Choosing A Topic
Firstly, I would like to say that I have taken some license with these weeks posting assignment. Since the the two required blog posts are so interconnected in terms of theme, I chose to combine the two entries into one more cohesive submission.
The The University of British Columbia’s article regarding topic selection, was a wonderful reminder of how to best construct arguments through writing. Although much of it was elementary, I did find the section at the end regarding narrowing your topic’s scope quite helpful.
As you may now know from reading my earlier posts, from the onset of this course I have been interested in studying the enclosure of English commons. However, this topic is all too broad and I have been struggling with refining it into a suitable project. At one point The University of British Columbia’s article suggests that a history paper could take the shape of a comparative book review and I thought to myself, can I apply this type of comparison to my own topic even if I have not doing a book review? In my research, I have come across a passage in Michael Perelman’s book “The Invention of Capitalism”, that compares the productivity of the now enclosed English commons with the market garden agriculture of their French counterparts across the channel. I think a more detailed comparison between the two agricultural systems would be incredibly useful in understanding just how significant a transformation enclosure brought to England.
Lamentably, I am not able to provide links to this work. However, below is a short excerpt of from the chapter I am referencing.
“Comte de Mirabeau contended that farmers in a suburb of Paris earned about twenty-eight pounds per year from a single acre of land (Weulersse 1920, 2:317) The physical output of these Market gardeners was nothing short of phenomenal. A Paris gardener, I. Ponce, produced more than forty-four tons of vegetables per acre, not to mention 250 cubic yards of topsoil (Ponce 1870, 32-49). By contrast in the United States, today’s commercial producers manage to harvest only nineteen tons of onions or thirty-three tons of tomatoes per acre (USDA 1997, 4-22).”
Would it not be wonderful to create a more thorough comparison between England’s agricultural system and it’s radically different market gardening based contemporary? Please let me know your thoughts !
Zall, This does look like a very interesting topic. I’m already asking, How did Ponce do it? How could he be so productive on so little land? How does this compare with outputs from English agriculture? Did market gardening emerge due to the growing population of Paris? Were there other motives? Keep working on this topic and we can discuss research strategies next week.
Prof. Bond