1700s Economic Structure
Changes before the French
Revolution
Progress only related to the elite
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Peasant lives not changed from ME
Economies expanded but slowly
Economic power moves to Atlantic
states with colonies helping provide
expansion
Changes in farming, industry, pop.,
and trade move Europe toward
industrial revolution
Agriculture
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Cyclical famine years (8-10 years)
Famine foods
Increased weakness and illness
Decrease population
Open field system
Common lands
Serfdom declined/living conditions
outside serfdom were poor
Agricultural Revolution
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Crop rotation!! Allowed for better
utilization of farm land
Had to get landowners to agree to
crop changes-- leading to…
Enclosure!!!
Hardest on poor– restricted use of
common lands
Farm leadership- Eng and Netherlands
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Netherlands– maximum use of land
necessary /expanded trade for extra
England learned from the Dutch
Jethro Tull (not the group) innovative
methods of farming
Selective breeding
England improved food by 300%
while increasing # of farmers by 14%
Cost of Enclosure
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Benefitted the large landowners
Increased surveying
Cottagers lost longtime use of
common land
Tenant farmers increase
Led to increase in market oriented
estate farming and creation of a
landless rural “proletariat”
Population Explosion
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1300- 1600’s population ravaged by
famine , war, black death
New pattern in 1700’s
More babies- fewer deaths
Fewer black death outbreaks
Small pox innoculations
Better management of famine
Improvements to water supply
Growth of Cottage industry
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Protoindustrialization
Putting out system- merchant capitalist
and rural worker
Advantages- used rural underemployed
workers, made “common” goods, less
guild restrictions, “spinsters”
Disadv- distrust, labor was scattered,
poorly organized, hard to control
Atlantic Advantage
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(This is why Eng will do better than France in 1700s
or18th century)
Colonization
Navigation Acts
Mercantilism
Slave trade
Growth of urban areas
Growth of foreign trade
Latin American colonizationNew ideas- Adam Smith 1776