Chapter 18

The period in Europe from the mid-seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries during which great agricultural progress was made and the fallow, or idling of a field to replenish nutrients, was gradually eliminated.

Agricultural Revolution

In Africa, the slave trade primarily resulted in

More consumer goods and greater prosperity.

How was the condition of the peasant in Western Europe in the eighteenth century?

Peasants were generally free from serfdom and owned land that they could pass on to their children.

The transformation of large numbers of small peasant farmers into landless rural wage earners.

Proletarianization

What correctly characterizes eighteenth-century colonial trade in Europe?

Spanish landowners in the colonies instituted slavery among all the Indian populations in order to force them to work on the haciendas.

Why did the Dutch fail to maintain their dominance in Asia?

The Dutch East India Company failed to diversify its trade to meet changing consumption patterns in Europe.

How did the problem of food shortages change in the eighteenth century?

The advances in agricultural methods produced abundant food that overcame the possibility of famine.

The War of the Austrian Succession could best be described as

An inconclusive standoff that set the stage for further warfare.

A form of serfdom that allowed a planter or rancher to keep his workers or slaves in perpetual debt bondage by periodically advancing food, shelter, and a little money.

Debt Peonage

A series of English laws that controlled the import of goods to Britain and British colonies.

Navigation Acts

The leadership of the Dutch people in farming methodology can be attributed primarily to what?

The necessity to provide for a densely populated country.

A stage of industrial development in which rural workers used hand tools in their homes to manufacture goods on a large scale for sale in a market.

Cottage Industry

What was the operation of the loom considered within the family?

A man's job, reserved for the male head of household.

Where did population growth in Europe in the eighteenth century occur?

In all regions.

Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, armies affected population growth in all of the following ways except

Soldiers and camp followers passed contagious diseases throughout the countryside.

How was the open-field system of the Middle Ages?

The land was divided into long, narrow strips that were not enclosed by fences or hedges.

From 1701 to 1763, what was at stake in the warfare between Great Britain and France?

The position as Europe's leading maritime power with the ability to claim profits from Europe's overseas expansion

The forced migration of Africans across the Atlantic for slave labor on plantations and in other industries; the trade reached its peak in the eighteenth century and ultimately involved almost twelve million Africans.

Atlantic Slave Trade

Who provided the labor force for Britain's initial colonization of Australia?

Convicted prisoners.

The Englishman Jethro Tull sought to do what?

Critically analyze farming methods and develop better methods about farming through empirical research.

The movement to fence in fields in order to farm more effectively, at the expense of poor peasants who relied on common fields for farming and pasture.

Enclosure

The English Navigation Acts mandated that all English imports and exports be transported on English ships, and also did what?

Gave British merchants a virtual monopoly on trade with British colonies.

The organization of artisanal production into trade-based associations, or guilds, each of which received a monopoly over its trade and the right to train apprentices and hire workers.

Guild System

The shift that occurred as families in northwestern Europe focused on earning wages instead of producing goods for household consumption; this reduced their economic self-sufficiency but increased their ability to purchase consumer goods.

Industrious Revolution

What characterizes the transformation of the English and Scottish countryside in the enclosure era?

Land was owned largely by middle-sized farmers who hired the poor as occasional farmers.

The idea of the industrious revolution is best understood as a result of what?

Poor families choosing to reduce leisure time and the production of goods for household consumption in order to earn wages to be used to buy consumer goods.

The eighteenth-century system of rural industry in which a merchant loaned raw materials to cottage workers, who processed them and returned the finished products to the merchant.

Putting-Out System

In the eighteenth century what did the advocates for agricultural innovation argue?

That landholdings and common lands needed to be consolidated and enclosed in order to farm more efficiently.

Between 1650 and 1790, a crucial component of the global economy was established when European nations developed what?

The Atlantic economy.

In the eighteenth century, the biggest increase in British foreign trade was with who?

The British colonial empire.

At the center of Adam Smith's arguments in The Wealth of Nations was the belief that

The pursuit of self-interest in competitive markets would improve the living conditions of the citizens.

The rural putting-out system many competitive advantages EXCEPT what?

The workers had to purchase the raw material themselves, saving the merchant capital expenses.

The British won the American component of the Seven Years' War because

They diverted men and money from Europe to the American theater.

Describe guild masters among the laboring classes.

They were a small minority of the population who jealously guarded their membership.

The treaty that ended the Seven Years' War in Europe and the colonies in 1763 and ratified British victory on all colonial fronts.

Treaty of Paris

What did the spinning of thread for the loom require?

The work of several spinners for each loom, which led merchants to employ the wives and daughters of agricultural workers at terribly low wages.

A belief in free trade and competition based on Adam Smith's argument that the invisible hand of free competition would benefit all individuals, rich and poor.

Economic Liberalism