https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1s5zkws/enclosure_as_internal_colonisation_the_settling/
Pretty obviously... the average English person suffered like hell during those times. Even from the aspect of poverty and starvation, it was rife. People died absolutely horrible deaths, directly or not, at the hands of the state. The same tactics used abroad were already tried and tested over here, it's how they knew they worked. The British empire was founded to create wealth and expand on labour exploitation... that's truly the bottom line here.
Put it into perspective... the majority of us, living at the height of the empire, wouldn't have survived until we were 10. Very, very few of us would have survived until we were 30. Workhouses were created to shove the poor away, but many children "failed to thrive" due to severe malnutrition - if not starvation - and preventable illness caused by some of the most unsanitary conditions you can have nightmares about. In some areas of England, the only way to stay out of the workhouse was prostitution and risking horrible diseases, as well as accepting you'd probably be murdered. If your kids didn't succumb to disease, filth or starvation... they'd need to be put to work, because you couldn't feed them otherwise. Sound familiar?
If you were renting a small patch of land to make profit from, expect it to be stolen with no recourse. It didn't matter if that cow was your only way to get milk for your kids and it didn't matter that selling the milk was your only source of income. Your landlord or the ruling class could just take it. Does this sound familiar?
