AP European

1
AP European

• Chapter 16 the Society and Economy Under the
  Old Regime in the Eighteenth Century

2
Old Regime
Innovations like the guillotine!!

• What was it?
• The life and institutions of eighteenth-century
  Europe before 1789
• Name given to separate them from the great
  innovations which followed the French revolution.

3
What did it stand for politically and
economically?

• POLITICAL
• Absolute monarchies
• Large bureaucracies
• Armies led by aristocrats

• ECONOMICAL
• Food scarcity
• Agrarian economy
• Slow transport
• Little iron production
• Unsophisticated finances
• Commercial overseas empire

4
Society
Peasant

• Pre-revolutional Europe was traditional an
  hierarchical
• Governing aristocratic elite through an urban
  middle class and labor force divided into guilds,
  rural peasantry living at the edge of poverty
• Corporate and privileged
• Men more conscious of their communal associations
  and group rights than of individual liberties.

5
More of the Old Regime
Not this kind of static

• Marked by great contrasts between the different
  classes and regions
• Character was very distinct and not static
• Society fostered revolutions in agriculture and
  industry, new products and wealth, population
  expansion and tension between monarchs, nobles
  and the middle class

6
Economy

• Depended on the land
• Those who lived in the western countryside were
  free peasants and those in the east were serfs.
• Both subjected to feudal dues, services and
  strict control which resulted in rebellion
• Pugachevs rebellion in 1771-1775 which involved
  all of southern Russia

7
Population

• A steady rise in the price of Europes food
  staple, grain, because of population growth,
  encouraged revolution, leading to greater
  productivity
• Improvements in production made pop. grow even
  more
• Europes population had exploded! It grew from
  100 million to 190 million in 100 years

8
European Economy

• European Economic expansion has continued since
  the industrial revolution after the population
  explosion
• Cities grew considerably even in urbanized
  countries such as France and England.
• The cities weren't massive industrial towns but
  either market towns, commerce and financial
  centers, or capital cities.

9
Social levels and Classes

• A small group of nobles, rich merchants, bankers,
  financiers, clergy, and officials ruled the
  towns.
• A dynamic element increasingly resentful of
  aristocratic monopoly and power was the middle
  class.
• The poorest class consisted of shopkeepers,
  artisans, and wage earners who were organized
  into guilds.
• The lower class often expressed their political
  grievances by rioting even before the French
  revolution.

10
Jewish life in Europe

• Dwelled most in nations without enjoying the
  rights and privileges of other subjects.
• Regarded as a resident alien whose status might
  be temporary or changed at the whim of local
  rulers or the monarchical government.
• Lived in ghettos or in villages in the
  countryside.

11
Jewish life cont.

• court Jews helped finance the wars of major
  rulers and received privileges but most of the
  Jewish population lived in poverty.
• Prejudice was not based on race but on religious
  separateness.
• The end of the old regime, however, brought major
  changes in the life of the Jews.