Society and Economy under the Old
Regime in the 18th Century
Major Features of Life in the Old Regime
· Maintenance of Tradition
o Few considered change or desired
innovation outside of those in favor of the Enlightenment, especially in social
relationships
o Nobles and Peasants repeatedly
called for the restoration of traditional rights
o Nobles were against expanding
monarchial bureaucracies to keep their ancient rights
o Peasants called for the
maintenance/revival of manorial rights that allowed them access to particular
land, courts, or grievance procedures
o
The 18th c. economy was also mostly
traditional. Quality/Quantity of the grain harvest was still most important
factor for most of the population and the government
· Hierarchy
and Privilege
o Hierarchical
structure of society – the medieval system of rank and degree became more rigid
o Each
state/society was considered a community composed of several smaller
communities/groups. A person enjoyed such rights/privileges as were guaranteed
to the communities/groups of which he or she was part.
o The
community might include the village, municipality, the nobility, the church,
the guild, a university or parish. In turn, each of these bodies enjoyed some
privileges
The Aristocracy
Nobility, consisting of 1-5% of the
population, were the wealthiest sector, had the widest degree of social,
political, and economic power, and set the tone for polite society.
Most had their own separate house in
the parliament, estates, or diet. Land gave them their biggest source of
income, but they also had extensive power in social and economic life.
They often fostered economic
innovation and embraced the competitive spirit, which helped to protect the
nobility’s wealth.
·
Varieties
of Aristocratic Privilege
o British Nobility
§
The
smallest, wealthiest, best-defined, & most socially responsible
§
400
families, w/the eldest male in the House of Lords, and usually in control of
the House of Commons by corruption. Owned ¼ of all arable land.
§
Dominated
the society and politics of the English counties.
o French Nobility
§
~400,000
nobles
§
Nobles
of the Sword – those whose nobility was derived from military service
§
Nobles
of the Robe – those whose title came by serving in the bureaucracy or by
purchasing it.
Aristocratic Resurgence
·
The nobility’s reaction to the
threat to their social position and privileges that they felt from the
monarchies’ expanding powers.
o All nobility tried to preserve their
exclusiveness by making it difficult to become a noble
o Pushed to reserve appointments to
the officer corps, the bureaucracies, the govt. ministries, and the church for
nobles only.
o Attempted to sue existing
autocratically controlled institutions against the power of the monarchy
o Sought to gain further exemptions
from taxation or by collecting higher rents or forgotten feudal dues from the
peasantry
The Land and Its Tillers
·
Land
was the economic basis of the 18th
c. and the foundation of the status and power of the nobility. Except for the
landowners, most people who lived on the land were poor.
·
Peasants
and Serfs –Rural
social dependency related directly to the land
·
Obligations
of Peasants
o The power of the landlords increased
as one moved from west to east across Europe
o Banalités: feudal dues, which included use of
the lord’s mill to grind grain and his oven to bake bread.
o Corvée: The practice of forced labor in
which the seigneur could also require a certain number of days each year
of the peasant’s labor
o Robot: the service that serfs must
provide to their lord by the laws/customs of the Habsburg lands.
The English Game Laws
·
1671-1831,
English landowners had the exclusive legal right to hunt game animals. By law,
only persons owning a particular amount of landed property could hunt the
animals.
·
Excluded
from the right to hunt were all persons renting land, wealthy merchants who did
not own land, and poor people in cities, villages, and the countryside.
·
The
poor were excluded b/c the elite believed that allowing them to enjoy the sport
would undermine their work habits
·
The
Game laws represent a prime example of legislation related directly to economic
and social status
·
Many
poor people living on an estate or in a nearby village would kill game for
food, as they believed the game actually belonged to the community. Poaching
thus increased during hard times.
·
By the
1820s, both landowners and reformers called for a change in the law.
·
In
1831, Parliament rewrote the game laws, retaining the landowners’ possession of
the game, but permitting them to allow other people to hunt it.
Family Structures and the Family Economy
In pre-industrial Europe, the household was the basic unit
of production and consumption.
Northwestern Europe
·
Almost
invariably consisted of a married couple, their children through the early
teenage years, and their servants.
·
Households
were small, usually consisting of not more than five or six members, with more
than 2 generations of a family rarely living together.
·
High
mortality and late marriages prevented the forming of 3+ generations. The
structure was thus nuclear rather than extended.
·
Children
usually left home in their early teens to enter the work force of young
servants who lived and worked in another household. A child of a skilled
artisan might remain w/his parents to learn a valuable skills, but only rarely
would more than one child do so.
o Neolocalism –
those young men & women who had moved away would eventually marry and form
an independent household of their own.
o They usually had kids right away, if the woman was not
already pregnant at marriage. Premarital sex was common, though illegitimate
births were rare.
·
Servants – a person who was hired to work
for the head of a household in exchange for room, board, and wages. They were
young and in no way socially inferior to their employer. This allowed people to
acquire the productive skills and savings necessary to begin their own
household. These years working are the reasons for the later marriage age in NW
Europe.
Eastern Europe
·
Men
& women usually married by age 20. Often, esp. w/Russian serfs, women were
older than their husbands.
·
Households
were generally larger, frequently consisting of more than 9, and possibly more
than 20, members, with 3-4 generations living together.
·
Marrying
did not involve starting a new household, but rather moving in and expanding
one already established.
·
Why?
o
The Landholding structures accounted
in part. The lords of the manor wanted to be assured that it would be
cultivated (to get rents). Some might forbid marriage between their own serfs
and those from another estate. They might require widows and widowers to
remarry to assure adequate labor. They discouraged single-generation families
b/c death or serious illness might mean a lack of cultivation to the land.
The Family Economy
·
Most
people worked w/in the family economy (w/in the household). Depending on their
age and skills, everyone in the household worked. All goods and income produced
went to the benefit of the household rather than an individual. This was for
farmers as well as artisans.
o In Western Europe, the death of a father often brought
disaster to the economy of the household that depended on his skills or land.
§
The high mortality rate meant that
many households included second-family groups such as stepchildren.
·
In
Eastern Europe, the family economy functioned in the context of serfdom and
landlord domination. Peasants thought in terms of their families and expanding
the land available for cultivation. There were fewer artisans and merchant
households, and far less geographical mobility than in Western Europe.
Women and the Family Economy
·
A
woman’s life experience was largely the function of her capacity to establish
and maintain a household. Marriage was an economic necessity. A woman devoted
much of her life to first maintaining her parents’ household and then devising
some means of getting her own household to live in as an adult. Bearing and
raising children were usually subordinate to these goals.
·
On a
farm, a girl would usually leave home between 12-14 years. She might take up
residence on a nearby farm, but more likely she would move to a nearby city or
town. She would rarely travel more than 30 miles from her parent’s household.
·
Having
migrated, her main goal is to accumulate enough capital for a dowry, which
might mean working for 10 or more years, which means marriage might be
postponed until the mid- to late twenties.
·
Women
found many occupations & professions closed to them because of their sex.
They had less education than men, as they found fewer education opportunities
than men. They often received lower wages than men for the same work.