My book with Gürol Irzik, Justice in the Distribution of Knowledge, is out today: global.oup.com/academic/pro...
Faik Kurtulmus
@faikkurtulmus.bsky.social
2.6K followers 3.8K following 48 posts
Political philosopher at Sabanci University, Istanbul. Working on distributive epistemic justice, political philosophy of science & freedom of expression. philpeople.org/profiles/faik-kurtul…
![Wikipedia entry on "Inclosure acts"
The inclosure acts[a] created legal property rights to land previously held in common in England and Wales, particularly open fields and common land. Between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 individual acts enclosing public land were passed, affecting 28,000 km2.[2]
Before the enclosures in England, a portion of the land was categorized as "common" or "waste".[b] "Common" land was under the control of the lord of the manor, but certain rights on the land such as pasture, pannage, or estovers were held variously by certain nearby properties, or (occasionally) in gross by all manorial tenants. "Waste" was land without value as a farm strip – often very narrow areas (typically less than a yard wide) in awkward locations (such as cliff edges, or inconveniently shaped manorial borders), but also bare rock, and similar. "Waste" was not officially used by anyone, and so was often farmed by landless peasants.[4]
The remaining land was organised into a large number of narrow strips, each tenant possessing a number of disparate strips throughout the manor, as would the manorial lord. Called the open-field system, it was administered by manorial courts, which exercised some collective control.[4] What might now be termed a single field would have been divided under this system among the lord and his tenants; poorer peasants (serfs or copyholders, depending on the era) were allowed to live on the strips owned by the lord in return for cultivating his land.[5] The system facilitated common grazing and crop rotation.[5]
Any individual might possess several strips of land within the manor, often at some distance from one another. Seeking better financial returns, landowners looked for more efficient farming techniques.[6] Enclosure acts for small areas had been passed sporadically since the 12th century, but advances in agricultural knowledge and technology in the 18th century made them more commonplace. Because tenants, or even copyholders, had leg…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:b7nwyonilwymqnwhomv6yfvy/bafkreiavpov65mel6psmaofbnz4tgv537gsabodsk5vu4oblkex4c4frsm)
