Robbing the Soil, 2: ‘Systematic theft of communal property’

By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism

The radical changes known to history by the innocuous name enclosure peaked in two long waves: during the rise of agrarian capitalism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and during the consolidation of agrarian capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth.

Robbing the soil, 1: Commons and classes before capitalism

By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism

Between the decline of feudalism and the rise of industrial capitalism, rural society was transformed by the complex of processes that are collectively known as enclosure.