«Commoners: common right, enclosure and social change in England, 1700-1820», llibre de J. M. Neeson publicat el 1993. Es pot descarregar en PDF aquí.
«Between 1750 and 1820, 20.9 per cent of England was enclosed by Act of Parliament, or some 6.8 million acres; as a proportion of agricultural land the area was much greater, perhaps 30 per cent of the total. Moreover, in the Midlands, enclosure affected the most densely populated rural areas [98]. It was no small event; it affected large numbers of men, women and children who lived and worked in what was still the largest sector of the economy – agriculture.»
«Moreover, enclosure was an institutional or political intervention. No other attack on common right succeeded as well as enclosure. No other means could be found to raise rents as far or as fast. Enclosure, sanctioned by law, propagandized by the Board of Agriculture, and profited in by Members of Parliament, was the final blow to peasants in common-field England. The result was a memory of expropriation that informed, legitimized, and sharpened the class politics of nineteenth-century villages.»
Afirma l’historiador José Miguel Lana Berasain a la seva ponència «El retorno de los comunales: instituciones, reglas y equilibros de poder», 2017:
«Cal senyalar que els “commons” anglesos no són les muntanyes comunals que entenem aquí, sinó que són bàsicament servituds, és a dir, drets de caràcter col·lectiu –o de caràcter comunitari– sobre unes propietats de titularitat privada.»
[diapositives de la ponència disponibles aquí]
