How Did Our Modern Era Get Started?

Up till now I have argued that the end of the feudal system occurred when the absolute monarchs like Henry VIII (reigned 1509-1547) nationalized the armed forces and disarmed the nobles. The response of the nobles, I argued, was to send the peasants packing because if they couldn't use them for arrow fodder, what was the use of them?

In addition, the nobles became courtiers and needed to start making money out of their estates to finance their courtier life in the capital. Hence the agricultural revolution.

But. I am now reading Thomas More's Utopia published in 1516, and he is whining about enclosures and the conversion of land and villages into sheep pasture. Also, there's a timeline that notes the 1495 act against vagrants and beggars. So it would seem that people were being chucked off the land before Henry VIII nationalized the armed forces.

On the other hand, an emailer notes that 

The western custom of personal business, and employment began after the great European plague of 1350. Under the previous feudal system every man living on the land belonged to the landowner.  After the plague most of the land owners were dead. Many people farmed to their own advantage.  Labor and craftsmanship were scarce.  Some migrated to the protected bourgeois cities and worked a skilled trade for pay.

So what is going on? More research is clearly needed. 

It seems that the rise of the bourgeoisie could be said to start in the aftermath of the Great Plague: people -- anybodies -- working for money rather than growing their own food as the serf of a lord.

But if there is a problem with vagrants and beggars then I interpret that as peasants being chucked off the land due to the monetization of agriculture and a culture of "improvement." And remember that vagrancy was a problem right up until the 19th century when the "surplus population" got sucked up into factories.

Let's just say that the period from, say, 1350 until 1850 was a period of staggering transformation -- socially, culturally, economically, politically, militarily and religiously -- and there ain't been nothing like it in human history.

You can say, with me, that the nobles kicking their peasants off the land after the nationalization of armies was cruel and unusual, and you would be right.

You can say, with Sir Thomas More, that the enclosure movement was cruel and unusual and kicked honest peasants off the land, and you would be right.

And the end of the union-based industrial corporation after 1965 was cruel and unusual and kicked honest white working-class men onto the trash heap of history, and you would be right.

In fact, you could say that any subordinate group that just sits there enjoying the patronage of a noble or a corporate or political patron is heading for disaster, and you would be right.

Indeed, anyone that does not live with half an eye on what's just around the corner, the need to adapt to the unexpected, is heading for disappointment, and you would be right.

But I must say, I sure would like to know a little more about what was going on back then at the dawn of the modern age. Was it the stirrings of a city-based market economy? Was it the appearance of guns in warfare? Was it the development of knowledge in agriculture? Was it the move of nobles into the capital city? Was it the revolution in navigation, with ships sailing all over the world?

Like I say, more research is needed.