The Expansion of Europe 1650 1800 AP Euro

The Expansion of Europe (1650 -1800) AP Euro CBHS Unit 3

By the middle of the 18 th C. , higher agricultural productivity and improved transportation increased the food supply, allowing populations to grow and reducing the number of demographic crises (a process known as the AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION).

WORKING THE LAND Thematic Question: What important developments led to increased agricultural production, and how did these changes affect peasants?

Working the Land ü Excluding the Dutch Republic and England, at least 80% of Western Europeans drew their livelihoods from agriculture at the end of the 17 th C. ü Eastern Europeans percentage was even higher where men and women were tied to the land. ü Agricultural output was low; climatic conditions regularly resulted in poor or disastrous harvests, and the number of deaths soared in famine years. ü New developments in agricultural technology and methods gradually brought an end to the ravages of hunger in western Europe.

The Open-Field System • Developed in Middle Ages, land was divided into several large open fields. • Each field was cut into long, narrow strips unenclosed by fences and farmed by traditional methods. • Soil exhaustion was biggest problem leading to 3 year crop rotation, followed by year of fallow. • The state and landlords levy heavy taxes and high rents, resulting in meager earnings. • Eastern Europe serfs were bound to their lords in hereditary service, working several days a week. • Social conditions in W. Europe were better, where peasants were free from serfdom and some owned land they could pass on to children.

New Methods of Agriculture • By 1700, less than ½ the population of Britain and the Dutch Republic worked in agriculture, producing enough food to feed rest of pop. • New ways of rotating crops led to gains in agricultural productivity. • Clover and other crops restored nutrients to the soil, yielding more hay, and vegetables. • This led to build up of more herds of cattle and sheep, which meant more meat and dairy products and manure for fertilizer, as well as power to pull ploughs and carts.

Enclosure • Planting of new crops such as potatoes and many types of beans supplanted peasants’ meager diet. • Farmers developed better patterns of crop rotation to suit different kinds of soils. • Some argued that enclosing and consolidating their scattered holdings and village’s pasturelands into compact, fenced-in fields in order to farm more effectively was best. • Small landholders and village poor opposed this new system sometimes finding allies with noble landowners who did not want the large investment in purchasing and fencing land. • Most of Europe continue unenclosed open fields, while England the Low Countries extensively adopted the new system.

Leadership of Low Countries • By middle of 17 th C. , Dutch Republic agriculture was highly specialized and commercialized, especially in Holland. • Dutch Republic was densely populated, so they needed maximum yields from their land strove to increased cultivated areas through steady draining of marshes and swamps. • Stimulated by commerce and overseas trade, Amsterdam grew from 30, 000 to over 200, 000 in 17 th C. • Population boom provided large markets for Dutch peasants to sell what they produced and for each region to specialize in what it did best. The Fishwife, 1672 Adrian van Ostade

Jethro Tull • British innovator who used empirical research to develop better methods of farming. • Tull advocated using horses, rather than oxen which were slower-moving, for plowing fields. • Also advocated sowing seed with drilling equipment rather than scattering by hand. • Drilling distributed seed in an even manner and proper depth.

English Enclosure • More than ½ of the farmland in England was enclosed through private initiatives prior to 1700. • From 1760 s to 1815 Parliament enclosed most of the remaining common land. • Arthur Young, an agricultural experimentalist, celebrated large scale enclosures as a means to achieve progress. • Resulted in reducing access of most poor men and women to the land. • By early 19 th C. , tiny minority of English landowners held most of the land pursued profits aggressively. • Landless laborers worked long hours and as technology improved, less of them were needed in farming. • Proletarianization—the transformation of large numbers of small peasants farmers into landless rural wage earners.

BEGINNING OF POPULATION EXPLOSION Thematic Question: Why did the European population rise dramatically in the 18 th C. ?

Long-Standing Obstacles to Pop. Growth • Until 1700, total pop. Growth of Europe grew slowly. • This irregular cyclical pattern determined availability of and prices of food. • In 17 th C. Europe, births and deaths were in a crude balance, with normal year growth in pop. ranging from. 5 to 1 %. • Certain abnormal years and tragic periods would decline the population, sometimes catastrophically. • So number of years of modest growth were necessary to make up the losses and keep pop. in check until after 1700.

New Pattern of the th 18 C. • Dramatic pop. increases occurred after about 1750. • Basic cause of increase was a decline in mortality. • Bubonic plague disappeared after a 1720 outbreak in Marseilles, France. • Inoculation against smallpox in England helped, though medical knowledge did little to reduce death rate. • Improvements in water supply and drainage of swamps diminished disease. • Advances in transportation helped safeguard the supply of food. • Wars became less destructive, new farming methods increased food supply. • Severity of famines, epidemics, and wars moderated. The Plague at Marseilles, Nicolas-Andre Monsiau, 1819

GROWTH OF RURAL INDUSTRY Thematic Question: How and why did rural industry intensify in the 18 th C. ?

Cottage Industry • Growth of population increased number of rural workers with little or no land • This contributed to the development of industry in rural areas. • The poor needed to supplement their earnings with other types of work. • Urban capitalists would employ them often at lower wages than urban workers. • The Cottage Industry, manufacturing with hand tools in peasant cottages and work sheds, became crucial feature of European economy.

The Putting-Out System • Cottage Industry was organized through the putting-out system. • Two participants were the merchant capitalist and the rural worker. • Merchants loaned, or “put-out, ” raw materials to cottage workers who processed the raw materials and returned the finished products to the merchant.

The Putting-Out System • As industries grew, production was often broken into many stages. • It grew because of competitive advantages. • Underemployed labor was abundant and thus could be paid low wages. • This developed most successfully in England with the spinning and weaving of wool. • By 1700 English industry was more rural than urban and reliant on this system. • The latter part of the 18 th C. , witnessed expansion of rural industry in certain densely populated regions of Europe.

DEBATE OVER URBAN GUILDS Thematic Question: What were guilds and why did they become controversial in the 18 th C. ?

Urban Guilds • A consequence of the growth of rural industry was an undermining of the traditional guild system that protected urban artisans. • Guilds reached its peak in the 17 th and 18 th C. in cities and towns across Europe. • Each guild had a set of privileges, including exclusive rights to produce and sell certain goods, access to raw materials, and rights to train apprentices and open shops. • Also served social and religious functions to the middling classes.

Urban Guilds • Guilds jealously restricted their membership to local men who were good Christians with several years of work experience, paid high membership fees, and completed a masterpiece. • Sons of masters’ received automatic entry to their father’s guilds, while barring outsiders. • German guilds were the most powerful and most conservative. • A few guilds, such as needlework and textile production, accepted women.

Critics of Guilds • Adam Smith criticized guilds for their restriction which he extended to all state monopolies and privileged companies. • Free competition, would best protect consumers from price gouging and give all citizens a fair and equal right to do what they do best, said Smith. • He advocated a “division of labor, ” separating craft production into individual tasks to increase workers’ speed and efficiency

Economic Liberalism • Smith believed the pursuit of self-interest in a competitive market would be sufficient to improve the living conditions of citizens. • This view quickly emerged as the classic argument for economic liberalism. • Although seen as an advocate of unbridled capitalism, Smith also called on government intervention to raise workers’ living standards. • In France, many shared Smith’s ideas, and guilds were abolished. • By middle of 19 th C. , most European govt. ’s and elites championed economic deregulation.

ATLANTIC WORLD & GLOBAL TRADE Thematic Question: How did colonial markets boost Europe’s economic and social development, and what conflicts and adversity did world trade entail?

ü In addition to agricultural improvement, population pressure and growing cottage industry, the expansion of Europe is characterized by the increase of world trade. ü The Atlantic Economy developed by the Dutch Republic, France and above all Great Britain from 1650 -1790 would prove crucial in the building of a global economy. ü Great Britain created in 1707 by the union of England Scotland into a single kingdom became the leading maritime power. ü Thus Britain built a fairly unified Atlantic economy that provided remarkable opportunity for them and their colonists. ü They also competed ruthlessly with France and the Netherlands for trade and territory in the Americas and Asia.

British Mercantilism • A system of economic regulations aimed particularly at creating a favorable balance of foreign trade to increase a country’s stock of gold and its ability to wage war. • These laws gave British merchants and ship owners a virtual monopoly on trade with British colonies. (Navigation Acts) • Regulations enacted in the hopes of eliminating foreign competition and developing a British shipping industry experienced in maritime that could also serve in a Royal Navy.

Navigation Acts • Form of economic warfare against the Dutch who were far ahead of the English in shipping and trade. • After the 3 Anglo-Dutch wars, the Dutch slipped behind the English. • France was next opponent which rivaled them between 1701 -1763 in a series of wars on who would become the leading maritime and colonial power.

British/French Wars • War of the Spanish Succession, ended in Peace of Utrecht 1713. • France gave parts of Canada to England Spain gave control of slave trade to England. • War of Austrian Succession 1740 -48 turned into world war with conflicts in India and N. America, but ended in no change of territory in N. America. • Seven Year’s War 1756 -63, last round in Franco-British competition, drew in Native American allies on both sides in N. America. • Britain’s victories on all fronts was ratified in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, France lost all possessions in N. America as well as most holdings in India.

The Atlantic Economy • Trade drew the 4 continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean into integrated economic system. • Triangular Trade entailed a three-way transport of European commodities, enslaved Africans and colonial goods. • Sales to mainland colonies of N. America and West Indies soared. • England also benefited from importing colonial products at favorable prices and reexporting them to other nations at high profits. • In 18 th C. , London grew into the West’s largest and richest city.

French Colonies • France was profitable through coffee and sugar plantations and slave trading in the West Indies. • By 1789, Saint-Domingue (Haiti) population included 500, 000 slaves whose labor had allowed the colony to become the most profitable in the New World off sugar and coffee.

Spanish Colonies • Spain’s influence expanded westward all the way to N. California through missionary efforts and ranchers. • Mercantilist goals were boosted by a recovery in silver production. • Spanish landowners developed a system of debt peonage keeping indigenous workers on their estates in perpetual debt bondage by advancing them food, shelter and a little money.

th 18 C. Atlantic Slave Trade • Intensified dramatically after 1750 with growth of trade and demand for sugar and cotton. • Peaked in the 1780 s when average of 80, 000 individuals per year were shipped across the Atlantic. • 12. 5 million Africans between 1450 and 1900. • Plantation agriculture is the main cause, with 45% of slaves going to Brazil, and another 45% to the Caribbean colonies. • Most Europeans did not witness the horrors of the slave trade, but a campaign to abolish slavery developed in Britain in late 1780 s. • Parliament abolished the British slave trade in 1807.

Trade and Empire in Asia and Pacific • The Portuguese dominated but did not fundamentally alter age-old pattern of Indian Ocean trade. • The Dutch transformed it by outright control of East Indian states (Indonesia) and peoples and reducing them to dependents. • The British focused on India working with the Mughal emperor and eventually intervening in local affairs and waged wars against Indian princes. • Treaty of Paris gave all French Indian possessions to Brits. • British East India Co. came to control most of the Indian subcontinent and in 1857 the British govt. took over from the company. • British settlement in Australia began in late 18 th C. with first colony established using labor of convicted prisoners forcibly transported from Britain.