托福阅读真题（含答案）20130112Reading.docxVIP

PAGE 20 ABDAB, CBCDC, (CD)DC, 234 DDBBB, DDBAC, BAB, 345 DCABD, AACCB, BDC, 123 Englands Economy in the Sixteenth Century In the last half of the sixteenth century England emerged as a commercial and manufacturing power in Europe due to a combination of demographic, agricultural and industrial factors. The population of England and Wales grew rapidly from about 2.5 million in the 1520s to more than 3.5 million in 1580, reaching about 4.5 million in 1610. Reduced mortality rates and increased fertility, the latter probably generated by expanding work opportunities in manufacturing and farming (leading to earlier marriage and more children), explained this rapid rise in population. While epidemics and plague occasionally took their toll, the people in England still suffered less than did those in continental Europe. Furthermore, the country had been pulled out of the war that occurred in France and central Europe during the same period. England provides the prominent example of the expansion of agricultural production well before the general European agricultural revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A larger population stimulated the increased woollen through crop civilization. English agriculture became more efficient and market-oriented than almost anywhere else on the continent. Between 1450 and 1640 the yield of grain per acre increased by at least thirty percent. In sharp contrast with farming in Spain, English land owners brought more dense marshes and woodlands into cultivation. The great land estates of the English society largely remained intact and many wealthy land owners aggressively increased the size of their holdings, a precondition for increased productivity. Marriages between the children of landowners also increased the size of land estates. Primogeniture (the full inheritance of land by the eldest son) helped prevent land from being subdivided. Younger sons of independent land owners left the family and went to find other res