Feudalism isn't necessarily that bad if your environment is stable. A lot of people moved into industry during the 18th and 19th centuries not because working the land was so awful to begin with, but because it became increasingly untenable as formerly public lands were privatized by legal fiat, and private landholdings were aggressively consolidated. Around the beginning of the Industrial revolution, the number of private landowners in the UK fell by over 80%, from about 1 person out of every 60 to 1 in 600 or so (the population grew about 25% over the same period).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_act has an OK overview but is a bit thin and just a starting point. The political upheavals still echo in British politics today. I think it's fair to say that some of the changes were driven by the lure of profit (and associated national revenue) and some out of a desire to avert a domestic repeat of the American and French revolutions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_act has an OK overview but is a bit thin and just a starting point. The political upheavals still echo in British politics today. I think it's fair to say that some of the changes were driven by the lure of profit (and associated national revenue) and some out of a desire to avert a domestic repeat of the American and French revolutions.