The European World

‘The European World’ BK 10/17

Rural and Urban Society

Key message: a primarily rural world with urbanization & commercialization in some regions

1. Definitions

Rural  Importance of environmental conditions; regional differences between arable, pastoral and mixed agriculture as well as manorial and demesne systems.  Peasants are ‘agriculturalists … utilizing mainly family labour, who are engaged in relations with the larger economic system, but only partially integrated into incomplete markets’ (Frank Ellis).

Urban  Criteria: size, structure (walls), economic activities (manufacture, markets), privileges  Some overlap between major villages (Gochsheim) and agricultural towns

2. People

Rural  80-90 % of Europeans lived in (heavily stratified) rural societies.  16thC population growth/inflation boosts polarization (middling sort vs landless poor)

Urban  Urbanised areas e.g. in N-Italy & Low Countries, few towns (Paris, Lisbon) over 50K  Socio-political (patricians, burghers, marginals), educational & gender differences.

3. Economies

Rural  Limited organic energy; low seed-yield ratios (1:4); dependence on harvest.  Differentiation of economic opportunities: market gardening; proto-industry (‘putting out system’, esp. for textiles) and early industries (like copper/iron/silver mines).

Urban  Guilds; rising trade (ports/entrepôts; shift Hanse/Mediterranean to Atlantic Seaboard).  Administrative & political services; synergies with state/courts (Madrid, London).

4. Everyday life & government

Rural  Ties of family, kin, custom and religion; informal social controls; church sets rhythms of work and rest/feasting and fasting; cereal-based diets with seasonal, regional and social variations; gradual integration into emerging consumer society.  Political agency in local government (village, parish, manor) and resistance (mostly defending ‘ancient law’, but ‘visions’ in peasant wars; Leuenberger vs Graffenried). Urban  Opportunities: immigration & freedom vs hazards of health, plague, poverty.  Bonds of parish/fraternity, quarter, street, craft vs tensions & rivalry (Palio at Siena)  Political life in councils (headed by mayors); struggles re oligarchization & autonomy

5. Town-Country Interactions

 Economic links: division of labour and gradual market integration; agricultural workers in towns; feudal lords with town residences; proto-industrialisation.  Cultural ties: political/legal/administrative services; cathedrals and religious houses; leisure facilities like theatres, salons, coffee houses.  Tensions and conflict: towns as ‘feudal’ lords over dependent territories; diverging economic interests (‘central-places’ vs decentral trading networks); grain supplies  Ambivalent perceptions: artistic representations of country people dominated by urban/literate elites; shift from ‘coarse peasantry’ to noble countryfolk in 18thC Alps.

6. Evolutions

Rural  Growing market orientation (cash crops like tulips in the Netherlands; enclosures and commercialization of land market, esp. in England) and transition to capitalism (Brenner debate; Braudel); some productivity gains.

Urban  Rise of leading ports & metropolitan centres like Amsterdam & London.  Transformation of civic culture (politeness, urban renaissance; leisure industry), interacting with developments in princely courts (like Versailles, Schönbrunn)

Selected reading Rural Aston, T..; Philpin, C. (eds), The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe (Cambridge, 1985) Braudel, Fernand, Civilisation and Capitalism: 15th to 18th Century (2 vols, 1981-2) Ellis, Frank, Peasant Economics: Farm Households & Agrarian Development (1988) Kümin, B. (ed.)., A Cultural History of Food in Early Modern Europe (2012) Magagna, V., Communities of Grain: Rural Rebellion in Comparative Perspective (1991) Ogilvie, S.; Cerman, M. (eds), European Proto-Industrialization (Cambridge, 1996) Sabean, W., Kinship in Neckarhausen 1700-1870 (1998) Scott, Tom (ed.), The Peasantries of Europe: From the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries (1998)

Urban Cowan, A., Urban Europe, 1500-1700 (1998) Vries, J. De, European Urbanization, 1500-1800 (1984) Friedrichs, C.R., The Early Modern City, 1450-1750 (1995) “ , Urban Politics in Early Modern Europe (2000) Merritt, J. F., Westminster 1640-60: A Royal City in a Time of Revolution (2013) Nicholas, D., Urban Europe, 1100-1700 (2003)

Interactions Epstein, S. R. (ed.), Town and Country in Europe 1300-1800 (Cambridge, 2001)