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Agricultural Revolution

The Agricultural Revolution is the transformation of British farming between roughly 1700 and 1850 through systematic improvements in cultivation, crop rotation, and livestock breeding that dramatically increased food production.

Type: Concept Domain: History Biology Engineering Era: 1700 — 1850

Overview

Jethro Tull's seed drill reduced wastage; Charles Townshend's four-field rotation restored soil fertility without fallowing; Robert Bakewell's selective breeding produced heavier animals more quickly. These innovations were applied genetics before the science existed — systematically exploiting heritable variation through artificial selection a century before Darwin explained the underlying mechanism.

Why it matters

The revolution freed agricultural labor and supplied the population growth that enabled industrialization, fundamentally reshaping society through rural-to-urban migration and the enclosure movement, which became a foundational case study in how economic change restructures political power. It also advanced chemistry by driving the discovery of artificial fertilizers and shaped political science through its influence on theories of land ownership and displacement.

What it builds on

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