The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets

by Jason Hickel

While the wool industry was a major driver of enclosure, the Reformation added impetus to the process. When Henry VIII dissolved the old Catholic monasteries, Church lands were quickly appropriated by the elite. Many of the peasants who lived on them were kicked off. But by far the most powerful driver of enclosure had to do with agriculture. Landlords began to realise that they could skim much more value from peasants if they were able to get them to increase their agricultural output. To do this, they transformed peasants’ secure tenure rights into a market for leases, and gave leases only to those who were able to produce the most. Those who were less productive would be kicked off the land and left with no way to survive. This new system – known at the time as ‘improvement’ – put peasants under tremendous pressure. If they wanted to survive they had to devise ways of extracting ever more yield from their land – far beyond what they needed to live on. They had to increase their workload and intensify their farming techniques. This led to a dramatic increase in agricultural output, but the only real improvement was to the landlords’ profits.