I have always heard that under the Enclosure Acts, wealthy landowners pushed peasants off land so they could let their flocks graze there, and allow them to get lots of wool to sell to merchants. I recently came across another interpretation–that this was done primarily to arrange everyone’s holdings so that they were contiguous, instead of being scattered–implying that it was to everyone’s benefit.
I didn’t find anything that would address this issue on this site. Are there any resources, either at mises.org, or elsewhere, that would shed some light on this? I"m interested primarily in the years before 1800.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, enclosures were by means of local acts of Parliament, called the Inclosure Acts. These “parliamentary” enclosures consolidated strips in the open fields into more compact units, and enclosed much of the remaining pasture commons or wastes. Parliamentary enclosures usually provided commoners with some other land in compensation for the loss of common rights, although often of poor quality and limited extent.