Chapter 17 - The Expansion of Europe 1650-1800

Obstacles to Population Growth

Irregular cyclical population pattern, food prices rose more rapidly than wages, fertility and mortality rates in balance, famine, disease and war led to population decline, years of modest growth followed this

Advancements in Agriculture

New ways of rotating crops, more fodder, hay, and vegetables for animals, new crops like potatoes and types of beans, enclosure movement

The Industrious Revolution

One scholar has used the term industrious revolution to summarize the social and economic changes taking place in northwestern Europe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries

Why did Smith criticize guilds?

Smith criticized guilds for their stifling restrictions, a critique he extended to all state monopolies and privileged companies.

Famine, Disease, and War led to Population Loss

The grim reapers of demographic crisis were famine, epidemic disease, and war. Episodes of famine were inevitable in all eras of premodern Europe, given low crop yields and unpredictable climatic conditions. In the seventeenth century much of Europe experienced unusually cold and wet weather, which produced even more severe harvest failures and food shortages than usual. Contagious diseases, like typhus, smallpox, syphilis, and the ever-recurring bubonic plague, also continued to ravage Europe's population on a periodic basis. War was another scourge, and its indirect effects were even more harmful than the purposeful killing during military campaigns. Soldiers and camp followers passed all manner of contagious diseases throughout the countryside. Armies requisitioned scarce food supplies and disrupted the agricultural cycle while battles destroyed precious crops, livestock, and farmlands.

Market-Produced versus Homemade Goods

They created households in which all members worked for wages rather than in a family business and in which consumption relied on market-produced rather than homemade goods.

guilds restricted their membership

To ensure there was enough work to go around, To ensure there was enough work to go around, guilds restricted their membership to men who were Christians, had several years of work experience, paid membership fees, and successfully completed a masterpiece.

Communal Patterns of Farming

Traditional village rights reinforced communal patterns of farming. Rotating field crops in a uniform way, maintained open meadows for hay and natural pasture, pastured their animals on the wheat or rye stubble, poor women would go through the fields picking up the few single grains that had fallen to the ground in the course of the harvest.

Irregular Cyclical Population Pattern

Until 1700 the total population of Europe grew slowly much of the time, and it followed an irregular cyclical pattern (Figure 17.1). This cyclical pattern had a great influence on many aspects of social and economic life. The terrible ravages of the Black Death of 1348-1350 caused a sharp drop in population and food prices after 1350 and also created a labor shortage throughout Europe.

Were women accepted into guilds?

While most were hostile to women, a small number of guilds did accept women. Most involved needlework and textile production, occupations that were considered appropriate for women.

Effects of More Fodder, Hay and Vegetables

With more fodder, hay, and root vegetables for the winter months, peasants and larger farmers could build up their herds of cattle and sheep. More animals meant more manure to fertilize and restore the soil. More animals also meant more meat and dairy products as well as more power to pull plows in the fields and bring carts to market.

Intercolonial Trade

a brisk intercolonial trade also existed, with the Caribbean slave colonies importing food in the form of fish, flour, and livestock from the northern colonies and rice from the south, in exchange for sugar and slaves

Open-field System

-Middle Ages up to the seventeenth centurymuch of -Europe was farmed through the open-field system -The land to be cultivated was divided into several large fields, which were in turn cut up into long, narrow strips. -The fields were open, and the strips were not enclosed into small plots by fences or hedges.

Enclosure Movement

Advocates of improvement argued that innovating agriculturalists needed to enclose and consolidate their scattered holdings into compact, fenced-in fields in order to farm more effectively. In doing so, the innovators also needed to enclose the village's natural pastureland, or common, into individual shares. According to proponents of this movement, known as enclosure, the upheaval of village life was the necessary price of technical progress.

What Were the Jews Status During this Time?

As in the Old World, Jews in European colonies faced discrimination; for example, restrictions existed on the number of slaves they could own in Barbados in the early eighteenth century.18 Jews were considered to be white Europeans and thus ineligible to be slaves, but they did not enjoy equal status with Christians. The status of Jews adds one more element to the complexity of Atlantic identities.

Industries Grew in Scale and Complexity

As industries grew in scale and complexity, production was often broken into many stages. For example, a merchant would provide raw wool to one group of workers for spinning into thread. He would then pass the thread to another group of workers to be bleached, to another for dyeing, and to another for weaving into cloth. The merchant paid outworkers by the piece and proceeded to sell the finished product to regional, national, or international markets.

Growth of The Atlantic Slave Trade

At the core of the Atlantic world were the misery and profit of the Atlantic slave trade. The forced migration of millions of Africans — cruel, unjust, and tragic — was a key element in the Atlantic system and western European economic expansion throughout the eighteenth century. The brutal practice intensified dramatically after 1700 and especially after 1750 with the growth of trade and demand for slave-produced goods like sugar and cotton.

What Were the Effects of Benjamin Franklins Writings?

Benjamin Franklin's writings and political career provide an outstanding example of the combination of the pragmatism and economic interests of the Scottish Enlightenment with the constitutional theories of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the baron de Montesquieu. Franklin was privately a lifelong deist, meaning that he believed in God but not in organized religion. Nonetheless, he continued to attend church and respect religious proprieties, a cautious pattern followed by fellow deist Thomas Jefferson and other leading thinkers of the American Enlightenment.

Slave Trade Abolished in Britain

But as details of the plight of enslaved people became known, a campaign to abolish slavery developed in Britain. In the late 1780s the abolition campaign grew into a mass movement of public opinion, the first in British history. British women were prominent in this movement, denouncing the immorality of human bondage and stressing the cruel and sadistic treatment of enslaved women and families. These attacks put the defenders of slavery on the defensive. In 1807 Parliament abolished the British slave trade, although slavery continued in British colonies and the Americas for decades.

Decline in Mortality

But the basic cause of European population increase as a whole was a decline in mortality — fewer deaths.

Treaty of Paris

By 1763 Prussia had held off the Austrians, and British victory on all colonial fronts was ratified in the Treaty of Paris.

Slaves in Saint Domingue

By 1789 the population of Saint-Domingue included five hundred thousand slaves whose labor had allowed the colony to become the world's leading producer of coffee and sugar and the most profitable plantation colony in the New World.

Market Oriented Estate Agriculture and Proletarianization

By eliminating common rights and greatly reducing the access of poor men and women to the land, the eighteenth-century enclosure movement marked the completion of two major historical developments in England — the rise of capitalist market-oriented estate agriculture and the emergence of a landless rural proletariat.

Rural and Urban Wage Workers

By working harder and increasing the number of wageworkers, rural and urban households could purchase more goods, even in a time of stagnant or falling wages.

New Crops like Potatoes & Beans

Clover was one of the most important crops, because it restores nitrogen directly to the soil through its roots. Other crops produced additional benefits. Potatoes and many types of beans came to Europe as part of the sixteenth-century Columbian exchange between the New and the Old Worlds.

triangle trade

Commercial exchange in the Atlantic has often been referred to as the "triangle trade," designating a three-way transport of goods: European commodities, like guns and textiles, to Africa; enslaved Africans to the colonies; and colonial goods, such as cotton, tobacco, and sugar, back to Europe

Ambition to Convert Native People to Christianity

Converting indigenous people to Christianity was a key ambition for all European powers in the New World. Galvanized by the Protestant Reformation and the perceived need to protect and spread Catholicism, Catholic powers actively sponsored missionary efforts. Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans, and other religious orders established missions throughout Spanish, Portuguese, and French colonies

Cottage Industry, the Putting Out System

Cottage industry, which consisted of manufacturing with hand tools in peasant cottages and work sheds, grew markedly in the eighteenth century and became a crucial feature of the European economy. Cottage industry was often organized through the putting-out system. The two main participants in the putting-out system were the merchant capitalist and the rural worker. In this system, the merchant loaned, or "put out," raw materials to cottage workers, who processed the raw materials in their own homes and returned the finished products to the merchant. There were endless variations on this basic relationship. Sometimes rural workers bought their own raw materials and produced goods that they sold to the merchant. Sometimes whole families were involved in domestic industry; at other times the tasks were closely associated with one gender or age group. Sometimes several workers toiled together to perform a complicated process in a workshop outside the home.

Causes of Population Increase

Decline in Mortality, Disappearance of the bubonic plague, Inoculation against Smallpox, Improvements in Water Supply and Sewage, drainage of swamps, reduced insect population, better safeguards for food supply, wars less destructive, food supply increased

Fertility & Mortality Rates in Balance

During the seventeenth century births and deaths, fertility and mortality, returned to a crude but effective balance. The population grew modestly in normal years at a rate of perhaps 0.5 to 1 percent, or enough to double the population in 70 to 140 years.

Dramatic Increases in Population after 1750

Europeans grew in numbers steadily from 1720 to 1789, with especially dramatic increases after about 1750. Between 1700 and 1835 the population of Europe doubled in size.

system of economic regulations

Eventually eliciting criticism from Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith and other proponents of free trade in the late eighteenth century, European mercantilism was a system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the power of the state.

why did Smith advocate for free competition and division of labor?

Far preferable, in his view, was free competition, which would protect consumers from price gouging and give all citizens an equal right to do what they did best. Smith advocated a more highly developed "division of labor," which entailed separating craft production into individual tasks to increase workers' speed and efficiency

Dutch controlled East Indian States

Formed in 1602, the Dutch East India Company had taken control of the Portuguese spice trade in the Indian Ocean, with the port of Batavia (Jakarta) in Java as its center of operations. Within a few decades they had expelled the Portuguese from Ceylon and other East Indian islands.

Serfs in Hereditary Service

Generally speaking, the peasants of eastern Europe were worst off. As we saw in Chapter 15, they were serfs bound to their lords in hereditary service. In much of eastern Europe, working several days per week on the lord's land was not uncommon. Well into the nineteenth century, individual Russian serfs and serf families were regularly bought and sold.

Guilds served social and religious functions

Guilds also served social and religious functions, providing a locus of sociability and group identity to the middling classes of European cities.

Smiths ideas on pursuit of self interest in a competitive market

He believed that the pursuit of self-interest in a competitive market would be sufficient to improve the living conditions of citizens, a view that quickly emerged as the classic argument for economic liberalism.

Better Safeguards for Food Supply

Human beings also became more successful in their efforts to safeguard the supply of food.

Improvements in Water Supply and Sewage, drainage of swamps, reduced insect population

Improvements in the water supply and sewage, which were frequently promoted by strong absolutist monarchies, did contribute to somewhat better public health and helped reduce such diseases as typhoid and typhus in urban areas of western Europe. Improvements in water supply and the drainage of swamps also reduced Europe's large insect population. Flies and mosquitoes played a major role in spreading diseases, especially those striking children and young adults. Thus early public health measures contributed to the decline in mortality

First of the Navigation Acts

In England, the desire to increase both military power and private wealth resulted in the mercantile system of the Navigation Acts. Oliver Cromwell established the first of these laws in 1651, and the restored monarchy of Charles II extended them in 1660 and 1663. The acts required that most goods imported from Europe into England and Scotland (Great Britain after 1707) be carried on British-owned ships with British crews or on ships of the country producing the articles. Moreover, these laws gave British merchants and shipowners a virtual monopoly on trade with British colonies. The Navigation Acts were a form of economic warfare. Their initial target was the Dutch, who were far ahead of the English in shipping and foreign trade in the mid-seventeenth century

Years of Modest Growth followed Decline

In certain abnormal years and tragic periods — the Black Death was only the most extreme example — many more people died than were born, and total population fell sharply, even catastrophically. A number of years of modest growth would then be necessary to make up for those who had died in an abnormal year. Such savage increases in deaths occurred periodically in the seventeenth century on a local and regional scale, and these demographic crises combined to check the growth of population until after 1700.

Dutch Republic Drained Marshes for Farmland

In order to feed themselves and provide employment, the Dutch were forced at an early date to seek maximum yields from their land and to increase the cultivated area through the steady draining of marshes and swamps.

Fate of Mixed Race Children

In the Spanish and French Caribbean, as in Brazil, many masters acknowledged and freed their mixed-race children, leading to sizable populations of free people of color. Advantaged by their fathers, some became wealthy land and slave owners in their own right. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the prosperity of some free people of color brought a backlash from the white population of Saint-Domingue in the form of new race laws prohibiting nonwhites from marrying whites and forcing them to adopt distinctive attire. The status of mixed-race people, known as mestizos in Spanish America and métis in New France, was ambiguous.

Jethro Tull

Jethro Tull (1674-1741), part crank and part genius, was an important English innovator. A true son of the early Enlightenment, Tull adopted a critical attitude toward accepted ideas about farming and tried to develop better methods through empirical research. He was especially enthusiastic about using horses, rather than slower-moving oxen, for plowing. He also advocated sowing seed with drilling equipment rather than scattering it by hand

Critics Emphasized the Resulting Social Upheaval

Many critics of Arthur Young's day emphasized the social upheaval caused by enclosure.

New Ways of Rotating Crops

Many elements combined in this production growth, but the key was new ways of rotating crops that allowed farmers to forgo the unproductive fallow period altogether and maintain their land in continuous cultivation. The secret to eliminating the fallow lay in deliberately alternating grain with crops that restored nutrients to the soil, such as peas and beans, root crops like turnips and potatoes, and clover and other grasses.

New Police Powers over Workers

Merchants also lobbied for, and obtained, new police powers over workers.

Low wages to force the "idle" poor to be productive

Merchants insisted on maintaining the lowest possible wages to force the "idle" poor into productive labor.

Continental Countries Developed Rural Industry more Slowly

Most continental countries, with the exception of Flanders and the Dutch Republic, developed rural industry more slowly. The latter part of the eighteenth century witnessed a remarkable expansion of rural industry in certain densely populated regions of continental Europe

Who worked in non guild trades?

Most urban men and women worked in non-guild trades as domestic servants, manual laborers, and vendors of food, used clothing, and other goods.

Widespread Unemployment in the Countryside

Not only was the small landholder deprived of his land, but improvements in technology meant that fewer laborers were needed to work the large farms, and unemployment spread throughout the countryside.

Who was Adam Smith?

One of the best-known critics of government regulation of trade and industry was Adam Smith (1723-1790), a leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment

Large Scale Enclosure

One of the most important — and bitterly contested — aspects of English agricultural development was the enclosure of open fields and commons. More than half the farmland in England was enclosed through private initiatives prior to 1700; Parliament completed this work in the eighteenth century. From the 1760s to 1815 a series of acts of Parliament enclosed most of the remaining common land. Arthur Young, another agricultural experimentalist, celebrated large-scale enclosure as a necessary means to achieve progress.

Disappearance of the bubonic plague

One of the primary reasons behind this decline was the still-unexplained disappearance of the bubonic plague. Following the Black Death in the fourteenth century, plague had remained part of the European experience, striking again and again with savage force, particularly in towns.

Colonial Trade

Over the course of the eighteenth century, the economies of European nations bordering the Atlantic Ocean, especially England, relied more and more on colonial exports. Colonial monopolies allowed the English to obtain a steady supply of such goods at beneficial prices and to re-export them to other nations at high profits. Although they lost many possessions to the English in the Seven Years' War, the French still profited enormously from colonial trade.

Rotation of Crops

Peasants staggered the rotation of crops, so some wheat, legumes, and pastureland were always available. The three-year system was an important achievement because cash crops could be grown two years out of three, rather than only one year in two.

Rural Manufacturing most Successful in England

Rural manufacturing did not spread across Europe at an even rate. It developed most successfully in England, particularly for the spinning and weaving of woolen cloth. By 1500 half of England's textiles were being produced in the countryside. By 1700 English industry was generally more rural than urban and heavily reliant on the putting-out system.

Debt Peonage

Silver mining also stimulated food production for the mining camps, and wealthy Spanish landowners developed a system of debt peonage to keep indigenous workers on their estates. Under this system, which was similar to serfdom, a planter or rancher would keep workers in perpetual debt bondage by advancing them food, shelter, and a little money.

Unions of European Men & Indigenous or African Women

Since European migrants were disproportionately male, much of the population of the Atlantic world descended from unions — forced or through choice — of European men and indigenous or African women

What three duties did Smith argue government should limit itself to?

Smith argued that government should limit itself to "only three duties": provide a defense against foreign invasion, maintain civil order with courts and police protection, and sponsor public works and institutions.

What Was Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations?

Smith developed the general idea of freedom of enterprise and established the basis for modern economics in his groundbreaking work Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).

Better Social Conditions in Western Europe

Social conditions were better in western Europe, where peasants were generally free from serfdom. In France, western Germany, England, and the Low Countries (modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands), peasants could own land and could pass it on to their children. In years with normal harvests, most people had enough food to fill their bellies.

War of the Austrian Succession

The War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), which started when Frederick the Great of Prussia seized Silesia from Austria's Maria Theresa (see Chapter 16), gradually became a world war that included Anglo-French conflicts in India and North America.

Seven Years' War

The War of the Austrian Succession ended with no change in the territorial situation in North America. This inconclusive standoff helped set the stage for the Seven Years' War.

What Movement Influenced the Colonies of British North America?

The colonies of British North America were deeply influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, with its emphasis on pragmatic approaches to the problems of life. Following the Scottish model, leaders in the colonies adopted a moderate, "commonsense" version of the Enlightenment that emphasized self-improvement and ethical conduct. In most cases, this version of the Enlightenment was perfectly compatible with religion and was chiefly spread through the growing colleges and universities of the colonies, which remained church-based institutions.

Inoculation against Smallpox

The most important advance in preventive medicine in this period was inoculation against smallpox, a disease that killed approximately four hundred thousand people each year in Europe. Widely practiced in the Ottoman Empire, inoculation was popularized in England in the 1720s by the wife of the former English ambassador, but did not spread to the rest of the continent for decades.

How did Slavery Limit Efforts to Spread Christianity?

The practice of slavery reveals important limitations on efforts to spread Christianity. Slave owners often refused to baptize their slaves, fearing that enslaved people would use their Christian status to claim additional rights. In some areas, particularly among the mostly African-born slaves of the Caribbean, elements of African religious belief and practice endured, often incorporated with Christian traditions.

Underemployed labor was Abundant

The putting-out system grew because it had competitive advantages. Underemployed labor was abundant, and poor peasants and landless laborers would work for low wages. Since production in the countryside was unregulated, workers and merchants could change procedures and experiment as they saw fit. Because workers did not need to meet rigid guild standards, cottage industry became capable of producing many kinds of goods.

Causes of Slave Trade Expansion

The rise of plantation agriculture was responsible for the tremendous growth of the slave trade. Some African merchants and rulers who controlled exports profited from the greater demand for slaves. With their newfound wealth, some Africans gained access to European and colonial goods, including firearms. Wars among African states to obtain salable captives increased, and leaders used slave profits to purchase more arms than textiles and consumer goods.

Trade in Atlantic inseparable from Asian commerce

The rising economic and political power of Europeans in this period drew on the connections they established between the Asian and Atlantic trade worlds. An outstanding example is the trade in cowrie shells. These seashells, originating in the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean, were used as a form of currency in West Africa. European traders obtained them in Asia, packing them alongside porcelains, spices, and silks for the journey home. The cowries were then brought from European ports to the West African coast to be traded for slaves. Indian textiles were also prized in Africa and played a similar role in exchange. Thus the trade of the Atlantic was inseparable from Asian commerce, and Europeans were increasingly found dominating commerce in both worlds.

Women worked Menial, Tedious Jobs for Low Wages, but had a Greater Role in the Household

The role of women and girls in this new economy is particularly controversial. When women entered the labor market, they almost always worked at menial, tedious jobs for very low wages. Yet when women earned their own wages, they also seem to have exercised more independence in marriage choices and household decision making

Heavy Taxes & High Rents

The state and landlords continued to levy heavy taxes and high rents, thereby stripping peasants of much of their meager earnings. The level of exploitation varied.

Creoles

The term Creole referred to people of Spanish ancestry born in the Americas. Wealthy Creoles and their counterparts throughout the Atlantic colonies prided themselves on following European ways of life. In addition to their lavish plantation estates, they maintained townhouses in colonial cities built on the European model, with theaters, central squares, churches, and coffeehouses. They purchased luxury goods made in Europe, and their children were often sent to be educated in the home country.

Merchants hired Wives and Daughters to Spin

The work of four or five spinners was needed to keep one weaver steadily employed. Since the weaver's family usually could not produce enough thread, merchants hired the wives and daughters of agricultural workers, who took on spinning work in their spare time.

Food Prices Rose more Rapidly than Wages

There was less food, housing, fuel, and other resources per person, and prices rose more rapidly than wages, a development intensified by the inflow of precious metals from the Americas

Selective Breeding Methods

There were also improvements in livestock, inspired in part by the earlier successes of English country gentlemen in breeding ever-faster horses for the races and fox hunts that were their passions. Selective breeding of ordinary livestock was a marked improvement over the haphazard breeding of the past.

Mutual Suspicion between Workers and Employers

There were constant disputes over the weights of materials and the quality of finished work. Merchants accused workers of stealing raw materials, and weavers complained that merchants delivered underweight bales. Suspicion abounded.

Households Stepped up the Pace of Work

This occurred as households reduced leisure time, stepped up the pace of work, and, most important, redirected the labor of women and children away from the production of goods for household consumption and toward wage work.

Textile Industry Employed the most People in Europe

Until the nineteenth century the industry that employed the most people in Europe was textiles. The making of linen, woolen, and eventually cotton cloth was the typical activity of cottage workers engaged in the putting-out system.

Wars less Destructive, Food Supply Increased

Wars became less destructive than in the seventeenth century and spread fewer epidemics. None of the population growth would have been possible if not for the advances in agricultural production in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which increased the food supply and contributed nutritious new foods, particularly the potato from South America.

Large Scale Conversion in Central & South America

n Central and South America, large-scale conversion forged enduring Catholic cultures in Portuguese and Spanish colonies. Conversion efforts in North America were less effective because indigenous settlements were more scattered and native people were less integrated into colonial communities.

What did the Enlightenment Encourage Creoles to Criticize?

one effect of Enlightenment thought was to encourage Creoles to criticize the policies of the mother country and aspire toward greater autonomy.

Why did the Dutch lose their hold on Asia?

the Dutch hold in Asia faltered in the eighteenth century due to the company's failure to diversify to meet changing consumption patterns

War of the Spanish Succession

the War of the Spanish Succession (see Chapter 15), which started in 1701 when Louis XIV accepted the Spanish crown willed to his grandson. Besides upsetting the continental balance of power, a union of France and Spain threatened to encircle and destroy the British colonies in North America (see Map 17.2). Defeated by a great coalition of states after twelve years of fighting, Louis XIV was forced in the Peace of Utrecht (YOO-trehkt) in 1713 to cede his North American holdings in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hudson Bay territory to Britain. Spain was compelled to give Britain control of its West African slave trade — the so-called asiento (ah-SYEHN-toh) — and to let Britain send one ship of merchandise into the Spanish colonies annually.

Mixed Race Laws & Norms in Britain

British colonies followed a distinctive pattern. There, whole families, rather than individual men, migrated, resulting in a rapid increase in the white population. This development was favored by British colonial law, which forbade marriage between English men and women and Africans or Native Americans. In the British colonies of the Caribbean and the southern mainland, masters tended to leave their mixed-race progeny in slavery rather than freeing them, maintaining a stark discrepancy between free whites and enslaved people of color.

Lower Wages for Female Workers

Conditions were particularly hard for female workers. While men could earn decent wages through long hours of arduous labor, women's wages were usually much lower because they were not considered the family's primary wage earner.

Why were guilds criticized?

Eighteenth-century critics derided guilds as outmoded and exclusionary institutions that obstructed technical innovation and progress.

Handloom Weaving

Handloom weaving was a family enterprise. All members of the family helped in the work, so that "every person from seven to eighty (who retained their sight and who could move their hands) could earn their bread," as one eighteenth-century English observer put it.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert revived urban guilds

In Louis XIV's France, for example, finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert revived the urban guilds and used them to encourage high-quality production and to collect taxes