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  3. Agricultural Society in Eighteenth-Century British AmericaP1: Throughout the co

Agricultural Society in Eighteenth-Century British AmericaP1: Throughout the co

游客2024-01-02  47
问题 Agricultural Society in Eighteenth-Century British America
P1: Throughout the colonial period, most Northerners, especially New Englanders, depended on the land for a livelihood, although a living had literally to be wrested from the earth. Community lands were used for grazing and logging (people could petition the town for the right to cut wood). Agriculture was the predominant occupation, and what industrial and commercial activity there was revolved almost entirely around materials extracted from the land, the forests, and the ocean.
P2: At the end of the eighteenth century, approximately 90 percent of all Americans earned a major portion of their living by farming. Generally, high ratios of land and other natural resources to labor generated exceptionally high levels of output per worker in the colonies. Located between the Potomac and the Hudson rivers, the Middle Colonies were, unlike New England, fertile and readily tillable, and therefore enjoyed a comparative advantage in the production of grains and other foodstuffs. Most production in the New World was for the colonists’ own consumption, but sizable proportions of colonial goods and services were produced for commercial exchange. In time, New England colonists had tapped into a sprawling Atlantic trade network that connected them to the English homeland as well as the West African Slave Coast, the Caribbean’s plantation islands, and the Iberian Peninsula.
P3: In the North, land was seemingly limitless in extent and therefore not highly priced, and almost every colonist wanted to be a landholder. The widespread ownership of land distinguished farming society in Colonial America from every other agricultural region of the Western world. Equal access to land ownership in this early period made it possible for most men other than indentured servants to purchase or inherit a farm of at least 50 acres. The North was developed as a rigidly hierarchical society in which status was determined by or at least strongly correlated with the extent to which one owned, controlled, or labored on land.
P4: The eighteenth century witnessed a sharp rise in population, which left many faced with the harsh reality of an increasingly limited supply of land; this was especially true in New England, where farms inherited from prior generations could not be divided and subdivided indefinitely . An example of this principle in action was the life of Edward Richards in Dedham, Massachusetts , a proprietor of the town, who had significant civic responsibilities, including road-building, militia duty, and fence-viewing, and who received parcels of land in return for his investment and work. By 1653, he owned over 55 acres and ranked twelfth of 78 property owners in terms of the size of his holdings. Eventually, the Richards family controlled several hundred acres of land, enough for Nathaniel Richards, Edward’s son, to give 80-acre farms to two sons while a third retained the central farm after his death. In this way, the average farm would shrink by two thirds in a century.
P5: The decreasing fertility of the soil compounded the problem of dwindling farm size in New England. When land had been plentiful, farmers had planted crops in the same field for three years and then let it lie fallow in pasture seven years or more until it regained its fertility. On the smaller farms of the eighteenth century, however, farmers reduced fallow time to only a year or two. Such intense use of the soil reduced crop yields, forcing farmers to plow marginal land or shift to livestock production.
P6: Under these circumstances, those families who were less well-off naturally struggled to make ends meet farming what little land they had. The diminishing size and productivity of family farms forced many New Englanders to move to the frontier or out of the area altogether in the eighteenth century. Vital as the agriculture of New England was to the people of the area, it constituted a relatively insignificant portion of the region’s total commercial output for sale (its destiny lay in another kind of economic endeavor). In addition, the growing season was much shorter in the North, and the cultivation of cereal crops required incessant labor only during spring planting and autumn harvesting; and so, from a very early date, many New Englanders combined farming with other intermittent work, such as clock-making, shoe-making, carpentry, and weaving, thereby enabling themselves to live better lives than they would have had they been confined to the resources of their own farms. Homecrafts and skilled trades of all varieties were common features of rural life in all the colonies, but especially in New England.
P6: Under these circumstances, those families who were less well-off naturally struggled to make ends meet farming what little land they had. ■ The diminishing size and productivity of family farms forced many New Englanders to move to the frontier or out of the area altogether in the eighteenth century. ■ Vital as the agriculture of New England was to the people of the area, it constituted a relatively insignificant portion of the region’s total commercial output for sale ■ (its destiny lay in another kind of economic endeavor). ■ In addition, the growing season was much shorter in the North, and the cultivation of cereal crops required incessant labor only during spring planting and autumn harvesting; and so, from a very early date, many New Englanders combined farming with other intermittent work, such as clock-making, shoe-making, carpentry, and weaving, thereby enabling themselves to live better lives than they would have had they been confined to the resources of their own farms. Homecrafts and skilled trades of all varieties were common features of rural life in all the colonies, but especially in New England. [br] The word "sizable" in the passage is closest in meaning to
选项 A、mixed
B、enormous
C、growing
D、constant
答案 B
解析 【词汇题】sizable意为“相当大的”。
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