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PART II Cyril Levitt - 9781433172090 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 04:58:54PM via free access Cyril Levitt - 9781433172090 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 04:58:54PM via free access CHAPTER THREE Labour Processes in Central Europe, 15th–17th Centuries 3.1 The Population and Its Numbers The population of Central Europe from the 15th to the 17th century was for the most part based in the countryside, and its main occupation was tied up with agriculture. The total population of Central Europe in 1500 amounted to around 12 million, of which the country population was 9 million or about 75% of the whole. The town population counted 3 million or about 25% of the total. The country population includes the peasants, workers on the land as well as the administration, people of the cloth, servants, traders, the military. Customarily one reckoned that those who were not peasants constituted 5 to 10% of the total pop- ulation of the countryside. The town population included embossers, iron workers, and miners; yet their labour was not plied everywhere in cities or small towns. The numbers offer a rough idea; the division of the totality in the city and in the coun- try is likewise imprecise, for some iron works were then country based. In 1300, the entire population of Western Europe, as we define it inTable 1 , counted 43 million and in 1500 roughly the same number. No increase in pop- ulation was attributed to this region between 1300 and 1500; the stagnation was explained by the effects of the plague, especially of the Black Death around 1347/52, and by war.1 In 1600, the total population of Central Europe rose to 15 Million and in parts of Western Europe to 54 Million. The further development Cyril Levitt - 9781433172090 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 04:58:54PM via free access 80 | THE BEGINNINGS OF CAPITALISM IN CENTRAL EUROPE of Central Europe from 1600 to 1700 is separated from the development in all of Europe and from Western Europe. In 1700, the population of Central Europe amounted to 15 million, thus remaining stagnant; in parts of Western Europe it amounted to 59 million and in Europe as a whole 115 million in total. The stag- nating numbers of people of Central Europe during the 17th century is attributed to the 30 Years’ War and its effects. The urban population of Central Europe rose during the 16th century from 3 to 4 million, thus keeping up with the increase of the total population step by step. The increase of the urban population of Central Europe which continued during the 17th century, occurred through the surplus of births in relation to the deaths among the population and through the influx of the people from the countryside who tried to avoid the desolation of the country during the war. This means that the number of people in the countryside during the 17th century decreased abso- lutely and relatively, from 12 million around 1600 to 10 million around 1700. It is estimated that the population of Central Europe around 1650 had sunk to 10 mil- lion as a consequence of the war. The losses were mainly confined to the second quarter of the 17th century in Central Europe, which was followed by a population increase. Immigrants from foreign countries are included in this. [The population rebounded although the population increase 1650–1700 did not result in a rural population that was as large as it had been at the beginning of the century before the war—trans.]. Population figures are not the cause of an event, they are more likely the characteristics and expressions of the biological, economic, military, political and peaceful processes of humanity. If we consolidate just these facts presented, the following picture arises: Table 1: The Population of Europe, 1300–1700 (in Millions)* Year Europe Western Europe Germany % Countryside % City % (a) (b) (c) (c) (d) (d) 1300 43 12 1500 87 44 46 12 14 9 75 3 25 1600 107 54 57 16 15 12 75 4 25 1700 115 60 63 15 13 10 67 5 33 (a) British Isles, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland. (b) The above plus the Netherlands. (c) As percentage of the total population of Europe. (d) As percentage of the total population of Germany. *K.T.v. Inama-Sternegg, Bevölkerung, in: Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, ed.: Conrad et al. 3rd edition 1909. All figures and percentages are gross estimates and are only offered for general orientation. Cyril Levitt - 9781433172090 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 04:58:54PM via free access LABOUR PROCESSES IN CENTRAL EUROPE, 15TH–17TH CENTURIES | 81 H. Bechtel (Wirtschaftsgeschichte Deutschlands, Vol. 1, Munich 1952) disputes the assumptions of Gustav Freytag and Inama-Sternegg that the population of the Holy Roman Empire had been diminished by two-thirds through the effects of the Thirty Years’ War. Yet, effects of the war were bad enough that there was no need for exaggeration. The whole of Europe had an increase in population of 10% in the course of the 17th century, Germany on the contrary, had none. [Indeed, it was smaller in 1700–trans.] (R. Mols, in: Europäische Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Ed.: C. Cipolla, K. Borchhardt, Vol. 2, Stuttgart 1979. H. Kellenbenz, R. Walter, in Handbuch der europäischen Sozial—und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Ed.: H. Fischer et al. 1986). The following table provides population figures for major European cities in select years from 1300 to 1700: Table 2: Population of Cities in England, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands, 1300– 1700 City Year (Population in Thousands). City 1300 1400 1500 1550 1600 1650 1700 Amsterdam 15 35 100 135 180 Antwerp 100 70 Bruges 35 34 Florence 95 55 70 60 80 70 80 London 35 70 80 250 450 600 Milan 100 50 110 95 100 Naples 230 210 250 215 Paris 100 300 500 Rome 50 45 110 126 135 Seville 100 150 125 Venice 115 160 150 120 140 Around 1520 Naples was the largest city in Europe, around 1600 it was Paris, around 1700 London. These data point to the general directions in the history of the urban pop- ulation. The numbers are rounded and presented only provisionally. They show smaller or larger swings in the population numbers for cities such as Basel, Rostock, Zurich, Danzig, Augsburg and Nuremberg. We have more data at our disposal for these cities than for the others, otherwise the same could be asserted in relation to other cases. At the end of the period—in comparison to the beginning of the increase in population—it is clearly shown in Hamburg, Breslau, Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig, Bern, Vienna. This urban increase in population can be generalized with regard to Central Europe in comparison to the Middle Ages; we take into Cyril Levitt - 9781433172090 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 04:58:54PM via free access 82 | THE BEGINNINGS OF CAPITALISM IN CENTRAL EUROPE consideration the whole, not the individual results. The effect of the plague in the 14th century on the cities of Central Europe can be identified. The population data cannot be abstracted from the social and economic events. These are bound up with the economic development of the entire region in the 15th, 16th, and 17th century. By contrast, the effects of the plague, of war and of the rearrangement of single industries or entire branches of industry are to be taken into account. The losses of Augsburg (45,000 in 1600, as opposed to 20,000 in 1650) of Berlin (13,000 in the year 1625, as opposed to 10,000 in 1645) and Frankfurt am Main (25,000 in 1600, 15,000 in 1650) are imputed to the impact of the Thirty Years’ War. Around the year 1700 people in Berlin and Frankfurt, as in Hamburg and Breslau, Leipzig among others, were able to recover. The role of the state and its centralized administration was expanded and intensified. In this way, the increase in the population numbers of London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin are explained, leaving aside the fact that in this period there came great losses through fire, war and plague. The fortunes of war and the rearrange- ment of industries, trade, textiles had exerted an effect on the population numbers of Antwerp, Augsburg, among others in this period. The total population of Central Europe from 1300 to 1500 remained fun- damentally unchanged. The great losses of the 14th century, mainly through the plague, were counterbalanced by the natural increase of the population and improved living conditions. The fact that the numbers at the beginning and end of the period are the same, grossly speaking, conceals the great swings within the period. The population in the countryside in the 15th and 16th century increased as a percentage in comparison to the total population numbers and to the por- tion of it in the countryside. Probably 10% is too low, 25% would be too high an assumption in relation to the total for the urban population of Central Europe; the general tendency lies in-between, at around 15%. The same is valid for Italy, France, the Netherlands and England. There were small and large swings in the urban population numbers of Central Europe from the 14th to the 17th century. Hamburg, Basel, Breslau, Frankfurt am Main, Freiburg/Switzerland, Danzig, Augsburg, Nuremberg all have lost as well as gained. The increase can be imputed to the immigration to the land, the losses, mainly to war and the plague. The following table provides the size of population for select cities in Central Europe from the 14th to 17th century: Cyril Levitt - 9781433172090 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/25/2021 04:58:54PM via free access LABOUR PROCESSES IN CENTRAL EUROPE TH TH CENTURIES 83 , 15 –17 | Table 3: Population of Some Cities in Central Europe in the 14th–17th Centuries City Year and Populations in Thousands Augsburg 1450 1475 1540 1570 1600 1650 20 18 40 50 45 20 Basel 1349 1429 1446 1454 14 9 10 7 Berlin 1625 1645 13 10 Breslau 1348 1403 1700 22 12 40 Cologne 1400 1550 30 37 Danzig 1403 1415 1437 1470 1550 22 40 20 18 20 Eger 1390 1500 7 5 Frankfurt (Main) 1387 1440 1600 1650 1700 10 9 25 15 25 Freiburg (Switzerland) 1390 1500 9 6 Hamburg 1311 1419 1526 1594 1700 7 22 12 19 60 Leipzig 1474 1550 1600 1700 4 7 15 22 Nuremberg 1431 1449 1500 1520 1622 22 20 52 47 50 Rostock 1387 1410 1500 11 14 10–13 Zurich 1357 1410 1467 1500 1600 12 11 5 5 7 Source: See Table 1.

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