The Agrarian Origins of the Industrial Revolution in England

Abstract

This article will highlight the importance of the common law, enclosure, and the abolition of common rights in changing the ownership of land, all of which helped to transform England into the first capitalist country. This unique social metamorphosis, which included the complete abolition of the peasantry, also accounts for why England, and no other country in Europe, experienced a thorough Industrial Revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century.