The Early Modern Period

 

THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 12  Jonathan Dewald 

Few historical labels conceal so much uncertainty as ‘‘early modern Europe.’’ The authors of fifteen latetwentiet twen tieth-cen h-century tury text textss whos whosee title titless inclu include de the phra phrase se date the beginning of the period variously between 1350 and 1650, with 1500 the plurality choice, and its end between 1559 and 1800. The three-century  difference of opinion over when the period begins equals the length of the period itself, as most of these historians understand it; one historian sees the period endingg almost endin almost a century century befor beforee anoth another’ er’ss starti starting ng point point.. The present article defines the period as extending  from 1590 to 1720. Thus envisioned, it starts with the last spasms of Europe’s Europe’s religious wars; these these opened a period of extreme political violence across the continent, and coincided with a variety of other disruptions of Europeans’ daily lives. The early eighteenth century brought this period of instability to a close. By 1720 religion had declined as a factor in European politics, poli tics, and the Enlightenmen Enlightenment’ t’ss criti critique que of orga organize nized d religion had begun. The last of Louis XIV’s great wars ended in 1713, 1713, opening a period of relative peace, and by happy coincidence Europe’s most frightening disease, the plague, plague, disappeared disappeared from the Continent after 1720. A series of other changes in European social organization added to the sense of relative security 

are the less easily resolved in that seventeenth-century  men and women already believed in their own modernit der nityy. In 168 1687 7 the Fr Fren ench ch wr write iterr and arc archit hitect ect Charles Perrault launched the ‘‘quarrel of the ancients and the moderns’’ with the claim that recent artists and wri writer terss had adv advanc anced ed far bey beyond ond any anythi thing ng ach achiev ieved ed in the ancient world. His claims with regard to the arts stimulated hot debate, but by that time recent advances had made modernism self-evidently persuasive in the domains of science and philosophy. Especially since World War II, historians of the early modern period have interested themselves in a  second set of interpretive concerns, in some tension  with this interest in finding the roots of modernity modernity.. Europeans’ own experiences of industrialization and their interest in economic development elsewhere encouraged historians to reflect on the break between preindustrial and industrial societies, and to see in industrialization the crucial difference between modern and premodern worlds. Such interpretations set the early modern period within a much larger premodern era, and indeed suggested that the break between medieval and early modern mattered far less than the historical changes of the later eighteenth and early  nineteenth centuries, the early phase of the industrial

that wouldofcharacterize the eighteenth century. vergences this order partly reflect historians’ useDiof  ‘‘early modern’’ as a handy catch-all term for a confusing period, whose contours shift according to national and thematic perspectives; but they also result from important interpretive differences.

Historians’ understanding of the early modern period has been affected affected by their differen differentt view viewss of mode modernity  rnity  itself, whose foundations are commonly seen to have been established at some point between the Renaissance and the French Revolution; differences of per-

revolution. During the 1960s and 1970s, European historianss work rian working ing with within in several inde independ pendent ent nati national onal traditions offered interpretations of this kind, seeing in the age of industrial and political revolutions around 1800 a break in human history more important than any since the invention of fixed agriculture. In France Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie used the phrase ‘‘immobile history’’ to suggest that society changed little between twee n the mid-f mid-fourt ourteent eenth h and the midmid-eigh eighteent teenth h centuries. Stagnant agricultural technology underlay  this immobility, for food production set the limits to economic enterprise of all kinds. Population rose in good times, eventually approaching the limit of society’s ability to feed itself; since food prices rose with

iodization reflect different ideas about the crucial moments in modernity’s unfolding. Such uncertainties

population, discretionary income income that might have have been spent on industrial products products or long-term investments

THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION

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disappeare disapp eared. d. Fam Famine, ine, war, and diseas diseasee (often con joined) eventually cut population back, freeing resources and according the survivors a temporary prosperity, before the whole cycle of growth and crisis began again. Le Roy Ladurie was concerned mainly   with France, but his work coincided with similar ideas that were developed in Germany by such historians as  Werner  W erner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck. By compari-

more change within the period itself than was once thought to have occurred. Historians have become more aware that even the period’s most powerful biological forces were mediated through complex mechanisms of social and cultural organization. As a result, the concept concept of a tech technologic nological al ceiling ceiling on early moder modern n economic development has lost much of its persuasiveness, siven ess, for early modern society operated operated far below 

son with the momentous changes around 1800, differenc fer ences es such such as tha thatt bet betwee ween n med mediev ieval al and ear early ly mod mod-ern periods could have little importance. importance. During the same years, the English historian Peter Peter Laslett likewise developed a vision of the early modern period as sharply set off from modernity, a ‘‘world we have lost’’ (in his famous phrase), governed by specific forms of  social and familial organization, and therefore therefore marked by specific worldviews as well.  Although these French, German, and British approaches to the early modern period differ in significant ways, if only because they deal mainly with their own national histories, they share an emphasis on the gap between the early modern period and our own and see that difference as extending to the most fundamental experiences of human life. Another feature common to all three approaches is an interest in the biol biological ogical constraints constraints on earl earlyy moder modern n lives lives.. Muscle-po Muscl e-power wer,, whe whethe therr hum human an or ani animal mal,, set the basic limits to agricultural and industrial production, and people had limit limited ed prote protection ction against either microbes, which brutally cut back population, or their own reproductive drives, which in good times led to rapid population growth. For these reasons, historical demography was a crucial companion science to the social history written in the 1960s and 1970s, promising insights into the workings of premodern social structures. In many ways the historiography historiography undertaken by 

 whatever that ceiling may have been. Revisions and queries like these have made the early modern period seem more complex and much less static than it did to earlier historians.

Le Roy Ladurie andofhisthe contemporaries sets but the agenda for studies early modern still period; since 1975 historians’ interpretive stances have again shifted significantly in response to changes in several fields fiel ds of re resea search rch.. Nei Neithe therr the ind indust ustria riall rev revolut olution ion nor the French Revolution seems so absolute a break as it once did. Economic historians have lowered their estimates of nineteenth-century economic growth, rendering images of economic ‘‘take off’’ inappropriate and drawing attention to the continuing importance of preindustrial modes of production into the twentieth century. Revisionist historians have similarly reevaluated the French Revolution of 1789, which they  present as having far less impact on European society  than was once believed. While these scholars have

to have reducedcontinued French population by 10 percent. Food shortages in the eighteenth century, and a last great subsistence crisis came in the midnineteent nine teenth h centu century; ry; but Europe Europeans’ ans’ exper experienc iences es of  food short shortage age after 1710 were essentially essentially different different from that of the seventeenth century. century. Before 1710, for instance, French French food prices might triple or quadruple in years of harvest failure; eighteenth-century crises led to a doubling of prices, still a serious burden for consumers, but far less likely to bring outright starvation. Freed from the experience of starvation and plague (though certainly not from many other natural catastrophes), catastrophe s), eighteen eighteenth-cent th-century ury Europeans could view  the world with significantly significantly more confide confidence nce than their early modern predecessors.

downplayed the extent of change at the end of the early modern period, others have found evidence of 

 An abrupt decline in military violence after 1713 meant that eighteenth-century Europeans also

 AN AGE OF CRISIS

To historians of the French school, inspired especially  by Le Roy Ladurie, social crisis dominated the period 1590 to 1720. Even historians who question his neoMalthusian Malthus ian inter interpret pretation ation find crisi crisiss an impor important tant theme in the period, for early modern Europeans had frequent and horrific experiences of famine, disease, and war. Plague, which had reappeared in Europe in 1348 after several centuries’ absence, remained endemic and virulent, producing major epidemics in most regions every generation or so. The Milan epidemic of 1630–1631 killed 60,000 people, 46 percent of the city’s population; the London epidemic of  1664–1665 killed 70,000. For reasons that remain mysterious, myste rious, however, however, the disease rece receded ded after the 1660s, and after a last, terrible epidemic in 1720– 1722, centering on the French port city of Marseilles, it disappeared from Europe altogether. The history of  famine followed a roughly similar chronology. Food shortages led to actual starvation as late as the midsevent sev enteen eenth th cen century tury in Eng Englan land, d, and sti still ll lat later er in France: the great famine of 1693–1694 is estimated

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had a fundamentally different experience of warfare. Organized violence had marked the early modern period to an unprecedented degree, with conflicts extending across the Continent from west to east and

and Spain—that had joined in to secure territorial gain and to defend the European balance of power. Relativ Rela tivee pea peace ce pre prevai vailed led dur during ing the mid mid-seventeenth century, despite the Anglo-Dutch Wars

south north. truce onlyNetherlands between 1609 and 1621, to Spain andWith the northern fought from 1566 until 1648, a conflict that also touched Spanish Italy (where troops were recruited and organized) and parts of Switzerland (through which they  had to mar march ch to rea reach ch the nor northe thern rn ba battl ttlefie efields lds). ). Spanish troops also attempted to invade England in 1588, assisted the Catholic side during the French  Wars  W ars of Religion in 1589– 1594, and invaded northern France in 1597; after some skirmishing in the 1620s and 1630s, Spain and France returned to allout wa warr bet betwe ween en 163 1635 5 an and d 165 1659. 9. Mea Meanw nwhil hilee the Thirty Thir ty Years ears’’ War (161 (1618– 8– 1648 1648)) embro embroiled iled cent central ral Europe in the most destructive of the century’s conflicts. The small German states fought one another,

of thein1650s and 1660s French sion the 1660s. But and Louis XIV’sterritorial invasionexpanof the Netherlands in 1672 opened a new round of Europe wide conflict, which continued with only short breaks until unt il 171 1713. 3. Lou Louis’ is’ss arm armies ies wer weree lar large gerr tha than n any Eu Europ ropee had pr previ evious ously ly see seen, n, an and d eve even n the eth ethics ics of wa warr see seemed med to have deterioriated. Under orders from Versailles, French armies systematically devastated the Palatinate Palatinate in 1689, suggesting to horrified contemporaries that pillaging had become a tool of state policy, policy, rather than a crime of angry soldiers. The financial, financial, demographic demographic,, and psychological psychological effects effects were so exhausting exhausting that most of Europe remained at peace for a generation thereafter aft er.. On Only ly in 174 1740 0 did the pri princi ncipal pal Eu Europ ropeanpowe eanpowers rs resume their warlike habits, and then, though armies

their overlord the Austrian Habsburg emperors, and a series of outsi outside de powers— powers— Denma Denmark, rk, Swed Sweden, en, Fra France, nce,

remained large and destructive, newly effective military discipline protected civilians from their worst ef167

 

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fects. Thus 1713 marked a genuine turning point in European social history history.. Measur Mea suring ing the soc social ial eff effect ectss of sev sevent enteen eenththcentury warfare has proven a complex historical problem. In central Europe the destructiveness was enormous and clear clearly ly visibl visible. e. Over Over the cour course se of the Thir Thirty  ty   Years’  Y ears’ War ar,, historians have estimated, the German population dropped dropped by 40 percent in the countryside,

but by 1600 they were everywhere apparent. Armies had to be be much much larger larger and bett better er trai trained, ned, fort fortifica ification tionss more substantial, military hardware more abundant and more carefully designed and managed. Warfare had to be better organized, with more efficient lines of command and greater subordination of individuals to collective purposes—in short something of a science. Ideally the warrior himself was to become a 

and 33 percent in the cities; in some regions the losses  were still greater greater.. This war was the century’ century’ss greatest military disaster, but even local conflicts might have comparable consequences: troop movements around Paris during the Fronde of the Princes in 1652–1653 broug bro ught ht a thr threef eefold old inc incre rease ase in the reg region ion’’s dea death th rat rates. es. Combatants died in great numbers (studies of one Swedish village during the Thirty Years’ War show a  survival rate after twenty years of 7 percent among  conscripted troops); further deaths were caused by the spread of epidemic diseases. But war did much more damage by disrupting already fragile economies, as soldiers took food and livestock for themselves, destroyed farms and other capital, and disrupted trade circuits. For this very reason, however, however, the impact of war might vary with the strength of the local economies that it touched. Since the thirteenth century, the Low  Countries and northern France had included some of  Europe’s great battlefields, and—as they formed the border bord er between the Habsburg Habsburg and Bourb Bourbon on empir empires— es— they witn witnesse essed d almo almost st conti continuou nuouss war during the early modern period. Yet these regions prospered, despite terrible terrible destructi destruction on in specific regions regions and at specific mome moments. nts. Even Spanish Spanish Flan Flanders ders,, whic which h lost considerable population in the turmoil of the later sixteenth century, recovered amid the warfare of the seventeenth, and the highly vulnerable agriculture of  the region continued to develop and innovate. Politi-

trained element within a bureaucratic system rather than the autonomous hero of feudal myth. The French peacetime army had numbered 10,000 in 1600; in 1681 it numbered 240,000, and during the last wars of Louis XIV it reached about 395,000. Changes of this scale, in a period of constant international internat ional competiti competition, on, require required d heavy governmental expenditures, and taxes rose with the size of  armies arm ies.. In Fr Franc ancee the nom nomina inall tax bur burden den tri triple pled d  within five years of Louis XIII’s entry into the Thirty   Years’  Y ears’ War, though actual collection rates were much lower. Taxation at these levels was a heavy burden for most economies and an important cause of the economic stagnation that marked the period. After 1672 even the United United Provinces, Provinces, which had prospere prospered d amid the violence of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, found the costs of fighting Louis  XIV so overwhelming as to drive their economy into long-term decline. Well before then, Spain’s international ambitions had exhausted it. Faced with such pressures, governments tended to reduce some forms of social privilege, notably the protections protections against against taxation enjoyed by most nobles and many commoners. Spain’s chief minister Gaspar de Guzma´n ´n y Pimental, Pi mental, Count-Duke Olivares (1587–1645) sought to end the fiscal exemptions enjoyed by the outlying provinces of Aragon and Catalonia—with politically disastrous sastr ous conse consequen quences, ces, for the regi regions ons rebe rebelled lled in 1640 and retained their exemptions until the eigh-

cal organization playedwere an important role in this resiliency; Dutchalso Dutch garrisons so well well disciplined (in contrast to those of other states) that communities actually actu ally welcomed them as an econ economic omic resource. resource. Converse Conv ersely ly,, peac peacee was no guar guarante anteee of pros prosperi perity ty.. Seventeenth-century Castile had almost no direct experience of war, but its economy stagnated and the region lost even its ability to feed itself. War’s effects depended on its social context. Violence probably also mattered less in the long  run than war’s secondary, indirect effects, particularly  on state organization. The early modern period was the critical point in the process that historians have called ‘‘the military revolution,’’ a series of changes that began with the application of gunpowder to war-

teenth In tFrance Louis XIV form for m ofcentury. taxation taxat ion tha that hit nob nobles les as ha hard rd asestablished common com moners ers.a . Efforts like these would receive full implementation only by the enlighten enlightened ed despots despots of the later later eight eighteent eenth h century centu ry,, when tax immun immunities ities were chall challenge enged d all across Europe, but state challenges to inherited social distinctions had already begun before 1700. Rapidly rising taxation was the principal cause of a second form of violence that gave the early modern period its air of crisis, the wave of rebellions that extended into the 1670s. Both ordinary people and elites participated in these movements, in ways that historians have found difficult to disentangle. Low  levels of popular discontent, discontent, producing assaults assaults on tax  collectors or other governmental agents, were com-

fare in the fou fare fourte rteent enth h cen centur turyy. The imp implic licati ations ons of thi thiss military milit ary tech technolog nologyy unfo unfolded lded slow slowly ly and unev unevenly enly,,

monplace, but the period was also marked by much larger movements, with elaborate elaborate ideological plans. In 169

 

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France the Catholic League, a movement dominated by middle-class city dwellers, took over Paris and several other cities between 1589 and 1594 and called for radical social reforms, including an end to hereditary ita ry nob nobili ility ty and the ins instit tituti ution on of par parlia liamen mentar tary  y  controls on royal power. The 1640s witnessed rebellions across Europe, most dramatically in England, France, Fran ce, Catalonia, Catalonia, Por Portugal, tugal, and Naples, again mixin mixing  g  popular and upper-class participation and generating   widespread calls for significant political change. The

In th this is re rega gard rd,, to too, o, th thee la late te se seve vent ntee eent nth h an and d ea earl rly  y  eighteenth centuries represented a significant break  that paralleled the more secure living conditions and international peace that followed Louis XIV’s reign: In the late seven seventeen teenth th century, century, the wave of great rebellions came to an end. Governments had become much more effective in controlling crowd violence and had begun to treat their subjects somewhat more fairly, for example, by spreading tax burdens more evenly. At the same time, experiences like the English

exampl example England, wher where e revolu revolutionar tionaries ies finally toppled thee of monarch, tried him in Parliament for political crimes, and publicly executed him, provided an especially frightening example of how far rebellion might lead. Even the Dutch Republic, an apparent oasis of political calm in the seventeenth century, experienced some of the political violence characteristic of the age: in 1618–1619 the overthrow and political execution of the seventy-two-year-old Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, and in 1672 the mob lynching of the brothers Johan and Cornelis de Witt, whose policies  were thought to have led to Louis XIV’ XIV’ss invasion. Seventeenth-century men and women had a powerful awareness aware ness of of society’ society’ss explosiven explosiveness. ess. Even the most apparently stable positions might be temporary, and or-

revolution and the much Frondemore had frightened elitesgovernevery where. They were ready to obey ments and more wary of encouraging popular discontent. In the German states governments consciously  involv inv olved ed eve even n lea leadin dingg pea peasan sants ts in the pow powers ers and pro proffits of government. During the eighteenth century local disord disorders ers remained common, especially especially in moments of food shortage, but contemporaries no longer viewed the social order as constantly subject to violent overturning. When violence returned with the French Revolution of 1789, it came as a devastating surprise to contemporaries.

dinary people might turn savagely on once-respected leaders.

 Alongside its instabilities and sufferings, the seventeenth century also showed signs of important social

SIGNS OF STRUCTURAL CHANGE

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advances advan ces.. Th These ese beg begin in wit with h the typ typica icall Eu Europ ropean ean household itself, which at some point in the later sixteenth century appears to have settled definitively into  what historians have termed the ‘‘Euro ‘‘European pean marriage pattern’’: late marriage for both men and women, nearly near ly equa equall ages at marr marriage iage,, limit limited ed numbers of  children, autonomous households for most married couples, and, outside of marriage, substantial rates of  lifelong celibacy. The pattern reached its fullest development in the later seventeenth century, with coupless in man ple manyy re regio gions ns mar marryi rying ng onl onlyy in the their ir lat later er twe twennties, tie s, and with abo about ut 10 per percen centt of wom women en ne never ver marrying. This set early modern Europe apart from most other preindustrial societies, and also from medieval Europe itself, which had been dominated well into the sixteenth century by early early marriage and and large, multigenerational households. Historians have noted both demographic and social effects of the European marriage pattern. It effectively limited births by reducing the number of childbearing years for many women and by excluding altogether many men and women from repr reproduci oducing. ng. Contr Controlling olling natal natality ity throu through gh the sociall cus cia custom tomss of ma marri rriage age in tur turn n ga gave ve Eur Europe opean an soc societ iety  y  an unusual capacity for saving, even during crisisridden periods like the seventeenth century, since society was not using all its resources on subsistence.  As important, the European marriage pattern accentuated the economic and social freedom of the individual household at the expense of the community and the larger patriarchal family; marrying as mature adults, with the presumption of autonomy  from their parents, couples formed highly flexible economic units, far more able than in medieval society to arrange both work and consumption to suit new circumsta circumstances. nces. Closely related to changes in household organization were increasing investments in human capi-

and more ready to accept the worldviews proposed by  physicians and natural philosophers.  A third critical change concerned the organization of space. At varying speeds, seventeenth-century  governments governmen ts succeeded in pacifying pacifying their realms, controlling local banditry and civil war, and starting the process proc ess of discip disciplinin liningg armies. armies. In this this as in many other seventeenth-century changes, the Dutch Republic led the way, establishing in the early seventeenth century  forms of social discipline that other regions regions would still be trying to emulate a century later. England also moved quickly to control brigandage and (in the Puritan armies of the Civil War) to discipline soldiers. Castile had been largely freed of brigandage by the mid-seventeenth mid-seventeen th century, though other parts of Spain  were pacified more slowly. Such polit political ical succe successes sses had impo importan rtantt socia sociall implications, for they allowed people, goods, cash, and information to circulate more freely, cheaply, and predictably, even without improvements in technology. But the technology for dealing with distance did improve in these years as well. Again, the most dramatic example is the Dutch Republic, where by the mid-seventeenth century an elaborate series of canals made movement throughout the country cheap and easy, and a regularly scheduled system of canal boats allow all owed ed peo people ple and and goo goods ds to tra travel vel fr freel eelyy. Oth Other er reg region ionss had neither the social resources nor the geographic advantages that allowed the Netherlands this success, but these handicaps make seventeenth-century efforts all the more striking. Significant canals were dug in England and France, and land transport improved there as well. Road-building became a major preoccupation of the French government, starting with the appointment of Maximilien Maximi lien de Be´thune, ´thune, duc de Sully, S ully, in 1599 as head of a government road-building service;; such proj vice projects ects rece received ived furt further her impe impetus tus from Je Jeanan-

tal, especially in formal education. century centu ry was among Europe’ Euro pe’ss grea greattThe erasseventeenth for schoo schooll foundation,, as Catholic foundation Catholic and Protestant churches competed to form educated, articulate believers. The number of Jesuit schools increased from 144 in 1579 to more than 500 by 1626, and more than 800 in 1749; and male literacy literacy reached impressiv impressivee leve levels, ls, 70 perc percent ent in Amsterdam in the 1670s, 65 percent in the small cities near Paris. In England, the historian Lawrence Stone has estimated, a higher percentage of the male populatio popu lation n atte attended nded univ universit ersityy in the seve seventeen nteenth th century than at any time before World War I. This upsurge in education probably contributed to a change that scholars have noted in several European countries: by the end of the seventeenth century, Europe-

Baptiste Colber t’ss interest highways. New carriages,  with steelColbert’ springs, allowed in people to travel these roads in relative comfort and speed; speed; in the sixteenth century  most people had had to travel on horse or mule. Increased freedom of movement movement addressed what had been a critical weakness in the European economy, its fragmentation into a collection of nearly autonomous, tono mous, self self-suffi -sufficient cient loca locall socie societies, ties, depe dependen ndentt mainly on what they themselves produced. Such enclaves might be very small, given the difficulties of  transportation and the uncertainties of relying on distant suppliers. Breaking down localism was an important step in economic development, for exchange over large areas allowed specialization and efficiency. The proce process ss of econo economic mic integ integratio ration— n— and andconseq consequent uent

ans of all social classes were becoming more skeptical about magical practices that had long been customary 

gains in specialization—would continue through the eighteenth and nineteenth nineteenth centuries and include much 171

 

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more dramatic technological advances than the seventeenth century could display. Yet it can be argued that the seve seventee nteenth nth cent century ury repr represen esented ted a criti critical cal phase in this long process. The economic historian  Jan de Vries has demonstrate demonstrated d that Europe first acquired an integrated system of cities in the seventeenth century, century, with cities for the first time time fitting into clear hierarchies of scale according to local, regional, or national functions—functional specialization that reflected the era’s increasingly effective networks of  communication. Europe’s ruling elites also first acquired national rather than regional orientations in these years, as capital cities and courts became the normal sites for at least part of their yearly routines.  Yet  Y et another indicator of the same process was the seventeenth century’s obsession with news. Europe’s Europe’s first daily newspaper, the London Daily Courant, appeared only at the end of the period, in 1702, but many  other news products, like the weekly Parisian Gazette, founded in 1621, had preceded it. Politic Po litical al stab stability ility and impr improvi oving ng commu communicanications underlay two other critical changes that marked the seventeenth century as a period of decisive social advance. First, nearly everywhere capital cities grew  dramatically,, approachin dramatically approachingg modern dimensions that  would have been unthinkable in the medieval world. By 170 1700 0 bot both h Lon Londo don n and Paris Paris had more than 500,000 inhabitants, Amsterdam 200,000. As E. A.  Wrigley  W rigley has argued in regard to London, the very existence of such cities had important effects beyond their boundaries. Many more people had some experience of this urban life than population statistics alone indicate, because these cities were sites of continual population turnover, with rapid in- and outmigration. These very large concentrations of people also focused demand for products of all kinds, encouragin cour agingg econ economic omic acti activitie vitiess that expe expensiv nsivee tran transsportation renderedofimpossible in the more scattered, isolated economy the sixteenth century. Second, Seco nd, the seve seventee nteenth nth cent century ury witn witnesse essed d the development of new institutions for mobilizing  resource reso urces, s, aga again in in way wayss not pre previou viously sly poss possible ible.. The Amsterdam stock market opened in 1611, selling shares in the Dutch East India Company. The stock exchange was one of several Dutch institutions that mobilized the wealth of those outside the narrow world of commercial specialists toward economically productive, even adventu adventurous rous purposes. The Dutch model spread slowly, but by the end of  the period similar systems were in place in England and France, allowing both countries to experience stock-market booms and then collapses in 1720, En-

SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATIONS

The ethics of economic life.   The seventeenth century was an especially competitive era that divided  winners from losers in fierce, unpredictable ways. The fields of social action had widened, depriving actors of the protections that localism once afforded against distant rivals, while political and social tumults disrupted even the most sensible economic plans, destroying capital and closing markets, but also opening  opportunities for the aggressive or lucky. After the mid-seventeenth mid-seventeen th century century,, awarene awareness ss of competition became widespread among European intellectuals, and ethical restraints on it diminished sharply. Changing  views of lending money at interest illustrate this shift. During the Middle Ages, theorists taught that fellow  economic actors should be treated first as Christians, to whom assistance should be freely offered, without payment of interest. In the seventeenth century both Protestant and Catholic theorists came instead to accept the idea that commercial transactions had their own laws that could not be subject to moral regulation, and condemnation of more basic moral failings  was weakening as well. English writers after 1660 regularly argued that pride, greed, self-interest, and vanity formed necessary underpinnings of a successful economy. Still more dramatically, the Anglo-Dutch  writer Bernard Mandeville (1670– 1733), in his  The  Fable of the Bees   (1714), summarized the argument that private vices would produce public prosperity, further eroding moral restraints on individuals’ actions in the social realm. On the Continent even the Catholic moralist Pierre Nicole (1625–1695) argued that self-interest rather than altruism formed the basis of public life. Cultural changes conjoined with political and economic circumstances to intensify the era’s economic and social competitiveness. The rural social order.   The period period from 1590 to 1720 witnessed significant reshufflings of the social order. Peasants experienced these changes most brutally, an important fact given that they constituted the vast majority of seventee seventeenth-centu nth-century ry Europe Europe’’s population, fewer than two-thirds of the total only  in the Dutch Republic, at least three-fourths three-fourths in most other regions. This group experienced a dramatic change in its relations to the most basic means of  production, producti on, the land itself, essentially amounting amounting to a process of expropriation. The process varied significantly from one region to another because medieval landowning landowning patterns themselves varied. varied. In England, most land belonged to nobles and gentry gentry,, but peasants enjoyed relatively secure long-term leases; in France and Germany peasants had direct owner-

gland with the South Sea Bubble, France with the  John Law affair. 172

 

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ship of most land, subject to loose feudal overlordship. Whatever the initial arrangements, large landowners everywhere took much more direct control of the land during the early modern period, with the crucial change coming at its outset, between about 1570 and 1630. Other changes accompanied and magnified these changes in ownership. Real wages diminished, partly as a result of sixteenth-century  population growth, and agricultural leases became more expensive; in central and eastern Europe working conditions deteriorated, with landowners exercising increasing control over peasants’ movements and requiring of them several days of unpaid labor each week. The mid-sixteenth-century countryside had been dominated by nearly independent independent peasant peasants, s, able more or less to survive from the produce of their own land. By 1650 most regions were dominated instead by large landowners and their economic allies, the large-scale tenant farmers who managed the actual actu al business business of far farming ming and mar marketi keting. ng. Most pea peassants had become essentially wage laborers, owning  cottages and small amounts of land, but needing to  work for others in order to survive. Both the well-to-do farm managers and the agricultural laborers had been forcibly inserted into a  market economy, with enormous attendant insecurities. The laborers now had to purchase their food on the open market and sell their labor, while the large tenant farmers had to market their produce and assemble the cash needed needed to pay pay rents and taxes. Indeed, the expropriation of the peasantry tended to advance fastest in regions that were especially open to commercial currents. These facts produced a seeming paradox in some regions of Europe. Precisely where capitalist ital ist and mode moderniz rnizing ing influ influence encess wer weree stro stronge ngest, st, around cities and in areas (such as east-Elbian Germany) especially open to international trade, peasants

  More intense competition came to characterize the world of urban business as  well. Seventeenth-century business was especially vulnerable to the period’s instability, for at its highest levels lev els bus busine iness ss wa wass ine inextr xtrica icably bly bou bound nd up wit with h sys system temss of political power. The connection was most direct in the case of state finance, among the most profitable sectors of early modern business. Governments had been poor credit risks since the early fourteenth century, and as a result soldiers, military suppliers, and other creditors would accept only cash; governments also had difficulty in moving money across long distances (necessary in an era of international warfare) and in assuring the regular flow of money over time (necessary since tax collections did not coincide with expendit expe nditure ures). s). Busi Businessm nessmen en with esta establish blished ed cred credit it could meet all these needs, and their indispensability  assured them enormous profits. The Dutch banker Louis de Geer (1587–1652) exemplified these possibilities when he took over large sectors of the Swedish economy,, in exchange for lending money to Gustavus economy

 were most vulnerable rable to the era’During s extra extraecono economic mic shock shocks, s, notably to vulne its harvest failures. the seventeenth century starvation was more common in the most advanced regions of France, those nearest Paris, than in regions regi ons of poore poorerr land land and more back backwar ward d agri agricultu cultural ral technique.  Jan de Vries has drawn attention to a second paradox in this history, history, the fact that expropriation and declining wages accompanied a steady growth in the number and range of consumer goods that villagers purchased. By 1720 death inventories across Europe reveal villagers’ purchases of coffee, tobacco, brightly  printed cloths, even books and prints. De Vries explains this paradox by what he calls the ‘‘industrious revolution,’’ a readiness to take on (or insist that familial dependents take on) paid work of all kinds so as to orient the household as fully as possible toward

 Adolphus (ruled 1611– 1632). thethe same governmental untrustworthiness thatBut made financiers’ fortunes regularly unmade them as well, for governments had little hesitation about defaulting on loans as soon as comp competin etingg bank bankers ers off offere ered d alte alternat rnative ive sources of cash. In France these tacit bankruptcies  were often accompanie accompanied d by show trials in which financiers were prosecuted for their excess profits. After the most famous of these in 1661, the financier and official Nicolas Fouquet barely escaped with his life, and was condemned to lifelong imprisonment in an isolated fortress. Faced with these risks, the business class could never cut itself off from leading aristocrats and officials, who supplied the political protection and introductions duct ions that bank bankers ers need needed ed in such tumultuous tumultuous times.. Gov times Governme ernments nts relin relinquis quished hed their reli reliance ance on

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the marketplace and its money-making possibilities, thereby diminishing the share of household effort devoted to domestic life. Businessmen responded to this widening of the rural labor pool by bringing  some of their manufacturing work to the countryside, especiall espe ciallyy such easi easily ly tran transpor sportable table work as text textile ile manufacturing. By the late seventeenth century, rural manufacturing had become commonplace in France, England, Engl and, and part partss of Germ Germany any.. Euro Europe pe rema remained ined overwhelmingly a rural society, with about the same perc pe rcen enta tage ge of ur urba bani nite tess in 17 1700 00 as in 16 1600 00,, bu butt ma manu nu-facturing had acquired considerable importance. It counted for about one-fourth of French economic activity in 1700, and much more in England and the United Provinces. Businesss and the cities. Busines

 

SECTION 2: THE PERIODS OF SOCIAL HISTORY 

such financiers at very different rates. In the Netherlands reliable state finances were established in the mid-seven midseventeen teenth th cent century ury,, and the Engl English ish foll followed owed their model. The Bank of England (created in 1694) placed state loans on reliable foundations and diminished the need for the great financiers. France on the other hand continued to need their services until the revolution in 1789. Power and commerce mixed in other ways during the seventeenth century, most directly in the exploitation of Europe’ Europe’ss colonial empires. empires. Already Already in the sixteenth century Spain and Portugal had organized imperial systems that sustained important mercantile networks. For the rest of Europe, however, profitmaking maki ng impe imperial rialism ism was essen essentiall tiallyy a seve seventee nteenthnthcentury creation. The first Dutch efforts to trade with the Far East came in 1595; in 1600 the monopoly  Dutch East India Company began operations, with permission from the state to undertake such essentially political tasks as establishing a military and diplomatic presence in the regions where it traded. The company used these rights to the fullest, so that by  the 1630s it held a string of fortresses and permanent tradin tra dingg cen center terss acr across oss the Ind Indian ian Oce Ocean an and had forced Asian rulers into a series of advantageous trade agreements. England attempted to keep up with its own monopoly East India Company, but above all launched concerted efforts to profit from the Americas. Until 1661 French efforts were much less impressive. Thereafter, Jean-Baptiste Colbert channeled state support to imperial ventures as well, financing a  large French navy and encouraging French efforts in Canada, India, and the Caribbean. By the end of the period, colonial products— tobacco, toba cco, sugar sugar,, cotton cotton cloth from India—had beco become me crucial goods of European commerce. In the French case especially, state encouragement of imperial com-

The seventeenth century thus offered extraordinary new opportunities to the minority of businessmen who enjoy enjoyed ed gove governmen rnmental tal conne connection ctions. s. Conte Contemmporaries believed that they had never seen so much  wealth, or wealth so conspicuously displayed, as that of the era’s great financiers and merchants. Farther down the commercial commercial hierarchy, hierarchy, however, however, the business atmosphe atmo sphere re of the seve seventee nteenth nth cent century ury was much more diffi difficult. cult. Stag Stagnant nant popu populatio lation n and wide widening  ning  competition threatened what had once been comfortable markets, and cities suffered as trades shifted to the countryside, with its relatively cheap labor and freedom from regulation. For shopkeepers and artisans, the result was a contraction of business and a  tendency for established families to protect their situations by every available available means. In many regions this meant an enthusiastic turn to an institution inherited from the Middle Middle Ages, Ages, the guilds. guilds. These organizatio organizations ns regulated activity within specific trades, controlling  the entry of newcomers, setting prices and wages, and determini dete rmining ng stan standar dards ds of trai training ning and wor work. k. The French government chartered a long series of new  guilds in the later seventeenth century, partly for its own fiscal reasons (guild positions could be sold), but also in response to businessmen’s eagerness for protection. For ordinary urban workers, this rise of regulation latio n mean meantt a sign significa ificant nt wors worsenin eningg in cond condition itionss and a widening of class differences within the workshop. The movement of workers into masterships became significan signi ficantly tly more difficult, difficult, as the guil guild d struc structure ture hardened and new masterships were reserved mainly  for those who already had familial familial connections connections within the trade. Workers who lacked these supports were likely to remain in subordinate positions throughout their lives, forming a permanent and often resentful  working class.

merce wasintervention, only part ofdesigned a larger to program state economic serve theofstate’s political needs by ensuring success in overseas markets. This mercantilist program involved both state investment in factories and infrastructure like roads and canals canals and the close regulation regulation of priv private ate busin business. ess. Colbert established a group of commerce inspectors to ensure the quality of French goods, essential, he believed, for sustaining sales. The Dutch East India  Compan Com panyy rel relied ied muc much h less on sta state te sup suppor port, t, its str streng ength th lying ultimately in the vitality of Dutch commercial life, but even it owed something to political calculations. Dutch leaders encouraged its development and accorded it extensive powers partly in hopes of undermining Iberian monopolies in Asia and Brazil, an important advantage in the Eighty Years’ War with Spain.

Th The e ne new bour urge geoi oisi and an d tr trad adit itio nall ru rulin ling  elites.  w Forbo embatt embattled ledsieebusinessmen, aniona appealing re-g  sponse to the difficult times was flight from the marketplace into social realms that promised more stability.. Lan ity Land d off offer ered ed one suc such h op optio tion, n, an and d the ear early  ly  modern period witnessed a rapid rapid increase in land purchases by the urban rich. The later sixteenth and early  seventeenth centuries apparently were the focal point for such purchases, for after 1650 falling rents made landowning much less attractive, and new forms of  safe investment had become more readily available. available.By  By  that point, however, leading bourgeois in most European cities controlled substantial shares of the surrounding territories. A second possibility fitted well  with this option, that of acquiring positions in the growing bureaucracies of the period. Civil services expanded everywhere during the early modern period,

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giving bourgeois bourgeois at all levels opportunities opportunities to abandon the uncertainties of commerce for the reliable income and social prestige of public office. France, where public positions were bought and sold, demonstrates in quantitative terms the allure of  this mode of life: Between 1600 and 1660, office prices there rose about fivefold, as monied families sought to secure for their sons the tranquil security of  officialdom. Though less easily measured, there seems to have been similar enthusiasm for office in the other European states. Most of these new landowners and officials continued continued to reside in the cities, but they now  resembled Europe’s traditional elites, its military nobilities, and at their highest levels they began to claim noble status. At the French Estates General of 1614– 1615, royal officials had sat with the commoners, but by 1650 the leading leading judges and officials officials were generally  recognized as nobles, with the full range of noble privileges. In Spain, England, and the German states as we well, ll, soc societ ietyy gen genera erally lly ag agree reed d tha thatt suc such h fig figure uress counted among the gentlemen, whether the title was formal (as in most of Europe) or informal (as in England). The accession of new families to noble status  was one of several changes affecting Europe’ Europe’ss ruling  elites during the early modern period. By their very  presence, the new nobles brought brought higher levels of education and urbanity to the nobilities, and in this their impact closely paralleled the growing importance of  court life for many nobles. Seventeenth-century Seventeenth-century monarchs were eager to have their greatest nobles nearby  and esta establish blished ed elabo elaborate rate cour courts ts for the purp purpose. ose. Louis  XIV’ss Versailles, to which he moved permanently in  XIV’ 1682, was only the most dramatic example of this policy.. By 1700 imitations of Versailles policy Versailles had sprung up all over Europe, and even the court of the Dutch Republic had acquired a new prominence. As a result,

By 1720 many Europeans had become aware that the Continent’s center of social and economic geography  had shifted from the Mediterranean to northwestern countries like England and the United Provinces. Provinces. The establishment of New World colonies and Atlantic trade do not sufficiently explain the shift. A century  after Columbus, Spain remained Europe’s dominant political power, partly because of its control of the  Atlantic, and Italy remained its leading commercial

the nobilityury in general was far moreseventeenth-century urban than its sixteenth-cent sixteenth-century predecessors.In predecessors. In Spain and Italy nobles had always played a prominent role in city life, but in the seventeenth century northerners too were drawn to the entertainments and elegance of the city, and urban centers responded to their needs. In the years around 1600, a number of  urban development projects were undertaken in London, Paris, Madrid, and other cities so as to make these cities more attractive to this new class of resident. Nineteenth-century historians tended to view  the nobles’ urbanization and their increasing focus on the court as signs of weakness, indicative of declining  political power and uncertainty about their proper social role. Twentieth-ce wentieth-century ntury scholarship, however, however, has stressed the nobility’ nobility’ss continuing vitality despite these changes, and to some extent because of them. New 

center. among the1590, chief profiteers of Genoese the earlybankers Atlanticwere empires. After however, the United Provinces quickly established themselves as Europe’s richest region, with a standard of  living unheard of elsewhere. This wealth rested on economic modernity modernity,, a situation in which social structures encouraged entrepreneurship and innovation.  With few natural resources, the Dutch established not only the most productive agriculture in Europe—managing to export food even as Mediterranean rane an regions regions experienced experienced harvest harvest fail failures—but ures—but a variety of novel industries as well. Their example suggested to contemporary observers that wealth derived from social organization, rather than nature, and that such wealth could allow surprising political successes. Despite its population of about only 1.9 million inhabitants, the Dutch Republic defeated the Spanish

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families of officials brought new wealth to the order and assured that aristocratic values would continue to shape governmental policies. If stronger governments eliminated some political powers powers that medieval nobles had exercised, they also created new ones. Nobles had numerous new positions available to them in the expanding armies and bureaucracies of the period, and they profited from the development of courts. More fundamentally, governments took their opinions seriousl rio uslyy and tailor tailored ed pro progra grams ms to mee meett the their ir nee needs. ds. Until about 1660 even economic circumstances tended to shine for the nobles. Food prices and land rents both remained high, so that nobles’ estates remained profitable. There was one exception to this favorable situation, however. For Europe’s poorer nobles, the early modern period represented a real social crisis— enough to provoke concerned governments into substantial policy innovations. The benefits of stronger government flowed mainly to nobles able to educate themselves for a public role, whether in the army, at court, or in the civil service. ‘‘Mere nobles,’’ who had only their claims to high birth and privilege, could not keep up in this world, and significant numbers left the order.

GEOGRAPHICAL DIFFERENTIATION

 

SECTION 2: THE PERIODS OF SOCIAL HISTORY 

Empire at the height of its power and in the 1670s fought Louis XIV to a stand-off. By that point, the Republic’s lead over the rest of Europe had begun to diminish, and after 1720 the Dutch fell behind England glan d in econ economic omic activity activity.. Yet Yet even then the Repu Republic blic remained the center of European economic innovation, and its export industries continued to develop. The eighteenth century’s great economic success stories, chiefly in England, would reflect the influence of  this model. The Dutch model had social and ethical as well as economic implications, for the United Provinces represented an anomaly among European societies. They formed a republic in which cities had the decisive political voice; they tolerated multiple religions, despite occasional flare-ups of intolerant Calvinist orthodoxy; thod oxy; above all, they acco accorde rded d high higher er stat status us to commerce than to warfare or noble birth. Over the years 1590 to 1720, this combination of social arrangements seemed to have been rewarded with ex-

traordinary success, even as Spain sank into economic troubles and French industrial development faltered. In his  Persian Letters  (1721),   (1721), the French philosopher Charles Louis de Secondat de Montesquieu Montesquieu attributed some of this contrast to Protestantism itself, arguing  that their reli religion gion encouraged encouraged Dutc Dutch h and English merchants in especially vigorous pursuit of worldly  advantage. advantag e. Late-twentie Late-twentieth-century th-century scholars have been skeptical, but they have suggested that the relative freedom of the United Provinces and England was moree con mor condu duciv civee to eco econom nomic ic ent enterp erpris risee tha than n the growing authoritarianism of seventeenth-century Catholicism. Thus the weakening weakening of religious values during the eighteenth century, century, following what the Fren French ch literary historian Paul Paul Hazard Hazard termed ‘‘the ‘‘the crisis of the European mind,’’ made emulating the Dutch easier for elite elitess throu throughou ghoutt Euro Europe. pe. With Without out reno renouncin uncing  g  monarchy mona rchy,, nobil nobility ity,, or war warfare fare,, Euro Europea pean n socie societies ties  would turn in fundamentally different directions directions after 1720.

See also  The  The World Economy and Colonial Expansion (in this volume);  Absolutism;  Absolutism; Bureaucracy; Capitalism and Commercialization; The European Marriage Pattern; Health and Disease; Land Tenure; The Population of Europe: Early Modern Demographic Patterns; War and Conquest  (volume  (volume 2);  Moral   Moral Econo Economy my and Luddism (volume ism  (volume 3);   The Household  (volume   (volume 4);   Journalism; Schools and Schooling  (volume 5).

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