Social Structures, 1450-1750 Flashcards
~Social stratification
● high degree
~Urbanization
● greater extent
~Coerced labour
● More varieties of coerced labour appeared during this period and the number of people forced into it increased significantly
~Secondary status for women
Perpetuation of it
~Class diversification
greater
~Elite classes
● Political centralization forced elite classes to adapt to new realities or risk losing their power
~Literary rates
● Tended to improve, especially in urban settings, as did greater accessibility to art and culture
~Plantation/cash-crop monoculture
● Prevailed especially in Europe’s overseas colonies, were extremely labor-intensive
● Placed immense strain on peasant populations and typically invovled coerced labor, if not outirght slavery
~Expansion of state power
● Gernemtns centralized, their power to affect peasant communities grew
● Taxation, serfdom, conscription
~Taxation
● Grew more efficient during these years
● More burdensome
~Conscrition
● More serfs and peasants were drafted into armies that were growing larger as states centralized
~Food shortages
● Happen when states proved unable or unwilling to assist rural populations when floods or bad harvests
~Food riots/peasant uprisings
● Conditions in the countryside caused enough frustration and esperation to trigger them
~German Peasants’ War
● Largest social disturbance in Europe prior to the French Revolution
● In the 1520s, 300,000 rebelled against landowners and aristocrats in central Europe
~Ikko-ikki revolts and Shimabara rebellion
● Late 1400s through the mid-1500s and again in the 1630s
● Both pitted peasants against samurai landowners and high taxes
~Cossack and serf uprisings
● Russia experienced nemerous uprisings in the 1600s and 1700s, including that of Stenka Razin in 1670 and the Pugachev revolt in the 1770s which shoook the regime of Catherine the Great to its foundations
~Li Zicheng
● Ming dynasty was brought down by a peasant war launched in the 1630s led by him
● He called for the abolition of grain taxes and the redistribution of land from the upper classes to the farmers
● He ruled briefly as China’ “Dashing King” until the Manchus toppled him in 1644 and established the QIng Dynasty
~Urban working classes and servant classes
● THe gorwing importance of artisanry, manufacturing, shopkeeping, unskilled labour and domestic servitude to middle-and upper-class households led to the enlargment of these classes ● They tended to be near the bottom of the hierarchy in most societies and many of them suffered poverty and related hardships
~Middle classes
● Mianly in urban settings
● Included highly stilled artisans, professionals such as lawyers and physicians and merchants and bankers
● Placed a high premium on initiative, hard work, and education
~Middle-class frustrations
● The economic importance increased but the elite classes looked down at them
● THey were mostly categorized as commoners and they had to pay taxes
~Elite classes
● Continued to hold onto their power and privileges, although political centralization and hcanign economic circumstances forced them to make various adjustments
● New elites arose in many societies to coexist alongside traditional elites, and in some cases replaced them or threatened to do so
~Political centralization
● Deeply affected aristocrats and nobles whose authority depended on inherited status and landownership
● They had provided military leadership and local governance in decentarlized or feudal systems
● Power shifted decisively to the monarch in many places
● Nobles and aristocrats often found themselves compelled by monarchs to serve their state more actively
~European nobles
● During and after Renaissance, they served as officers in their nations’ rapidly expanding armies and navies, and as civil servants in their govenrmts’ grwoing bureaucracies due ot pressue from their monrachs
~Zamindars
● As the Mughal empire strengthened its hold over Indai, landowning zamindars who had previously enjoyed much local autonomy, were increasinly incorporated into the Mughal system as local officials and reigional governors
~Daimyo
● Japan’s samurai landowning nobility
● Tended ot be masters of their own domains during the fuedal disunity of the 1400s and 1500s but were forced into loyalty and service by Japan’s unifiers in the late 1500s and early 1600s and especially by the Tokugawa shogunate in the 1600s and 1700s
~Create/elevate new elites and military professional
● Sometimes based on skill or merit instead of hereditary status ● Confucian examination system ● Salaried samurai ● Devshirme system ● Nobles of the robe
~Confucian examination system
● Confucian examination systehm continued ot produce a mandarin class of bureaucrats who served the government regardless of what dynastry happened to be in charge
~Salaried samurai
● Took up administrative and bureaucratic posts in a Japan that had been made more peaceful by unification after about 1600 snad no longer requried their traditional warrior skills
~Devshirme system
● The Ottoman system recruited boys from the empire’s Christian populations
● Provided the sultan and his government not just with janissary gunpowder troops but also civil servants
● WHile both groups remained slaves, they converted to Islam and enjoyed elite status and many privileges
~Nobles of the sword
● In Europe during the 1600s
● In honor of hte military roles they had played since hte middle ages
● Poweful traditional aristocrats
~Nobles of the robe
● Louis XIV of France transferred many nobles of the sword to nobles of the robe
● Civil servants and administrators who were promoted to the nobility by Louis himself and who therefore owed their aristocratic status to the king rather than tot heir own distinguished family tree
● THis ensured their loyalty to and continued dependnece on the goodwill of the king
~Serfdom
● Binding of peasant laborers to the land in a way that left them unfree, although not technically enslaved
● Had been practiced in medieval Europe and elsewhere, mainly in centralized, feudal conditions
~Arab slave trade
● Exported AFrican capitves throughout the Middle East and the Indian Ocean basin
~Yasak
● The combination of labor obligations and tribute payments
● Russia forced native populations in Siberia to work for them and also to provide them with a yearly quota of fur pelts and other goods between the 1500s and 1700s