Question

explain the condition in 18th century English countryside created condition for proto-industrialisation?

Answer 1

1. Conditions in the country side proved favorable for the merchants to look for and provide money to the peasants and artisans to produce for the international market.

2. With the shrinking of the open fields and Commons, peasants were left with small plots of land not sufficient to meet their family needs so they took to alternate source of income.

3. Enclosure movement impacted the poor  peasantry as they found their customary rights disappearing, they were forced to look for alternate jobs , and thus they provided for ready labour to the merchants who could cultivate in the countryside.

4. To supplements their meagre incomes, to achieve optimum utilisation of their family labour resources and the prospect of staying in the countryside enabled peasants to take up money from the merchants and to produce for the international market.

5. Merchants provided for raw material and money to the peasants and artisans in the country side who in turn produced for them. This thus brought about a huge network of commercial exchanges and established a system in which merchants regulated the supply , provided raw materials to the peasants, weavers establishing a whole network of association amongst them.