Social and Economic Progress
Following the Black Death and the agricultural depression of the late 15th century, population growth began to increase. The export of woollen products resulted in economic upturn with products exported to mainland Europe. Henry VII negotiated the favourable Intercursus Magnus treaty in 1496.
The high wages and abundance of available land seen in the late 15th century and early 16th century were replaced with low wages and a land shortage. Various inflationary pressures, perhaps due to an influx of New World gold and a rising population, set the stage for social upheaval with the gap between the rich and poor widening. This was a period of significant change for the majority of the rural population, with manorial lords beginning the process of enclosure.
Read more about this topic: Tudor Period
Famous quotes containing the words social, economic and/or progress:
“Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The bourgeois takes economic power very seriously, and often worships it quite unselfishly.”
—Nicolai A. Berdyaev (1874–1948)
“An accurate charting of the American woman’s progress through history might look more like a corkscrew tilted slightly to one side, its loops inching closer to the line of freedom with the passage of time—but like a mathematical curve approaching infinity, never touching its goal. . . . Each time, the spiral turns her back just short of the finish line.”
—Susan Faludi (20th century)