PSIR205 Week 2

Society and Economy Under the Old Regime in the Eighteenth Century Pre-revolutionary Europe 1) aristocratic elites 2) established churches 3) urban labour force and guilds 4) a rural peasantry Major features of life in the old regime Maintenance of tradition: Nobles and peasants did not want change Nobles: ancient rights vis-à-vis monarchs Peasants: customary manorial rights to have access to particular lands, courts, or grievance procedures Hierarchy and privilege: Corporate nature of social relationships Communities: not existence of individual rights Community: village, the municipality, the nobility, the church, the guild, a university, etc.

The Aristocracy Varieties of Aristocratic Privilege British nobility: four hundred families eldest male members sat in the House of Lords Nobles invested in commerce, canals, urban real estate, mines French Nobility: 400000 nobles (of the sword and of the robe) Some nobles sat in Versailles (the famous royal court of the French monarchy) Nobles were exempted from some taxes: taille (land tax), vingtieme (twentieth of income), and corvee forced labour on public work Nobles could collect feudal dues and had hunting and fishing privileges East European Nobility: Poland: Szlachta totally exempt from taxes after 1741 Austria and Hungary: The nobility enjoyed judicial powers over the peasantry Prussia: the position of Junker nobles became stronger; they established the bureaucracy Russia: Peter the Great created a noble class Aristocratic resurgence 1) all nobilities intended to make it more difficult to become a noble 2) They strived to keep important positions in the state: officer corps in the army; the senior posts in the bureaucracies; and uppers ranks of the church 3) the nobles tried to use aristocratically controlled institutions against the power of the monarchies 4) the nobility attempted to improve its financial position by acquiring exemptions from taxation or by collecting higher rents from the peasantry

The land and its tillers Land was the economic basis and the foundation of the status and power of the nobility Peasants and serfs: Free peasants (English and French) and serf-like peasants (Germany, Austria, and Russia) Burden of taxation fell on the tillers Obligation of Peasants: France: Feudal dues: use-for-payment, corvee Austria, Prussia: robot (serfs to provide to the lords) Russia: serfs were economic commodities; six days a week of labour (barschina) Southeastern Europe: landlord was often an absentee; landlords protected peasant from bandits Peasant rebellions: Pugachev’s rebellion and others. Rebels were against property rather than persons: they sought reinstating traditional rights and practices; they were against unfair pricing; heavy feudal dues, brutal landlords and overseers, unjust officials Aristocratic domination of the countryside: The English Game Laws

Family structures and the family economy Households: Northwestern Europe: married couple, their children, and their servants; nuclear family-like. Children left home in their teen period to work as a servant in other families Eastern Europe: large families; in Russian families wives were older The family economy: the household was the basic unit of production and consumption; everyone in the household worked (no idleness) Women and the family economy: the function of her capacity to establish and maintain a household; marriage was economic necessity; housework for women already started by the age of seven; saving money fro dowry Children and the world of the family economy: contagious diseases and childbirth affected child mortality; wet nursing was common in urban areas; the idea of preserving the life of abandoned children developed during the late seventeenth century (Paris Foundling Hospital, London Foundling Hospital); interest in educating children emerged

The Revolution in Agriculture New Crops and New Methods: Dutch landlords and farmers devised better ways to build dikes and to drain land New crops: clover; turnip Using iron pillows to turn the earth Crop rotation More animals more food, as animals supplied fodder for the soil Enclosure replaces open-field method: fencing of common land, which nobles owned but rented to the farmers Enclosure created the entrepreneurial attitude Limited Improvements in Eastern Europe: Only method to increase production was to bring untilled land under pillow Expansion of the Population: Increased population required more food production.

Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century A revolution in consumption Industrial leadership of Great Britain New Methods of textile production The impact of the agricultural and industrial revolutions on working women

The growth of cities Patterns of preindustrial urbanization Urban classes The urban riot Jewish population and the age of the ghetto