16-17th Century Social Econ Changes

CHAPTER 3 • THE AGE OF REFORMATION 127
The ideal of the companionate marriage- that is, of husband and wife as cowork-
ers in a special God-ordained community of the family, sharing authority equally
within the household- led to an expansion of the grounds for divorce in Protestant
lands as early as the 1520s. Women gained an equal right with men to divorce and
remarry in good conscience- unlike the situation in Catholicism, where only a sepa-
Tation from bed and table, not divorce and remarriage, was permitted a couple in a
failed marriage. The reformers were more willing to permit divorce and remarriage
on grounds ~adultery and abandonment than were secular magistrates, who feared
liberal divorce'1aws would lead to social upheaval.
Typical of ~o ms and revolutions in their early stages, Protestant doctrines
emboldened women as wellas men. Renegade nuns wrote exposes of the nunnery in
the name of Christian fr tfedom and justification by faith, declaring the nunnery was
no special woman 's place..a ~all and that supervisory male clergy (who alone could
hear the nuns' confessions and admi~ster sacraments to them) made their lives as
unpleasant and burdensome as any atiusive husband. Women in the higher classes,
who enjoyed new social and political freedoms during the Renaissance, found in Prot-
estant theology a religious complement to their greater independence in other walks
of life. Some cloistered noblewomen, however, protested the closing of nunneries,
arguing that the cloister provided them a more inter.esting and independent way of
life than they would have known in the secular world.
Because Protestants wanted women to become pious ~usewives, they encour-
aged the education of girls to literacy in the vernacular, with the expectation that they
would thereafter model their lives on the Bible. However, women a1so found biblical
passages that made clear their equality to men in the presence of God. Education
also gave some women roles as independent authors on behalf of the Reformation.
Although small advances from a modern perspective, these were also steps toward
the emancipation of women .
.., Family Life in Early Modern Europe What wa amily life like in early
modern Europe?
Changes in the timing and duration of marriage, family size, and infant and child care
suggest that family life was und er a variety of social and economic pressures in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Later Marriages
Between 1500 and 1800, men and women in Western Europe married at later ages
than they had in previous centuries: men in their rnid- to late twenties, and women
in their early to mid-twenties. The canonical, or church-sanctioned, age for mar-
riage remained fourteen for men and twelve for women. The church also recognized
as valid free, private exchanges of vows between a man and a woman for whom no
impediment to marriage existed. After the Reformation, which condemned such clan-
destine union s, both Protestants and Catholics required parental consent and public
vows in church before a marriage could be deemed fully licit.
Late marriage in the West reflected the difficulty couples had supporting them-
selves independently. It simply took the average couple a longer time than before to
prepare themselves materially for marriage. In the sixteenth century, one in five women
never married, and these, combined with the estimated 15 percent who were unmarried
widows, constituted a large unmarried female population. A later marriage was also a
shorter marriage; in an age when few people lived into their sixties, couples who mar-
ried in their thirties spent less time together than couples who married in their twen-
ties. Also, because women who bore ch ildren for the first time at advanced ages had
higher mortality rates, late marriage meant more frequent remarriage for men. As the
rapid growth of orphanages and foundling homes between 1600 and 1800 makes clear,
delayed marriage increased premarital sex and the number of illegitimate children.
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128 PART 1 • EUROPE IN T RANSITION, 1300- 175 0
Arranged Marriages
Marriage tended to be "arranged" in the sen se that th e parents met and discussed the
terms of the marriage before th e prospective bride and bridegroom becam e directly party
to the preparations. The wealth and social standing of the bride and the bridegroom,
however, were not th e only things considered wh en youth married. By the fift eenth
century, it was u sual for the future bride and bridegroom to have known each other
an d to have had some prior relationship. Also, paren ts respected th e couple's emotional
feeling for one another. Parents did not force total strangers to live together, and chil-
dren had a legal right to resist a coerced marriage, which was by definition invalid. The
best marriage was one desired by both the bri de and groom and their fa mili es.
Fa ily Size
11h Western European family was con jugal, or nuclear, consis ting of a father and a
m other and two to fou r children who su rvived into adulthood. This nuclear fa mily
lived within a larger househ old, including in-laws, servants, laborers, and boarders.
The average husband and wife had six to seven children, a new birth about every two
years. Of these, an estimated one-third died by age five, and on e-half by their teens.
Rare was th e famil ~at any social level, that did not experie nce child deat h.
Birth Control
Artificial birth control lsponges, acidic ointm ents) has existed since antiquity. Th e
church 's condemna tion of coitus inter.ruptus (male withdrawal before ejaculation)
during the thirteenth and fourteenth cen ~uri es su ggests the existence of a contracep-
tive m entality, that is, a conscious, regular effort at birth control. Early birth control
m easures, when applied, were not very effective, and for both histo rical and moral
reasons, the church opposed them . According to SainttThomas Aquinas, a m oral act
must aid and abet, never frustrate, nature's goal, and the natural end of sex was th e
birth of children and their godly rearin g within the bounds oflholy m atrimony and
th e community of th e church.
Wet Nursing
The church allied with the physicians of early modern Europe on another intimate
family matter. Both condemned wom en who hired wet nurses to suckle their newborn
children. The practice was popular among upper-class women and reflected their social
standing. It appears to have increased the risk of infant mortality by exposing infants
to a strange and shared milk supply from women who were often not as healthy as th e
infants' own m others and lived under less sanitary conditions. Nursing was distasteful
to some upper-class women, whose husbands also preferred that they not do it. Among
women, vanity and convenience appear to have been m otives for hiring a wet nurse,
while for husbands, even more was at stake. Because th e church forbade lactating
women from indulging in sexual intercourse, a nursing wife could become a reluctant
lover. Nursing also had a contraceptive effect (about 75 percent effective). Some wom en
prolonged nursing their children to delay a new pregnancy, and some hu sbands cooper-
ated in this form of fa mily planning. For other husbands, however, especially noblemen
and royalty who desired an abundance of male heirs, nursing seemed to rob th em of
offspring and jeopardize th eir patrimony-hence th eir support of hired wet nurses.
Loving Families?
Th e traditio nal Western European family had features that see m cold and distant.
Children between the ages of eight and thirteen were routinely sent from their homes
into apprenticeships, school, or employmen t in the hom es and businesses of relatives,
ENCOUNTERING
TABLE MANNERS
/ LEASURE AT TABLE in the sixteenth Do not e lbow the person sitting next to you.
century was considered a matter of self- Sit up straight; be a model of gracefulness.
control. The we ll -dressed table taught Do not rock back and forth on the bench,
the ~essons of life as well as offered its bread. Lest you let loose a stink .
Neatness and order showed respect, respect Do not kick your feet under the tab le.
ensured attentiv.eness, and attentiveness made Guard yourself against all shamefu l
for learning . TJie union of pleasure and d isci- Words, gossip, ridicule, and laughter.
pline at mealtime was belie:\ed to inculcate If sexua l play occurs at table,
in the young the traits tha wou ld keep th em Pretend you do not see it.
free and safe in an unforgiving wo rld. Here is Never start a quarrel,
how Hans Sachs, a sixteenth-cen t ury father, Quarre ling at table is most despicable.
expected children to behave: Say nothing that might offend another.
Do not blow your nose
Listen you ch ildren who are going to tab le . Or. do other shocking things.
Wash you r hands and cut your na ils. Do not pick your nose.
Do not sit at the head of th e tab le; If you must pick your teeth, be discreet about it.
This is reserved for the father of the house . Never scratch your head
Do not commence eating until a blessing has (This goes for girls and women too);
been said . Or fish out lice.
Dine in God's name Let no one wipe his mout ~ n the tab le cloth,
And perm it the eldest to begin first. Or lay his head in his hands.
Proceed in a d isciplined manner . Do not lean back against....the wa ll
Do not snort or smack like a pig. Until th e meal is finished .
Do not reach violently for bread, Silently praise and thank God
Lest you may knock over a glass. For the food he has graciously provided . . ..
Do not cut bread on your chest, From S. Ozment, When Filthers Ruled: Family Life in R' m a.
Or conceal pieces of bread or pastry under lion Europe (Cambri dge, MA: Harva rd Uni versity Press, 1983J,
your hands . pp. 142-43 .
Do not tear pieces for your plate with your teeth .

How do table manners prepare a child for
Do not sti r food around on your plate
life?
Or linger over it.
Do not fill you r spoon too full. Has table etiquette changed since the six-
Rushing through your meal is bad manners. teenth century?
Do not reach for more food
Whi le your mouth is sti ll fu ll ,
Nor talk with your mouth full.
Be moderate; do not fa ll upon your plate like
an anima l.
Be the last to cut your meat and break your fish.
Chew your food with your mouth closed.
Do not lick the corners of your mouth like a dog.
Do not hover greedi ly over your food.
Wipe your mouth before you d rink,
So that you do not grease up you r wine .
Drink politely and avoid coughing into your cup.
Do not belch or cry out.
With drink be most prudent.
Sit smartly, undisturbed, humble . .
Do not stare at a person A family meal . bpk, Berlin / Ku pfe rstich kabinc tt, Staa tliche Museen,
As if you were watching him eat. Bulin, Germany!Juerg P. An dus/ Art Resuurce, NY
129
130 P ART 1 • EUROPE IN TRANS ITION, 1300-1750
friends, and occasionally strangers. The emotional ties between spouses also seem to
have been as tenuous as those between parents and children. Widowers and widows
often married again within a few months of their spouses ' deaths, and marriages with
extreme difference in age between partners suggest Limited affection.
In response to modern-day criticism, an early modern parent might well have
asked: "W hat greater love can parents have for their children than to equip them
well for a worldly vocation?/I A well-apprenticed child was a self-supporting child,
and hence a child with a future. In light of the comparatively primitive living con-
ditions, contemporaries also appreciated the purely utilitarian and humane side of
marriage and understood when widowers and widows quickly remarried. Marriages
with extreme disparity in age, however, were no more the norm in early modern
Europe than th e practice of wet nursing, and th ey received just as much criticism
and ridicule .
How was the transition from ... Literary Imagination in Transition

medieval to modern reflected in
the works of the great literary Alongside the political and cultural changes brought about by the new religious sys-
figures of the era? tem s of the Reformation (Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Puritanism) and Catholic
Reform, medieva outlooks and religious values continued to be debated, embraced,
and rejected into the seventeenth century. Major literary figures of the post-
Reformation period had elements of both the old and the new in their own new tran-
sitional works. Two who stand 0 t are Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra /1547- 1616 ),
writing in still deeply Catholic Spain, and William Shakespeare (1564-1616 ), who
wrote in newly Anglican England.
Miguel de Cervantes Sa avedra : Rejection of Idealism

Spanish literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth Benturies reflects the peculiar
religious and political history of Spain in this period. Traditional Catholic teaching
was a ma jor influence on Spanish life. Since the joint reign of Ferdinand and Isabella
/1479- 1504), the church had received the unqualified support of the reigning political
power. Although there was religious reform in Spain, and genuine Protestant groups
were persecuted for "Lutheranis m," a Protestant Reformation never occurred there,
thanks largely to the entrenched power of the church and the Inquisition.
A second influence on Spanish literature was the aggressive piety of Spanish rul-
ers. Their intertwining of Catholic piety and political power underlay a third influ-
ence: preoccupation with m edieval chivalric virtues, in particular, questions of honor
and loyalty. The novels and plays of the period almost invariably focus on a special
tes t of character, bordering on the heroic, that threatens honor and reputation. In this
regard, Spanish literature remained more Catholic and medieval than that of Eng-
land and France, where major Protestant movem ents had occurred. Two of th e most
important Spanish writers of this period became priests (the dramatists Lope de Vega
and Pedro Calderon de la Barca). The writer generally acknowledged to be Spain's
greatest, Cervantes, was preoccupied in his work with the strengths and weaknesses
of traditional religious idealism.
Cervantes (1547- 1616) had only a smattering of formal education . He educated
him self by wide reading in popular literature and immersion in the "school of
life./I As a young man, he worked in Rome for a Spanish cardinal. As a soldier, he
was decorat ed for gallantry in th e Battle of Lepanto against the Turks (1571 ). He
[]3-[Read the Document also spent five years as a slave in Algi ers after hi s ship was pirated in 1575 . Later,
"Miguel de Cervantes, while working as a tax collector, he was imprisoned several tim es for padding his
Don Quixote" on accounts, and it was in prison that h e began, in 1603, to write hi s most famous
MyHistoryLab.com work, Don Qu ixote.
Th e first part of Don Quixote appeared in 1605. The intent of this work seems
to have been to satirize the chivalric romances then popular in Spain. But Cervantes
CHAPTER 3 • THE AGE OF REFORMATION 131
could not conceal his deep affection for th e

character he created as an object of ridicul e. The
work is satire only on the surface and appeals as
much to philosophers and theologians as to stu-
dents of Spanish literature. Cervantes presented
Don Quixote as a none-tao-stable middle-aged
man. Driven mad by reading too many chivalric
romances, he had come to believe he was an
aspiring night wh ~ had to prove his worthi-
ness by brave need. To this end, he donned a
rusty suit of armor and chose for his inspiration
an unworthy peasant girl (Dulcinea), whom he
fancied to be a noble lady to whom he could,
with honor, dedicate his life.
Don Quixote's foil-Sancho Panza, a clever,
worldly wise peasant who serves as Quixote's
squire- watches with bemu sed skeptic"i,s~:m~;~~C~[1r;:;;'!!
his lord does battle with a windmill (,
he ha s mista ken for a dragon) and repeatedly
makes a fool of himself as he gallops across
the countryside. The story ends tragically with
Don Quixote's humiliating defeat at the hand
of a well-meaning friend who, di sgui sed as a
knight, bests Quixote in combat and forces
him to renounce hi s quest for knighthood. Don
Quixote did not, however, come to his senses
but rather returned to hi s village to die a bro-
kenhearted old man.
Throughout the novel, Cervantes juxta-
poses the down-to-earth realism of Sancho
Pan za with the old-fashioned religious idealism
of Don Quixote. The reader perceives that Cer-
vantes adm ired the one as much as the other
and m eant to portray both as representing atti-
tudes necessary fo r a happy life.
William Shakespeare: Dramatist

Cover of the 1620 English translation of The History of Don-Quichote, The
of the Age Firste Parte. HIP/An Rl:source, NY
There is much less factual knowledge about
Shakespeare (1564-1616) than we would expect
of the greatest playwright in the English language. He married at the early age of eigh-
teen, in 1582, and he and his wife, Anne Hathaway, were the parents of three children
/including twins) by 1585. He apparently worked as a schoolteacher for a time and in
this capacity gained his broad knowledge of Renaissance literature. His own reading
and enthusiasm for the learning of his day are manifest in the many literary allusions
that appear in his plays.
Shakespeare lived the life of a country gentleman. There is none of the Puritan
distress over worldliness in his work. He took the new commercialism and the bawdy
pleasures of the Elizabethan Age in stride and with amusement. He was a radical
neither in politics nor religion. The few allusions in his works to the Puritans seem
more critical than complimentary.
That Shakespeare was interested in politics is apparent from his historical plays
and the references to contemporary political events that fill all his work. He viewed
government through the character of th e individual ruler, whether Richard III or
Elizabeth Tudor, rather than in terms of ideal systems or social goals. By modern
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132 P ART 1 • EUROPE IN TRANSITION, 1300-1750
standards, he was a political conservative, accepting the social rankings and the power
structure of his day and demonstrating unquestioned patriotism.
Shakespeare knew the theater as one who participated in every phase of its life-
as a playwright, an actor, and part owner of a theater. He was a member and principal
writer of a famous company of actors known as the King's Men. Between 1590 and
1610, many of his plays were performed at court, where he moved with comfort and
received enthusiastic royal patronage.
Elizabethan drama was already a distinctive form when Shakespeare began writ-
ing. Unlike French drama of the seventeenth century, which was dominated by clas-
sical models, English drama developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as
a blending of many forms: classical comedies and tragedies, medieval morality plays,
and contemporary Italian short stories.
Two contemporaries, Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, influenced Shake-
spea)e's tragedies. Kyd (1558-1594) wrote the first dramatic version of Hamlet. The
t.ragedies of Marlowe (1564- 1593) set a model for character, poetry, and style that
only Shakespeare among the English playwrights of the period surpassed. Shakespeare
synthesized the best past and current achievements. A keen student of human moti-
vation and p'assio~ he had a unique talent for getting into people's minds.
Shakespeare wrote histories, comedies, and tragedies. Richard III (1593), an early
play, stands out among the histories, although some scholars view the picture it
presents of Richard as an unprincipled villain as IITudor propaganda." Shakespeare's
comedies, although not attaining the heights of his tragedies, surpass his history
plays in originality.
Shakespeare's tragedies are considered his unique achievement. Four of these
were written within a three-year period: amJet (1603L Othello (1604), King Lear
11605 ), and Macbeth 11606 ). The most orig{naLof the tragedies, Romeo and Juliet
(1597), transformed an old popular story into al1110ving drama of IIstar-cross'd lov-
ers." Both Romeo and Juliet, denied a marriage by' flieir warring families, die tragic
deaths. Romeo, believing Juliet to be dead when she has merely taken a sleeping
potion, poisons himself. When Juliet awakes to find Romeo dead, she kills herself
with his dagger.
Shakespeare's works struck universal human themes, many of which were deeply
rooted in contemporary religious traditions. His plays were immensely popular with
both the playgoers and the play readers of Elizabethan England. Still today, the works
of no other dramatist from his age are performed in theaters or on film more regularly
than his.
In Perspective
During the early Middle Ages, Christendom had been divided into Western and
Eastern churches with irreconcilable theological differences. When, in 15 17, Mar-
tin Luther posted ninety-five theses questioning the selling of indulgences and the
traditional sacrament of penance that lay behind them, h e created a division within
Western Christendom itself- an internal division between Protestants and Catholics.
The Lutheran protest carne at a time of political and social discontent with the
church. Not only princes and magistrates but many ordinary people as well resented
traditional clerical rights and privileges. The clergy were exempted from many secular
laws and taxes while remaining powerful landowners whose personal lifestyles were
not all that different from those of the laity. Spiritual and secular protest combined
to make the Protestant Reformation a successful assault on the old church. In town
after town and region after region within Protestant lands, the major institutions and
practices of traditional piety were transformed.
It soon became clear, however, that the division would not stop with the Luther-
ans. Making Scripture the only arbiter in religion had opened a Pandora's box. People
proved to have different ideas about what Scripture taught. Indeed, there seemed to
244 PART 1 • EUROPE IN TRANS ITION, 1300-1750
believed the game actually belonged to the community, and this poaching increased
during hard times. Poaching was thus one way for the poor to find food.
Even more important was the black market in game animals that the demand
in the cities for this kind of luxury meat sustained. This created the possibility of
poaching for profit, and, indeed, poaching technically meant stealing or killing game
for sale. Local people from both the countryside and the villages would steal the game
and then sell it to intermediaries called higglers. Later, coachmen took over this func-
tion. The higglers and the coachmen would smuggle the game into the cities, where
poulterers would sell it at a premium price. Everyone involved made a bit of money
along th e way. During th e second half of the century, English aristocrats began to
construct large game preserves. The rural poor, who had lost their rights to communal
land as a result of its enclosure by the large landowners, resented th ese preserves,
which soon became hunting grounds to organized gangs of poachers.
,." Penalties against poaching increased in the 1790s after th e outbreak of the French
Revolution, but so did the amount of poaching as the economic hardships increased.
Britain's participation in the wars of th e era put a greater burden on poor people as the
demand for food in English cities grew along with their population. By the 1820s, both
landowners antlJe£ormers called for a change in th e law. In 1831, Parliament rewrote
the game laws, retaining the landowners ' possession of the game, but permitting them
to allow other people to hunt it. Poaching continued, but th e exclusive right of th e
landed classes to hunt game had ended.
What role did the family play in T Family Structures and the Family Economy
the economy of preindustrial
Europe? In preindustrial Europe, the household was the basic unit of production and consump-
tion. Few productive establish ments employed rna e than a handful of people not
belonging to the family of the owner, and those rare exceptions were in cities. Most
Europeans, however, Lived in rural areas. There, as well as . n small towns and ci ties,
the household mode of organization predominated on farms, in artisans' workshops,
and in smaLl m erchants' shops. With that mode of economic organization, there
family economy The basic developed what is known as the family economy. Its structure, as described here, had
structure of production and prevailed over most of Europe for centuries.
consumption in preindustrial
Europe.
Households
What was a household in the preindustrial Europe of the Old Regime? There were two
basic models, one characterizing northwestern Europe and the other eastern Europe.
Northwestern Europe In northwestern Europe, th e household almost invariably

consisted of a married couple, their children through their early teenage years, and
th eir servants. Except for th e few wealthy people, households usually consisted of
not more than five or six members. Furthermore, in these hou seholds, more than two
generations of a family rarely lived under th e sa m e roof. High mortality and lat e mar-
riage prevented a formation of families of three generations or more. In other words,
grandparents rarely lived in th e sa m e household as th eir grandchildren, and families
consisted of parents and children. The fa mily structure of northweste rn Europe was
thus nuclear rather than extended.
Historians used to assume that before industrialization Europeans lived in
extended familial settings, with several generations living together in a household.
Demographic investigation has now sharply reversed this picture. Children lived with
their parents only until their early teens. Then they normally left horne, usually to
enter th e workforce of young servants who lived and worked in another household.
A child of a skilled artisan might remain with his or her parents to learn a valuable
skill; but only rarely would more than one child do so, because children earned more
working outside the home.
CH APTER 7 • SOCIETY AND ECONOMY UNDER THE OLD REGIME IN THE E IGHTEENTH CENTURY 245
Those young men and

women who had left home would
eventually marry and for m their
o~n independent hou sehol ds.
Tnis pra ctic e of m oving away
f'fm hom e is known as neoJocaJ-
ism. These young people married
relativelylate. Men were usually
over twenty-six, and women over
twenty-t h ree, r~e--n ew couple
usually had ch'iltlren as soon after
marriage as possible. Fre / uently,
the woman was already pI gnant
at marriage. Family and commu-
nity pressure often compelled the
man to marry her. Tn any case,
premarital sexual relations were
common. The new couple would
soo n employ a serva nt , who,
together with th eir growing chil-
dren, would undertake whatever
form of livelihood the household
used to support itself.
The word servant in this con-
text does not refer to someone
looking after the needs of wealthy
people. Rather, in preindustrial
Europe, a servant was a person-
either male or female- who was During the seventeenth century t he French Le Nain scenes of French peas-
hired, often under a clear co n- ant life. Although the images softened many of the harsh peasant existence, the
tract, to work for th e head of the clothing and the interiors were based on actual models and convey the character of the life
household in exchange for room, of better-off French peasants whose lives would have continued very much the same into the
eighteenth century. Erich Lessing/ Art Resuurce, NY
board, and wages . The se rvant
was us uall y yo ung and by no
m eans always socially inferior to his or her em ployer. Normally, the servant was an
integral part of the household and ate with the family.
Young men and women became servants when their labor was no longer needed
in their parents' household or when they could earn more money for their family out-
side th e parental household. Being a servant for several years-often as many as eight
or ten years- allowed young people to acquire the productive skills and the monetary
savings necessary to begin th eir own household. These years spent as servants largely
accoun t for the late age of marriage in northwestern Europe.
Eastern Europe As one moved eas tward across the Continent, th e structure of
the household and the pattern of marriage changed. In eastern Europe, both men and
women usually married before th e age of twenty. Consequently, children were born
to much younger parents. Often- especially among Russian serfs-wives were older
than th eir husbands. Eastern European households were ge nerally larger than those
in the West . Frequently a rural Ru ssian household consisted of more than nine, and
possibly more than twenty, members, with three or perhaps even four ge nerations
of the same family living together. Early marriage made this situation more likely.
In Russia, marrying involved not starting a new household, but remaining in and
expanding one already established.
The landholding structure in eastern Europe accounts, at least in part, for these
patterns of marriage and the family. The lords of the manor who owned land wanted
to ensure that it would be cultivat ed, so they could receive their rents. Thus, in
246 PART 1 • EUROPE IN TRANSITION, 1300-1750
Poland, for example, landlords might forbid marriage between their own serfs and
those from another estate. They might also require widows and widowers to remarry
to ensure adequate labor for a particular plot of land. Polish landlords also frowned on
the hiring of free laborers- the equivalent of servants in the West- to help cultivate
land. The landlords preferred to use other serfs. This practice inhibited the formation
of independent households. In Russia, landlords ordered the families of young people
in their villages to arrange marriages within a short set time. These lords discouraged
single-generation family households because the death or serious illness of one person
in such a household might mean the land assigned to it would go out of cultivation.
The Family Economy

rough out Europe, most people worked within the family economy. That is to say,
the hou ~ ehold was the basic unit of production and consumption. Almost everyone
liveo ithin a household of some kind because it was virtually impossible for ordi-
nary eop e to support themselves independently. Indeed, except for members of
religious orde eople living outside a household were viewed with great suspicion.
They were consid~~ed potentially criminal, disruptive, or at least dependent on the
charity of others.$verywhere beggars met deep hostility.
Depending on their ages and skills, everyone in the household worked. The need
to survive poor harvests or economic slumps meant that no one could be idle. Within
this family economy, all goods andj ncome produced went to the benefit of the house-
hold rather than to the individual family member. On a farm, much of the effort
went directly into raising food or producing other agricultural goods that could be
exchanged for food. Few Western Europeans, however, had enough land to support
their household from farming alone. Thus, one or more family members might work
elsewhere and send wages home; for example, the father and older children might
work as harvesters, fishermen, or engage in other laBor e ~ er in the neighborhood or
farther from home. If the father was such a migrant worker< his wife and their younger
children would have to work the family farm. This was not an uncommon pattern.
The family economy also dominated the life of skilled urban artisans. The father
was usually the chief artisan. He normally employed one or more servants but would
expect his children to work in the enterprise also. He usually trained his eldest child
in th e trade. His wife often sold his wares or opened a small shop of her own. Wives
of merchants also frequently ran their husbands' businesses, especially when the
husband traveled to purchase new goods. In any case, everyone in the family was
involved. If bu siness was poor, fam ily members would look for employment else-
where- not to support th emselves as individuals, but to ensure the survival of th e
family unit.
In Western Europe, th e death of a fa th er often brought disaster to the household.
The continuing economic life of the family usually depended on his land or skills.
The widow might take on the farm or the business, or his children might do so. The
widow usually sought to remarry quickly to restore the labor and skills of a male
to the household and to prevent herself from becoming dependent on relatives or
charity.
The high mortality rate of the time meant th at many households were recon-
stitu ted second-family groups that included stepchildren . Because of the advanced
age of the widow or economic hard times, however, some households might simply
dissolve. The widow became dependent on charity or relatives . The children became
similarly dependent or entered the workforce as servants earlier than they would have
otherwise. In other cases, the situation could be so desperate that they would resort
to crime or to begging. The personal, emotional, and economic vulnerability of the
family cannot be overemphasized.
In Eastern Europe, the family economy func tion ed in the context of serfdom and
landlord domination. Peasants clearly thought in terms of their families an d expand-
ing the land available for cultivation. The village structure may have mitigated the
Pri nted by Adali a Davi s (adali aadav is@tlmail.com) on 8/51201 4 from 23.122.120.5 4 authoriz ed to use until 712412020. Us e beyond the authorized us er or vili d
CHAPTER 7 • SOC IETY AN D ECONOMY UNDER THE O LD REGIME IN THE E IGHTEENTH CENTURY 247
pressures of the family economy, as did the multigenerational family. Dependence

on the available land was the chief fact of life. There were many fewer artisan and
merchant households, and there was far less geographical mobility than in Western
Europe.
Women and the Family Economy

The family economy established many of the chief constraints on the lives and per-
sonal experiences oftwomen in preindustrial society. Most of the historical research
that has been undertaken on this sub ject relates to Western Europe. There, a woman 's
life experience was largely' the function of her capacity to establish and maintain a
household. For women, marriage was an economic necessity, as well as an institution
that fulfilled sexual and psychological needs. Outside a household, a woman's life
was vulnerable and precarious. Some women became economically independent, but
they were the exception. NormallY1'llnless she were an aristocrat or a member of a
religious order, a woman probably could nqt sUPR0rt herself solely by her own efforts.
Consequently, a woman devoted much of he nfe first to maintaining her parents'
household and t hen to devising some means of getting her own household to live
in as an adult. Bearing and rearing children were usually subordinate to these goals.
By the age of seven, a girl would have begun to help w'th the household work.
On a farm, this might mean looking after chickens, watering-the animals, or carrying
food to the adults working the land. In an urban artisan's househo ~d, she would do
light work, perhaps cleaning or carrying, and later sewing or weaving. The girl would
remain in her parents' home as long as she made a real contribution to the family
enterprise or as long as her labor elsewhere was not more remunerative to the family.
An artisan 's daughter might not leave home until marriage, because at home
she could learn increasingly valuable skills associated with the trade. The situat,i on
was different for the much larger number of girls growing up on farms. Their parents
and brothers could often do all the necessary farm work, and a girl's labor at home
quickly became of little value to her family. She would then leave horn e, usually
between the age of twelve and fourteen years. She might take up residence on another
farm, but more likely she would migrate to a nearby town or city. She would rarely
travel more than thirty miles from her parents' household. She would then normally
become a servant, once again living in a household, but this time in th e household
of an employer. Having left home, the young woman's chief goal was to accumulate
enough capital for a dowry. Her savings would make her eligible for marriage because
they would allow her to make the necessary contribution to form a household with
her husband. Marriage within the family economy was a joint economic undertaking,
and the wife was expected to make an immediate contribution of capital to establish
the household. A young woman might well work for ten years or more to accumulate
a dowry. This practice meant that marriage was usually postponed until her mid- to
late twenties.
Within marriage, earning enough money or producing enough farm goods to ensure
an adequate food supply dominated women's concerns. Domestic duties, childbear-
ing, and childrearing were subordinate to economic pressures. Consequently, couples
tried to limit the number of children they had, usually through the practice of coitus
interruptus, the withdrawal of the male before ejaculation .
The work of married women differed markedly between city and country and was
in many ways a function of their husbands' occupations. If the peasant household had
enough land to support itself, the wife spent much of her time literally carrying things
for her husband- water, food, seed, harvested grain, and the like. Such landholdings,
however, were few. If the husband had to do work besides farming, such as fishing or
migrant labor, the wife might actually be in charge of the farm and do the plowing,
planting, and harvesting. In the city, the wife of an artisan or a merchant might be in
charge of the household finances and help manage the business. When her husband
died, she might take over the business and perhaps hire an artisan. Finally, if
248 PART 1 • EUROPE IN T RANSITION, 1300- 175 0
economic disaster struck the family, it was usually the wife who organized wh at
Olwen Hufton has calJed the "economy of expedients,,,l within which family m em -
bers m ight be sent off to find work elsewhere or even to beg in the streets.
Despite alJ this economic activity, women found m any occupations and profes-
sions closed to them because they were female. They labored with less education than
m en becau se in such a society women at all levels of life consistently fo und fewer
opportunities for education than did m en. They often received lower wages than m en
for the same work. The mechanization of agriculture and the textile industries, which
is discussed la ter in this chapter, made these disabilities worse.
Children and the World of the Family Economy

or women of all social ranks, childbirth m eant fea r and vulnerability. Contagious
diseases endangered both m other and child. Pu erperal fever was frequent, as were
other infections fro m unsterilized m edical instruments. Not all midwives were skill -
ful practitioners. Furthermore, m ost m others gave birth in conditions of immen se
poverty and wretched housing. Assuming both moth er and child survived, th e m oth er
might nurse the infant, but oft en the child would be sent to a wet nurse. The wealth y
may have don e th is fo ~ co nveni e nc e, bu t economic necessity dictated it for the poor.
The structures and custom s of th e fa mily economy did n ot permit a woman to devote
herself entirely to rearing a ch il d. Th e wet-nursing industry was well organized, with
urban children being frequently transported to wet nurses in th e country, where they
would remain for months or even years.
The birth of a ch ild was not always welcome. The child m ight represent another
econom ic burden on an already hard-pr,essetl househ old, or it might be illegitimate.
The number of illegitimate births seem s to have increased during the eighteenth cen-
tury, possibly becau se increased m igration of th e population led to flee ting romances.
Through at least the end of the seventeenth century unwanted or illegitimate
births could lead to infanticide, especially among the Poo;?The parents m ight sm oth er
the infant or expose it to the elements. These practices we·re one result of both the
ignorance and th e prejudice surroun din g contraception.
The la te seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries saw a new interest in
preserving th e lives of abandoned children. Although foun dling ho spitals establish ed
to care for abandoned children had existed before, their size and number expanded
during these years. Two of the m os t famous were the Paris Foundling Hospital (1670)
and th e London Foundling Ho spital (1739). Such ho spi tals cared fo r thousands of
children, and the demand for their services in creased during the eighteenth century.
For example, early in th e century, an average of 1,700 children a year were admit-
ted to the Paris Foundling Hospital. In the peak year of 1772, however, that number
rose to 7,676 children . Not all of those children came from Paris. Many had been
brought to the city from the provin ces, wh ere local foundling homes and hospitals
were overburdened. The London Foundling Hospital lacked the income to deal with
all the children brought to it. In the m iddle of the eighteenth century, the hospital
fo und itself compeLled to choose children for admission by a lottery system .
Sadness and tragedy surrounded abandoned children. Most of them were ille-
giti mate in fa nts from across th e social spect rum. Many, however, were left with
the foundling hospitals because their parents could not support them. There was a
close relationship between rising food prices and increasing numbers of abandoned
children in Paris. Parents would sometim es leave personal tokens or saints' m edals
on th e abandoned baby in the vain h ope th ey might one day be able to reclaim th e
child. Few children were reclaimed. Leaving a child at a foundling hospital did not
guarantee its su rvival. In Paris, only about 10 percent of all abandoned children lived
to th e age of ten.
IOlwen H ufton, "Women and the Family Economy in Eigh teenth-Century France," French Historical Studies
90976I, p.19.
Despite all of these perils of early childhood, children did grow up and come of
age across Europe. The world of the child may not have received the kind of attention
it does today, but during the eighteenth century, the seeds of that modern sensibil-
ity were sown. Particularly among the upper classes, new interest arose in educating
children. In most areas, education remained firmly in the hands of the churches.
As economic skills became more demanding, literacy became more valuable, and
litera@rates rose during the century. Yet most Europeans remained illiterate. Not
until file late nineteenth century was the world of childhood inextricably linked to
the process of education. Then children would be reared to become members of a
national citizenry y n the Old Regime, they were reared to make their contribution
to the economy of their parents' family and then to set up their own households .
... The Revolution in Agriculture What led to the agricultural

revolution of the eighteenth
Thus far, this chapter has examined those groups that sought stability and that, except century?
for certain members of the nobility, resisted chan e. Other groups, however, wished
to pursue significant new directions in social ana economic life. The remainder of the
chapter considers those forces and developments t·hat would transform European life
during the next centu ry. These developments first apl2.,eared in agriculture.
The main goal of traditional peasant society was a stability that would ensure
the local food supply. Despite differences in rural customs across Europe, the tillers
resisted changes that might endanger the sure supply of food, 'bich they generally
believed traditional methods of cultivation would provide. The food supply 'Was never
certain, and the farther east one traveled, the more uncertain it beca~. Failure of
the harvest meant not only hardsh ip, but also death from eith er outright starvation
or malnutrition. People living in the countryside often had more difficulty finding
food than did city dwellers, whose local government usually stored reserve supplies
of grain. ,•
Poor harvests also played havoc with prices. Smaller supplies or larger demand
raised grain prices. Even small increases in the cost of food could exert heavy pressure
Agricultural Revolution T he
on peasant or artisan families. If prices increased sharply, many of those families fell
innovatiuns in farm production
back on poor relief from their local government or the church. that began in the eigh teenth
Historians now believe that during the eigh teenth century bread prices slowly but century and led to a scientific
steadily rose, spurred largely by population growth. Since bread was their main food, and mechanized agriculture.
this inflation put pressure on the poor. Prices rose faster
than urban wages and brought no appreciable advantage
to the small peasant producer. However, the rise in grain
prices benefited landowners and those wealthier peasants
who had surplus grain to sell.
Th e rising grain prices gave landlords an opportunity to
improve their incomes and lifestyle. To achieve those ends,
landlords in Western Europe began a series of innovations
in farm production that became known as the Agricultural
Revolution. Landlords commercialized agriculture and
thereby challenged the traditional peasant ways of produc-
tion. Peasant revolts and disturbances often resulted. The
governments of Europe, hungry for n ew taxes and dependent
on the goodwill of the nobility, used their armies and mili-
tias to smash peasants who defended traditional practices.
New Crops and New Methods

The English agricultural im prover Jethro Tull d evised this se ed
The drive to improve agricultural production began during d rill, which increas ed wheat crops by plantin g seed deep in the
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the Low Coun- soil rather than just ca sting it randomly on the surface . lmage
tries, where the pressures of the growing population and the Works/ Mary Evans PiclUre Libra ry Ltd.
250 PART 1 • EUROPE IN TRANS ITION, 1300-1750
shortage of land required changes in cultivation. Dutch landlords and farmers devised
~View the Image better ways to build di kes and to drain land so they could farm more land. They also
"Diderot's Encyclopedia- experimented with new crops, such as clover and turnips, that would increase the
Plate Illustrating supply of animal fo dder and restore the soil. These improvements became so famous
Agricultural Techniques" that early in the seventeenth century English landlords hired Cornelius Vermuyden,
on MyHistoryLab.com a Dutch engineer, to drain thousands of acres of land around Cambridge.
English landlords provided the most striking examples of eighteenth-century
agricultural improvement. They originated almost no genuinely new farming meth-
ods, but they popularized ideas developed in the previous century either in the Low
Countries or in England. Some of these landlords and agricultural innovators became
famous . For example, Jethro Tull /1674- 1741 ) was willing to conduct experiments
himself and to financ e th e experiments of others. Many of his ideas, such as th e rejec-
tion of manure as fertilizer, were wrong. Others, however, such as using iron plows
to nyn the earth more deeply and planting wheat by a drill rather than by just casting
seeds, were excellent. His methods permitted land to be cultivated for longer periods
without baving to leave it fallow.
Charles II Turnip" Townsend (1674- 1738 ) encouraged other important innova-
tions. He learned from th e Dutch how to cultivate sandy soil with fertilizers. H e also
instituted crop rota ion, u sing wheat, turnips, barley, and clover. This new system of
rotation replaced the fallow field with one sown with a crop that both restored nutri-
ents to the soil and suppl~d animal fodder. The additional fodder meant that more
lives tock could be raised. 12hese fodders allowed animals to be fed during the winter
and assured a year-rou nd supply of meat. The larger number of animals increased the
quantity of manure available as fertilizer for the grain crops. Consequently, in the
long run, both animals and human beings had more food.
A third British agricultural improver as obert Bakewell (1725- 1795), who pio-
neered new methods of animal breeding that-produced more and better animals and
more milk and m ea t. These and other innovations received widespread discussion
in the works of Arthur Young (1741 - 1820), who edited th ~ nnaJs of Agriculture. In
1793, he became secretary of the British Board of Agriculture. Young traveled widely
across Europe, and his books are among the most important documents of life during
the late eighteenth century.
Enclosure Replaces Open-Field M ethod Many of the agricultural innovations,

which were adopted only slowly, were incompatible with the existing organization
of land in England. Small cultivators who lived in village communities still far med
most of the soil. Each farmer tilled an assortment of unconnected strips. The two- or
three-fie ld systems of rotation left large portions of land fallow and unproductive each
year. Animals grazed on the common land in the summer and on the stubble of the
harvest in the winter. Until at least the mid-eighteenth century, the whole commu-
enclosures The consolidation or
fencing in uf commun lands by
nity decided what crops to plant. The entire system discouraged improvement and
British landlords to increase favored th e poorer farmers, who needed th e common land and stubble fields for their
produ ction and achieve greater animals. The village method precluded expanding pastureland to raise more animals
commercial profits. It also involved that would, in turn, produce more manure for fertilizer. Thus, th e m ethods of tradi-
the reclamation of waste land and tional production aimed at a stea dy, but not a growing, supply of food.
the consolidation of strips into
block fields.
In 1700, approximately half th e arable land in England was farmed by this open-
field method. By the second half of the century, the rising price of wheat encouraged
~View the Map " Map landlords to consolidate or enclose th eir lands to increase production. The enclosures
Discovery: English Common were intended to u se land m ore rationally and to achieve greater commercial profits.
Lands Enclosed by Acts of The process involved the fencing of common lands, the reclamation of previously
Parliament, 1700- 1850" on untilled waste, and the transformation of strip s into block fields . These procedures
MyHistoryLab.com brought turmoil to th e economic and social life of th e countryside. Riots often ensued.
Because many English farmers either owned their strips or rented them in a man-
ner that amounted to ownership, th e larger landlords usually resorted to parliamen-
tary acts to legalize the enclosure of th e land, which they owned but rented to the
farmers. Because the large landown ers controlled Parliament, such m easures passed
CH APTER 7 • SOCIETY AND ECONOMY UNDER THE OLD REGIME IN THE E IGHTEENTH CENTURY 251
easily. Between 176 1 and 1792, almost 500,000 acres were enclosed through acts of
Parliament, compared with 75,000 acres between 1727 and 1760. In 1801, a ge neral
enclosure act streamlined the process.
Th e enclosures were controversial at the time and have remained so among
historians. They permitted the extension of both farming and innovation and thus
increased food production on larger agricultural units. They also di srupted small tra-
ditionaDcommunities; they forced off th e land independent farmers, who h ad needed
the common pasturage, and poor cottage dwellers, who h ad lived on th e reclaimed
wasteland. The--enclosu res, however, did no t depopulate the countryside. In some
counties wh ere th e:-enclosures took place, the population increased. New soil had
come into productiW1:, and services that supported farming also expanded.
The enclosures did n ot create the labor force for th e British Industrial Revolu-
tion. What the enclosu res most conspicuously displayed was the introduction of the
entrepren eurial or capitalistic attitude of th e urban m erchant into th e countryside.
This commercialization of agriculture, which spread from Britain slowly across the
Continent during th e next century, strained the paternal relationsh ip betwee n th e
governing and governed classes. Previously, landlords had often looked after the wel-
fare of th e lower orders through price control§ oI-waivers of rent during hard times.
As the landlords became increasingly concerned about profits, they began to leave
the peasants to th e mercy of th e marketplace.
Limited Improvements in Eastern Europe Imp roving agriculture tended to

characterize farm produ ction west of the Elbe River. Dutch farming was efficient.
In France, despite the efforts of th e government to improve agriculture, enclosures
were restricted . Yet many people in France wanted to improve agricultural m eth -
ods. These new procedures benefited th e ruling classes because better agriculture
increased their incomes and assured a larger food supply, which discouraged social
unrest. /See "Compare and Connect: Two Eighteenth-Century Writers Contemplate
the Effects of Different Economic St ructures," pages 252- 253. )
In Prussia, Austria, Poland, and Russia, agricultural improvement was limited.
Nothing in the rel ationsh ip of the serfs to their lords encouraged innovation . In
eastern Europe, the chief m eth od of increasing produ ction was to bring previously
un tilled lands under the plow. The landlords or their agents, and not the vill ages,
normally directed farm management. By extending tillage, the great landlords sough t
to squ eeze more labor from their se rfs, rather than greater productivity from the soil.
Eastern European landlords, like their western counterparts, sough t to increase their
profits, bu t they were less ambitious and su ccessfu l. The only sign ificant nutritional
gain they achieved was the introduction of maize and the potato. Livestock produc-
tion did not increase sign ificantly.
Expansion of the Population

The population explosion with which the entire world mu st contend today had its
origins in th e eighteenth century. Before that tim e, Europe's population had expe-
rienced dramatic increases, bu t plagues, wars, or famin e had redressed the balance.
Beginning in th e second quarter of th e eighteenth century, the population began to
increase steadily. The need to feed this population caused food prices to rise, which
spurred agricultural innovation. Th e need to provide everyday consumer goods for
the expanding numbers of people fueled the demand side of the Industrial Revolution.
In 1700, Europe's population, excluding the European provinces of the Ottoman
Empire, was probably between 100 million and 120 million people. By 1800, the figures
had risen to almost 190 million and by 1850, to 260 million. The population of England ~View the Map " Map
and Wales rose from 6 million in 1750 to more than 10 million in 1800. France grew Discovery: Population
from 18 million in 1715 to about 26 million in 1789. Russia's population increased from Growth in Europe.
19 million in 1722 to 29 m illion in 1766. Su ch extraordinary sustained growth put new 1800- 1850" on
demands on all resources and considerable pressure on the existing social organization. MyHistoryLab.com
254 PART 1 • EUROPE IN TRANSITION, 1300-1750
The population expansion occurred across the Continent in both the country and
the cities. Only a limited consensus exists among scholars about the causes of this
growth. The death rate clearly declined. There were fewer wars and epidemics in the
eighteenth century. Hygiene and sanitation also improved. Better medical knowledge
and techniques, however, did not contribute much to the decline in deaths. The more
important medical advances came after the initial population explosion and would
not have affected it directly.
Instead, changes in th e food supply itself may have allowed population growth to be
sustained. Improved and expanding grain production made one contribution. Another and
even more important change was the cultivation of the potato. This tuber was a product
of the New World and came into widespread European production during the eighteenth
century. (See "The West & The World," page 303.) On a single acre, a peasant family
Bould grow enough potatoes to feed itself for an entire year. This more certain food supply
enabled more children to survive to adulthood and rear children of their own.
T he impact of the population explosion can hardly be overestimated. It created new
demand0~ food, goods, jobs, and services. It provided a new pool of labor. Traditional
modes of production and living had to be revised. More people lived in the country -
side than couldJind employment there. Migration increased. There were also more
people who mig t become socially and politically discontented. Because the population
growth fed on itself, these pressures and demands continued to increase. The society
and the social practices of the Old Regime literally outgrew their traditional bounds.
Why d id the Industrial Revolution T The Industrial Revolution of the

begin in Britain?
Eighteenth Century
The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed the beginning of the industrial-
ization of the European economy. That achievement-of sush ined economic growth is
Industrial Revolution termed the Industrial Revolution. Previously, the economy of a province or a country
Mechanization of the European might grow, but growth soon reached a plateau. Since the late eighteenth century,
economy that began in Britain in however, the economy of Europe has managed to expand at an almost uninterrupted
the second half of the eighteenth
century. pace. Depressions and recessions have been temporary, and even during such eco-
nomic downturns, the Western economy has continued to grow.
At considerable social cost, industrialization made possible the production of
more goods and services than ever before in human history. Industrialization in
Europe eventually overcame the economy of scarcity. The new means of production
demanded new kinds of skills, new discipline in work, and a large labor force. The
goods produced met immediate consum er demand and also created new demands. In
the long run, industrialization raised the standard of living and overcame the poverty
that most Europeans, who lived during the eighteenth century and earlier, had taken
for granted. It gave human beings greater control over nature than they had ever
known before; yet by the mid-nineteenth century, industrialism would also cause
new and unanticipated problems with the environment.
During the eighteenth century, people did not call these economic developments
a revolution. That term came to be applied to the British economic phenomena only
after the French Revolution. Then continental writers observed that what had taken
place in Britain was the economic equivalent of the political events in France, hence
an Industrial Revolution. It was revolutionary less in its speed, which was on the
whole rather slow, than in its implications for the future of European society.
A Revolution in Consumption
The most familiar side of the Industrial Revolution was the invention of new machin-
ery, the establishm ent of factories, and the creation of a new kind of workforce.
Recent studies, however, have emphasized the demand side of the process and the
C HAPTER 7 • SOC IETY AN D ECONOMY UNDER THE O LD REGIME IN THE E IGHTEENTH CENTURY 263
... The Growth of Cities What problems arose as a result

of the growth of cities?
Remarkable changes occurred in the pattern of city growth between 1500 and 1800.
In 1500, within Europe (excluding Hungary and Ru ssia ) 156 cities had a population
greater than 10,000. Only four of those cities- Paris, Milan, Venice, and Naples- had
populations larger than 100,000. By 1800,363 cities had 10,000 or more inhabitants,
ana V of them had populations larger than 100,000. The percentage of the European
population livj ng in urban areas had risen from just over 5 percent to just over 9 per-
cent. A major shift in urban concentration from southern, Mediterranean Europe to
the north ha ~o occurred.
Patterns of Preindustrial Urbanization

The eighteenth cen tury witnessed a considerable growth of towns, closely related to
the tumult of the day and the revolutions with which the century closed. London
grew from about 700,000 inhabitants in 1700 to almost 1 million in 1800. By th e
time of the French Revolution, Paris h ad rna ethan 500,000 in habitants. Berlin's
population tripled during the cen tury, reaching 170,000 in 1800. Warsaw had 30,000
in habitants in 1730, but almost 120,000 in 1794. St. Petersburg, founded in 1703,
nu mbered more than 250,000 inhabitants a centu ry later. The number of smaller
cities with 20,000 to 50,000 people also increased considerably. This urban growth
must, however, be kept in perspective. Even in France and Grea teBritain, probably
somewh at less th an 20 percent of the population lived in cities. p nd the town of
10,000 inhabitants was mu ch more common than the giant urban center.
These raw figures conceal significant changes that took place in ho cities grew
and how the population redistribu ted itself. The major urban development of ~
sixteenth century had been followed by a leveling off, and even a decline, in the s..ev-
enteenth. New growth began in the early eighteenth century and accelerated du ring
the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries.
Between 1500 and 1750, major u rban expansion took place within already estab-
lished and generally already large cities. After 1750, the pattern changed with the
birth of new cities and the rapid growth of older, smaller cities.
Growth of Capitals and Ports In particular, between 1600 and 1750, the cities
that grew most vigorously were capitals and ports. This situation reflects the success
of monarchical state-building during those years and the consequent burgeoning of
bureaucracies, armies, courts, and other groups who lived in the capitals . The growth
of port cities, in turn, reflects the expansion of European overseas trade- especially
that of the Atlantic rou tes. Except for Manchester in England and Lyons in France,
th e new urban conglomerates were nonindustrial cities.
Furthermore, between 1600 and 1750, cities with populations of fewer than
40,000 inhabitants declined. These included older landlocked trading centers, medi-
eval industrial cities, and ecclesiastical centers. They contribu ted less to the new
political regimes, and the expansion of the putting-out system transferred production
from medieval cities to the cou ntryside becau se rural labor was cheaper than u rban
labor.
The Emergence of New Cities and the Growth of Small Towns In the mid-
eighteenth century, a new pattern emerged. The rate of growth of existing large cities
declined, new cities emerged, and existing smaller cities grew. Several factors were
at work in the process, which Jan De Vries has termed /Ian u rban growth from below. "3
First was the general overall population increase. Second, the early stages of the
Industrial Revolution, particularly in Britain, occurred in the cou ntryside and fostered
3Jan De Vries, " Patte rns of Urbani zati on in Prc·Indus trial Eu ropc, 1500- 1800," in H. Schmal , cd., Pattern s of
Urbanizaliotl since 1500 (l o ndo n: Croom Helm, 1981), p. 103.
264 P ART 1 • EUROPE IN TRANSITION, 1300-1750
the growth of smaller towns and cities located near factories. Factory organization
itself led to new concentrations of population.
Cities also grew as a result of the new prosperity of European agriculture, even
where there was little industrialization. Improved agricultural production promoted
the growth of nearby market towns and other urban centers that served agriculture
or allowed more prosperous farmers to have access to consumer goods and recreation.
This new pattern of urban growth- new cities and the expansion of smaller existing
ones- would continue into the nineteenth century.
Urban Classes
Social divisions were as marked in eighteenth-century cities as they were in
.-nineteenth-century industrial centers. Th e urban rich were often visibly segregated
~ from the urban poor. Aristocrats and the upper middle class lived in fashionable
town ouses, often constructed around newly laid-out green squares. The poorest
town dwellers usually congregated along the rivers. Small merchants and artisans
lived above their shops. Whole families might live in a single room. Modern sanitary
facilities were unknown. Pure water was rare. Cattle, pigs, goats, and other animals
roamed the streets. All eports on the cities of Europe during this period emphasize
both the striking grac and beauty of the dweLlings of the wealthy and the dirt, filth,
and stench that filled the streets. (See "Encountering the Past: Water, Washing, and
Bathing," page 266.1
Poverty was not just an urban problem; it was usually worse in the countryside.
In the city, however, poverty was more visible in the form of crime, prostitution,
vagrancy, begging, and alcoholism. Many a young man or woman from the country-
side migrated to the nearest city to seek a {Jetter He, only to discover poor housing,
little food, disease, degradation, and finally death. It did not require the Industrial
Revolution and the urban factories to make the cit~es into hellholes for the poor and
~View the, Image "Gin the dispossessed. The full darkness of London life during the midcentury "gin age,"
Lane, William Hogarth" on when consumption of that liquor blinded and killed many poor people, is evident in
MyHistoryLab.com the engravings of William Hogarth 11697- 17641.
Also contrasting with the serenity of the aristocratic and upper-commercial-class
lifestyle were the public executions that took place all over Europe, the breaking of
men and women on instruments of torture in Paris, and the public floggings in Russia.
Brutality condoned and carried out by the ruling classes was a fact of everyday life.
Th e Upper Classes At the top of the urban social structure stood a generally small
group of nobles, large merchants, bankers, financiers, clergy, and government offi-
cials. These upper-class men controlled the political and economic affairs of the town.
Normally, they constituted a self-appointed and self-electing oligarchy that governed
the city through its corporation or city council. Some form of royal charter usually
gave the city corporation its authority and the power to select its own members. In
a few cities on the Continent, artisan guilds controlled the corporations, but gener-
ally, the local nobility and the wealthiest commercial people dominated the councils.
The Middle Class Another group in the city was the prosperous, but not always
immensely wealthy, merchants, trades people, bankers, and professional people. They
were the most dynamic element of the urban population and made up the middle
class, or bourgeoisie. The concept of the middle class was much less clear-cut than
that of the nobility. The middle class itself was and would remain diverse and divided,
with persons employed in the professions often resentful of those who drew their
incomes from commerce. Less wealthy members of the middle class of whatever
occupation resented wealthier members who might be connected to the nobility
through social or business relationships.
The middle class had less wealth than most nobles, but more than urban artisans.
Middle-class people lived in the cities and towns, and their sources of income had
Pri nted by Adali a Davi s (adali aadav is@tlmail,com) on 8/512014 from 23,122,120,54 authoriz ed to use until 712412020, Us e beyond the authorized us er or vili d
little or nothing to do with the land. In one way or another, they all benefited from
expanding trade and commerce, whether as merchants, lawyers, or small-factory own-
ers. Theirs was a world in which earning and saving of money enabled rapid social
mobility and change in lifestyle. They saw themselves as willing to put their capital
and energy to work, whereas they portrayed the nobility as idle. The members of the
middle class tended to be economically aggressive and socially ambitious. People often
rna e run of them for these ch aracteristics and were jealous of their success. The mid-
dle class normally supported reform, change, and economic growth. They also wanted
more rational egulations for trade and commerce, as did some progressive aristocrats.
The middle class was made up of people whose lives fostered the revolution in
consumption. On one)tand, as owners of factories and of wholesale and retail busi-
nesses, they produced and sold goods for the expanding consumer market; on th e
other hand, members of the middle class were among the chief consumers. It was to
their homes that the vast array of new consumer goods made th eir way. They were
also the people whose social values mostJully embraced the commercial spirit. They
might not enjoy the titles or privileges of th e-nobility, but they could enjoy material
comfort and prosperity. It was this style ofJife that less well-off people could emulate
as they sought to acquire consumer goods for th emselves.
During the eighteenth century, the relationshi between the middle class and
the aristocracy was complicated. On one hand, th e noble j. especially in England and
France, increasingly embraced the commercial spirit associated with the middle class
by improving their estates and investing in cities. On the other hand, wealthy mem-
bers of the middle class often tried to imitate the lifestyle of the ob'y'-ity by purchas-
ing landed estates. The aspirations of the middle class for social mobility, however,
conflicted with the determination of the nobles to maintain and reassert their own
privileges and to protect their own wealth. Middle-class commercial figures-- raders,
bankers, manufacturers, and lawyers- often found their pursuit of profit and prestige
blocked by the privileges of the nobility and its social exclusiveness, by the ineffi-
ciency of monarchical bu reaucracies dominated by the nobility, or by aristocrats who
controlled patronage and government contracts.
The bourgeoisie was not rising to challenge the nobility; rather, both were seeking
to increase their existing political power and social prestige. The tensions that arose
between the nobles and the middle class during the eighteenth century normaLly
involved issues of power-sharing or access to political influence, rather than clashes
over values or goals associated with class.
The middle class in the cities also feared the lower urban classes as much as they
envied th e nobility. Th e lower orders were a potentially violent element in society,
a threat to property, and, in their poverty, a drain on national resources. The lower
classes, however, were much more varied than eith er the city aristocracy or the
middle class cared to admit.
Artisans Shopkeepers, artisans, and wage earners were the single largest group
in any city. They were grocers, butchers, fish mongers, carpenters, cabinetmakers,
smiths, printers, hand-loom weavers, and tailors, to give a few examples. They had
their own culture, valu es, and institutions. Like the peasants, they were, in many
respects, conservative. Their economic position was vulnerable. If a poor h arvest
raised the price of food, their own businesses su ffered. These urban classes also con- [E-{Read the Document
tributed to the revolution in consumption, however. They could buy more goods than "Jacques-Louis Menetra.
ever before, and, to the extent their incomes permitted, many of them sought to copy Journal of My Life" on
the domestic consumption of the middle class. MyHistoryLab.com
The lives of these artisans and shopkeepers centered on their work and their
neighborhoods. They usually lived n ear or at their place of employment. Most of
them worked in shops with fewer than a half dozen other artisans. Their primary
institution had historically been the guild, but by the eighteenth century, the guilds
rarely exercised the influence their predecessors had in medieval or early modern
Europe.

16-17th Century Social Econ Changes

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16-17th Century Social Econ Changes

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CHAPTER 3 • THE AGE OF REFORMATION 127

Do not tear pieces for your plate with your teeth .

How was the transition from ... Literary Imagination in Transition

Miguel de Cervantes Sa avedra : Rejection of Idealism

could not conceal his deep affection for th e

William Shakespeare: Dramatist

Northwestern Europe In northwestern Europe, th e household almost invariably

Those young men and

The Family Economy

pressures of the family economy, as did the multigenerational family. Dependence

Women and the Family Economy

Children and the World of the Family Economy

... The Revolution in Agriculture What led to the agricultural

New Crops and New Methods

Enclosure Replaces Open-Field M ethod Many of the agricultural innovations,

Limited Improvements in Eastern Europe Imp roving agriculture tended to

Expansion of the Population

Why d id the Industrial Revolution T The Industrial Revolution of the

... The Growth of Cities What problems arose as a result

Patterns of Preindustrial Urbanization

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