01:360:401 Lecture 19: Chapter 19
21 May 2018
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Chapter 19: The Expansion of Europe
in the Eighteenth Century
1. Agriculture and the Land
1. Introduction
1. With the exception of Holland, at least 80 percent of the people of all
western European countries drew their livelihoods from agriculture
(Eastern higher percent)
2. In 1700 European agriculture was much more ancient and medieval
with an average of only five or six bushels of grain for every bushel of
wheat sown
3. In crisis years, when crops were ruined by drought or flood, starvation
forced people to use substitutes—the famine foods of a desperate
population
1. People gathered chestnuts and stripped bark in the forests, they
cut dandelions and grass, and they ate these substitutes to
escape starvation
2. Such unbalanced, inadequate food in famine years made people
weak and susceptible to epidemics—dysentery, intestinal
problems, influenza, smallpox
4. In preindustrial Europe, the harvest was the real king, which was often
cruel
2. The Open-Field System
1. The greatest accomplishment of medieval agriculture was the open-
field system of village agriculture developed by European peasants
1. Open-field system was divided the land to be cultivated by the
peasants of a given village into several large fields, which were in
turn cut up into long, narrow strips that were not enclosed into
small plots by fences or hedges
2. The land of those who owned land were nobility, clergy, and
wealthy
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2. The ever-present problem was exhaustion of the soil and when the
community planted wheat year after ear, the nitrogen in the soil was
soon depleted—crop failure
1. In the early Middle Ages, the only way for the land to recover its
fertility was for a field to lie fallow for a period of time (alternating
crop and idle)
2.
3. Three-year rotations were introduced that permitted a year of
wheat or rye to be followed by a year of oats or beans and then by
a year of fallow (still plowed)
3. Traditional village rights reinforced the traditional pattern of farming
and in addition to rotating, villages maintained open meadows for hay
and natural pasture set aside for draft horses, oxen, cows, and pigs of
the village community
4. Poor women would go through the fields picking up the few single
grains that had fallen to the ground in course of harvest (The
Gleaners by Jean François Millet)
5. In the age of absolutism and nobility, state and landlord continued to
levy heavy taxes and high rents that stripped the peasants of much of
their meager earnings
6. In eastern Europe, peasants were worst off because of serfdom and
social conditions were better in the west where they could own land
and pass it on to their children
7. Peasants of a region of France had to pay heavy royal taxes, the
church’s tithe, and dues to the lord as well as set aside seed for the
next season (half of their crop left)
3. The Agricultural Revolution
1. European peasants could improve their position by taking land from
those who owned buy did not labor but powerful forces stood ready to
crush any protest
2. If peasants could replace the idle fallow with crops they could increase
their land under cultivation by 50 percent and an agricultural revolution
followed that occurred slowly throughout Europe but progressively
eliminated the use of the fallow
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3. Because grain crops exhaust the soil and make fallowing necessary,
the secret to eliminating fallow lies in the alternating grain with certain
nitrogen-storing crops such as land reviving crops such as peas and
beans, root crops such as turnips and potatoes, and clovers and
grasses (turnips, potatoes, and clover were new-comers)
4. New patterns of organization allowed some farmers to develop
increasingly sophisticated patterns of rotation to suit different kinds of
soils
5. Improvements in farming had multiple effects
1. The new crops made ideal feed for animals and peasants had
more fodder, hay and root crops for the winter, they could build up
herds of cattle and sheep
2. More animals meant more meat and better diets for the people
and also meant more manure for fertilizer and therefore more
grain for bread and porridge
6. Advocates of the new rotations included an emerging group of
experimental scientists, some government officials, and landowners,
believed that new methods were scarcely possible within the
traditional system of open fields and common rights
7. A farmer who wanted to experiment had to get all landholders in a
village to agree so they argued that farmers should enclose and
consolidate their scattered holdings into compact, fenced-in fields in
order to farm more effectively
8. But with land distributed unequally all across Europe by 1700,
common rights were precious to there poor peasants and when small
land holders and the village poor could effectively oppose the
enclosure of the open fields and common pasture, they did so—only
powerful social and political pressure could overcome such opposition
9. The promise of the new system was only realized in the Low
Countries and England
4. The Leadership of the Low Countries and England
1. The new methods of the agricultural revolution originated in the Low
Countries and Holland was most advanced in many areas of human
endeavor including shipbuilding navigation, commerce, banking,
drainage and agriculture—provided model
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Document Summary
Countries and england: the leadership of the low countries and england, the new methods of the agricultural revolution originated in the low. Mediterranean ports and along austrian border: bubonic plague was a disease that was mainly carried around by the black rat"s flea (carrying around bacillus) and after 1600, a new rat of. British colonies in america (coalition of states: louis xiv was forced in the peace of utrecht (1713) to cede. Newfoundland, nova scotia, and the hudson bay territory to. Britain: spain was compelled to give britain control of the west african slave trade (asiento) and let britain send one ship of products into. Spanish colonies yearly: the war of austrian succession, which started when frederick the. German affairs (she almost succeeded, skillfully winning both france, Habsburg"s long-standing enemy and russia to her cause) The seven years" war was decisive between the franco- British competition for colonial empire and led by william pitt, the.
