The City Farmers of Thomas More’s Utopia – 1516

Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535) sketch by Holbein. Thomas More’s Utopia was written in Latin towards the close of 1515.

The gardens in Amaurot, the capital city of Utopia

“There lie gardens behind all their houses.  These are large, but enclosed with buildings, that on all hands face the streets, so that every house has both a door to the street and a back door to the garden. 

“They cultivate their gardens with great care, so that they have both vines, fruits, herbs, and flowers in them; and all is so well ordered and so finely kept that I never saw gardens anywhere that were both so fruitful and so beautiful as theirs.  And this humour of ordering their gardens so well is not only kept up by the pleasure they find in it, but also by an emulation between the inhabitants of the several streets, who vie with each other.  And there is, indeed, nothing belonging to the whole town that is both more useful and more pleasant. 

“So that he who founded the town seems to have taken care of nothing more than of their gardens; for they say the whole scheme of the town was designed at first by King Utopus, but he left all that belonged to the ornament and improvement of it to be added by those that should come after him, that being too much for one man to bring to perfection.”

Utopia, by Thomas More

According to More, the island of Utopia is “two hundred miles across in the middle part, where it is widest, and nowhere much narrower than this except towards the two ends, where it gradually tapers.

The island was originally a peninsula but a 15-mile wide channel was dug by the community’s founder King Utopos to separate it from the mainland. The island contains 54 towns, each with about 6000 households. The capital city, Amaurot, is located directly in the middle of the crescent island.

“The town is compassed with a high and thick wall, in which there are many towers and forts; there is also a broad and deep dry ditch, set thick with thorns, cast round three sides of the town, and the river is instead of a ditch on the fourth side.  The streets are very convenient for all carriage, and are well sheltered from the winds.  Their buildings are good, and are so uniform that a whole side of a street looks like one house.  The streets are twenty feet broad.”

The Importance of Agriculture in Utopia

“Agriculture is that which is so universally understood among them that no person, either man or woman, is ignorant of it; they are instructed in it from their childhood, partly by what they learn at school, and partly by practice, they being led out often into the fields about the town, where they not only see others at work but are likewise exercised in it themselves.

“There are fifty-four cities in the island, all large and well built, the manners, customs, and laws of which are the same, and they are all contrived as near in the same manner as the ground on which they stand will allow.  The nearest lie at least twenty-four miles’ distance from one another, and the most remote are not so far distant but that a man can go on foot in one day from it to that which lies next it. 

“Every city sends three of their wisest senators once a year to Amaurot, to consult about their common concerns; for that is the chief town of the island, being situated near the centre of it, so that it is the most convenient place for their assemblies.  The jurisdiction of every city extends at least twenty miles, and, where the towns lie wider, they have much more ground.  No town desires to enlarge its bounds, for the people consider themselves rather as tenants than landlords. 

“They have built, over all the country, farmhouses for husbandmen, which are well contrived, and furnished with all things necessary for country labour.  Inhabitants are sent, by turns, from the cities to dwell in them; no country family has fewer than forty men and women in it, besides two slaves.  There is a master and a mistress set over every family, and over thirty families there is a magistrate. 

“Every year twenty of this family come back to the town after they have stayed two years in the country, and in their room there are other twenty sent from the town, that they may learn country work from those that have been already one year in the country, as they must teach those that come to them the next from the town.  By this means such as dwell in those country farms are never ignorant of agriculture, and so commit no errors which might otherwise be fatal and bring them under a scarcity of corn. 

“But though there is every year such a shifting of the husbandmen to prevent any man being forced against his will to follow that hard course of life too long, yet many among them take such pleasure in it that they desire leave to continue in it many years.  These husbandmen till the ground, breed cattle, hew wood, and convey it to the towns either by land or water, as is most convenient.  They breed an infinite multitude of chickens in a very curious manner; for the hens do not sit and hatch them, but a vast number of eggs are laid in a gentle and equal heat in order to be hatched, and they are no sooner out of the shell, and able to stir about, but they seem to consider those that feed them as their mothers, and follow them as other chickens do the hen that hatched them. 

“They breed very few horses, but those they have are full of mettle, and are kept only for exercising their youth in the art of sitting and riding them; for they do not put them to any work, either of ploughing or carriage, in which they employ oxen.  For though their horses are stronger, yet they find oxen can hold out longer; and as they are not subject to so many diseases, so they are kept upon a less charge and with less trouble.  And even when they are so worn out that they are no more fit for labour, they are good meat at last. 

“They sow no corn but that which is to be their bread; for they drink either wine, cider or perry, and often water, sometimes boiled with honey or liquorice, with which they abound; and though they know exactly how much corn will serve every town and all that tract of country which belongs to it, yet they sow much more and breed more cattle than are necessary for their consumption, and they give that overplus of which they make no use to their neighbours. 

“When they want anything in the country which it does not produce, they fetch that from the town, without carrying anything in exchange for it.  And the magistrates of the town take care to see it given them; for they meet generally in the town once a month, upon a festival day.  When the time of harvest comes, the magistrates in the country send to those in the towns and let them know how many hands they will need for reaping the harvest; and the number they call for being sent to them, they commonly despatch it all in one day.

Read Utopia, by Thomas More, Edited by Henry Morley here.