Capital investment

• Investment in land was required, and elites were best placed to do this. Elites buy out small-holders and land is consolidated into large estates.
• Tenant farmers were dependent on support of elites and improvements to infrastructure.
• Gentry and aristocracy invested in large-scale modernisation.
• 53.6% of agricultural land was part of large estates of over 100 acres, compared to a 32.2% a hundred years earlier.
• Large landowners gave work to their tenants and offered to give them loans to help them modernise.