those turnips to feed the livestock that are grazing on 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:38.480 the clover, and previous to that, they might slaughter livestock 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:40.200 at the end of the season in the early winter. 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:44.560 Another big change was that the seed drill came along, 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:47.879 which has allowed them to plant in these very long 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:52.240 straight rows, just you know, endless, endless straight rows, and 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:58.640 they planted grain. And guess who introduced that, Josh and audience, I. 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:03.520 Know who it is, Air and Air yep survivor. 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:07.440 Oh man, jeth Throw Toll baby. 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:09.160 Oh yeah, Jethrow Toll. 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:10.280 That's right. 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:13.199 I knew it all along. I was just teasing. So 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:15.960 did you know Jethro Toll was a British band? 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:18.520 Oh? I did not. I just thought he was the 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:20.760 guy that came up with the seed drill and was 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:22.359 generally feeling like a dead duck. 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:26.080 No. Uh, they were a British band and apparently someone 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:28.520 in their agent's office was a history buff and was 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:31.200 telling them all about Jethrow Toll and what a great 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:33.720 inventive person he was. So they're like, we'll just name 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:36.639 our band Jethro Toll, even though it'll make no sense 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:39.800 because it doesn't fit with our music at all. We're 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:41.360 gonna name our band Jethrow Toll. 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:44.600 I think it kind of fits, do you think so? Yeah. 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.480 When I think of seed drills, I think of flautists. 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:50.600 I think of Ian Anderson dancing around on one leg 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:51.480 like a flamingo. 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:54.560 Nice. Okay, I guess it makes sense now that you 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:55.119 put it like that. 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:57.480 We talked about aqualon quite a bit on the show. 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:00.800 I don't know how you don't talk about aqualong like 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:04.960 pretty frequently. It's just there. It's worth talking about, for sure. 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:07.919 I love very divisive song. I think it's great and 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:08.520 kind of fun. 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:11.240 Oh yeah, some people hate it, boy, a lot of people. 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:13.320 Yeah, I wonder why it's a weird song. 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:18.199 It's odd. So I guess the upshot of all this 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:23.920 is that an industrial revolution was coincidental with an agricultural revolution, 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:28.840 and one fueled the other, which is pretty interesting because 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:32.520 this is happening at the exact same time. But even still, 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:34.639 the government was like, you can't just go in and 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:38.359 steal people's land. If you want to enclose your land 0:21:38.840 --> 0:21:42.200 and consolidate it so that you can create this super 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:45.000 efficient agricultural land that you can make tons of money 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:48.280 off of selling food again to the peasants who were 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:50.639