Land & Power in 18th Century England

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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nd efficiency. One of the primary ways that the meaning of land changed in the 19th century was that it ceased to be the prime support of the ruling class -- a position it had held since before the Norman Conquest. The decline of agriculture reduced the value of land during the 19th century, and the landowning class itself was reduced in power by successive reforms of the franchise and by the arrival of new representative institutions in local government . Much of the shifting relationship between power and land that occurred during the 19th century was reflected in the battles fought over various Corn Laws -- those forms of legislation that had been used for hundreds of years to regulate the price of grains as well as to ensure the adequate supply of food for the country. During the 19th century wage controls, high wheat prices, and resultant high bread prices placed a heavy burden on the mass of the population. The Corn Laws thus perpetuated the economic distinction between the classes and were a source of continuing discontent. In other words, the Corn Laws helped maintain traditional distinctions between landed and landless people in an era in which those distinctions were becoming increasingly archaic and the subject of gr
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Approximate Word count = 2004
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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