Back to Aubrey/Maturin.
Back to Aubrey/Maturin. I had forgotten that The Yellow Admiral starts with a history lesson on the enclosure of the English commons. I feel like O’Brian’s opinions are put into Jack’s mouth, while Stephen, as usual, plays the part the reader asking for information. Except this time it’s not about a nautical term, it’s about land theft by aristocrats and the events that led to the industrial revolution. The pro-enclosure opinion is put in the mouth of an asshole admiral who dislikes Jack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
Enclosure is actually much older than that, dating back to the period after the Black Death when there were insufficient workers to tend all of the fields. Many land owners shifted to pastoral agriculture and then enclosed the pastures, enabling larger flocks to be managed with fewer people. It was highly profitable at the time and a big driver of the English Wool trade.
ReplyDeleteen.m.wikipedia.org - Medieval English wool trade - Wikipedia