Note 983 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

While Japan's agriculture reflected the small area of an island environment, and under its influence reached a high development, England's from the beginning of the fifteenth century declined before the competition of English commerce, which gained ascendency owing to the easy accessibility of Great Britain to the markets of Europe. The ravages of the Black Death in the latter half of the fourteenth century produced a scarcity of agricultural laborers and hence a prohibitive increase of wages. To economize labor, the great proprietors resorted to sheep farming and the raising of wool, which, either in the raw state or manufactured into cloth, became the basis of English foreign trade. A distinct deterioration in agriculture followed this reversion to a pastoral basis of economic life, supplemented by a growing commerce which absorbed all the enterprise of the country. The steady contraction of the area under tillage threw out of employment the great mass of agricultural laborers, made them paupers and vagrants.983 Hence England entered the period of maritime discoveries with a redundant population. This furnished the raw material for her colonies, and made her territorial expansion assume a solid, permanent character, unknown to the flimsy trading stations which mark the mere extension of a field of commerce.