The Expansion of Europe in the Eighteenth Century

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The Expansion of Europe in the Eighteenth Century

• McKay Chapter 19

The East India Dock, by Samuel Scott
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Age of Economic Expansion
Enlightenment Begins
Atlantic Economy Expands
1st Crusade 2nd Agricultural Revolution
Fall of Quebec
1095 1620 1650 1687 1700 1759 1776
Height of African Slave Trade (1700-1790)
Scientific Revolution Begins
Wealth of Nations
3
Agriculture Before 1650

• Economy in East and West overwhelmingly agrarian
  (except Holland)
• Low yields harvested
• Bad weather wiped out entire harvest
• Famine foods
• Chestnuts, bark, dandelions, grass
• Population susceptible to disease and plague
• Open-field system/3field system
• Fields divided into strips
• Communally divided among villagers
• Annually rotated each fields crop
• Common lands
• Lands set aside for pasturing cows, horses,
• Gleaners allowed to collect discarded grains
• Eastern peasants (serfs)
• Robot required
• Western European peasants
• Owned own land
• East and Western peasants maintained struggle for
  survival

Artist Jean François MilletTitle The Gleaners
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Agricultural Revolution

• Great technological breakthrough in eliminating
  fallow fields came about in mid 1600s
• Crop rotation
• Alternating grain with nitrogen storing crops
  (peas, beans, turnips, potatoes)
• Effects
• More animal feed
• More animals
• More meat
• More manure
• More grain

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Enclosure Movement

• Scientist, large landowners, gov officials
• Said open field system prevented advances in
  agriculture
• Enclosure
• Called for reorganization of traditional communal
  villages into fenced-in and consolidated lands
• Common rights (gleaners) would be eliminated
• Resisted by peasants and large nobles wary of the
  cost
• Only realized in England and United Provinces
  prior to 1700

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Low Countries and England

• Population density required most efficient
  farming in LC
• Adopted enclosure, crop rotation, heavy manuring
  by mid 1600s
• Urban growth offered markets to farmers
• LC- Mecca of foreign agricultural experts
• English learned about swamp drainage
• Jethrow Tull
• Advocated drilling seed
• Better husbandry of horses
• By 1870 English farmer produced 300 more than
  1700

The Vegetable Market, Hendrick Martensz Sorgh, c.
1662.
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Cost of Enclosure

• Mainly benefited aristocracy
• Higher yields would allow higher rents
• Pushed Parliament to pass hundreds of enclosure
  acts
• Authorized the fencing and division of common
  land in proportion to ones property in open
  field
• Cost of survey weigh heavily on small landowners
• Cottagers who were landless lost access to common
  pastures
• About 50 of English already enclosed by 1750
  (before Parliamentary enclosure)

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Effects of Enclosure

• 1700 Socio-Economic hierarchy emerged
• Elite large landowners
• Small independent landowning farmers
• Profit seeking tenant farmers
• Main advocates of new farming techniques
• Market oriented estate agriculture
• Landless Wage laborers (Rural proletariat)
• 1815
• Majority of land held by small group of elites
  who rent it out to tenant farmers
• Tenant farmers use proletariat laborers
• Lost independence and respect

The Swing Rioters attack a Threshing Machine
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Age of Economic Expansion
Columbus Sails the Ocean Blue
High Medieval Period
Black Death devastates Europe
End of 30 Years War
1200 1300 1348 1492 1600 1648 1720
Population v. Resources intensify 1500-1600
Little Ice Age begins
Population Boom begins
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Population Growth before 1700

• Characteristically slow growth (until 1700)
• Black Death
• 1/3 of population wiped out
• Serfdom
• Intensified in Eastern Europe
• Declines/Disappears in West
• Increased freedom, wages
• 1500
• Price Revolution
• Skyrocket
• Food shortages
• Influx of precious metals
• After 1600
• Population growth slowed
• Except in frontier Russia and New England
• Plague, war, disease
• German states declined b/t 33- 66

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Population after 1700

• Dramatic rise (Especially after 1750)
• Why?
• Plague disappeared
• Last case in Marseilles (1721)
• 40 thousand died in 3 weeks
• Black rat driven out by brown wander rat
• Has different flea that does like humans
• Medical knowledge
• Did not contribute to population growth
• English experimented with smallpox inoculations
• Absolutism
• improved water supply and sewage
• Drained swamps
• Reduced mosquito population
• Transportation improvements
• Canal and road building
• Lessened impact of local crop failure
• Wars less destructive to civilian population
• New Foods (potato)

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Growth of the Cottage Industry

• Population growth left many landless rural
  workers with need for income
• Resulted in growth of cottage industry
• AKA Domestic, Putting-Out system,
  protoindustrialization
• Peasant textile manufacturing existed in medieval
  period
• But not on large scale
• Grew dramatically after 1700 on continent

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Cottage Industry

• Merchant (capitalist) loaned (put out) raw
  materials to cottage workers
• Create finished product in their cottage
• Grew rapidly
• Large unemployed unregulated population

Wool Industry
Farmer sheers sheep
Wool taken to Spinner
Thread taken to Weaver
Entrepreneur sells Finished product
Dyed cloth Taken to Tailor
Fabric taken to Dyer
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Life in the Early Textile Industry

• Employed most people until 1800s
• Cottage
• Small, one room, tiny window rural dwelling
• Functioned as home and workshop
• Entire family unit used in production
• Even toddlers used wash cotton (stepping in tub)
• Young children and elderly combed cotton or wool
  for spinning
• Women and children prepared raw material spun
  thread
• Men were weavers
• Hired spinsters to keep up thread supply

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What was the relationship like between the
Merchant Worker?

• Marked by conflict
• Questions about weights of materials, quality
• Hard for merchant to manage workers
• Widely dispersed
• Holy Monday
• Cottage workers tended to loaf early in week and
  work hard later to meet quota
• Gave merchants incentive for factory system

We heapeth up riches and treasure great
store Which we get by griping and grinding the
poor. And this is a way for to fill up our purse
Although we do get it with many a curse.
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Building of the Atlantic Economy

• World trade grew after 1700
• Portugal, Spain, France grew
• Great Britain (formed in 1707 with union of
  Scotland and England) dominated
• Built a unified Atlantic economy

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Age of Economic Expansion
Treaty of Paris
Peace of Utrecht
1713 1740 1756 1763
Seven Years War begins
War of Austrian Succession
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English Mercantilism

• Distinguished from Colberts France First
  version
• Government regulation should serve the private
  entrepreneur as well as the state
• Josiah Child (East India Company)
• Profit and Power ought jointly to be
  considered.
• Navigation Acts (1651, 1660, 1663)
• Required most goods imported into England to be
  carried on British ships
• Monopolized trade with British colonies for
  British merchants
• Forced American colonists to ship their products
  on Brit ships only buy from British
• A form of economic warfare at Dutch

London, Circa 1700
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British v France

• Embroiled in a series of wars over overseas
  colonies/expansion
• War of Spanish Succession
• Union of France and Spain would encircle American
  colonies
• Peace of Utrecht
• France ceded Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Hudson
  Bay territory to GB
• Spain gave asiento to GB
• Control of Slave trade
• War of Austrian Succession(1740-48)
• Ended inconclusively for GB and France

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Seven Years War

• Seven Years War (1756-1763)
• Began when Maria Theresa tried to win back
  Silesia
• Led to French and Indian War
• Began over French fort building in Ohio valley
• GB refocused forces from Europe to America
• Cut off supply ships to French
• Montcalm defeated at battle of Quebec in 1759
• Treaty of Paris (1763)
• GB gained all French territory on mainland
• France gave Spain Louisiana territory (for losing
  Florida to GB)
• Great Britain dominate Europe power

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Economic/Social impact of the Seven Years War

• Seven Years War
• Provided outlet for excess population
• Less poverty in England
• Created Land of Opportunity
• Free White Settlers
• Indentured servants
• 7 years of service
• Acquire own farms
• paid less taxes than Europe
• Not nearly enough labor to meet demand

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Growth of Foreign Trade

• England relied heavily on textile trade with
  European continent
• Mercantile policies started to cut them out after
  1700
• By Revolutionary War England depended on America
  (Caribbean, India, Africa less so) as market for
  goods

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Plantation System

• Slave trade grew because of severe labor demand
  after 1650
• Plantation system developed in Caribbean
• Spread to Virginia other southern colonies
• Caribbean plantations Sugar
• Southern Colonies Tobacco, cotton
• Plantation owners protected within English
  mercantile system

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The Atlantic Slave Trade