(i) Enclosure laws favoured the landlords at the expense of the poor. When fences came up, enclosed lands became exclusive property of one land owner.
(ii) Poor farmers lost grazing rights and other customary rights, e.g, of collecting firewood from forests or apples and berries or hunt small 'animals for meat. Everything belonged to the landlords and had a price, which they could not afford.
(iii) The poor were deprived of ways to supplement their meagre income and means to tide over periods of crises.
(iv) Earlier labourers lived within the compounds of the landowners and availed of certain facilities. But with enclosures, labourers were reduced to the status of wage-earners and were employed during harvest time.
(v) Deprived of their rights and driven off the land they tramped in search of work. From Midlands they moved to southern England. This region was intensively cultivated and there was demand for agricultural labourers. But nowhere could the poor find secure jobs. Work of the poor became insecure and income unstable.
(vi) With enclosures came threshing machines. These machines resulted in further displacement of labour. Wages became low and the number of poor unemployed large.

(i) Enclosure laws favored the landlords at the expense of the poor. When fences came up, enclosed lands became exclusive property of one land owner.
(ii) Poor farmers lost grazing rights and other customary rights, e.g, of collecting firewood from forests or apples and berries or hunt small 'animals for meat. Everything belonged to the landlords and had a price, which they could not afford.
(iii) The poor were deprived of ways to supplement their meagre income and means to tide over periods of crises.
(iv) Earlier labourers lived within the compounds of the landowners and availed of certain facilities. But with enclosures, labourers were reduced to the status of wage-earners and were employed during harvest time.
(v) Deprived of their rights and driven off the land they tramped in search of work. From Midlands, they moved to southern England. This region was intensively cultivated and there was demand for agricultural labourers. But nowhere could the poor find secure jobs. Work of the poor became insecure and income unstable.
(vi) With enclosures came threshing machines. These machines resulted in further displacement of labour. Wages became low and the number of poor unemployed large.

(i) The enclosures movement ushered in the Agricultural Revolution in Britain.
(ii) Enclosures enabled richer landowners to expand the land under their control and produce for thee market.
(iii) By bringing new land under cultivation enclosures increased food production, reduced Britain's dependence on food grain import and enabled her to meet the needs of its growing urban population.
(iv) Enclosures gave the landlords the opportunity to make long term investments on land. Barren land was made cultivable by clearance of forests and marshes.
(v) They helped plan crop rotation to improve soil fertility by simple innovations like planning of cloves and turnips to restore the soils' nitrogen.

(i) The enclosures movement ushered in the Agricultural Revolution in Britain.
(ii) Enclosures enabled richer landowners to expand the land under their control and produce for thee market.
(iii) By bringing new land under cultivation enclosures increased food production, reduced Britain's dependence on food grain import and enabled her to meet the needs of its growing urban population.
(iv) Enclosures gave the landlords the opportunity to make long term investments on land. Barren land was made cultivable by clearance of forests and marshes.
(v) They helped plan crop rotation to improve soil fertility by simple innovations like planning of cloves and turnips to restore the soils' nitrogen.

Foodgrains production grew rapidly in the 19th century England because:
(i) New Lands: Enclosures helped bring new lands under cultivation. Lands which earlier constituted pasture lands, open fields, forests commons, marshes were turned to agricultural fields.
(ii) Simple Innovations: Farmers started using simple innovation on a more regular basis. Crops like turnip and clover which helped restore depleted nitrogen content of the soil and made soil more fertile were regularly cultivated. Turnip was also a good fodder crop relished by cattle.
(iii) Crop Rotation; Use of crop rotation technique on a regular basis improved soil and fertility and increased foodgrain production.
(iv) Threshing Machines: The use of threshing machines improved efficiency and reduced labour cost.

(i) The British insisted on farmers growing in India to balance their trade with China. The British could buy tea from China only by paying in bullion. This resulted in outflow of treasure. Opium was one commodity which the British could sell and persuade the Chinese to buy. Its addictive properties in China. Therefore, the Indian farmers were forced to cultivate opium and sell at a cheap price. This was then illegally smuggled into China and sold at a high price.
(ii) Opium grown in India helped the British to reverse the unfavourable balance of payment with China.
(iii) Opium trade resulted in two Opium Wars.
(iv) These wars forced China to open her territories to foreign trade.

In early 19th century farmers in the USA had uprooted all vegetation and used tractors to break the sod into dust. In early 1930s when rains failed year after year and temperature soared, winds blew with ferocious speed. Dust storms became black blizzards because the entire land had been ploughed over and stripped of grass. The lessons we can draw from the USA's conversion of the countryside from a bread basket to a dust bowl are:
(i) Man must respect the ecological conditions of each region.
(ii) Man's uncontrolled ambitions, greed and desire to conquer nature can lead to ecological disbalance and nature's wrath.
(iii) Technology and development should be nature-friendly otherwise the very livelihood of mankind could be at stake.

Advantages: The advantages of mechanical harvesting were: 
(i) They allowed big farmers to rapidly clear large tracts, breakup the soil, remove the grass and prepare the ground for cultivation. 
(ii) These machines reduce dependence on labour and increased efficiency.With power driven machinery four men could plough, seed and harvest 2,000 to 4,000 acres of wheat in a season.
(iii) The machines helped increase production by bringing virgin land under cultivation, to meet the growing demands of urban dwellers and the export market.
Disadvantages: The disadvantages of mechanical harvesting were:
(i) For poor farmers machines brought misery. Machines reduced dependence on labour leading to unemployment. For many a poor it became difficult to find jobs.
(ii) Many farmers who bought machines on loans, thinking the boom would last, faced hard times once the boom ended by 1920s. They faced difficulty in paying back loans. Some were driven to take the extreme step of abandoning farms.
(iii) Production had expanded so rapidly that during the post war years, when the export market collapsed and wheat prices fell farmers were left with large surpluses and overflowing store houses. -:
(iv) Extensive cultivation made feasible by machines resulted in the Great Agrarian Depression of the 1930s, which ruined wheat farmers everywhere.
(v) Indiscretionary use of machines ruined the entire landscape resulting in ecological disbalance. Periods of plenty were followed by droughts. Ordinary dust storms became black blizzards. The American dream of land of plenty turned into a nightmare.

The impact of westward expansion of white settlers in the USA were:
(i) The white settlers first settled in the Appalachian plateau from where they moved to the Mississippi valley, and after 1860s swept in the Great Plains across the river Mississippi. Settled agriculture especially grain production was undertaken on an extensive scale largely at the expense of grasslands and forests. Forests were slashed and burnt, stumps pulled out and land cleared for cultivation.
(ii) Agrarian expansion led to displacement of local tribes. They were driven beyond the river Mississippi and later further West.
(iii) In the late 19th century, American urban population expanded rapidly and the export market grew. During the world war the world market boomed, since Russian supplies were cut-off due to the Russian Revolution. The spread of railways made it easy to transport grain from wheat producing regions for export to the east coast. By 1919, nearly 74 million acres of land was under wheat cultivation in America. The USA came to dominate the world"1harket in agricultural produce and came to be called the bread ba~ket of the world.
(iv) The westward expansion provided the impetus for development of new technologies in agriculture, to meet the requirements of new habitats and land.
(v) Ploughs were modified, disk ploughs, tractors and the mechanical reaper were invented.
The westward expansion thus led to the US emerging as the bread basket of the world and to increased mechanisation of agriculture.

Captain Swing was no person but a mythic name used in threatening letters by poor labourers who were deprived of their common land, of their livelihood and even their jobs to farmers using threshing machines. They could not openly face the landlords, so they adopted this method. At night they would attack the farmhouse of the landlords, burn their barn and haystacks, and sometimes their entire farmhouse. Sometimes they would destroy the threshing machines, which had ruined their lives.
The name symbolised anti-machine movement and the insecurity of the poor farm labourer, who feared displacement due to use of threshing machines by rich farmers.
This name became so common in about 1830 that the riots started by the poor labourers began to be called "Swing Riots".