Monoscapes - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 32

started the large-scale disconnection between people and the land, a
process that continues today.
Winners and Losers in the Wetlands and Forests
The story of the drainage of the low-lying fens of East Anglia illustrates
how quickly some people became winners and others losers. The first
major drainage of marshes for agricultural improvement occurred during
the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I; but it was not until the 17th
century that serious attempts were made on the Great Level of the Fens,
a vast wetland of 280,000 hectares ranging across six counties of eastern
England. Local people were hunters and gatherers, 'travelling in punts, walking
on stilts, and living mainly by fishing, cutting willows, keeping geese, and wildfowling' .
But the official narrative of the time was that these areas comprised 'water
putrid and muddy, full of loathsome vermine, the Earth spuing, unfast and boggie' , and
that these unproductive wetlands were conveniently 'overmuch harbour to a
rude and almost barbarous sort of lazy and beggarly people' . 13
In the early 17th century, commissioners were appointed by govern-
ment and backed by new legislation to speed the process of drainage.
Cornelius Vermuyden, popularly accredited with bringing drainage know-
how from the Netherlands to England, was appointed with the Earl of
Bedford to lead the undertaking. Despite decades of technical and social
setbacks, by 1649 a new system of drains, raised riverbeds, outfalls, sluices
and dams was complete. Vermuyden reported that on this newly privatized
land, 'wheat and other grains, besides innumerable quantities of sheep, cattle and other stock
were raised, where never had any before' . But it was not so simple, as these
improvements provoked commoners and fen men to half a century of
uprisings. They broke embankments, fired mills and filled drains. In some
cases, they secured concessions. Ernle indicates that it was not until 1714
that the riots caused by the reclamations ceased. Yet, these protests were
to no avail, as the fens stayed drained and in private hands.
Soon after this period, there followed one of the most notorious
examples of state disenfranchisement of people relying on the resources
of the commons. This was the passing, in May 1723, of the Waltham
Black Act, or just 'Black Act', by the English parliament. In his compelling
account, the historian E P Thompson describes how those in power took
to new extremes their justification for wresting control of forests. 14 The
act described the 'Blacks' as 'wicked and evil-disposed men going in disguise' to
pillage the royal forests of deer and do battle with forest officers. Critically,
the Black Act created 50 new capital offences, which were then extended
by successive legal judgements. Anyone found with their face 'black' , or who