A brief commentary about Dickens' Britain.
             B. Economic development and the Industrial Revolution
             The major trends of the Industrial Revolution in Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries.
             II. The Agricultural Revolution in Britain
             The enclosure movement and its impact on the development of British agriculture
             A brief discussion of how technology and invention impacted the growth of industrialization and agriculture in Britain.
             A. The rural landscapes of Dickens' times
             Agriculture During the Time of Dickens
             Charles Dickens (1812-1870), the noted 19th century British author and social critic, lived during what might best be described as a period of great technological innovation which was the direct result of culminating factors which emerged during the Industrial Revolution (Ackroyd, 1988). The primary stimulus for change during this time was the increased demand for food generated by a parallel demographic revolution. Britain's population nearly doubled in the 18th century and doubled again by 1850. Population growth tends to retard economic development in a modern developing country, but Britain was a wealthy country with a standard of living well above subsistence. Thus the population explosion enlarged the effective demand for consumption and had a beneficial effect on economic development.
             Industrialization usually goes hand in hand with agrarian reform, if for no other reason than that an agrarian revolution allows a relatively small agrarian labor force to feed a larger manufacturing work force (Jones, 1974). In Britain, the revolution in land use, perhaps even more than improving technology, dramatically increased agricultural production. The so-called "enclosure movement" increased the efficiency of farmlands as common pastures and fields were replaced by more compact and easily farmed private holdings (Tate, 1967). Farmers were thus m
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