Land & Power in 18th Century England

Land is the most fundamental of resources, the beginning and end of human wealth, the beginning and end of human identity. Where a person happens to be born defines their sense of identity forever; the reason that the dead are committed to the ground is in some measure because it reaffirms this human connection to place. The wealth of a person is tied to the land that she or he controls: A good farmstead, a poor claim, a reliable well make or break a person's fortune in the world.

In the 18th century, England -- like other countries throughout the world at the time (and arguably in some measure still today) was a country marked by enormous distinctions of wealth, distinctions that were expressed in terms of owner ship of land.

Thus it is no surprise that the changing political and cultural tenure of English life during the 18th and 19th centuries was reflected in the meaning of land; the metaphors and significances associated with land both mirrored and in some measure created these political changes.

At the beginning of the 18th century England (like other European nations) was marked by extreme distinctions of wealth, with a very large distance between rich and poor, powerful and impotent and cultured and uneducated. These distinctions were in many ways defined and maintained by the different relationships that the different classes had to land. Those who owned large estates were not only wealthy, but they constituted the governing classes both in terms of those who were

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Category: History - L