1. Chapter 16: Society & Economy Under the Old Regime in the 18th Century
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Mr. McKee
The period known as the ancien regime, or the Old Regime, usually refers to the various political and social relationships and situation prior to the French Revolution of During this time both nobles and peasants called for the return of traditional rights, and society was fairly hierarchal.
The Aristocracy
This group represents a mere 5% of the population but controlled the majority of land, as well as social, economic, and political power. As monarchs’ powers expanded, European aristocrats used existing governmental institutions to limit the power of the monarchy.
In England, game laws gave aristocratic landowners the exclusive rights to hunt from The English aristocracy owned one-fourth of all arable land and consisted of about 400 families, many of whom controlled the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

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3. The Aristocracy continued…
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The Aristocracy continued…
- In France, the nobility consisted of military officers, bureaucrats, or other individuals who paid to become an aristocrat. French nobles fell into two groups: those who held court at Versailles, and those who did not.
- In eastern Europe, the nobility had more rights over peasants. Polish aristocrats exerted total control over serfs (peasants). In Austria and Hungary, nobles were exempt from taxation. In countries like Hungary and Poland, nobles were the only ones with political representation. In Prussia, nobles had authority over serfs. In Russia, nobles became determined to resist compulsory state service. In the 1785Charter of Nobility, Catherine the Great defined the legal rights of nobles and their families in exchange for the nobility’s voluntary service to the state.

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5. The Land and its tillers - (farmers – serfs – peasants)
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The Land and its tillers
- (farmers – serfs – peasants)
- Over three-quarters of all Europeans lived in the country; many of them were peasants who were very poor and lived by subsistence agriculture.
- In Great Britain, farmers had legal rights of British citizens, but the courts were run by the nobility. French peasants had to pay feudal dues and were responsible for a certain amount of forced labor, known as corvee.
- In Prussia and Austria landlords exercised almost complete control over serfs. The condition of the serfs was the worst in Russia, who were effectively slaves. Russia experienced numerous peasant revolts between 1762 and 1769, a period culminating in Pugachev’s Rebellion between 1773 and Southeastern European peasants were free, but only because of a scarcity of labor, ( due in part to the Black Death). Balkan peasants eventually became dependent on their Ottoman Empire landlords because they wanted protection from them from bandits and rebels.

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7. Family Structures and Family Economy
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Family Structures and Family Economy
- Households in northwestern Europe often consisted of a married couple, children through their teens, and servants (people who were hired under contract to work for the head of the household in exchange for room, board, and wages). Households were small, usually no more than five or six people, mortality was high, and no more than two generations lived together under one roof. Most children eventually married and formed their own household – a phenomenon known as neolocalism. The marriage age was in the mid-twenties for men and women.
- In Eastern Europe, the marriage age was much earlier, usually before 20. Wives were often older than their husbands. Russian households often consisted of as many as 3 or 4 generations living together in one house.
The Revolution In Agriculture
- The movement to improve agricultural production began in the Netherlands., where farmers built dikes, expanded land, and experimented with new crops.

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The Revolution In Agriculture
- In England, English landlords began to popularize the Dutch innovations. Jethro Tull financed the experiments of others and conducted his own, including permitting land to be cultivated for a longer period without having to be left fallow (unplanted). Robert Bakewell pioneered new methods of animal breeding. Charles “Turnip” Townsend learned how to use fertilizer and instituted a crop rotation system. By the second half of the 17th century, the enclosure movement replaced open-field methods of farming. These enclosures commercialized agriculture, maximizing profits for the landowners. Many peasants will be removed from the land.
The Industrial Revolution in the 18th century
(The proto-Industrialization)
- The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed the industrialization of the European economy, which made possible the production of more goods and services than ever before. New machinery was invented that enabled this industrialization, including the spinning jenny, the water frame, and the steam engine. Iron Production during this era was essential to the manufacture of machinery. The Industrial Revolution forced women into cottage industries and resulted in the workplaces of men and women becoming more separate.

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11. The Jewish Population: The Age of the Ghetto
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The Growth of cities
- Between 1659 and 1700, cities that grew most in population were capitals and ports; the urban Industrial Revolution, overseas trade, and governmental bureaucracy came to control European economies. New cities began to emerge in the middle of the 18th century; improved agricultural production enabled growth of nearby urban centers that gave farmers access to consumer goods. Social divisions were marked between the upper classes, middle class, artisans, and peasants.
The Jewish Population: The Age of the Ghetto
- The majority of Jews lived in eastern Europe, with the Netherlands being a notable exception. The Jewish population was concentrated in Lithuania, Poland, and the Ukraine. Catherine the Great was intolerant of the Jewish population in Russia and discouraged their settlement there. Jews were often victims of intolerance in the countries where they settled.
For Further Review: Consider how popular consumption was affected by the I.R. and the shift of population to urban centers.

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13. KEY POINTS AND VITAL CONCEPTS
1. Family Structure and Family Economy:
A section of this chapter focuses on family structure. Most Europeans worked within the context of the family economy. This is to say the household was the fundamental unit of production and consumption. Family members worked together to sustain their economic life because it was almost impossible to support oneself independently. Recent demographic investigation has revealed that the northwestern European household was not extended, but nuclear. Children lived with their parents only until their early teens when they often moved away and worked in other households as servants. The family economy also established many of the chief constraints on women in pre­-industrial society. A woman's life was devoted to the maintenance of her parent's household and then to assuring that she would have her own to live in as an adult. Bearing and rearing children were often subordinate to these goals. Children too became part of the family economy; there were many perils of early childhood, but with the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries came a new interest in preserving the lives of abandoned children with the establishment of foundling hospitals. The chapter presents a section on the impact of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions on working women.
2. The Agricultural Revolution:
The chapter emphasizes the importance of the agricultural innovations of this period. Jethro Tull, for example, introduced the iron plough and "Turnip" Townsend, the Four-field-system of crop rotation. Such innovations required large blocks of land and landlords enclosed common land throughout the countryside which brought about social turmoil, but did not depopulate the rural areas as is sometimes claimed.

14. KEY POINTS AND VITAL CONCEPTS 3. The Industrial Revolution:
As in agriculture, Britain took the lead in the industrial revolution, favored as it was by rich deposits of coal and iron ore, a stable political structure, consumer demand from the colonies, a law tax structure and relative social mobility. The chapter details such innovations as the flying shuttle, spinning jenny, and water frame in the textile industry and the development of the steam engine. Important as these changes were, their full economic and social ramifications were not really felt until the nineteenth century.
4. The Aristocracy:
Before 1789, the aristocracy was still the wealthiest and most influential sector of the population in all countries, although it differed from place to place. Britain's nobility was Europe's smallest, wealthiest and most socially responsible; while France's aristocracy was larger, more complex and benefited from more legal privileges, especially tax exemption. The chapter discusses in further detail the aristocracies in Poland, Prussia (Junkers) and Russia. Squeezed between absolutist monarchs and the growing commercial classes, Europe's nobles tried to reassert their power throughout the century, a movement termed the "aristocratic resurgence."

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16. Important Additional Information
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This chapter surveys the life and institutions of eighteenth-century Europe before They are known as the Old Regime (ancien regime), to separate them from the great innovations which followed the French Revolution. Politically, the term stood for absolute monarchies, large bureaucracies, and armies led by aristocrats. Economically, the Old Regime was marked by a scarcity of food, agrarian economy, slow transport, little iron production, unsophisticated finances, and sometimes commercial overseas empire.
The society of pre-revolutionary Europe was traditional and hierarchical. It ranged from a governing aristocratic elite through an urban middle class and labor force divided into guilds, to a rural peasantry living at the edge of poverty. Society was also corporate and privileged, for men were more conscious of their communal associations and group rights than of individual liberties.
The Old Regime was marked by great contrasts between different classes and regions, especially between western Europe and the countries east of the Elbe River. Finally, although the character of the old regime was very distinct, it was not static. Society itself fostered a number of developments which eventually led to change: revolutions in agriculture and industry, the creation of new products and wealth, population expansion and tension between monarchs, nobles and the middle class.

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18. Important Additional Information
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The economy of the eighteenth century depended on the land. In the west, most of those who lived in the countryside were free peasants, in the east, most were serfs. The landowners subjected both of these groups to feudal dues, services and strict control, which often resulted in peasant discontent and rebellion. The most dramatic revolt was Pugachev's rebellion of which involved all of southern Russia.
A basic cause of peasant discontent was the growing desire of landlords to change the traditional ways of production in order to maximize profits. A steady rise in the price of Europe's food staple, grain, because of population growth, encouraged a revolution in agriculture, leading to greater productivity. Improvements in grain production further spurred population growth: in 1700, the population of Europe had been million; by 1800, it was about 190 million. Improvements in hygiene and sanitation were also significant.

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20. Important Additional Information
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The population explosion placed new demands and pressures on eighteenth-century society as did the incipient industrial revolution in the second half of the century which limited production with sustained growth. European economic expansion has continued almost without interruption ever since. Europe's cities grew considerably during the century, although even in urbanized Britain and France, they seem to have contained less than twenty percent of the population.
The cities were not industrial centers, but either market towns, commerce and financial centers, or capital cities. A small group of nobles, rich merchants, bankers, financiers, clergy and officials ruled the towns. Below them was the prosperous middle class (bourgeoisie), a dynamic element increasingly resentful of aristocratic monopoly of power and prestige. The largest and poorest group in the city was made up of shopkeepers, artisans and wage earners who were generally organized into guilds. Even before the French Revolution, this lower class often expressed their political grievances by rioting.

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22. Important Additional Information
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The chapter ends with an evaluation of Jewish life in Europe during the eighteenth century. Jews dwelled in most nations without enjoying the rights and privileges of other subjects. They were regarded as a kind of resident alien whose status might be temporary or changed at the whim of local rulers or the monarchical government. Jews under the Old Regime lived apart from non-Jews in distinct urban districts called ghettos or in Jewish villages in the countryside.
Although "court Jews" helped finance the wars of major rulers and received privileges, the vast majority of the Jewish population of Europe lived in poverty. Under the Old Regime, discrimination was not based on race, but on religious separateness. Those Jews who remained loyal to their faith were subject to various religious, civil and social disabilities. The end of the Old Regime brought major changes in the life of these Jews and in their relationship to a larger culture. By the end of the eighteenth century, many of the facets of the old regime had been changed in fundamental ways. Europe stood on the brink of a new era.

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