Agriculture in England
* The agriculture system changed in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
* Until the eighteenth century, the countryside of England was open.
* The common land was open to all villagers, and was used for a variety of daily activities.
* The rich landlords enclosed lands by drawing up hedges around them to demarcate their property.
* After the mid eighteenth century the Parliament passed 4000 Enclosure Acts.
Land Enclosures and Threshing Machines
* The enclosures and threshing machines changed the life of people in England.
* The open Fields were covered with enclosures now.
* Increase in grain production was achieved through simple innovations as crop rotation.
* The introduction of threshing machines sparked riots across the country.
* After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, food grains from Europe started flowing in and the grain prices fell down, causing an Agricultural Depression to set in.
* The landlords were forced to reduce the area under cultivation as well as the amount of labour they used.
Agriculture in the USA
* Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a major part of the USA was still covered with natural vegetation.
* The large portion of the country was inhabited by Native American Indians.
* After the American War of Independence was fought between 1775 and 1783, the United States of America was created.
* The government of the USA adopted a policy of driving out Native American
* Indians to pave the way for the white settlers to spread across the country towards the west.
* They changed the entire landscape and replaced the natural wilderness with cultivated fields of corn and wheat.
* The Great Plains were on to become the major wheat producing area in the future earning USA the title of the ‘Bread Basket of the World’.
New Technology in Agriculture and the poor
* The Great Plains were covered with thick grass that had deep roots that the farmers found difficult to unearth with their existing equipment.
* New ploughs were designed like disk ploughs and tractors that could clear vast stretches for wheat cultivation.
* In the year 1831, the first mechanical reaper was invented by Cyrus McCormick.
* Combined harvesters were later invented to cut grain.
* The Great Agrarian Depression set in during the 1930s.
* The 1930s also witnessed disturbance in the ecological balance of the Great Plains.
* The Great Plains that once was the bread basket of the world had now been reduced to a big Dust Bowl, causing damage to both life and property.
Opium Production in India
* In the late eighteenth century, the British wanted to trade opium with China in exchange for tea.
* Opium was being used in Chine only for medical purposes and its trade been banned by the Chinese Emperor.
* The British started illegal trade of opium in China.
* Opium was not grown in England; it was grown in India by the poor peasants of Bengal.
* The British paid low opium rates to the peasants and sold it at a higher rate to the Chinese.
* The monopoly of the British over growing opium was also broken, when states like Rajasthan, which were not under British rule, started growing opium and exporting it to China.
