Growth in Agriculture

In the year 1800, much of Europe was farmed as it had been for hundreds of years, by serfs or peasants , who worked on small plots of land as "subsistence farms." This meant they grew primarily food (mostly cereals, like white and rye). The serfs and peasants lived off of part of what they harvested each year. The lord, who owned the land, collected most of what was harvested, which they sold to nearby cities or shipped to cities elsewhere in Europe or the world.

In England, there was a gradual change in this system, which began with the "dissolution" of the Catholic Church lands by King Henry VIII and which continued through the 1700s. This change was a transition from peasant, subsistence farming to commercial farming. During this period of transition, peasants (known in England as "cottagers" or "yeoman") found that as the years went by, they had less and less left over from their harvests to sell on the market, and the prices for these goods were not rising. Meanwhile, lords were continually raising the rent on the land, plus there were new taxes to pay the king. To make ends meet, cottagers often borrowed money, using their land as collateral, from the lord or from members of the gentry.