Monoscapes - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 33

might 'appear in any forest, close, park, or in any warren, or on any high road, heath,
common or down' , was now likely to be charged with a capital offence.
Thompson quotes Sir Leon Radzinowicz's mid 20th-century judgement:
'It is very doubtful whether any other country possessed a criminal code with anything like
so many capital provisions as there were in this single statute.'
The narrative of the time was, again, that commoners were destroying
woods, coppices and heaths, and deliberately stealing the resources of
others, particularly deer, game and fish. This made them, of course,
poachers, smugglers and criminals, rather than simply rural people trying
to make a living. What do the records tell us about these people who were
caught and put to death? They were labourers, servants, millers, innkeepers,
yeoman farmers, blacksmiths, butchers, carpenters, gardeners, ostlers,
tailors, shoemakers and wheelwrights. They were 'again and again. . . men with
small freehold or copyhold farms, sometimes scattered in several parcels in more than one
parish, adjoining the heath and forest with their valued grazing and common rights' . 15 Not
surprisingly, none were gentlemen farmers or squires. E P Thompson
describes the act as 'savage' and 'atrocious'. For most of the 18th century,
though, it directed and strengthened the majority of people's attitudes not
only to common resources, but also to the people who relied upon them
for their livelihoods. It also, because of Britain's rapidly growing empire,
helped to shape lands and thinking in many other parts of the world.
Commons and Exclusions in India
Enclosures of common pastures, swamps and grazing grounds have
provoked exclusion and conflict in many other parts of the world. 16 Even
though these are well documented by historians, today we are still doing
more of the same, sometimes in the name of conservation, more often
in the name of creating more productive farming. Very often, new social
conflicts have come to threaten the success of the new system.
Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha's perceptive analysis of Indian
ecological history, This Fissured Land , highlights the essential interdepend-
ence of ecological and social change. This is important because few
histories have focused upon this vital connection between nature and
people. As the authors indicate of India:
A whole range of resources, regulated and utilised in many different ways, is under
great stress. There are very few deer and antelope left to hunt for hunter-gatherers. . .
A majority of shepherds in peninsular India have given up keeping sheep for want
of pasture to graze them. The shifting cultivators of north-east India have drastically