Discuss the factors that precipitated the Agricultural Depression. What were the consequences of this Depression? How was the Captain Swing Movement related to .this Depression?
After the end of Napoleonic wars, thousands of soldiers returned to the villages. They needed alternative jobs to survive. But this was a time when grain from Europe began flowing into England, prices declined and an Agricultural Depression set in. Anxious landowners began reducing the area they cultivated and demanded that the exports of crops be stopped. They tried to cut wages and reduced the number of workmen they employed. The unemployed poor tramped from village to village, and those with uncertain jobs lived in fear of a loss of their livelihood. The Captain Swing riots spread in the countryside at this time. For the poor, the threshing machines had become sign of bad times
