Ch 17 Flashcards
What were some of the hardships people faced in the 16th and 17th centuries? (this is about agriculture)
80 percent of the people of western Europe drew their livelihoods from agriculture.
Every bushel of wheat seed planted yielded on average only five or six bushels of grain at harvest. By modern standards, output was distressingly low.
Climate produced poor or disastrous harvests every 8-9 years leading to famine and death
What was the open field system?
The open field system is when the land to be cultivated was 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 into small plots by fences or hedge
What major problems did the open field system present?
Soil exhaustion. Soil exhaustion is when wheat planted year after year in a field will deplete nitrogen in the soil. To replete it you have to not plant things in that area for a couple years.
What was the significance of crop rotation?
Allowed farmers to forgo the unproductive fallow period (where nothing is planted) altogether and maintain their land in continuous cultivation
Deliberately alternating grain with crops that restored nutrients to the soil, such as peas and beans, root crops such as turnips and potatoes, and clover and other grasses.
What were the effects of crop rotation?
It restored nutrients and nitrogen directly to the soil
These other crops produced additional benefits:
• Potatoes and many types of beans were first perceived by Europeans as fit only for animal feed…potatoes eventually made their way to the human table, where they provided a nutritious supplement to the peasant’s meager diet.
• With more hay, and root vegetables for the winter months, peasants and larger farmers could build up their herds of cattle and sheep.
• More animals meant more manure to fertilize and restore the soil.
• More animals also meant more meat and dairy products as well as more power to pull ploughs in the fields and bring carts to market.
Discuss “enclosure” and the effects it had on “common lands” and peasants.
The movement to fence in fields in order to farm more effectively, at the expense of poor peasants who relied on common fields for farming and pasture.
What enabled the Dutch to lead the way in the agricultural revolution?
At the time they were already the most advanced country in Europe in many areas of human endeavor.
Another reason is the area was one of the most densely populated in Europe. This means they have to find advancements in order to feed everybody in the country
What agricultural innovations did the Dutch make?
They had to get maximum yields from their land and to increase the cultivated area through the steady draining of marshes and swamps to feed the population
Also the growing urban population provided Dutch peasants with markets for all they could produce and allowed each region to specialize in what it did best.
How did England emulate the success of the Dutch?
Somewhere in the middle of the 17th Century, English farmers borrowed the system of continuous crop rotation from the Dutch. They also drew on Dutch expertise in drainage and water control.
What were the impacts of the enclosure movement on England?
Negative. This is proven by scientists saying regions that maintained open-field farming were still able to adopt crop rotation and other innovations, suggesting that enclosures were not a prerequisite for increased production. There was also a social upheaval caused by the enclosure movement.
What problems did Europe face as population grew in the 16th century?
There was less food per person, and food prices rose more rapidly than wages.
Discuss the “grim reapers” of demographic crisis
The grim reapers of demographic crisis were famine, epidemic disease, and war.
Famine occurred during all eras of pre modern Europe. During this time Europe experienced unusually cold and wet weather, which produced even more severe harvest failures and food shortages than usual.
Disease continued to ravage Europe’s population because there were so many re occurring outbreaks of multiple types of bad diseases.
War was one of the worst of this. They experienced disease, famine, and death all at the same time. There was also a lot of population decrease during these wars, for example the 30 Years’ War.
Discuss the causes of population growth
European population steadily increased from 1720 to 1789. There was a much more dramatic change after the year of 1750 compared to before.
The reason for some of this population growth was women had more babies than before because new opportunities for employment in rural industry allowed them to marry at an earlier age.
But the basic cause of European population increase as a whole was a decline in mortality. Part of this was because the Bubonic plague made a sudden disappearance.
Describe the cottage industry and how it worked:
The cottage industry was a stage of industrial development in which rural workers used hand tools in their homes to manufacture goods on a large scale for sale in a market.
How did the putting out system work?
A merchant loaned raw materials to cottage workers, who processed them and returned the finished products to the merchant.
What were advantages of the putting out system?
The putting-out system grew because it had competitive advantages.
Underemployed labor was abundant, and poor peasants and landless laborers would work for low wages.
Since production in the countryside was unregulated, workers and merchants could change procedures and experiment as they saw fit.
What was produced by the putting out system?
Because workers did not need to meet rigid guild standards, cottage industry became capable of producing many kinds of goods.
Textiles; all manner of knives, forks, and housewares; buttons and gloves; and clocks could be produced quite satisfactorily in the countryside
How did the family contribute to the cottage industry?
For example, Handlooming….All members of the family helped in the work. The work of four or five spinners was needed to keep one weaver steadily employed. Since the weaver’s family usually could not produce enough thread, merchants hired the wives and daughters of agricultural workers
What were lives like for male rural textile workers?
Could earn decent wages through long hours of arduous labor
What were lives like for women rural textile workers?
Women’s wages were usually much lower then men’s because they were not considered the family’s primary wage earner.
What were lives like for child rural textile workers?
Children worked at extraneous tasks
What were the drawbacks to the cottage textile industry?
The work of four or five spinners was needed to keep one weaver steadily employed.
Relations between workers and employers were often marked by sharp conflict. There were constant disputes over the weights of materials and the quality of finished work.
Merchants accused workers of stealing raw materials, and weavers complained that merchants delivered underweight bales.
What factors led to the Industrious Revolution?
When families reduced leisure time, stepped up the pace of work, and, most important, redirected the labor of women and children away from the production of goods for household consumption and toward wage work.
What were some effects of the Industrious Revolution?
The Industrious Revolution reduced families economic self-sufficiency but increased their ability to purchase consumer goods.
More finished goods becoming available at lower prices, households sought cash income to participate in an emerging consumer economy.
How did the growth of rural industry undermine traditional guilds?
Critics attacked the guilds as outmoded institutions that obstructed technical progress and innovation.
Why did Jean Baptiste Colbert revive urban guilds in France?
Jean-Baptiste Colbert revived the urban guilds and used them to encourage high-quality production and to collect taxes
What privileges did guilds receive?
Exclusive rights to produce and sell certain goods, access to restricted markets in raw materials, and the rights to train apprentices, hire workers, and open shops
How was guild membership restricted?
Any individual who violated these monopolies could be prosecuted. Guilds also restricted their membership to local men who were good Christians, had several years of work experience, paid stiff membership fees, and completed a masterpiece.
Discuss criticism of guilds by enlightenment thinkers
Eighteenth-century critics derided guilds as outmoded and exclusionary institutions that obstructed technical innovation and progress.
One of the best-known critics of the guilds (all government regulation of trade and industry) was Adam Smith (1723–1790), a leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment
Smith criticized guilds for their stifling and outmoded restrictions, a critique he extended to all state monopolies and privileged companies
Discuss Adam Smith’s economic views
Smith developed the general idea of freedom of enterprise
Wanted free competition, which would best protect consumers from price gouging and give all citizens a fair and equal right to do what they did best.
Smith argued that government should limit itself to “only three duties”: it should provide a defense against foreign invasion, maintain civil order with courts and police protection, and sponsor certain indispensable public works and institutions that could never adequately profit private investors. He believed that the pursuit of self-interest in a competitive market would be sufficient to improve the living conditions of citizens, a view that quickly emerged as the classic argument for economic liberalism.
Capitalist, but also believed in livable wages and government assistance
What is economic liberalism?
A belief in free trade and competition based on Adam Smith’s argument that the invisible hand of free competition would benefit all individuals, rich and poor
What was Smith’s view on division of labor and colonial empires?
Smith advocated a more highly developed “division of labor,” which entailed separating craft production into individual tasks to increase workers’ speed and efficiency.
Which nations dominated the Atlantic trade economy?
North Western Europe, the Dutch Republic, France, and above all Great Britain
Describe mercantilism
European mercantilism was a system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the power of the state (a country would produce whatever it needed and tax imports to encourage people to but local goods).
What were the Navigation Acts?
The Navigation Acts was a series of English laws that controlled the import of goods to Britain and British colonies. The acts required that most goods imported from Europe into England and Scotland be carried on British owned ships with British crews or on ships of the country producing the article.
What was the purpose of the navigation acts?
The Navigation Acts were a form of economic warfare. Their initial target was the Dutch. They were ahead of the English in shipping and foreign trade. The Navigation Acts seriously damaged Dutch shipping and commerce. the Dutch Republic was falling behind England in shipping, trade, and colonies in the late 17th century
What were the cause and result of the War of Spanish Succession?
Louis XIV accepted the Spanish crown willed to his grandson.
A union of France and Spain threatened to encircle and destroy the British colonies in North America
After the war Louis XIV was forced in the Peace of Utrecht
What were the cause and result of the War of Austrian Succession?
Frederick the Great of Prussia seized Silesia from Austria’s Maria Theresa Gradually became a world war that included Anglo French conflicts in India and North America.
Ended with no change in the territorial situation in North America.
What were the cause and result of the the Seven Years War?
In North America, French and British settlers engaged in territorial skirmishes that eventually resulted in all-out war that drew in Native American allies on both sides of the conflict
By 1763 Prussia had held off the Austrians, and British victory on all colonial fronts was ratified in the Treaty of Paris.
Why did the Atlantic Slave trade happen?
The growth of trade and demand for slave-produced goods like sugar and cotton
What were the demographics (people involved) in the Atlantic Slave trade?
European traders shipped and purchased 6.5 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic between 1701 and 1800 more than half of the estimated total of 12.5 million Africans transported between 1450 and 1900, of whom 15 percent died in procurement and transit.
What was the impact of Africa of the Atlantic slave trade?
Wars among African states to obtain slaves increased, and leaders used slave profits to purchase more arms than textiles and consumer goods.
The population of Africa stagnated or possibly declined.
How did Britain lead the way in trying to abolish the slave trade?
They created abolition campaigns. The people supporting these campaigns were denouncing the immorality of human bondage and stressing the cruel and sadistic treatment of enslaved women and families. In 1807 Parliament abolished the British slave trade
What was a creole?
A creole referred to people of Spanish ancestry born in the Americas.
What advantages did creole’s have?
They had lavish plantation estates and they maintained townhouses in colonial cities built on the European model, with theaters, central squares, churches, and coffeehouses
What role did Christianity play in the colonies?
Converting indigenous people to Christianity was a key ambition for all European powers in the New World.
Because of the Protestant Reformation Catholics felt the need to protect and spread Catholicism
• Actively sponsored missionaries
Large-scale Catholic conversion in Central and South America forged (Portuguese and Spanish colonies).
Conversion efforts in North America were less effective because indigenous settlements were more scattered and native people were less integrated into colonial communities.
What role did Protestants play in the colonies?
Protestants were less active as missionaries
Some dissenters, like Moravians, Quakers, and Methodists, did seek converts among indigenous and enslaved people
What role did Jews play in the colonies?
Jews were restricted from owning land and holding many occupations in Europe
Eager participants in the new Atlantic economy and established a network of mercantile communities along its trade routes.
Jews in European colonies faced discrimination; for example, restrictions existed on the number of slaves they could own in Barbados in the early eighteenth century.
What was the role of the Portuguese in trade in Asia and the Pacific?
Between 1500 and 1600 the Portuguese had become major players in the Indian Ocean trading world, eliminating Venice as Europe’s chief supplier of spices and other Asian luxury goods.
The Portuguese dominated but did not change the age-old pattern of Indian Ocean trade
Involved merchants from many areas as more or less independent players.
What was the role of the Dutch in trade in Asia and the Pacific?
Formed in 1602, the Dutch East India Company took control of the Portuguese spice trade in the Indian Ocean
Port of Batavia (Jakarta) in Java was center of operation
Within a few decades they had expelled the Portuguese from Ceylon and other East Indian islands.
Unlike the Portuguese, the Dutch transformed the Indian Ocean trading world.
Whereas East Indian states and peoples maintained independence under the Portuguese, who treated them as autonomous business partners, the Dutch established outright control and reduced them to dependents.
What was the role of the British in trade in Asia and the Pacific?
English East India Company (established 1600), also severely undercut Dutch trade.
Britain initially struggled for a foothold in Asia. With the Dutch monopolizing the Indian Ocean, the British turned to India, the source of lucrative trade in silks, textiles, and pepper.
Throughout the seventeenth century the English East India Company relied on trade concessions from the powerful Mughal emperor, who granted only piecemeal access to the subcontinent. Finally, in 1716 the Mughals conceded empire- wide trading privileges.
Who was Britain’s rival for influence in India?
France
How was the French / English rivalry in India resolved?
French- English rivalry was finally resolved by the Treaty of Paris, which granted all of France’s possessions in India to the British with the exception of Pondicherry, an Indian Ocean port city.
Did India become a Colony of Britain after widespread dominance of the East India Company?
Yes.
Who colonized Australia?
The British. Captain James Cook claimed the east coast of Australia for England in 1770, naming it New South Wales. The first colony was established there in the late 1780s, relying on the labor of convicted prisoners forcibly transported from Britain.
How did Captain James Cook die?
Cook was killed by islanders in Hawaii in 1779, having charted much of the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
(Kealalekua Bay - you have been here 15 times!)
