Review Ch. 19, 20,24

Before 1750

• In most regions of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, harvests were poor, or even failed completely, every 8 or 9 years.

• Famine foods– Chestnuts, stripped bark, dandelions, grass

• Such unbalanced and inadequate food in famine years made people weak and susceptible to illness.

• Influenza and smallpox

Before 1750• Open Field system• The greatest accomplishment of medieval

agriculture.• Land divided into several large fields, which

were in turn cut up into long, narrow strips. The fields were open, and the strips were not enclosed by fences.

• Soil Exhaustion• Fallow• Common lands-set aside for animals, open to

cows and pigs of the village community as well

Around 1750• Agricultural revolution• Progressive elimination of the fallow• Land reviving crops; peas, beans• Root crops; turnips , potatoes• Crop rotation-scientific farming• Advocates of the new crop rotations believed

that these new methods were scarcely possible within the traditional framework of open fields and common rights. They argued that innovating agriculturalists needed to enclose and consolidate their scattered holdings into compact, fenced in fields.

Around 1750• The new methods of the agricultural revolution

originated in the Holland.– Drained swamps, reclaimed land

• Dense Population• The English learned from the Dutch

– Cornelius Vermuyden directed large drainage projects in England

• Jethro Tull (1674-1741)- important English innovator-enlightened.– Seed Drill

• Selective Breeding

Around 1750• By the mid 18th century, English agriculture

was in the process of a long but radical transformation.

• By 1870 English farmers were producing 300% more food than they had produced in 1700

• The number of people working in the land had grown by only 14%

• This great surge of Ag. Production provided food for England’s rapidly growing population.

Around 1750• Enclosure Acts

• Parliament passed hundreds of enclosure acts, which authorized the fencing of open fields in a given village and the division of the common land in proportion to one’s property in the open fields.

• Impetus for enclosing the fields came from the powerful ruling class (Aristocracy)

• Higher yields, higher rents

Around 1750

• The enclosure movement marked the completion of 2 major historical developments in England-the rise of market oriented estate agriculture and the emergence of a landless rural proletariat.

• Most small landowning peasants initially became rural wage earners.

• Look at reading

Around 1750

• Growth of Cottage Industry• The growth of population increased

the number rural workers with little or no land, and this in turn contributed to the development o industry in the rural areas.

• Manufacturing with hand tools grew markedly in the 18th century

Around 1750

• By the 18th century pressures of rural poverty and the need to employ landless proletarians were overwhelming the efforts of urban guilds to maintain their traditional control over production.

• Putting-Out system- between merchant capitalist and rural worker.

• The putting out system was a kind of capitalism. Merchants needed a large amounts of capital, which they held in the form of goods being worked up and sold in distant markets.

Around 1750

• Competitive advantages of the putting-out system:– Unemployed rural labor was abundant– Production was unregulated– The skills of rural industry were sufficient for

everyday articles

Around 1750

• Rural manufacturing appeared first in England, particularly for the spinning and weaving of woolen cloth.

Around 1750

• Textile Industry• The loom had changed somewhat in the early

18th century, when John Kay’s invention of the Flying shuttle enabled the weaver to throw the shuttle back and forth between the threads with one hand.

• Weaving was happening faster than spinning.• Spinsters• In 1784 Samuel Crompton developed the

spinning mule to speed up spinning.

Spinning mule

Around 1750

• Family enterprise

• There was work for everyone, including the youngest, which encouraged cottage workers to marry early and have large families.

• Piece work/ Holy Monday

Before 1700

• Mercantilism- a system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the power of the state.

• Mercantilism aimed at creating a favorable balance of trade in order to increase a countries stock of gold.

• France-Colbert• England-Navigation Acts

– Cromwell 1651, Charles II 1660 and1663– Economic warfare with Dutch– By 1700 the Dutch were falling behind england in

shipping, trade and colonies.

Around 1750

• After the Dutch decline in world affairs, France stood clearly as England’s most serious competition for overseas Empire.

• From 1701-1764, Britain and France were locked in a series of wars to decide, in part, which nation would become the leading maritime power.

Around 1750

• Wars of the Mid 18th Century• War of Spanish Succession 1701-1713

– Philip of Anjou, threatened to encircle and destroy the British colonies in North America

• Treaty of Utrecht– France forced to cede Newfoundland, Nova

Scotia, and the Hudson Bay territory to the British.

– Spain forced to give up the Asiento

Around 1750

• The War of Austrian Succession 1740-1748

• Frederick the Great seized Silesia from Austria and Maria Theresa, violating the Pragmatic sanction

• Alliances

• Peace of Aix La Chapelle 1748– “status quo antebellum”

Around 1750

• The 7 years war

• Alliances

• Peace of Paris 1763

• France kicked out of North America

• France ceded to Spain the Louisiana territory.

Around 1750• Economic liberalism• Adam Smith- 1776 Inquiry into the Nature and

Causes of the Wealth of Nations• Highly Critical of Mercantilism• Preferred free competition (laissez faire) which

would protect consumers from unreasonably high prices and would give each person an equal right to do what he does best.

• Three duties of government: provide defense, maintain civil order, and sponsor public works that could never adequately profit private investors.

• Invisible hand

• Back to Notes

Around 1750

• Attitudes toward children• Feelings toward children were greatly

influenced by the terrible frequency of their death. Doctors and clergymen urged parents not to get too emotionally involved with their children.

• Childhood rearing pattern- considerable indifference, on the one hand, and strict physical discipline on the other.

Around 1750

• From the middle of the 18th century, this pattern came under increasing attack and began to change.

• Jean Jacques Rousseau- Emile– Called for greater love and tenderness toward

children– Proposed imaginative new teaching methods– Urged wealthy women to nurse their babies

Around 1750

• Edward Jenner-smallpox vaccination

• Carnival

• Blood sports

• Rise of Methodism– John Wesley– Methodists– Differed from Calvin’s view of predestination

1800-1850

• Problems with the cities• Infectious disease spread with deadly

speed in cities, people at this time were more likely to die in the city than in the country. In larger cities more people died than were born.

• Overcrowding• No Plumbing• Total absence of public transportation

After 1850

• Public health and the Bacterial revolution

• Edwin Chadwick-Benthamite, scientific approach to government, do the most good for the most people.

• Chadwick became convinced that disease and death caused poverty.

• Sanitary Idea

After 1850

• Bacterial revolution• Miasmatic theory• Germ theory• Louis Pasteur-Pasteurization• Robert Koch-vaccinations, learned life cycle of

all kinds of bacteria.• Joseph Lister-Antiseptic principle• Now medicine was causing people to live longer.

After 1850

• Urban Planning Baron Haussman-Paris

• Back to Notes

After 1850

• Second Industrial revolution

• Steel-Bessemer Process

• Electricity

After 1850

• Science and Thought

• Mendeleev-periodic table

• Michael Faraday- Dynamo

• Darwin- Origin of the Species by the means of natural selection 1859

After 1850

• Social Science

• Auguste Comte-system of positive philosophy- each branch of knowledge goes thru 3 stages: Theological, Metaphysical, Positive.

• Herbert spencer- social Darwinsim

After 1850

• Literature

• Realism

• Emile Zola, Gustave flaubert (Madame bovary), Count Leo tolstoy (war and peace).

• DONE FOR Today!!!