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'Systematic theft of communal property'

Angus, Ian
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2021/08/30/robbing-the-soil-2-systematic-theft-of-communal-property/

Publisher:  Climate & Capitalism
Date Written:  30/08/2021
Year Published:  2021  
Resource Type:  Article

In 1549, tens of thousands of English peasants fought -- and thousands died -- to halt and reverse the spread of capitalist farming that was destroying their way of life. The largest action, known as Kett’s Rebellion, has been called "the greatest practical utopian project of Tudor England and the greatest anticapitalist rising in English history."

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

In part one we saw that organized resistance and reduced population allowed English peasants to win lower rents and greater freedom in the 1400s. But they didn't win every fight — rather than cutting rents and easing conditions to attract tenants, some landlords forcibly evicted their smaller tenants and leased larger farms, at increased rents, to well-off farmers or commercial sheep graziers. Caring for sheep required far less labor than growing grain, and the growing Flemish cloth industry was eager to buy English wool.

Local populations declined as a result, and many villages disappeared entirely. As Sir Thomas More famously wrote in 1516, sheep had "become so greedy and fierce that they devour human beings themselves. They devastate and depopulate fields, houses and towns."

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