Editing Swing Riots (section)

=== Enclosure ===
Early 19th-century England was almost unique among major nations in having no class of landed [[smallholding]] [[peasant]]ry.<ref name="dorset">Coffin. The Dorset Page. "Captain Swing in Dorset".</ref> The [[inclosure act]]s of rural England contributed to the plight of rural farmworkers. Between 1770 and 1830, about {{convert|6|e6acre|km2}} of common land were enclosed. The common land had been used for centuries by the poor of the countryside to graze their animals and grow their own produce. The land was now divided up among the large local landowners, leaving the landless farmworkers solely dependent upon working for their richer neighbours for a cash wage.<ref name="hammond3">Hammond. ''The Agricultural Labourer 1760–1832''. Chapter III "Enclosure"</ref> That may have offered a tolerable living during the boom years of the [[Napoleonic Era]], when labour had been in short supply and corn prices high, the return of peace in 1815 resulted in plummeting grain prices and an oversupply of labour.<ref name="dorset"/> According to the social historians [[John Lawrence Hammond|John]] and [[Barbara Hammond]], enclosure was fatal to three classes: the small farmer, the cottager and the squatter.<ref name="hammond97">Hammond. ''The Village Labourer, 1760–1832''. p.&nbsp;97</ref><ref name="elmes178">Elmes. Architectural Jurisprudence. Title LXVI. pp.&nbsp;178–179. Definition of a cottage is a small house for habitation without land. Under an Elizabeth I statute, they had to be built with at least {{convert|4|acre|m2}} of land. Thus, a cottager is someone who lives in a cottage with a smallholding of land</ref> Before [[enclosure]], the cottager was a labourer with land; after enclosure, he was a labourer without land.<ref name="hammond100">Hammond. ''The Village Labourer'', 1760–1832. p.&nbsp;100</ref>

In contrast to the Hammonds' 1911 analysis of the events, the historian [[G. E. Mingay]] noted that when the Swing Riots broke out in 1830, the heavily-enclosed Midlands remained almost entirely quiet, but the riots were concentrated in the southern and south-eastern counties, which were little affected by enclosure.<ref>G. E. Mingay, ''Parliamentary Enclosure in England: An Introduction to Its Causes, Incidence and Impact, 1750-1850'', (1997) pp.17-19</ref> Some historians have posited that the reason was that in the West Midlands, for example, the rapid expansion of the Potteries and the coal and iron industries provided an alternative range of employment to agricultural workers.<ref>RICHARDS, ERIC. “‘CAPTAIN SWING’ IN THE WEST MIDLANDS.” International Review of Social History, vol. 19, no. 1, 1974, pp. 86–99. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44581713. Accessed 12 Nov. 2020.</ref>

Critically, [[J. D. Chambers]] and [[G. E. Mingay]] suggested that the Hammonds exaggerated the costs of change, but enclosure really meant more food for the growing population; more land under cultivation and, on the balance, more employment in the countryside.<ref>Chambers and Mingay. ''Agricultural Revolution''. p. 104</ref> The modern historians of the riots, [[Eric Hobsbawm]] and [[George Rudé]], cited only three of a total of 1,475 incidents as being directly caused by enclosure.<ref>E. J. Hobsbawm & G Rudé, '' Captain Swing '' (1969), appendix 1</ref> Since the late 20th century, those contentions have been challenged by a new class of recent historians.<ref>J.M. Neeson. ''Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure: and Social Change in England, 1700-1820''. p. 223</ref>  Enclosure has been seen by some as causing the destruction of the traditional peasant way of life, however miserable:
{{Blockquote|"Enclosure dissipated the haze which surrounded rural poverty and left it nakedly visible as propertyless labour"|Hobsbawm/Rude. Captain Swing p. 16}}
Landless peasants could no longer maintain an economic independence and so had to become labourers.<ref>Hobsbawm/Rude. Captain Swing p. 16</ref> Surplus peasant labour moved into the towns to become industrial workers.<ref>Moore. ''Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World'' pp. 29–30</ref>