{"id":1815,"date":"2015-03-18T23:38:04","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T23:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/?p=1815"},"modified":"2026-03-04T08:59:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T08:59:30","slug":"british-agricultural-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/british-agricultural-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"British Agricultural Revolution: A Detailed Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The British Agricultural Revolution was a major event in world history and had a profound effect on populations throughout Europe and other historical events.\u00a0 For example, many historians consider the British Agricultural Revolution to be a major cause of the\u00a0Industrial Revolution<\/a>, especially in terms of when and how it began in Britain<\/a>.\u00a0 For example, the Industrial Revolution<\/a> began in Britain in the 18th century due in part to an increase in food production, which was the key outcome of the Agricultural Revolution.\u00a0 As such, the Agricultural Revolution is considered to have begun in the 17th century and continued throughout the centuries that followed, alongside the Industrial Revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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BRITISH AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION AND CROP ROTATION<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the centuries before the start of the British Agricultural Revolution, European farmers practised a form of farming in which they planted the same crop in the same field every year.\u00a0 This would cause them to avoid plant anything in the field every few years in order to avoid destroying the quality of the soil.\u00a0 However,\u00a0Charles Townshend<\/a>, a British statesman, identified a way to improve farming practises and thus produce more food.\u00a0 In the 1730s, he discovered that by growing different types of crops in the fields year after year, British farmers did not have to leave a field for a growing season.\u00a0 For example, he argued that in one year the farmers should grow a cereal grain such as whet or barley and in a following year they should grow a vegetable crop such as turnips.\u00a0 By doing so, a farmer could grow food in a field every year without diminishing the ability of the soil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Charles
Portrait of Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend by Godfrey Kneller (1715)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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For his discovery, he became known as \u2018Turnip Townshend\u2019.\u00a0 In general, this allowed British farmers to grow more food, which in turn helped lead to an increase in the population of British citizens.\u00a0 The increased population was important to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution<\/a> because it created a large workforce for the factories and mines that would be common during the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Industrial
The Industrial Revolution is a significant event in world history because it transformed European and North American societies from being based on agriculture production to industrial production.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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BRITISH AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION AND THE SEED DRILL<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A key aspect of the Industrial Revolution was the invention<\/a> of different types of machines, many of which were used in farming and agriculture.\u00a0 For example,\u00a0Jethro Tull<\/a>\u00a0is famous for his invention of the seed drill which had a profound effect on the British Agricultural Revolution and, in turn, the Industrial Revolution. \u00a0Tull worked on his father\u2019s farm in England and noticed that some of the traditional farming practices were very inefficient.\u00a0 For example, he was particularly concerned with how seeds were drilled into the soil by hand, which was very slow and required a lot of labor on the part of farmers. As a result, Tull invented a seed drill with a rotating cylinder to drill the seeds into the soil. This made the planting process much quicker.\u00a0 As well, the seed drill allowed crops to be planted in straight rows, which allowed the farmers to use less seeds while making weeding of the crops easier and more efficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jethro
Portrait of Jethro Tull by an Unknown Artist (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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BRITISH AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION AND THE ENCLOSURE MOVEMENT<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Another important feature of the British Agricultural Revolution was the\u00a0Enclosure Movement<\/a>.\u00a0 In the decades and centuries before the 1700s, British farmers planted their crops on small strips of land while allowing their animals to graze on common fields shared collectively.\u00a0 However, in the 1700s, the British parliament passed legislation, referred to as the Enclosure Acts, which allowed the common areas to become privately owned.\u00a0 This led to wealthy farmers buying up large sections of land in order to create larger and more complex farms.\u00a0 Ultimately, this forced smaller farmers off of their land.\u00a0 Having lost their way of life, many of these farmers went to local towns and cities in search of work.\u00a0 This was important to the overall Industrial Revolution, because it helped create a system that created a large workforce for the factories<\/a> and mines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Enclosure
‘The Corn Harvest’ by Pieter Bruegel (1565)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BRITISH AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In all, the British Agricultural Revolution was an important cause of the Industrial Revolution.  The British Agricultural Revolution took place in Britain in the 1700s and involved inventions and innovations that led to an increase in food production.  As stated previously, the increased food production allowed Britain\u2019s population to also increase which benefitted the Industrial Revolution in two ways.  First, the increased population helped produce workers for the factories and mines that were so important to the Industrial Revolution.  Second, the larger population created a market for goods to sold to which helped the owners of the factories to make a profit off of the sale of their goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Textile
Child laborers in a textile factory in Georgia in 1909. (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The British Agricultural Revolution, spanning the 17th to the 19th centuries, was a period of significant agricultural development marked by innovations in farming techniques. Historians consider it important to the start of the Industrial Revolution in Britain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":44,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[15,17],"class_list":["post-1815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industrial-revolution","tag-history","tag-industrial-revolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1815"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6181,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815\/revisions\/6181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}