On Historical Imagination

When history was conceived in the 18^th century as being the younger sister of science, it was involved in a painful struggle to emulate her objectivity and notion of progress. It had to regard facts as sacrosanct and had to accept authority unquestionably. Thankfully, history was rescued from the Whiggish notion without significant damage having been committed to its craft. What liberated history thus from the drabness of reporting mere facts was imagination. It introduced the concept of narrativisation and interpretation. History was then on the brink of being drawn towards the other extreme of “history as an art.” But historians in time have realized that there is much that history can take from both ends and marry it to inculcate certain practices and principles of its own. This marriage of science with art or in other words facts with narratives was brought about by imagination. Over the years imagination has served as both a constructive and destructive agent enabling historians to understand the past in new and different ways.

Imagination as construction

In this regard imagination is what Bertrand Russell perceived it to be when he stated “What a man loses in knowledge he gains it in imagination.” Historically this imagination pieces together fragments of evidence and weaves them into a coherent understanding of the past. Hayden White in his book Tropics of Discourse is of the view that “the historian must inevitably include in his narrative an account of some event or complex of events for which the facts that would permit the plausible explanation of its occurrence are lacking. This means the historian must interpret his materials by filling the gaps in his information on inferential or speculative grounds.”[1] Thus, imagination in its constructive role aids the historian not only in narrativisation but also interpretation. How it does so needs further explanation.

a)      Imagination as an aide to narrativisation

The act of narrativisation, as purported by Louis Mink and Hayden White, consists of forming a story. What is implied by a story here is continuity. A narrative demands a chain of events stringed together by a common thread. This thread is supplied by imagination. It lends the narrative its flow. In another sense, as White informs us, imagination is what converts knowing into telling. However, White’s conception here is incomplete. Imagination aids not just in telling but also in knowing. Ricouer in his work Time and Narrative is of the view that “writing in history is not external to the conceiving and composing of history.”[2] Thus, the act of narrativisation is “knowing” first and then “telling”. Imagination being the essence of a narrative, therefore, helps in both knowing and telling. It helps the historian contextualize facts and plug in lacunae due to incomplete evidence at one level and at the other helps him coalesce these into a compelling plot.

Collingwood’s understanding of imagination is twofold. On one hand it is a priori and on the other structural. The a priori imagination develops a plot in a manner determined by a necessity internal to it. As Collingwood informs us “a story, if it is a good story, cannot develop otherwise than as it does.”[3] Imagination then sequences a narrative not arbitrarily but in sync with the need of the narrative. In other words, to Collingwood, “a historian cannot imagine what cannot be there”.[4] In other words what a historian can imagine is what could possibly have been there. His imagination unlike the poet’s cannot run amuck. It has to be in line with the pieces of evidence that it is trying to connect. A historian’s imagination therefore has to work within certain paradigms which differentiate a historical narrative from a purely fictional one. Ricouer calls this kind of imagination as productive imagination which assists in emplotment of facts.[5] However, imagination not only structures a narrative but also lends meaning to it. This meaning is shaped by the historian’s interpretation of past which is explored in the next section.

b)      Imagination as an aide to interpretation

The act of imagining the structure of a historical narrative is not separate from imagining its form or dominant theme. The two actions happen in the historian’s mind almost simultaneously. When putting historical facts in perspective, the historian invariably interprets the facts according to his own imagination. In the act of interpreting them, thus, he forms a structure of the narrative in his head. In this way, the historian is very similar to the poet who fashions the rhyme scheme of his poem just when he perceives the fanciful object of his poem. He does not first pen his thoughts and then structure them. The thoughts come in his head replete with an ornate flow.  

White takes this view and propounds that imagination helps the historian decide the theme of his narrative. He might view the past he is inquiring about as romantic, idealist, tragic, comic and so on.[6] The explanation of the past requires an explanation of the why more than the what. The “why” often plagued by a dearth of evidence is not always sufficient enough to explain the event. Thus relying on his imagination the historian constructs the past in a certain way.  However, even if the why is replete with evidence the historian will still have to perceive it in order to make sense of it. It is in this perception that imagination lies. Collingwood calls this perceptual imagination which “supplements and consolidates the data of perception by presenting to us objects of possible perception.”

Ricouer though does not side with White and Collingwood and critiques them by arguing that the past has a plot of its own and it is the task of the historian to trace that. Instead of creating his own plot, the historian’s job is to find the pre-configured past. Therefore, to Ricouer, emplotment is not an act of re-emplotment. It is an act of searching for the plot structure inherent in the past.[7] While Ricouer’s view is compelling, the act of finding the past’s pre-figured plot is both an arduous and unimaginative task. True, the past has its own storyline, but often its storyline is incomplete. Moreover, the past plot is drab and lackluster in the sense that it is merely a compendium of facts. Finally, the prefigured past or res gestae is difficult to produce as it is when seen through the lens of the present. While the historian must always try and teleport himself to the world he is studying, he cannot do so with complete objectivity. His currently held worldview and perceptions of the present will inadvertently reflect in his reflection on the past. Thus, this is where White’s tropes of interpretation (comic, satirical etc.) and Collingwood’s perceptual imagination steps in inevitably.

Thus, imagination is necessary for constructing the past not only because it helps in assembling facts together in a cogent whole but also because it lends perspective to the past. Operating within the confines of certain paradigms of the discipline (which are also a product of imagination as explained in the next section of the essay), historical imagination lends a flow to the narrative, a flow which binds together the writer/historian and the reader and makes an otherwise drab account of the past more interesting. Not only does it form a story, imagination also paints the plot in the hues of the historian’s interpretation of the past. It is courtesy these varied hues that the past can be analysed in several new ways and each time reveals something new about itself.

Imagination as de-construction

Another way in which imagination helps a historian is by freeing him from the shackles of authority and temporality.

a)      Imagination as historical criticism

Authority in history has two meanings: one authority is wielded by facts and the other by influential historians. Imagination helps the historian overcome both sets of authority. When a historian sets himself to the task of ascertaining himself with facts of a particular event he tends to reject several of them and accept several others. These facts he gains from his predecessors who like him were interested in the question that intrigues him now and in their process of inquiry came up with certain facts. Therefore, the historian does not need to regard facts as sacrosanct as most of them are established by human authority. A historian can choose to challenge the authority if in the process of his inquiry he comes across new facts. But he can only do so if he imagines a different past from the one constructed by his influential counterparts. Only then can he look for more evidence and select from the available pool of facts those which harmonise with his view of the past. Thus, in doing so the historian’s imagination deconstructs the old and establishes the new only to be deconstructed again by another historian’s imagination.     

Collingwood is of the opinion that the historian can “discover what, until he discovered it, no one ever knew to have happened.”[8] This he achieves by critically analysing his sources or by using unwritten sources and at times even by taking an interdisciplinary approach to decipher a particular piece of the past. The more the historian becomes adept in his craft and the more he learns the less he is bound by authority. He comes to rely on his own powers and constitutes himself as his own authority while other authorities are now relegated to being just evidence.

White however would not go as far as Collingwood in letting imagination take over factual authority. For him “unless at least two versions of the same set of events can be imagined, there is no reason for the historian to take upon himself the authority of giving a true account of what really happened.”[9] Yet, when it comes to imagination the matter becomes highly subjective. So, to say that two different imagined narratives are more authoritative than one, is a moot point. It is true that more the out of the box connections a historian forges between his facts, the more matured his perspective becomes. But if we regard the narrative as being a story then that narrative is an authority in itself. It is replete with its own set of facts, arguments and imaginative perceptions. In this way that narrative has been established as an authority.

b)      Imagination as distortion

Another way in which imagination works in favour of a historian is by liberating him from the narrow notions of temporality. Time in history is fluid. Therefore, the historian does not need to stick to the pulse of time when writing his narrative. His imagination can spur him to sync the temporality of his event to the tune of his narrative. Hayden White calls this distortion and defines it as the “departure from the chronological order of events’ original occurrence so as to disclose their true or latent meanings.”[10] Therefore, imagination deconstructs the paradigm of chronologically determined narratives and instead gives birth to adjusted chronologies for a meaningful narrative. Just as a fiction writer starts his work with a specific point in time and then keeps moving back and forth in it as the narrative demands so can a historian. When describing the First World War he can start with 1916 instead of 1914 or 1918 and then can move in either directions or in both directions simultaneously. All this is a factor of his imagined narrative’s needs.

White further goes on to say that distortion can have two meanings; negative, entailing the selection of facts and positive, consisting of arrangement of events in an order different from the chronological order of their original occurrence. In this way for White a historian employs the Freudian tactics used in interpreting dreams to reveal their hidden meanings. [11]

Thus imagination as a de-constructing agent then brings down two major paradigms of the discipline; authority and time. As discussed in the first section, imagination then determines its own paradigms and operates within it. It is the historian who imagines a view of the past and the rest follows. As Collingwood says in his book The Idea of History “the supposedly fixed points between which the historical imagination spins its web are not given to us readymade, they must be achieved by critical thinking.” [12]

Thus, there are several ways in which a historian employs imagination as a tool to delve deeper into the innards of his craft. With imagination, not only can history be rest assured of newness in perspectives but also can be confident of being completely freed from the suffocating designs of positivism in times to come.

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[1] Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, John Hopkins University Press, p. 51

[2] Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Volume 1, University of Chicago Press, p. 161

[3] R.G. Collingwood, the Idea of History, Oxford University Press, p. 579

[4] Ibid, p. 579

[5] Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Volume 2, University of Chicago Press, p. 2

[6] Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, John Hopkins University Press, p. 51-68

[7] Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Volume 1, University of Chicago Press, p. 170

[8] R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford University Press, p. 579

[9] Hayden White, The Content of  the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, John Hopkins University Press, p.  31

[10] Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, John Hopkins University Press, p. 111

[11] Ibid, p. 111

[12] R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford University Press, p. 581

Women in Islam

Having finally triumphed Mecca in the 8^th year of Hijra (630 AD) from the hands of his arch enemy Abu Sufiyan, Mohammed is said to have asked Hind Bint Utbah, Sufiyan’s wife, to lead a delegation of Meccan women in taking the oath of allegiance to Islam. Detesting the Prophet and his religion, when Hind was asked to swear not to commit adultery (zina), she replied rather mockingly “Does a free woman commit adultery?” Hind’s oath, to put in Mernissi’s words, was “a masterpiece of humour and political insolence by a woman forced to submit.”

Renowned for her sexual liaisons with many men, including the second caliph Umar, Hind was the last of the “jahilyya” women desperately clinging to her sexual and financial independence before Islam stomped on it. Many a woman believed, as Leila Ahmed tells us, that Islam expunged their rights and rebelled against it in full gusto once Mohammad was dead. The women of Hadramaut rejoiced at his death and were duly executed for their blasphemy by Abu Bakr. Similarly, Salma bint Malik, a slave captured by Mohammad’s followers, rebelled post the Prophet’s death to avenge the death of her mother, apparently tied to the foot of two elephants and torn apart. Mohammad’s own lineage is said to harbor such views. Sukaina, the great granddaughter of the Prophet when asked why she was merry and her sister Fatima somber replied that it was because the former was named after her pre-Islamic great-grandmother and the latter after her Islamic grandmother!

To credit Islam with the lofty achievement of liberating women from the clutches of jahillya would be an overstatement. That the jahillya was largely fabricated in the Islamic texts in order to portray Islam as the other, rescuing Arabia from its barbarian clutches, is hardly news. But to what extent did Islam rescue the women? If the example of Khadija is to go by, Islam instead suppressed whatever little freedom women enjoyed in pre-Islamic Arabia. Khadija, a wealthy widow was Mohammad’s employer and a dabbler in the highly profitable Meccan trade. At 40, she proposed to and married Mohammed (then 25). Freed from the burdens of having to earn a living Mohammad could now go meditate in the caves of Mount Hira and be visited by Gabriel. Khadija thus was not only financially independent but also sexually liberated. She not only initiated her own marriage but also did not require a father/son/brother to give her away in marriage. To Ahmed, Khadija is wrongly attributed as the first lady of Islam. To her she is a jahillya woman reflecting pre-Islamic values and prevalent customs. Pre-Islamic Arabia, largely tribal in nature, followed the norm of an uxorilocal marriage and a matrilineal family. Polyandry was the common practice and Mohammad’s own mother Amna bint Wahb stayed with her maternal clan even after she was married and bore a child. In fact Mohammad had to stay with her mother till she breathed her last and only then was he passed on to his paternal kin.

Yet, with the growth of the Meccan trade things began to change for Arabia, particularly Mecca. Exposure of Mecca to “culturally and materially advanced north” made it vulnerable to Christian and Judaic influences both of which were predominantly patriarchal. Thus, the old nomadic ways were being shed and communal property now gave way to individual property. Rich Meccan traders now needed an heir to pass it on. In essence, what Islam did then was to consolidate the change from matrilineal to a patrilineal society. As Ahmed points out, perhaps this is why “Islam introduced the greatest reform in the area of marriage and sexual relations” most of which sought to suppress rather than empower women. 

The one thing that greatly secluded women from the public sphere was the hijab. Islam spread far and wide primarily by conquest. Thus, most places in Arabia during this time were in turmoil and women on the streets were being harassed and molested. Women, including the Prophet’s wives were being pursued by men asking them to commit ta’arrud (literally, taking up a position along a woman’s path to urge her to fornicate). Hence the hijab descended on Islam. The observance of the hijab involved covering oneself with a jilbab. Literally, a piece of cloth worn by a woman, a jilbab could range from a simple chemise to a cloak. Thus, God in a revelation post Uhud advised the Prophet’s wives to cover themselves with a jilbab. The jilbab was exclusive. Only the elite women were to observe it. A woman wearing a jilbab on the street was not to be harassed. As Mernissi puts it, “Islam sacrificed women slaves in order to protect women aristocrats.” So, slaves/lower class women could be approached by men on the streets for ta’arrud. If hijab came in response to sexual aggression it also came as a support to it. It legitimized the street as a place to commit zina with the “uncovered women”. Hence, a woman’s body came to be considered in Islam as essentially naked/vulnerable without a jilbab.

This seclusion became rigid with time. Women of aristocratic families were now not to be seen in the streets. Their names were not to be known to men other than those of their family. Moralists like Ibn Abdun advised men to keep their women, a family’s honour, be kept out of sight of unrelated males. If necessary, women should go out veiled. Women’s seclusion meant purity of the male lineage. She was less at a danger to commit zina when inside the home than when outside of it. A common way to shame/dishonor a man was to name his women in public or mention them in satirical poems.

The seclusion of women in the streets was met by seclusion of women in political and religious leadership positions. There were no female imams or qazis. Women were thought unfit to preside over men. The only exception to this rule seems to be the Fatimid Arwa and the Ayyubid Shajar al Durr. While the former reigned over Yemen after her husband abdicated in favour of her, the latter, of slave origins, controlled the Ayyubid army and finances for while. Shajar was only a titular sovereign though. She couldn’t preside over public ceremonies and military parades and was finally “murdered in obscure circumstances”

Mernissi informs us of a hadith duly noted by al-Bukhari. When Kisra, a Persian king, died the Prophet is said to have asked Abu Bakra, “Who has replaced in command?” Abu Bakra informed him it was the King’s daughter. The Prophet upon hearing this is said to have remarked “those who entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity.” Abu Bakra is said to have revealed this hadith at the opportune time of the Battle of Camel when Aisha, the Prophet’s wife rallied against Ali for not having adequately punished the murderers of Uthman. Mernissi, highly doubts the character of Abu Bakra, a low born man who owed his fame and fortune to Islam. Islam on paper makes no difference between men. They only differ in terms of their piety. Thus, male slaves found this religion to be rather emancipating and quite correctly so (Slave dynasties of India and Egypt). So to Abu Bakra the schism came as a jolt. He thought of this as a warning sign of Islam’s downfall. Thus, holding Aisha responsible for the Battle of Camel, Abu Bakra narrated this hadith. He used the schism as an example to show what happens when women try and wrest power. Mernissi accuses Bakra of forging the hadith just as he lied when he was summoned as a witness before Uthman for a case involving zina. Whether Bakra was lying or not, the hadith stuck. Notable tarikh and tafsir writers included this in their treatises and hence the tradition of having no women rulers continued.

Mernissi makes a pertinent point. There is a plethora of fake hadith. She records other hadith such as one recalled by Abu Hurayra that if a dog, ass and woman interrupt prayer if they pass in front of the worshipper.  Aisha is said to have refuted the hadith but her refutations have been ignored by several authors, according to Mernissi. Again, Mernissi raises serious doubts on Hurayra’s character and contends the veracity of the hadith. Even if we discount several misogynist hadith as fake we still are left with considerable instances which inform us that Islam since its inception was never in any way emancipatory for women.

In terms of marriage too Islam was no messiah for women. Although on paper men and women were equal in marriage, yet in practice women suffered. Pre-Islamic jahillya had four distinct types of marriage out of which temporary marriage in which a man and a woman could cohabit with each other without getting married for a stipulated amount of time. Islam abolished all forms except for the “nikah”. Moreover, polyandry was abolished and polygyny was upheld. A Muslim man could have four wives but a woman could only have one husband at a time. The latter was forbidden to have sexual liaisons with anyone else except her husband (otherwise she committed adultery, zina, which attracted death by stoning) but a man could keep as many concubines and slaves as he liked for his sexual fulfillment.

Like marriage divorce was also biased in favour of the superior sex. The wife could be repudiated by her husband any time but when the wife wanted divorce she had to initiate proceedings in a court of law. In khul (literally, to free), a form of divorce, a woman could buy her way out of marriage. Khul was a divorce for personal reasons (like impotency) and a woman either had to forego payment of the delayed part of their dowry by their husbands or they had to compensate them by giving them a share of their property. Many a men would force their wives to divorce them in order to avoid paying a part of their dowry. Divorce rules, reckons Ahmed, were skewed towards men for Mohammad’s personal reasons. It was because many women, primarily daughters of tribal leaders, divorced him before consummation of their marriage and this irked Mohammad enough to make divorce a tougher nut to crack for women.

Post divorce/widowhood, women could remarry just as men could. Yet, women had to wait for a stipulated amount of time, usually a few menstrual cycles (idda), before she could remarry. The practice ensures that the woman was not pregnant with her previous husband, in a sense, that she would now not corrupt the lineage of the man she marries next. Moreover, it was the man who retained custody of the kids. Men, in Islam, had unconditional rights over their offspring, as soon as the nurturance period of the child was over.

Islam did nothing to eradicate the female infanticide and child marriage prevalent in the pre-Islamic society. If anything it encouraged the former by the Satanic verses. In order to appease the Meccans, Mohammad in a verse sanctioned the worship of Lat, Manat and Uzza alongside that of Allah. Yet, soon these verses were abrogated. Mohammad dismissed these as verses coming from Satan and not God. After all “the absurdity of Allah’s daughters while mortals could have the preferred sons” was a serious consideration. As for child marriage, Islam if anything encouraged it. Aisha, the Prophet’s favourite wife, was only 6 when she was betrothed to him and only 10 when Mohammad consummated their marriage.

While women could inherit, much like jahillya times, their inheritance was more often than not managed by men, either husbands or brothers. Thus, many women preferred to sell their estates and obtain cash instead. This cash was then dispensed of either as loans to the family or in charitable endowments or awqaf to religious institutions. Jurists such as Malik ibn Anas even defined the goods fit to be owned by a woman as opposed to a man. For women household wares, clothes, linen, jewellery, cooking utensils etc were the possessions. Women possessed no books, weapons or riding animals.

The condition of slave women was even worse than their veiled elite counterparts. Not only was an owner of a female slave legally allowed to use her sexually but could also if wanted give her the status of the mother of his child or umm al walad. Having too many slaves was considered unhealthy for the patriarchal family as that could produce many kids and confuse/corrupt the patrilineage.

Women’s sexuality was another hotly debated issue. For all its faults, Islam acknowledges the sexual desires of both men and women and does not advocate its suppression as does Christianity. As Manuela Marvin tells us, “Islam is a sex positive religion” devoid of the “repressive aspects” of Western cultures towards sexuality. Yet, for women, it had to be regulated or controlled. The reason was crystal clear; protection of the male lineage. A woman was forbidden to meet unrelated men and could only enjoy sex with her husband. Girls were married early in order to keep their virginity intact. Men, however, enjoyed far more sex than women. They could have coitus interruptus with slaves to avoid having children and they could of course keep more than one wife. Thus, Islam, despite acknowledging the sexual desires inherent in both men and women, let only their men have complete sexual independence.

Old women and mothers enjoyed a considerable position of power in Islam. While the Prophet emphasized that parents should be taken due care of, he mentioned that the person deserving the most love and care was one’s mother. Annemarie Schimmel informs us that the word reham or mercy is derived from the word, rahim or womb. Thus, the mother was privileged due to her abilities to give birth. Mothers were then in this respect hailed by Rumi as the “men of God”, those who the Quran says “carry and bear the names of God in themselves”.  The old women were revered for their wisdom and for their piety. It was assumed that an old woman’s piety was stronger than the “mightiest prince on earth”. 

Schimmel also makes us aware of the embodiment of women in the sufi tradition as the soul or nafs. The connotation of nafs here although is a negative one. Nafs is the soul inciting to evil. Thus, in several sufi poems, God is the male beloved and poet is the feminine lover. Forever striving to unite with the Beloved, the struggle of the nafs was according to the Prophet the greatest jihad. But each one of the nafs can become a true “man of god” if it wills so. The nafs is the ascetic’s fear of lust and desire, the merchant’s fear of avarice and worldliness. She is the tempting seductress enticing men to herself and deviating them from the path of God. This concept of nafs has been portrayed in Sassi’s wandering for her King Punhu, whom she lost as she slept a little too much, in Eve’s frivolity, her expulsion from paradise and her separation from Adam and in Bilqis’ attempt to charm Solomon with her wealth and her repentance for it. All of them yielded to their desires and were lost till they wandered and struggled to become one with their beloved.

Islam prides itself on making no distinction between the worshippers of Allah except in their degree of piety. Yet when a bleary old woman is said to have asked the Prophet if women like her go to heaven he is said to have replied, “No. Old women like you do not go to heaven. You are all transformed into beautiful virgins." No matter how much they try, Muslim women will always be the inferior sex according to their religion, even in terms of their piety, in which case they become a man of God. The nafs, she can only suffer in vain and it is in her sufferance that her salvation lies.

The Enclosure Movement in Britain: Lex Loci v/s Force Majeure

“Inclosure came and trampled on the grave

Of labour's rights and left the poor a slave……

…And birds and trees and flowers without a name

All sighed when lawless law’s enclosure came” – The Mores, John Clare

Festooned with vivid imagery, Clare’s poem captures the plight of those who were pauperized by the elite scheme of agricultural progress, the enclosures. Simply put, enclosures were the creation of large estates by wealthy landlords involving the buying up of small farms in the neighbourhood and enclosing, amidst much hue and cry, the village commons. Much was done to piece a large estate together. The lex loci of the commoners were checkmated by the force majeure of the parliamentarians. For some, elaborate lease contracts were drawn up, for others land was compensated with land and for yet others only a paltry sum of money was enough. And if even after all this dissent persisted, it was stemmed by Acts of Parliament.

Enclosures happened in various ways including reclamation of wastes, division of intercommoned pasture, privatization of woods and elimination of common fields. When enclosing, the merchants and landlords came across three sets of legal right holders; the freeholders, copyholders and leaseholders. The difference between the first and the last two categories is that while the latter are merely rights on property the former is a right on land. A freeholder owns the land in perpetuity, while copyholders and leaseholders own certain rights on land for a fixed tenure, the land being owned by someone else.  Perhaps this is why, Habakkuk points to the disappearance of the small freeholder between 1660 and 1760. Freeholders had to be eliminated because their presence on the estate meant that some part of it did not belong to the landlord. But because they had proper legal rights on land i.e. they owned a piece of land on the estates, the only way to do away with them was to buy their land. This is why Habakkuk tells us that enclosures were a very costly affair as they involved buying up tracts of land by paying enormous sums. Yet, John Broad differs and argues that the cost of enclosures were nothing as compared to its windfall returns. Moreover, the small freeholder was more than eager to sell off his land during the time period in consideration. As stated earlier, the tax burdens were now to be shouldered by the landlords and the small freeholder could not bear it. So freeholds could be bought pretty easily. But there were those freeholders who became tough nuts to crack and would not give up their claims so easily. In addition, some of them were well aware that the buying parties were really in need of their land and could, therefore, be arm twisted into paying a little extra. Negotiations followed and the freeholder was soon dispossessed of his land either by cash or by kind (compensation by providing land to the freeholder elsewhere).  

Thus, when confounded with legal claims, the enclosing landlords took legal recourse; negotiations, agreements and acts of Parliament. But when it came to dealing with customary rights when enclosing the village commons, the situation became a lot more complex. EP Thompson in his book Customs in Common tells us that custom at one extreme was well defined and enforceable by law and at times was less exact depending on oral traditions while at the other end emanated from unwritten beliefs and practices but was never recognized by laws. The village commoners suffered the most primarily because their rights were based on the last type of custom. It was easier to do away with them simply because they had no “legal” claims on land. Custom was implicit and based on social sanctions. It often failed to prove its mettle in legal courts. Yet, to think that the peasants gave up their rights easily would be naïve.

On the commons, the peasants could graze their cows and Humphries tells us that the “annual income from the cow was often more than half the adult male labourer’s wage and an average priced cow could pay for itself in about a year.” Milk for the family, cow dung for manure and skimmed milk for feeding pigs were some of the many advantages of keeping a cow. Apart from grazing rights peasants also had estover (rights to cut wood) and turbary (rights to dig peat) rights. These took care of the peasant’s fuel requirements. Commons gave the peasants a right to glean or to collect the grains leftover in the fields post harvest. Almost all of these activities were performed by women and children. These kept the women employed and made them the contributors of a sufficient amount of income to the family.

Therefore, peasants were reluctant to let go. E.P. Thompson’s book is rife with examples of peasants rising in rebellion against the enclosures. Commoners were often seen claiming their rights to throw down encroachments, carrying an axe or a mattock for demolishing any building or fence which had been raised by enclosures. Apart from this lobbying, letters, petitions, mobbing of surveyors, destruction of records, arsoning, rioting, fence-breaking were all common methods of protest. Much of this though was overcome, it wasn’t completely fruitless. Thompson tells us that such forms of resistance delayed enclosures and significantly increased their costs. The riots were so influential that when King George II’s consort, Queen Caroline asked her steward what it could take to shut off St James’ Park, the steward replied “Only a Crown, madam.”

To deal with the stubborn dissenters the enclosing parties came up with several ways. One such interesting way is narrated by Broad in his essay on the Verneys. While enclosing Middle Claydon was a smooth affair and involved simple legal negotiations, East Claydon estates posed a lot of problem. When enclosing a common in West Buckinghamshire, the commoners rose in revolt. The steward of the Verneys was convinced this was done to ask for more compensation. These rioters were led by the parson in East Claydon, Parson Aris. When Aris was away from Claydon on church business, Sir Ralph Verney, the second Earl Verney, ordered his steward to brew twelve barrels of ale than six to cheer the proceedings. After much negotiations and ale most of the dissenters agreed to the enclosures by 1653. However, when the steward set out to buy seeds to be sown in the enclosed fields, he had to pay a premium of 25% for the purchase as almost every seedsman knew and regretted the Buckinghamshire enclosures.

While ale may have been an effective tool for negotiation, it paled in terms of its efficiency when compared to the rule of law. Courts were approached in places where custom was enforceable by law. When enclosures had just begun in the 16^th century, the judiciary termed it as destructible to the village economy. However, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the courts held the view that the “lord’s waste (common) or soil was his personal property albeit restrained and curtailed by the inconvenient usages of custom”. If his access to any part of his soil should be restricted this will be a ready way to enable tenants to “withstand all improvements”. Thus, the judiciary also thought of commons as a hindrance to agricultural improvement.

Yet, the fact stayed that “a right of common cannot be altered without the consent of all parties concerned therein”. Therefore, in many places it became increasingly difficult to enclose unless by way of a due parliamentary process. Thus, the age of parliamentary enclosures dawned in the latter half of the 18^th century. Many parsons were hushed and many riots were silenced by these numerous acts. Chapman tells us that about 7,253,955 acres of land was enclosed in England and 117,030 acres in Wales by way of parliamentary enclosures.

Thus, enclosures were effected through acts of parliament only when the peasants started to rise in revolt against the enclosing landlords. They were brought in when anyone holding a legal right dissented and would not be silenced by compensations in cash or kind. As for those deprived of any legal rights, customary rights were just not capable of defending them. And when the enclosures were complete a period of “Agricultural Revolution” (as hailed by historians like Allen and Overton) was ushered in. The rich became richer while the poor were subjected to 10 hours of wage labour for meager wages. Women and children were employed for lesser wages as compared to an adult male’s wage. In order to subsist, children were forced to work at an early age and contribute to the family’s income. Thus, for some it was the glorious age of improvements in agricultural production, better diets and windfall gains while for others it was a battle for subsistence and survival.