英国的工业化与小农户的命运

The English Industrial Revolution and the Fate of Small Farmers

人口普查数据证明英国的小农户并没有因工业化的完成而消失,而是相反地与工业化同步发展,重新获得了自身发展的动力,并通过先进技术的应用对英国经济发挥着积极的作用。英国革命以后的小农户从性质上讲已不属于传统的"农民",不再属于自然经济的成分。他们的生产和生活方式更加接近于城镇中的手工业者或小商贩,因此应当把他们看作是农村的小资产阶级。

A census statistics shows that English small farmers, instead of disappearing after the Industrial Revolution, increased by the number in the late nineteenth century, especially in such an in- dustrialized region as Lancashire. This paper concludes that the industrialization created market demands supplied by small farmers, and in turn, created conditions for their existence and development. They made their contributions, by the benefit of technique advances, to economic growth, At the same time they were no longer the peasantry of the traditional type, but became a kind of rural pretty-bourgeoisie in their production, living and status.