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