HST 101 Lecture Notes - Business Cycle, Corn Laws, Infant Mortality
Document Summary
In the eighteenth century more reliable food supplies, earlier marriage, high birthrates, and more widespread resistance to disease contributed to significant population growth in europe. England and wales experienced particularly rapid population growth: rapid population growth meant that children accounted for a relatively high proportion of the total population. Population growth also contributed to migration of people from the countryside to the cities, from ireland to england, and from europe to the americas. The agricultural revolution: the agricultural revolution began long before the eighteenth century. Rich landowners fenced off (enclosed) their own land and common land to apply new scientific farming methods; as they did so, they forced their former tenants to become sharecroppers or landless laborers, or to migrate to the cities. Britain and continental europe: eighteenth-century britain had a number of characteristics that help to explain its peculiar role in the industrial revolution. Industrialization took hold in europe after 1815, first in belgium and france.