Europe in the 18th Century: Society & Politics
Primary Sector in the 18th Century
In the eighteenth century, most of the population worked in agriculture. In general, it was subsistence production on unproductive dry lands, and most of the land was devoted to growing cereals, which were the staple diet, but products for trade were also grown.
Land Ownership and Privilege
Land ownership was fundamentally in the hands of the clearly privileged.
The land of the nobility was never divided because of primogeniture, a law requiring all property to be transmitted to the eldest son of the lord.
Mortmain (‘dead hand’) land could not be sold, being under the direct protection of the king.
The rest of the property was in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Landless peasants were subject to feudal tenure; they were servants of a lord. The lord allowed them to work a part of his land for their livelihood, and in exchange, the peasantry had to work the lord’s land freely and pay him rent.
Industry Development
Industry was not driven primarily by the kings, nobility, and clergy, who concentrated capital but could not invest in industry and preferred to do so on land. The monarchy attempted to renew the productive system, creating “actual factories,” but these factories were rather large artisan workshops, not modern industries. Foreign trade had grown significantly, thanks to the expansion of exchanges between Europe and America.
The Persistence of Absolutism in Europe
Absolutism, the political system which governed most of Europe early in the century, concentrated legislative, executive, and judicial power in the king. The king decided which laws came into effect. Absolutism, born in France in the eighteenth century, relied on the theories of thinkers such as Bossuet, who defended the divine origin of monarchy, asserting that nothing, no law, could be above the king.
Economically, mercantilism was the economic system developed by the finance minister of Louis XIV.
Mercantilism defended 3 ideas:
- A state was richer the more gold and silver it possessed.
- To acquire metal, foreign trade had to be developed.
- The State should intervene in other aspects of the economy.
The triumph of absolutism allowed the kings of France to be less dependent on the aristocracy.
The English Parliament
During the seventeenth century, England’s Stuart dynasty kings had attempted to establish absolutism but met strong opposition from the bourgeoisie. The conflict between the king and the bourgeoisie led to the revolutions of 1642 and 1688, which resulted in the expulsion of the king from the English throne and the triumph of parliamentary monarchy. The new political system was based on the supremacy of the law over the monarch. The Declaration of Rights guaranteed citizens a series of rights and freedoms and acknowledged that Parliament was in charge of making laws. In this way, England achieved the separation of powers. Political liberalism was the theoretical basis of the English parliamentary monarchy. John Locke defined its basic principles:
- Freedom, reflected in the existence of rights that all people possessed.
- Equality before the law.
- Property as a criterion of social differentiation.