Download Jenny MacMichael Period 5 11/ 15/10 Toward a New

Jenny MacMichael
Period 5
11/ 15/10
Toward a New-World View: Chapter 18
The Expansion of Europe in the 18th century: Chapter 19
Chapter 18
1. In the course of the 18th century, the traditional way of thinking underwent a
fundamental transformation known as the scientific revolution. A new critical, scientific,
and very “modern” world-view took shape.
2. Aristotle believed that a motionless earth was fixed at the center of the universe. Around
it moved ten separate transparent crystal spheres: the moon, sun, the five known planets,
and the fixed stars. Beyond the tenth sphere was Heaven, with the throne of God and the
souls of the saved. Angels kept the spheres moving in perfect order.
3. Aristotle had distinguished between the world of the celestial spheres and that of earth.
While the spheres consisted of a perfect, incorruptible fifth essence, the earth was made up
if four imperfect, changeable elements. The “light” elements (air and fire) naturally moved
upward, while the “heavy” elements (water and earth) naturally moved downward. These
natural directions did not always prevail however because they were often mixed and could
be affected by an outside force. He also believed that a uniform force moved an object at a
constant speed and that the object would stop as soon as the force was removed.
4. Copernicus was uninterested in astrology and felt that Ptolemy’s cumbersome and
occasionally inaccurate rules detached from the majesty of a perfect Creator. He thought
that the sun, rather than the earth, was at the center of the universe. Never questioning
Aristotle’s belief in crystal spheres or the idea that circular motion was most perfect and
divine, Copernicus theorized that the stars and planets, including earth, moved around a
fixed sun. Yet he was cautious, and did not publish On the Revolutions of the Heavenly
Spheres until the year of his death in 1543.
5. By characterizing the earth as just another planet, Copernicus destroyed the basic idea of
Aristotle – that the earthly world was quite different from the heavenly one. Where, then,
was the realm of perfection, or the Heaven and the throne of God? Thus the Copernican
hypothesis brought sharp attacks from religious leaders, especially Protestants. For
instance, Martin Luther and John Calvin condemned him, calling him a “fool” and ridiculing
him. Catholic reaction was milder at first.
6. Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) was an astronomer who agreed with Copernicus. Born into a
leading Danish noble family, he was impressed at an early age when a partial eclipse of the
sun occurred exactly as expected, which seemed “divine” to him. He established himself as
Europe’s leading astronomer with his detailed observations of the new star of 1572. He
built the most sophisticated observatory of his day.
7. Brahe’s assistant, Johannes Kelper (1571-1630) developed the three famous laws of
planetary motion. The three laws: First, he demonstrated in 1609 that the orbits of the
planets around the sun are elliptical rather than circular. Second, he demonstrated that the
planets do not have a uniform speed in their orbits, and third, in 1619 he showed that the
time a planet takes to make its complete orbit is precisely related to its distance from the
sun.
8. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) challenged all the old ideas about motion. His great
achievement was the elaboration and consolidation of the experimental method; rather
than speculate about what might or should happen, he conducted controlled experiments to
find out exactly what did happen. In his famous experiment, he showed that a uniform force,
gravity, produced a uniform acceleration. He also formulated the law of inertia, and
eventually applied this to astronomy.
9. In 1624 Pope Urban VIII permitted Galileo to write about different possible systems of
the world as long as he did not presume to judge which one actually existed. His 1632 work,
Dialogue of the Two Chief Systems of the World, openly ridiculed the traditional views of
Aristotle and Ptolemy and defended those of Copernicus. The papal Inquisition therefore
tried him for heresy. He was imprisoned and threatened with torture, in which he recanted.
10. Newton published Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1687. This
accomplishment was to integrate in a single explanatory system the astronomy of
Copernicus, as corrected by Kepler’s laws, with the physics of Galileo and his predecessors.
The key feature of the Newtonian synthesis was the law of universal gravitation. According
to this law, every body in the universe attracts every other body in the universe in a precise
mathematical relationship.
11. The first factor that caused the scientific revolution was the long-term contribution of
medieval intellectual life and medieval universities. By the 13th century, permanent
universities with professors and large student bodies had been established in western
Europe to train the lawyers, doctors, and church leaders that society required. By 1300
philosophy had taken its place alongside law, medicine, and theology. With this framework,
science was able to emerge as a minor but distinct branch of philosophy.
12. Second factor that caused the scientific revolution: the Renaissance. The Renaissance
also stimulated scientific progress. The recovery of the finest works of Greek mathematics
greatly improved European mathematics well into the early seventeenth century. The
recovery of more texts also showed that classical mathematicians had their differences. Its
pattern of patronage, especially in Italy, was often scientific as well as artistic and
humanistic.
13. The navigational problems of long sea voyages in the age of overseas expansion were a
third factor in the scientific revolution. Ship captains needed to be able to chart their
positions as accurately as possible so that reliable maps could be drawn and the risks of
international trade reduced. Latitude was easily fixed, and science was turned to in order to
solve the pressing problem of finding longitude.
14. At Gresham College scientists had an important, honored role in society for the first time
in history. They became the main center of scientific activity in England in early 1600s. It
also led to the establishment of the Royal Society of London.
15. Better instruments (e.g. telescope, barometer, thermometer, pendulum clock,
microscope, and air pump) were part of a fourth factor in the scientific revolution, the
development of better ways of obtaining knowledge about the world.
16. The English politician and writer Francis Bacon was the greatest early propagandist for
the new experimental method. He argued that new knowledge had to be pursued through
empirical, experimental research. His contribution was to formalize the empirical method
into the general theory of inductive reasoning known as empiricism. He claimed that the
empirical method would result in more and highly practical, useful knowledge.
17. The French philosopher Rene Descartes came up with Cartesian dualism. His reasoning
ultimately reduced all substances to “matter” and “mind,” or the physical and the spiritual.
This view, which consists of two fundamental entities, is known as Cartesian dualism.
18. The Catholic church supposedly suppressed scientific theories that conflicted with its
teachings and thus discouraged scientific progress. All religions (Catholic, Protestant, and
Jewish) opposed the Copernican system until about 1630, by which time the scientific
revolution was definitely in progress. The Catholic church was initially less hostile than the
other religious leaders.
19. Protestant countries became quite “proscience,” especially if the country lacked a strong
religious authority capable of imposing religious orthodoxy on scientific questions. This was
especially the case with Protestant England after 1630. English religious conflicts became so
intense that the authorities could not impose religious unity on anything, including science.
20. The rise of modern science has many consequences, some of which are still unfolding.
First, it went hand in had with the rise of a new and expanding social group – the
international scientific community. Members of this community were linked together by
common interests and shared values. Science became quite competitive. Second, the
scientific revolution introduced not only new knowledge about nature but also a new and
revolutionary way of obtaining such knowledge – the modern scientific method. Third, the
scientific revolution had few consequences for economic life and the living standards of the
masses until the late 1700s. The scientific revolution of the 1600s was first and foremost an
intellectual revolution – for more than 100 years its greatest impact was on how people
thought and believed.
21. The scientific revolution was the single most important factor in the creation of the new
world-view of the eighteenth century Enlightenment. This world-view, which had played a
large role in shaping he modern mind, grew out of a rich mix of ideas. The most important
and original idea of the Enlightenment was that the methods of natural science could and
should be used to examine and understand all aspects of life. This is what intellects mean by
reason. This rationalism brought conflicts with established churches. A second important
concept was that the scientific method was capable of discovering the laws of human
society as well as those of nature. Social science was thus born. Its birth led to the third key
idea, that of progress. The Enlightenment was profoundly secular.
22. The most famous and influential popularizer was a versatile French man of his letters,
Bernard de Fontenelle (1657-1757). He set out to make science witty and entertaining for a
broad nonscientific audience – as easy to read as a novel. Though challenging, he largely
succeeded.
23. A second uncertainty involved the whole question of religious truth. Some people asked
if ideological conformity in religious matters was really necessary, others skeptically asked
if religious truth could ever be known with absolute certainty and concluded that it could
not. This was skepticism in the Enlightenment. The most famous of these skeptics was
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), a French Huguenot who despised Louise XIV. He critically
examined the religious beliefs and persecutions of the past. He demonstrated that human
beliefs had been extremely varied and very often mistaken, concluding that nothing can
ever be known beyond all doubt. In religion as in philosophy, humanity’s best hope was
open-minded toleration. Bayle’s skepticism was very influential.
24. John Locke’s Essay Concerning Hyman Understanding is considered one of the most
influential books in history. It brilliantly set fourth a new theory about how human beings
learn and form their ideas. In doing so, he rejected the prevailing view of Descartes, who
had held that all people are born with certain basic ideas and ways of thinking. He insisted
that all ideas are derived from experience. The human mind at birth is like a blank tablet
(tabula rasa), on which the environment writes the individual’s understanding and beliefs.
Education and social instruments therefore determine human development, for good or for
evil.
25. By the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, a large portion of western Europe’s
educated elite had embraced many of the new ideas. This acceptance was the work of one of
history’s most influential groups of intellectuals, the philosophes. They proudly proclaimed
that they were finally bringing the light of knowledge to their ignorant fellow creatures in
an Age of Enlightenment. Philosophe is the French word for “philosopher,” and it was in
France that the Enlightenment reached its highest development. There were three main
reasons for this. First, French was the international language of the educated classes in the
1700s, which is the class of people that Enlightenment ideas often lay in the hands of.
Second, French absolutism and religious orthodoxy remained strong, but not too strong.
Third, the French philosophes were indeed philosophers, asking fundamental philosophical
questions about the meaning of life, God, human nature, good and evil, and cause and effect.
They were determined to reach and influence all the French economic and social elites,
many of which were joined together in simply “the public.”
26. The baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) was one of the greatest philosophes who had
works that were very effective at transmitting ideas to the public. The Persian Letters of
1721 is an extremely influential social satire. He was inspired by the example of the physical
sciences, and he set out to apply the critical method to the problem of government in the
1748 The Spirit of Laws. The result was a complex comparative study of republics,
monarchies, and despotisms. Showing that forms of government were shaped by history,
geography, and customs, he focused on the conditions that would promote liberty and
prevent tyranny. He argued that despotism could be avoided if there were a separation of
powers, with political power divided and shared by a variety of classes. His idea had a great
impact on France’s elite.
27. Perhaps the finest representative of a small number of elite Frenchwomen and their
scientific accomplishments during the Enlightenment, Madame de Chatelet suffered
nonetheless because of her gender. She became uncertain of her ability to make important
scientific discoveries, so she concentrated on spreading the ideas of others. She didn’t doubt
that women’s limited scientific contributions in the past were due to limited and unequal
education. She once wrote that if she were a ruler, she would reform for women’s rights.
28. Like almost all of the philosophes, Voltaire was a reformer, not a revolutionary, in social
and political matters. He was eventually appointed royal historian in 1743 and he portrayed
Louis XIV as the dignified leader of his age. He also began a large correspondence with
Frederick the Great, and after the death of his beloved Emilie, accepted Frederick’s
invitation to come brighten up the Prussian court in Berlin. They later quarreled, but he still
admired Frederick as a free thinker and an enlightened monarch.
29. Though Voltaire was considered by many devout Christians to be a shallow blasphemer,
his religious views were influential and quite typical of the mature Enlightenment. He
clearly believed in God, but his was a distant, deistic God. He hated all forms of religious
intolerance, which he believed often led to fanaticism and savage, inhuman actions.
30. The French philosophes’ greatest achievement was the seventeenth volume
Encyclopedia: The rational Dictionary of the Sciences, the Arts, and the Crafts. The two men
set out to find coauthors who would examine the rapidly expanding whole of human
knowledge. Even more fundamentally, they set out to teach people how to think critically
and objectively about all matters. They had to conquer innumerable obstacles.
31. McKay says the overall effect for the Encyclopedia was “revolutionary” because science
and the industrial arts were exalted, religion and immortality questioned. Intolerance, legal
injustice, and out-of-date social institutions were openly criticized. The writers showed that
human beings could use the process of reasoning to expand human knowledge. They were
convinced that the greater knowledge would result in greater human happiness, for
knowledge was useful and made possible economic, social, and political progress. It was
widely read, and was extremely influential. It summed up the new-world view of the
Enlightenment.
32. Baron Paul d’Holbach argued in his works that human beings were machines completely
determined by outside forces. Free will, God, and immortality of the soul were foolish
myths. His aggressive atheism dealt the unity of the Enlightenment a severe blow.
33. Marie-Jean Caritat, the marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794) hypothesized and tracked
nine staged of human progress that had already occurred and predicted that the tenth
would bring perfection.
34. The Swiss Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) published The Social Contract in 1762.
His contribution was based on two fundamental concepts: the general will and popular
sovereignty. According to Rousseau, the general will is sacred and absolute, reflecting the
common interests of all the people, who have displaced the monarch as the holder of
sovereign power. The general will is not necessarily the will of the majority, however. At
times the general will may be the authentic, long-term needs of the people as correctly
interpreted by a farseeing minority. His concept of the general will appealed greatly to
democrats after 1789.
35. The European market for books grew in the 1700s. The number of books printed rose
greatly from roughly 600 new titles in 1700 to 2,600 in 1780. These figures understate the
shift in French taste because France’s censorship caused many books to be printed abroad
and then smuggled back into the country for “under-the-cloak” sale.
36. Salons were elegant private drawing rooms where a number of talented and often rich
women resided over regular social gatherings. They were important because they
encouraged witty and uncensored observations on literature, science, and philosophy,
which brought the various French elites together and mediated the public’s freewheeling
examination of Enlightenment thought.
37. Frederick II (the Great of Prussia) built on the work of his father, Frederick William I,
which is surprising because he rebelled against his family’s wishes in his early years. He
rejected the cruel life of the barracks and embraced culture and literature, writing poetry
and prose in French, which his father detested.
38. He eventually reached reconciliation with his father and was determined to use the
splendid army that his father left him when he took the throne. Therefore, Frederick II
suddenly (and without warning) invaded Austria (of Maria Theresa), mainly her rich
German province of Silesia. This defied solemn Prussian promises to respect the Pragmatic
Sanction, which guaranteed Maria Theresa’s succession. Her army was no match for
Prussian precision. Now Prussia unquestionably towered above all the other German states
and stood as a European Great Power.
39. The terrible struggle of the Seven Years’ War tempered Frederick and brought him to
consider how more human policies for his subjects might also strengthen the state; thus he
went beyond a superficial commitment to Enlightenment culture for himself and his circle.
He tolerantly allowed his subjects to believe as they wished in religious and philosophical
matters. He promoted the advancement of knowledge. He tried to improve the lives of his
subjects more directly. The legal system and the bureaucracy were his primary tools. He
worked hard and lived modestly. He justified monarchy in terms of practical results and
said nothing of the divine right of kings.
40. Catherine the Great of Russia was one of the most remarkable rulers who ever lived, and
the French philosophes adored her. She was really involved with Enlightenment ideas. She
set out to rule in an enlightened manner. She had three main goals. First, she worked hard
to bring the sophisticated culture of Western Europe back to Russia. To do so, she imported
Western architects, sculptors, musicians, and intellectuals. Her second goal was domestic
reform, and she began her reign with sincere and ambitious projects. Better laws were a
major concern, which she appointed during her reign. She also tried to improve education.
Catherine’s third goal was territorial expansion, and in this respect she was extremely
successful. Expansion helped her keep the nobility happy, for it provided her with vast new
lands to give her faithful servants and many lovers.
41. Maria Theresa introduced major reforms in Austria. Maria Theresa was a remarkable
but old-fashioned absolutist. She was determined to introduce reforms that would make the
state stronger and more efficient. Three aspects of these reforms were most important.
First, she introduced measures aimed at limiting the papacy’s political influence in her
realm. Second, a whole series of administrative reforms strengthened the central
bureaucracy, smoothed out provincial differences, and revamped the tax system, taxing
even the lands of nobles. Third, the government sought to improve the lot of the agricultural
population, cautiously reducing the power of lords over their hereditary surds and their
partially free peasant tenants.
42. Joseph II (son of Maria) moved forward rapidly when he came to the throne in 1780. He
controlled the established Catholic church even more closely in attempt to ensure that it
produced better citizens. He granted religious toleration and civic rights to protect
Protestants and Jews. He abolished serfdom in 1781, and in 1789 he decreed that all
peasant labor obligation be converted into cash payments. These policies would be
considered “enlightened.”
43. After the death of Louis XIV, favored by the duke of Orleans, who governed as a regent of
his five-year-old great-grandson Louis XV, the nobility made a strong comeback. They
restored to the high courts of France (the parliaments) the ancient right to evaluate royal
decrees publically in writing before they were registered and given the force of law. This
restoration of the right to evaluate was a fateful step. By the 1700s the middle-class judges
became essentially private property, passed down from father to son.
44. In 1748 Louis XV appointed finance minister who decreed a 5 percent income tax on
every individual regardless of social status. The result was a vigorous protest from many
sides, led by the influential Parlement of Paris. The monarchy retreated; the new tax was
dropped.
Chapter 19
1. The world of absolutism and aristocracy was very different from the lives of the common
people, which was the overwhelming majority. Life remained a struggle with poverty and
uncertainty because of the landlords and the tax collectors.
2. At the end of the seventeenth century, most of the population was agrarian. At least 80
percent of the people of all western European countries (except Holland) drew their
livelihoods from agriculture. In eastern Europe the percentage was even higher. People put
all their effort into the land, plowing fields and sowing seed, reaping harvests and storing
grain. However, in most regions in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, harvests were poor
or completely failed every 8 or 9 years.
3. The greatest accomplishment of medieval agriculture was the open-field system of village
farming developed by European peasants. That system 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. The fields were open, and the strips were not enclosed into small plots by
fences or hedges. Peasants farmed each large field as a community. Each family followed the
same pattern of plowing, sowing, or harvesting in accordance with tradition and the village
leaders. The problem was exhaustion of the soil. When the community planted wheat year
after year in the field, the soil would deplete and crop failure was certain. Manure was
limited, so they devised a three-year rotation system: a year of wheat or rye bread to be
followed by a year of oats or beans to be followed by a year of fallow (crop-free).
4. In addition to rotating field crops, villages maintained open meadows for hay and natural
pasture. These were called common lands, set aside primarily for the draft horses and oxen
that were necessary in the fields, but open to the cows and pigs of the village community as
well.
5. The peasants of eastern Europe were worst off. They were serfs bound to their lords in
hereditary service. In much of eastern Europe, there were few limitations on the amount of
forced labor the lord could require, and it was common for them to work five or six days of
the week with no pay. Social conditions were better in western Europe.
6. Technological progress offered another possibility. If peasants and their noble landlords
could replace the idle fallow with crops, they could increase the land under cultivation by
50 percent. Elimination of fallow occurred gradually throughout Europe from the middle
1800s and on, introducing an agricultural revolution. The secret of eliminating the fallow
land lies in alternating grain with certain nitrogen-storing crops. New patterns of
organization allowed some farmers to develop increasingly sophisticated patterns of crop
rotation to suit different kinds of soils. For example, farmers in French Flanders used a tenyear rotation, alternating a number of grain, root, and hay crops in a given field on a tenyear schedule.
7. Improvements in farming had multiple effects. The new crops made ideal feed for
animals. Because peasants and larger farmers had more fodder, hay, and root crops for the
winter months, they could build up their small herds of cattle and sheep. More animals
meant more meat and better diets for the people, and more manure for fertilizer and more
grain for bread and porridge.
8. Advocates of improvement argued that innovating agriculturalists needed to enclose and
consolidate their scattered holdings into compact, fenced-in fields in order to farm more
efficiently. They also needed to enclose their individual shares of the natural pasture.
According to the proponents of this enclosure idea, a revolution in village life and
organization was the necessary price of technical progress. This was too much to ask of
many poor rural people, who held small, inadequate holdings or very little land. When the
small landholders and the village poor could effectively oppose the enclosure of the fields
and the common pasture, they did so.
9. The new methods of the agricultural revolution originated in the Low Countries. Holland
led the way. By the mid 1600s, intensive farming was well established throughout much of
the Low Countries. Enclosed fields, continuous rotation, heavy manuring, and a wide variety
of crops were all present. One reason for early Dutch leadership in farming was that the
Low Countries was one of the most densely populated areas in Europe. The towns and cities
in the Low Countries grew tremendously in the 17th century.
10. Cornelius Vermuyden was a famous Dutch engineer. He directed one large drainage
project in Yorkshire and another in Cambridgeshire. In the Cambridge fens, he eventually
reclaimed forty thousand acres, which were then farmed intensively in the Dutch manner.
Swampy wilderness was converted into thousands of acres of some of the best land in
Europe.
11. Jethro Tull was an important English innovator. He adopted a critical attitude toward
accepted ideas about farming and tried to develop better methods through empirical
research. He was enthusiastic about using horses, rather than slow-moving oxen, for
plowing. He also advocated sowing seed with drilling equipment rather than scattering it by
hand. He also suggested selective breeding of ordinary livestock, which was a marked
improvement over the old pattern.
12. By the mid-eighteenth century, English agriculture was in the process of a long and
radical transformation. The eventual result was that by 1870 English farmers were
producing 300 percent more food than they had produced in 1700, although the number of
workers only increased 14 percent.
13. Enclosure was hardly fair. Scholars agree that enclosing the fields came from the
powerful ruling class, the English aristocracy, because they benefited directly from it. Some
historians assert that the open fields were enclosed fairly; with both large and small owners
receiving their fair share after the strips had been surveyed. Others argue that it wasn’t fair,
as the large landowners controlled Parliament, which made the laws. Parliament passed
hundreds of “enclosure acts” which authorized the fencing of open fields. Many peasants
had to sell out their smallholdings in order to pay their share of the expenses. By 1700 a
highly distinctive pattern of landownership and production existed in England. At one
extreme were a few large landowners; at the other, a large mass of landless cottagers who
labored mainly for wages. Tenant farmers were the key to mastering the new methods of
farming. Enclosure did not force people off the land and into the towns by eliminating jobs,
as has sometimes been claimed. At the same time, by eliminating common rights and greatly
reducing the access of poor men and women to the land, the 18th century enclosure
movement marked the completion of two major historical developments in England – the
rise of market-oriented estate agriculture and the emergence of a landless rural proletariat.
14. The practice of selective breeding meant bigger livestock and more meat on the tables of
English families. The picture features a “gigantic champion,” one of the new improved
shorthorn breeds of the Newbus Ox. Such great and fat animals were pictured in the press
and praised by poets.
15. Proletarianization was the transformation of large numbers of small peasant farmers
into landless rural wage earners.
16. European population did not grow at a regular rate. In fact, a “population explosion”
occurred in the 18th century. This remarkable population growth occurred in Europe until
the 20th century.
17. Population growth slowed and stopped in 17th century Europe: widespread poverty was
an undeniable reality; births and deaths, fertility and mortality, were in a crude but effective
balance.
18. The most important advance in preventive medicine during the 18th century was
inoculation against small pox. This was confined mainly to England and did little to reduce
deaths throughout Europe until the later part of the century.
19. Improvements in the water supply and sewage, which were frequently promoted by
strong absolutist monarchs, resulted in somewhat better health and helped reduce such
diseases as typhoid and typhus in some urban areas of western Europe. It also reduced
Europe’s large insect population. Early public health measures helped the decline in
mortality that began with the disappearance of plague and continued into the early 19th
century.
20. The 18th century was a time of canal and road building in western Europe. These
advances in transportation, which were also among the more positive aspects of strong
absolutist states, lessened the impact of local crop failure and famine. Emergency supplies
could be brought in, and starvation became less frequent. Wars became less destructive and
spread fewer diseases. New foods were introduced.
21. By the 18th century, the pressures of rural poverty and the need to employ landless
proletarians were overwhelming the efforts of urban artisans to maintain their traditional
control over industrial production. A new system was expanding, known by many names.
Often called the cottage industry, or “domestic industry” to distinguish it form the factory
industry. Sometimes referred to as “protiondustrialization.” The most appropriate phrase is
commonly known as the putting-out system for the new form of industrial production. The
two main participants were the merchant capitalist and the rural worker. In this system,
the merchant loaned, or “put out” raw materials to several cottage workers, who processed
the raw materials in their own homes and returned the finished product to the merchant. In
all cases this system was a kind of capitalism. Merchants sought to make profits and
increase the capital in their business.
22. The putting-out system grew because it had competitive advantages. Underemployed
labor was abundant, and poor peasants and landless laborers would work for little pay.
Since production in the countryside was not regulated, workers and merchants could
change procedures and experiment whenever they wanted to. Because they did not need to
meet the standards that maintained quality but discouraged the development of new
methods, the cottage industry produced many different kinds of goods.
23. Rural manufacturing did not spread across Europe at an even rate. It first appeared in
England and developed most successfully there, especially for the spinning and weaving of
woolen cloth.
24. Continental countries developed rural industry more slowly. The royal government in
France had come to believe that the best way to help the poor in the countryside was to
encourage the growth of cottage manufacturing. Governments in Germany and the Low
Countries also gradually reduced the power of guilds in the countryside. The later part of
the 18th century witnessed a remarkable expansion of rural industry in certain densely
populated regions of continental Europe.
25. Every one of all ages in each family involved in the cottage industry would have a task.
Though ordinarily productive, there was always a serious imbalance in this family
enterprise: the work of four or five spinners was needed to keep one weaver steadily
employed. Therefore, they had to constantly find more thread and more spinners. The need
for more thread often led to the weaver and his wife to become small capitalist employers.
There were constant disputes over the weights of materials and the quality of the cloth
between merchants and employers. Merchants accused workers of stealing raw materials,
and weavers complained that merchants delivered underweight bales. Another problem
(for the merchant capitalists) was that rural labor was cheap, scattered, and poorly
organized. It was hard to control; cottage workers tended to work in spurts.
26. Monday was called “holy Monday” because inactivity was so religiously observed. It is
significant because workers would often work in spurts: After they got paid Saturday
afternoon, they tended to drink and relax for two to three days. Ambitious merchant
capitalists intensified their search for ways to produce more efficiently and to squeeze more
work out of “undisciplined” cottage workers.
27. European mercantilism was a system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the
power of the state. Mercantilism aimed particularly at creating a favorable balance of
foreign trade in order to increase a country’s stock of gold.
28. Early English mercantilists believed that a country’s gold holdings served as an allimportant treasure chest, to be opened periodically to pay for war in a violent age. What
distinguished English mercantilism was the unusual idea that government economic
regulations could and should serve the probate interests of individuals and groups as well
as the public needs of the state. By contrast, France and other continental counties, 17th
century mercantilists generally put the needs of the state first, and they seldom saw a
possible union of public and private interests for a common good.
29. The result of the English desire to increase both military power and private wealth was
he mercantile system of the Navigation Acts. Oliver Cromwell established the first of these
laws in 1651.The acts required that most goods imported from Europe into England and
Scotland be carried on British-owned ships with British crews or on ships of the country
producing the article. These laws gave British merchants and ship-owners a monopoly on
trade with British colonies.
30. The Navigation Acts were a form of economic warfare. Their initial target was the Dutch,
who were far ahead of the English in shipping and foreign trade in the mid-1600s. The Acts
did serious damage to the Dutch shipping and commerce. Thereafter France stood clearly as
England’s most serious rival in the competition for overseas empire. From 1701 to 1763,
Britain and France were locked in a series of wars to decide which nation would become the
leading maritime power and claim the lion’s share of profits of European’s overseas
expansion.
There are three wars between the French and British, The War of the Spanish Succession, The
War of the Austrian Succession, and The Seven Years’ War.

Name of War
and Countries
31. War of
Spanish
Succession
32. War of the
Austrian
Succession
(1740-1748)
33. Seven Years’
War (17561763)
Countries
involved (who
fought who)
France and
Spain
threatened to
encircle and
destroy the
British colonies
in North
America.
Gradually
became a world
war that
included AngloFrench conflicts
in India and
North America.
Austria almost
succeeded in
crushing
Prussia, but
Prussia
survived.
Inconclusive in
Europe, this war
was the decisive
round in the
Franco-British
competition for
colonial empire.
The fighting
began in North
America.
What was the
cause of the
war?
Started when
Louis XIV
declared his
willingness to
accept the
Spanish crown
willed to his
grandson.
Started when
Frederick the
Great of Prussia
seized Silesia
from Austria’s
Mother Theresa.
What treaty
ended the war?
What were the
results of the
treaty?
Defeated after
The Peace of
12 years of
Utrecht
fighting, Louis
surrendered
XIV was forced
Newfoundland,
into the Peace of Nova Scotia, and
Utrecht (1713)
the Hudson Bay
territory to
Britain.
Inconclusive
The war ended
standoff.
with no change
in the territorial
situation in
North America.
In central
Europe,
Austria’s
Mother Theresa
sought to win
back Silesia and
crush Prussia,
thereby reestablishing the
Habsburgs’
traditional
leadership in
German affairs.
British victory
on all colonial
fronts was
ratified in the
Treaty of Paris
(1763).
France lost all
its possessions
on the mainland
of North
America. By
1763 British
naval power,
built after the
passage of the
Navigation Acts,
had triumphed
decisively.
34. According to the map on page 645 that depicts triangular trade:
a. Slaves and gold came from Africa, and manufactured goods came to Africa.
b. Colonial products such as silver, sugar, furs, and tobacco, came from the “New
World” (North & South America). Manufactured goods and slaves came to the New World.
c. Manufactured goods came from Europe. Gold from Africa and colonial products
(silver, sugar, furs, tobacco) came to Europe.
35. Although the trade in African people was a worldwide phenomenon, the Atlantic slave
trade became the most extensive and significant portion of it. Until 1700 and perhaps even
1750, almost all Europeans considered the African slave trade a legitimate business activity.
36. After 1775, a large campaign to abolish slavery developed in Britain. People, especially
women, denounced the immortality of human bondage. These attacks put defenders of
slavery on the defense. In 1807 Parliament abolished the British slave trade, although
slavery continued for years in British colonies and the Americas.
37. Adam Smith (1723-1790) was a Scottish professor of philosophy; one of the
Enlightenment’s most original and characteristic thinkers and was highly critical of 18th
century mercantilism. Smith relied on the power of reason to unlock the secrets of the
secular world, and he believed that he spoke for the truth, not for special interests. He
persuasively developed the general idea of freedom of enterprise in foreign trade. His
famous book Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) established
the basis for modern economics. He said that mercantilism meant a combination of
government regulations and unfair privileges for state-approved monopolies and
government favorites. He believed that free competition was preferable because it would
best protect consumers form price gouging and give all citizens a fair and equal right to do
what they did best. He argued that government should limit itself to “only three duties.” It
should provide a defense against foreign invasion, maintain civil order with courts and
police protection, and sponsor certain public works and institutions.
38. Though Smith applauded the modest rise in real wages of British workers in the 18th
century, he did not call for more laws and more police power to force people into proper
economic behavior. Instead, he made the pursuit of self-interest in a competitive market the
source of an underlying and previously unrecognized harmony that would result in gradual
progress. The “invisible hand” of free competition for one and for all disciplined the greed of
selfish individuals and provided the most effective means of increasing the wealth of both
rich and por. His provocative work had a great international impact. It quickly emerged as
the classic argument for economic liberalism and unregulated capitalism.