Society and the Economy Under the Old Regime in the Eighteenth Century
Social Group
Aristocracy
British Nobility
French Nobility
East European
Nobility
Peasants/Serfs
General Situation
-Nobility constituted 1%-5% of the population of any country, but they were the single wealthiest part of the population of every country and had the most social,
political and economic power
-Nobles had their own houses in parliament, estates, or diet and in Hungary and Poland, only nobles had any kind of representation
-Land was their largest source of income and their influence was felt throughout social and economic life
-They fostered economic innovation and embraced the commercial spirit
-Aristocrats throughout had exclusive game laws
-They were the smallest, wealthiest, best defined, and most socially responsible class of nobility in Europe
-There were appx 400 families, and the eldest male member of each family sat at the House of Lords. Through corruption, they also held many seats in the House
of Lords
-They owned 25% of arable land and they invested in commerce, canals, urban real estate, mines, and industrial ventures
- Because of primogeniture, younger sons of moved into commerce, the army, the professions, or the church
-They levied taxes and paid them, unlike in France
-They had few significant legal privileges, but their control of local governments gave them immense political power and social influence
- Their country house were often centers of local societies
-400,000 nobles were divided between nobles of the sword, who gained their status though military service, and nobles of the robe, who gained their titles by
serving in bureaucracy or by purchasing them
-They often quarreled, but cooperating when they had to defend their privileges
-They were also divided between who had favor with the royal court at Versailles and who did not
- They court nobility gained immense wealth in high offices, and their hold on these offices intensified during the century
-Appointments to the church, army, bureaucracy, and other positions tended to go to nobles who already were established in court circles
-The Hobereaux were the provincial nobility, and were barely more well off than wealthy peasants
-No matter what kind of nobility they were, hereditary privileges set them apart from the rest of society
-They didn’t pay the taille, a land tax which was a basic tax of the Old Regime
-They were liable for the payment of the vingtieme, an income tax, but they rarely paid it in full
-They were not liable for royal corvees, forced labor on public works, which fell on peasants
-They could collect feudal dues and had exclusive hunting and fishing privileges
-In Poland, the szlachta were entirely exempt from taxes until 1741 and had the right of life or death over their serfs until 1768
-Most Polish nobles were relatively poor and the few rich nobles exercised political power in the Polish state
-In Austria and Hungary, the nobility had broad judicial power over the peasantry in the manorial courts and were generally exempt from taxes
-In Prussia, the position of the Junkers became stronger once Frederick the Great in 1740
-His wars required their support, and the nobles increasingly made up the bureaucracy
-In Russia, the Table of Ranks created among the nobles a “self-conscious class identity that had not previously existed”
-They were determined to resist compulsory state service, which Peter III exempted them from.
-In the Charter of Nobility, Catherine the Great defined the privileges of the nobles in exchange for the assurance that the nobility would serve the state voluntarily
-In GB, all farmers and smaller tenants had the same legal rights as British citizens. The justices, who presided over the local courts, were landowners.
-In East Europe, the landowners presided over the manorial courts and in continental Europe, the tax burden fell on the peasant class
-Moving from west to east, landowners had increasing power over the peasants/serfs
-In France, all peasants were subject to banalities, or feudal dues. They included use-for-payment of the lord’s mill
-Because landowning peasants didn’t have enough for their families, they had to rent more land form the lords and were subject to the feudal dues w/ that land
Society and the Economy Under the Old Regime in the Eighteenth Century
Families
Women
-In Prussia and Austria, monarchies tried to improve the lives of the serfs, but landlords had almost complete control over them
-In Habsburg dominions, serfs were required to provide service, or robot, to the lords
-The serfs were worst off in Russia, where nobles measured their wealth by the number of souls they owned
-They could demand 6-day work weeks and even could banish serfs to Siberia
-Serfdom in Russia was almost equivalent to slavery
-In the Ottoman Empire, peasants were free, even though landlords tried to exert their authority in every way
-Scarcity of labor rather than the recognition of legal rights supported the independence of peasants in southeastern Europe
-Landlords offered protection from bandits and rebels who might destroy their villages in the turmoil of the Ottoman Empire
-Despite their independence, they were still dependent on the landlords, but not to the extent of those in eastern Europe or Russia
-Between 1762 and 1769, there were over 50 peasant revolts in Russia, which all culminated in Pugachev’s rebellion b/w 1773 and 1775
-All of southern Russia was in turmoil until the govt. brutally suppressed the rebellion
-After it, any thought liberalizing or improving the condition of the serfs disappeared for over a generation
-Several peasant revolts took place elsewhere in Europe, but there were almost no revolts in Western Europe
-They rebelled because of unfair pricing, new or increased feudal dues, changes in methods of payment or land use, unjust officials, or brutal landlords
-In preindustrial Europe, household was center of production and consumption
-Most lived in rural areas and in small towns, where they were a mode of organization on farms, in artisan workshops, and in small merchant workshops
-This was known as the family economy, and it prevailed in Europe for centuries
-In Northwestern Europe, the household consisted of a married couple, their children through the early teenage years, and their servants.
- They usually had no more than five or six members, and more than two generations rarely lived under the same roof b/c there was high mortality rate and late
marriage
-Family in NW Europe was nuclear rather than extended
-Children practiced neolocalism, meaning they would marry and form independent households of their own
-Women were frequently pregnant at marriage, and men felt compelled to marry the girl due to societal pressure
-Servants were usually hired under a clear contract, to work for the family in exchange for room, board, and wages.
-In Eastern Europe, men and women usually married before 20, children were born to much younger parents, and wives were often older than husbands
-A household usually consisted of 9, maybe 20, people of 3 or 4 generations b/c marrying involved remaining in and expanding one already established
-Throughout Europe, it was virtually impossible to support oneself independently
-Within family economy, all goods and services when to the benefit of the household rather than an individual
-In Western Europe, one or more members often went to work elsewhere to support the family so death of the father was usually disastrous for the household
-Widows were often dependent on charity and relatives until they remarried
-In Eastern Europe, family functioned in context of serfdom and landlord dominations as they thought in terms of their families and expanding the land available for
cultivation
-Marriage was an economic necessity and institution that fulfilled sexual and psychological needs. Few women were successful independently and exceptions
-Women began work at home at a young age and would remain at her parents’ home as long as she made real contributions to the household
-An artisan’s daughter may not leave b/c she could keep learning useful skills, whereas other family members could take over a woman’s work on farms
-Having migrated, a woman had to then accumulate enough money for a dowry as her savings would make her eligible for marriage
-Because of this marriage was usually postponed until her late 20s
-Once married, child-bearing responsibilities were subordinate to economic pressures and couples often tried to limit the amount of children they had
-The raising of children was often the responsibility of a wet nurse or servant
-In peasant households, women usually just carried stuff for men, but if the man had to do a work besides farming, the woman would be in charge
Society and the Economy Under the Old Regime in the Eighteenth Century
Children
Urban Classes
Jewish People
-In artisan or merchant households, the woman would be in charge of finances, and management of trade or manufacturing
-They had less education and lower wages than men
-Assuming the child survived childbirth, it would usually be the responsibility of a wet nurse as women didn’t have time to child rear
-The number of illegitimate births and infanticide deaths increased in the 18th century
-Foundling hospitals were founded to help abandoned children and many were brought in from rural areas into urban foundling hospitals
-In the upper class, interest rose in the education of children and in most areas, they were educated by the church
-But still, most European were illiterate
-Poverty was prevalent, and sanitation was terrible as infrastructure was not developed
Upper Class:
-They consisted of bankers, financiers, clergy, and government officials and they controlled political and economic affairs
-They formed a self-electing and self-instituting oligarchy that ruled the city. The rights of this self-government were often granted by a govt. charter
Middle Class:
-They consisted of prosperous merchants, tradespeople, bankers, and professional people
-They were the most dynamic social class and were the bourgeoisie
-They were divided, themselves between those who had professional jobs and those who had commercial jobs
-Earning and saving allowed for much social mobility and they portrayed themselves as energetic while the nobility was idle
-They exemplified the culture of consumption. Members of the aristocracy embraced their commercial spirit, while wealthier middle class members sought to
become aristocrats and wanted more political power
Artisans:
-They were the largest single social group in any city, consisting of shopkeepers, artisans, and wage earners
-Like peasants, they were conservative and held their economic position very vulnerable
-Guilds had lost much of their influence, and many sought to mimic the middle class’s culture of consumption as the middle class sought to mimic the aristrocracy
- The guilds tried to preserve jobs and skills and were still able to determine who could pursue a particular craft
-They also provided a framework for social and economic advancement and were particularly strong in central Europe
-Artisans often rioted in cities of high food prices, and it was a way that people not involved in political process would have a say
-In these riots, violence was usually directly against property rather than at people
-Towards the end of the century, riots became more political than economical
-While some Jews in Western Europe became famous for intellect and finance, the majority of Jews lived in Eastern Europe
-Catherine the Great didn’t welcome Jews to migrate to Russia, but the Jewish population in Russia increased significantly as it ceded land such as Poland
-They often didn’t have the same rights as other citizens, and the vast majority lived in poverty
-Jews often lived in separate communities altogether, known as ghettos
-Their economic, legal, political, and social rights and privileges were significantly lessened due to much discrimination
Society and the Economy Under the Old Regime in the Eighteenth Century
Occurence
Agricultural Revolution
Industrial Revolution
Urbanization
Description
- The main goal of the peasant society was to ensure the local food supply
-Poor harvests would reap havoc on food prices
-There were several new crops and crops to improve agriculture production
-The Dutch experimented with new crops, and Cornelius Vermuyden, found a way to drain thousands of acres of land
-Jethro Tull experimented himself and innovated new methods even though some of them were wrong
-Charles Townsend encouraged important innovations, learned how to cultivate sandy soil with fertilizers, and instituted crop rotation
-Robert Bakewell pioneered new methods of animal breeding
-Arthur Young wrote Annals of Agriculture, which spurred on much discussion about innovations
-The enclosure method also replaced the open-field method with the intention of consolidating land to increase production to increase profits
-Several farmers were displaced, and there was much social and economic turmoil in the countryside
-Because of this, several displaced farmers moved to urban areas to work in factories
-In Eastern Europe, improvement was limited and the major was to increase production was to simply plow untilled land
-Because of the increased food supply, the population exploded across England and the Continent
-Hygiene and sanitation also improved substantially
-The population explosion created new demands for food, goods, jobs, and services
-It provided more labor, and increased migration. There were also more people who would become discontented
-Industrialization in Europe eventually overcame the economy of scarcity.
-The new production demanded new skills, new discipline, and a large labor force
-The industrial revolution created a revolution in consumption, as the increased the supply of consumer goods and increased widespread demand for
them
-People had more disposable incomes and this income allowed people to buy consumer goods
-Josiah Wedgewood attempted to find customers by mass advertising and used catalogues
-Style also changed immensely
-GB led the way in the Industrial Revolution, with the textile industry. This was because Britain was the single largest free-trade area, had an abundance
of natural resources, had a stable political structure, and a socially mobile society
-James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, Richard Arkwright invented the water frame, and James Watt perfected the steam engine
- All of these innovations revolutionized the textile industry, and the steam engine, invented by Newcomen, allowed factories to be located almost
anywhere
-Iron production also increased significantly, as Henry Cort introduced a new puddling process
-Women’s lives were affected significantly by the industrial revolution
-Machinery operated by men displaced women on farms, and a similar process took place in the textile industry, as men took over jobs with machines
-Working women turned to cottage industries or became domestic servants
-This shift of employment made women more associated with the home rather than with places where men worked
-As a result of industrialization, urbanization occurred as well.
-Preindustrialization, there was a considerable growth of towns, but the town of 10,000 was still more common than an urban center
-Until 1750, ports and capitals were the main cities to experience significant growth
-Afterwards, new cities began emerging, and small cities began to grow
-These cities grew as a result of the new prosperity of European agriculture as improved agricultural production promoted the growth of nearby market
towns and urban centers
Society and the Economy Under the Old Regime in the Eighteenth Century