The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #163811   Message #3913846
Posted By: Iains
29-Mar-18 - 10:08 AM
Thread Name: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Highland Clearances discussion
The reality is that modern farming could not exist without enclosure and this process occurred over swathes of Europe as well.
"In Europe enclosure made little progress until the 19th century. Agreements to enclose were not unknown in Germany in the 16th century, but it was not until the second half of the 18th century that the government began to issue decrees encouraging enclosure. Even then, little advance was made in western Germany until after 1850. The same policy of encouragement by decree was followed in France and Denmark from the second half of the 18th century, in Russia after the emancipation of the serfs (1861), and in Czechoslovakia and Poland after World War I. Common rights over arable land—which constitute the most formidable obstacle to modern farming—have now for the most part been extinguished, but some European land is still cultivated in the scattered strips characteristic of common fields, and common rights continue over large areas of pasture and woodland."
The reality is that peasant farming was inefficient and not capable of generating the required level of investment to progress. Modern arable farming requires single blocks of significant hectarage to operate efficiently, strips comprising roods and perches can no longer hack it.
   It is carefully overlooked that the displaced persons also created victims. How many native peoples suffered as a result of uncontrolled immigration?