Reconsidering women’s role in enclosure protest

This blog is based upon research funded by a grant awarded by the Economic History Society through its Research Fund for Graduate Students to Jessie Wall of the University of Oxford.

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The enclosure of the English commons is both bemoaned as theft from the commoners and lauded for sparking agrarian capitalism and subsequent economic growth. The economic history of enclosure is preoccupied with questions of agricultural productivity and economic impact. While important, these questions fail to explain the working-class response to enclosure, thus depriving historical actors of agency. For women, who used the commons extensively, the standard assumption is that enclosure is something that happened to them, rather than something with which they interacted. Women are rendered passive actors, instead of economic agents. In my study of 18^th century parliamentary enclosure, I am collecting a sample of enclosure riots in order to understand the working-class response to enclosure and women’s role in enclosure protest. My findings suggest a need to re-evaluate women’s economic position within 18^th century commoner households and to reconceptualize the standard methodology for studying English riot history.

The English common land system is best understood within the manorial land system, originating in the 1066 Norman Conquest. After harvests, the ‘common field’ opened as pasture for tenants and workers with common rights. Uncultivated ‘waste’ land was used for collecting fuel, pasturing livestock, cultivating allotments, and cutting timber. Land was both a place of dwelling and a means of economic security. Husbands, wives, and children participated jointly in the creation of livelihoods based on the common land, among other sources of capital and income.

Enclosure dates to the 12th century. To increase agricultural productivity, land was consolidated or divided, hedges and roads were constructed, and common rights were altered. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries 7 million acres of land were enclosed with diverse impacts. Small farmers who could not afford to erect the required fencing often lost their land. Cottagers who resided on the edges of the commons could lose their livelihoods.

Parliamentary enclosure during the 18th century co-occurred with early industrialization. Wage and industrial labour increased as agricultural labour decreased. As a result, the family grew more dependent upon wage labour, typically more accessible to men. Market and household labour separated, and two economic spheres solidified – the public and the private. The public sphere was predominantly male and the private sphere was overwhelmingly female.

The untethering of livelihood from land without a clear replacement for economic security provided by the commons, often resulted in riots. Enclosure riots were one of the earliest forms of protest in England. They included both mobs of thousands and clandestine moonlight fence breaking by a few people.

The Historic Social Conflict Database (HSCD), the standard riot databank, contains information on over 3,000 riots in England during this period. Yet, only three are enclosure riots. Data on women’s participation is similarly sparse. Estimates in the literature on women’s participation in various types of riots vary from one to thirty percent. Some of the best work on enclosure protest is local, including Janet Neeson’s account of enclosure protest in Northamptonshire. However, no-one has collected a national sample.

Using newspaper keyword searching and digitizing Charlesworth’s An Atlas of Rural Protest in Britain 1548-1900, I have collected a sample of enclosure riots in the 18^th century. The dataset comprises approximately 150 riots between 1710 and 1830.

The study’s contributions are threefold. First, I offer a quantitative account of women’s participation in enclosure protest. The literature suggests that women were primarily present in food riots, associating them with the sourcing and preparation of meals, and a gendered role within the household. However, women are present in between twenty and twenty-five percent of enclosure riots in my sample. This estimate is equal to and surpasses women’s participation in food and machine riots, putting women squarely in the productive arm of the commoner household. Further, children are often present with women, reflecting a household interest in the commons.

Secondly, my database draws from newspapers, court records, and state papers. Evidence of women’s involvement is more likely in court records. Women are less likely to be mentioned in newspapers unless they are violent: the extraordinary event was not women’s rioting, but women’s violence. The current HSCD data is overwhelmingly newspaper data, and women’s presence is reflected in around one percent of the riots. This is well below women’s participation in other European countries, pointing to serious bias in the English data. Studies should leverage a mixture of sources, accounting for and analysing the bias of each source.

Lastly, once complete, my study will offer preliminary evidence regarding the drivers of women’s participation. Women were likely motivated to oppose those enclosures involving land which was of specific value to them. When the use of the commons was of value to both men and women, the economic interest in the commons was also shared, and participation in riots likely a household activity. For instance, women appear more frequently in riots defending the right to gather, a role belonging to women. The Economic History Society has generously offered to fund travel to enable my final archival work.

To contact the author:

Jessie Wall

Jessie.Wall@stcatz.ox.ac.uk

University of Oxford