Download Commercial Revolution

Commercial Revolution
As the World Turns
or
Day in the lives of Europeans of
the 1600’s
Time of Confusion and Flux
Why????
Put on a time line: Tension mount as secular
issues seem to take over
• Reformation: 95 thesis, Burning of Papal Bull, Peasant
Rebellion, Henry’s act of supremacy, Calvin in Geneva, Peace of
Augsburg
• Catholic Response: Council of Trent, Jesuits
• Philip’s Crusade: War against Netherlands, War against
Moslems, War against England
• War of 3 Henry’s, St Bartholomew’s Day Mass., Henry Guise and
Henry III Valois are murdered, Henry IV Bourbon takes over,
Paris, Edict of Nantes, Henry IV killed,
• Thirty years War: Start 1618 , 4 phrases, Treaty of Westphalia
Themes to help you make
connections
• Religious wars ended with Treaty of
Westphalia
• Increasingly secular issues drive national
rivalries: dynastic rivalries, economics
• Domestic scene: struggle between new
monarchy, old landed aristocracy, new
nobility and new dynamic middle class
– Strangely the new monarchy wants to
consolidate his power, centralize it and uses
absolutism as a method against the landed
aristocracy who wants to keep their old
powers from the medieval period
Commercial Revolution
• Transformation of the economy of
Europe from agrarian and rural to
commercial, industrial and urban
based
Occurred over a long period of time—
17th century or 1600’s at the same time
as the last of the religious wars and the
rise of absolutism
Commercial Revolution
• Starts with the explorations
• Leads to increase in world trade and new
goods: shift of economic power from the
Mediterranean sea to the Atlantic
• Influx of gold leads to inflation but
increase in population causes demand to
increase pushing up prices.
• Hurts the Aristocracy: income from land,
fixed, hard to find new sources, enclosed
their lands, forces tenets off land,
population shifts
• Growing significance of Middle class: new
entrepreneurs, independent of the guilds,
capitalists, expansion of commercial
interests
• Middle class befriended the monarchy
• Other social effects; slavery, migration
overseas, spread of European culture
• Need for colonies: outlet for population,
raw materials, revenue for the king, leads
to trade wars, conflicts on the continent
spread to the colonies (world wars)
• Charters: monarchy issued monopolies to
charter companies that were owned by
stock holders who wanted a profit.
• Domestic system or putting out system or
cottage system
• Mercantilism or Bullionism
• Price revolution: slow gradual rise in
prices, debasing of currency, flow of gold
new world, rise of capitalism, new trade in
commodities and luxuries
• Labor force separate from ownership
unlike the earlier guilds,
• Tariff walls, and subsidized exports
Rural Peasants
• Small yeoman or independent farmer
• Peasants: sharecroppers etc.
Aristocracy
• Noblese de sword: or old aristocrcy
• Noblese de robe: or new nobility
• Used enclosure to cope with loss of
income due to inflation and set rents
Bourgeoise or Middle class
• Haute bourgeoise vs. petite bourgeoise
• Urban
• Professionals allies of the new
monarchy
• Increased dynamically in 1600 due to
commerce—money economy
Lower classes in urban
areas
• Unskilled uneducated urban poor
• Wage earners: day workers
Impact of the Commercal
Revolution
• Price revolution: inflation
• Changing trade practices and institutions:
capitalism, Joint stock companies,
entrpreneurship, charters, Mercantialism,
banking, insurance industry, new
commodities etc.
• Leads to new social patterns and
interaction
• Affects on education
• Affects on agriculture: enclosure, rural
poor, new crops, life expectancy
Economic changes impact the social
scene
look at Hogarth, Reynolds,
Gainsborough, Chardin, Rembrandt,
Hals, Leyster, Vermeer
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Food
Dress
Homes
Furniture
Leisure time activities
Manners
Education and language
Health
Social Changes with the
reformation
• Luther stressed:
– Importance of education for both men
and women
– Changing role for women: wife mother
and partner in business
– New divorce laws
– Later marriages: men late 20’s , women early 20’s
– Nuclear family not extended family
• Calvin
– Elect
– Importance of education
– Intolerance
– Theocracy
– Morality legislated by the church
Other gender issues
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Frequent remarriages for men
Increase in premarital sex
Increase in #illegitimate children
Wet nurses for elite ranks
Children 8 to 13 apprenticeships,
school, domestic servants
William Hogarth
• English
• Commentary on
–social
–Economic
–political life in late 17th
century
arrested
Apprehended
Artists
Bedlam
Beer Alley
Gin Alley
Convassing the
voters
House of Commons
Enraged
• Party
Foundlings
Funeral
Gaming
Heir from Rakes Progress
The Heir Marries
Operas
Prison
Spinners
Looms Pre industrial England
Tavern
Toilet
Enraged
Ancien Regime
Old Regime
1600’s and 1700’s
Prior to French
Revolution
Characteristics
Aristocratic elite: old legal
privileges, tax exempt, political
privileges, socially elite
Urban centers : guilds declining,
new middle class trying to show
economic status , wants to be
accepted with elite
Rural Peasants high taxes and
feudal dues
Importance of
Tradition
Hierarchy and
Privilege very
visible
• Boucher
Chardin
Gainsborough