From 1776 to 1825, the English Parliament passed more than 4,000 Acts that served to appropriate common lands from commoners, chiefly to the benefit of politically connected landowners. These enclosures of the commons seized about 25 percent of all cultivated acreage in England, according to historian Raymond Williams, and concentrated ownership in a small minority of the population. These “lawful” enclosures also dispossessed millions of citizens, eradicated traditional ways of life, and forcibly introduced the new economy of industrialization, featuring occupational specialties and large-scale production. Nowadays we use the term “enclosure” to denounce heinous acts such as the ongoing privatization of intellectual property, the expropriation and massive land grabs occurring in Africa and other continents, the imposition of digital rights management, the patenting of seeds and the human genome, and more. This modern tendency towards enclosures and turning relationships into services and commons into commodities, has been described by Commons scholar David Bollier as “The great invisible tragedy of our time”.
