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 Peasants,
Landlords and
Merchant
Capitalists

Europe and the World Economy,

1500-1800

r;' -~
 PEASANTS,
LANDLORDS AND
MERCHANT
CAPITALISTS

Europe and the World Economy,

1500-1800

Peter Kriedte

BERG PUBLISHERS LTD

\\ C tKö .'TS 'l 3 I 3
Berg Publishers Ltd.
24 Binswood Avenue
Leamington Spa
Warwickshire

© English translation 1983 Berg Publishers Ltd.

Originally published as Spätfeudalismus und Handelskapital. Grundlinien der
europäischen Wirtschaftsgeschichte vom 16. bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts.

© Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Göttingen, 1980

translated from the German by V. R. Berghahn

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, or otherwise, without prior permission of Berg Publishers Ltd.

Kriedte, Peter
Peasants, landlords and merchant capitalists.
1. Europe—Economic conditions
I Title IE Spätfeudalismus und Handelskapital. English
330.94'02 HC240

ISBN 0-907582-07-9
ISBN 0-907582-08-7 Pbk

Typeset by Gilbert Composing Services, Leighton Buzzard.

Printed in Great Britain by Billing 8c Sons Ltd., Worcester.
 Contents

Introduction 1

1 THE AGE OF THE PRICE REVOLUTION 18

1.1 The Growth of the Population 18

1.2 The Expansion of Agriculture 20
1.3 Crafts, Commerce and Finance 31
1.4 The Price Revolution and Socio-Economic Change 48

2 THE CRISIS OF THE 17TH CENTURY 61

2.1 Stagnation and the Demographic Crisis 61

2.2 Agriculture: Crisis and Resurgence 65
2.3 Proto-Industrialization and Merchant Capitalism 70
2.4 The Crisis of the 17th Century in its Socio-Economic
Context 91

3 THE UPSWING OF THE 18TH CENTURY 101

3.1 Population: From Crisis to Renewed Growth 101

3.2 Agriculture: Expansion or Revolution? 105
3.3 On the Road to Industrial Capitalism 115
3.4 Population Growth, Economic Growth and Society 145

Conclusion 158
Annotated Bibliography 162
Sources for Tables and Graphs 185
Index 189
 Intr®ducti®n
The development of the European economy entered a new phase
around the turn of the 15th to the 16th century. The crisis of the late
middle ages had come to pass; the price revolution of the 16th century
appeared on the horizon. The discovery of America and the
exploration of the sea route to India created the preconditions of
European overseas expansion and of the emergence of a capitalist
world-system whose structures were characterized by unequal
exchange relations and their maintenance by the open or covert use
of’force. Notwithstanding these developments which pointed to the
future, the economic system as a whole continued to be dominated by
the feudal mode of production. The dynamism of merchant capital,
to be sure, was not exclusively determined by the feudal system; but it
did remain within a framework which was defined by it; it operated in
the ‘skin' of feudal society without being_a.bJgjo challenge ,it.
To speak of the ‘feudal mode of production’ around 1500 implies a
dominance of a peasant economy organized on a family basis; it also
means that the class of feudal lords appropriated to itself large parts of
the agricultural wealth which the peasant economy was generating.
The peasant family was the basic unit of production. It tended to be
composed of the two parents and their children. The nuclear family
was the general rule. Families which united the father and/or mother
of the peasant under the same roof with his own family (three-
generation families) remained relatively rare. The labour potential of
the nuclear family would occasionally be supplemented by non-
familial labour, depending on the family’s generational cycle as well
as on whether it was able to produce above subsistence level. If a
peasant couple had children who were too small to work, they often
had no choice but to employ outside labour. I he land which had
passed into their hands by inheritance constituted the production
factor which determined the entire existence of the peasant family.
The crop grown on this land tended to be grain which imposed its
own specific seasonal rhythm. Stock-farming formed an important
supplement to agriculture. Animals were not only used for
ploughing, but also provided valuable fertilizer.

1
2 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

The purposes of this type of peasant-family production were quite

limited. The peasant tried to strike a balance between the labour
potential of his family on the one hand, and on the other its own
culturally determined needs as well as obligations towards other
persons and institutions. If this balance became upset, he had to
attempt to redress it by increasing the family’s labour input; this
could reach the dimensions of ‘self-exploitation’ (A.V. Chayanov). In
short, the objective of the peasant’s economic activity was to produce
not the exchange value but the utility value (Gebrauchswert) of what
he was producing.
Until the high middle ages the estates of the landlord, worked with
the help of serf labour, had been the central unit of the agrarian
economy. It had subsequently become replaced by the peasant
community which functioned as a coordinating centre between
the peasant households within the individual village. The
community also acted as a bulwark against outside intervention,
above all by the feudal lord; it was finally a framework which enabled
its members to keep control over internal differentiations and to
maintain the existing social equilibrium. Of course, the community
could fulfil these functions only if it was endowed with strong
coercive powers.
The landlords had largely retreated from the production process
from the high middle ages onwards. Wherever they managed their
own estates, they did so with the help of wage labour. There were two
reasons for this development; the large units of the lords were less
productive than the peasant holdings—a direct result of the
contemporary level of agricultural technology and of social
mechanisms which forced the peasant to make more strenuous
efforts. This weakness of the demesnes was exacerbated by a shift in
the balance of class forces which forced the feudal lords to abandon
the system of serf labour. In other words, they had to give up the
system of labour on which their own agricultural production had
once been based. Thenceforth the landlord appropriated the surplus
of peasant production to himself primarily in the form of dues in
money and kind, whereas feudal services rendered in the form of
labour declined in importance. The peasant was now fully in control
of his own labour. The economic relationship between him and the
landlord was limited to ‘transfer payments’. All three types of feudal
dues were characterized by what E. Balibar has called the ‘non¬
coincidence of pioduction and appropriation; the two processes had
become separated from one another. In view of this, the feudal lord
had to resort to means of violence of a non-economic nature in order
 Introduction 3

to enforce his claims upon the peasant’s surplus production.

The dynamics of the feudal mode of production—initially less
concerned with modification and transformation than with mere
reproduction as they were—can be traced through the long-term ups
and downs of the agricultural economy of Europe. The available
series of grain prices and other data, above all the figures relating to
demographic change, demonstrate that the upswing of the high
middle ages, which was accompanied by a migration movement and
the emergence of the towns, ended in the crisis of the 14th and 15th
centuries. There followed the price revolution of the 16th century
which in turn led to the crisis of the 17th century. It was only the
upswing of the 18th century which ushered in a new age (see Table 1
and Figure 1, the latter from 1500 only). The causes of this sequence of
booms and depressions in the European economy may be explained
in three ways.
(1) First of all there tended to exist a positive interaction between
population growth and economic growth during a long-term

Table 1:
Population change in Europe, 1500-1800 (mill.)

15 00 16 00 17 00 18 00
abs. Index abs. Index abs. Index abs. Index

Northern Europe1 1.6 100 2.6 163 3.1 194 5.0 313

Northwestern Europe2 6.3 100 9.7 154 12.7 202 21.2 337

Western Europe5 17.0 100 17.9 105 20.8 122 27.9 164

Southern Europe4 16.4 100 21.7 132 21.7 132 31.3 191

Central Europe5 18.5 100 24.0 130 24.5 132 33.5 181

Total 59.8 100 75.9 127 82.8 138 118.9 199

Eastern Europe6 12 100 15 125 20 167 36 300

Southeastern Europe7 9,1 100 11.2 123 12.2 134 20.8 229

Total 21.1 100 26.2 124 32.2 153 56.8 269

European total 80.9 100 102.1 126 115.0 142 175.7 217

■Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland; 2British Isles, Netherlands,

Belgium; 3France; ^Portugal, Spain, Italy; 5Germany, Switzerland,
Austria, Poland, Czech parts of Czechoslovakia; ‘Russia (European parts);
’Slovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Balkan countries (respective present-day
frontiers).
4 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Figure 1:
Grain prices in England, France and Germany, 1501-1810,
in grams of silver per Doppelzentner (ca. two hundredweight:
moving ten-year averages)

gr Silver

upswing which stimulated the development of the productive

potential of the economy. But sooner or later this linkage turned into
a boomerang. If population growth and economic growth had
mutually accelerated each other, the latter began to lag in comparison
to demographic change. Population growth made its adjustment to
economic growth too late, if at all. There were more people than
agricultural production could sustain. The peasants began to plough
up land of inferior quality which had hitherto been used for grazing
Livestock declined and manure became scarcer. The balance between
grain-growing and stock-rearing, which had been of crucial
importance to soil fertility, was being destroyed. The law of
diminishing agricultural returns came into force. Productivity per
head decreased. There were innumerable small-holdings, whose
owners lived on the starvation line. If the harvest was poor, they
would actually starve in large numbers.
(2) The above-mentioned changes in the sphere of production
forces were bound to affect production relations in general. This
separation of the production process from the appropriation process
which had now become typical of the feudal mode of production
implied that the share of the feudal lords in the agricultural product
tended to decline in the course of this long-term historical
 Introduction 5

development. And the sharper the tensions within the productive

system of the economy, the higher the rise in agricultural prices. At
the same time the rent which the peasants were obliged to pay in cash
remained unchanged. Hitherto the decline in feudal income had been
more or less compensated for by an extension of the land which was
subject to rent. Yet this compensatory mechanism disappeared, once
land development had begun to slow down. Wherever possible the
feudal lords tried to prevent a fall in their income by raising the level
of rents. They did this through a manipulation of the basis on which
it was calculated. They would demand entry fines; they might retake
land in order to re-lease it; they would expand their demesnes and
work them with the help of serf labour; or, finally, they would exploit
their monopoly rights.
The peasants thus found themselves in a double squeeze. Their
margin of subsistence was shrinking, while the pressure exerted by
the lords mounted. The potentialities for a crisis accumulated until
they finally exploded in a series of food crises. In a narrow sense such
food crises were the result of crop failure, and these were in turn
manifestations of metereological conditions during the harvest cycle
(see, e.g. Figure 2). What made the weather factor so serious was the
underdeveloped state of agricultural production. This is why Pierre
Vilar has called the harvest cycle the ‘original cycle of the feudal mode
of production’. If one now considers its repercussions as reflected in
mortality rates, it becomes clear that the long-term cycle was more
important than the short-term one. One harvest failure at the
beginning of a long-term cycle was not yet the last straw. But a

baptisms
funerals ,lvres

Figure 2:
The famine of 1693/94 in
Wheat in Pontoise per
- ",setier" the Meulan region (north¬
_Funerals

_Baptisms west of Paris)

6 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

subsistence crisis was the more serious, the more the long-term
impoverishment of the peasants had progressed and the pressure of
feudal charges had increased. Thus the long-term cycle tended to
dominate the short-term one without being able to determine its
course completely. What ultimately caused a reversal of the long-term
trend was a series of major subsistence crises, often in quick
succession, which were in themselves the result of that trend.
The population decline which set in with the above-mentioned
food crises exacerbated the already difficult income situation of the
feudal nobility. The death of every rent-paying peasant was
tantamount to a further reduction in rents. This was true not only in
terms of absolute figures, but also in terms of the proportions exacted
as feudal dues. As the demand for peasant holdings declined, those
peasants that were left were able to negotiate better terms; the feudal
lords saw the slices which they were accustomed to taking shrink
relatively as well as absolutely. They were under pressure to look for
alternative ways of maintaining their economic position.
Among these alternatives there was war as a means of bringing
about a redistribution of incomes by military force; there was also the
acquisition of offices. This implies that the state, whose autonomy
vis-a-vis the feudal lords was but limited, began to appear as a factor
on the historical stage. The crisis had undermined the old system of
appropriation of which the state had been a beneficiary. Yet the
attempt not merely to maintain the income of the feudal lords, but to
increase it, dealt a fatal blow to the peasant economy. The immediate
drain resulting from wars and the intolerable fiscal burdens destroyed
the peasant s reproductive capacity. These developments exacerbated
the crisis which finally culminated in a contraction of the economy
which could not be halted. If an end to the downhill slide at last came
into sight, it was because its impact began to mobilise forces which
made it possible for the peasant economy to regain a new
equilibrium: once the population had declined, the size of the
holdings incieased again; marginal land of poor quality ceased to be
cultivated. Both developments contributed to a marked increase in
productivity. A new growth cycle could set in.
(3) Population change occupied a key position in this model which
we have derived from our analysis of the feudal mode of production.
I he factoi at the loot of this change—i.e. the shifting ratio between
population and resources on the one hand and the mechanisms of
feudal exploitation on the other-cannot always provide a
satisfactory explanation, however. Population growth was also
blocked and reversed by developments which were extraneous to the
 Introduction 7

feudal mode of production. Among these factors three are of

particular importance: epidemics, wars and the role of the state of the
early modern period. All three have already been alluded to in
sections (1) and (2) above; yet it would be wrong to assume that they
can always or wholly be related to the prevailing system of
production. True, the demographic catastrophe which was
unleashed by the plague of 1348 could probably not be fully
explained without the impoverishment which affected large parts of
Europe’s population. On the other hand, the plague was also an
exogeneous phenomenon, a product of that ‘unification micro-
bienne du monde’ (E. Le Roy Ladurie) resulting from the Oriental
trade through which the disease was carried to Europe.
The same applies to the wars which the emergent national states
conducted and to the pressures which they imposed on the peasants
to finance them. Neither was always inseparably connected
with the decline in feudal income. On the contrary, there is some
reason to assume that the interconnections which have been made in
this chapter became less strong, and the more so since the state
machineries succeeded in increasing their autonomy vis-a-vis the
feudal lords. In short, it would be wrong to underestimate the impact
of forces upon the historical process which, if at all, can be derived
from the feudal economy only in a very general sense.
If the long-term upswings of the European economy were twice
interrupted by extended crises, this was due to the causes set out
above. They were responsible that the dynamics of feudalism never
went beyond the long waves of upswings and crises, which acted to
perpetuate the feudal mode of production. These ups and downs
ultimately generated a new balance between population and
available resources; they also redefined the relationships between
divergent social groups.
Side by side with the agricultural economy there arose in the towns
which had grown up in the high middle ages a specialized sector
engaged in the manufacture of goods on an artisanal basis. The
‘autarkic division of labour’ (K. Modzelewski) which had hitherto
existed in feudal agriculture gradually gave way to a division of
labour between town and country. Agricultural production
continued in the countryside; the production of manufactured goods
moved to the towns. Of course, this division was by no means
universal. The peasants continued to manufacture goods for their
own consumption. Nor was it possible to dispense altogether with
certain craftsmen such as blacksmiths. Mining and iron production
were likewise tied to the countryside. The demographic and
 8 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

agricultural surplus of the surrounding countryside was crucial for

the emergence and growth of the towns as well as for the division of
labour between town and country. Only if there was a demographic
surplus on which they could feed were towns able to grow. This is
also true of later urban development, even if it is erroneous to assume
that the towns could not have maintained their size without an influx
of people from the countryside. The agricultural surplus was even
more vital. It would have been impossible for the towns to develop
into a dense network without an agricultural revolution which
improved agriculture’s productivity. The surplus of dozens of
villages was required in order to secure the food supply of even
smaller towns. Thus the growth of the towns and of the artisanal
economy were directly dependent upon the contributions by the
agricultural sector of the economy.
The basic unit of production in the urban centres was again the
family. However, women and children were as a rule not engaged in
the production process. The wife’s role tended to be limited to the
household; the husband was in charge of the workshop. In addition,
there were the journeymen and apprentices. With a few exceptions
like the building trade, they lived under the master’s roof and were
also maintained by him. They were fully integrated into the
household and were under the master’s disciplinary authority. It was
this relationship rather than a labour-capital tie which defined the
position of these dependants.
The small urban craftsmen manufactured utility values, not
exchange values. He aimed to produce enough to be able to acquire
foodstuffs and other things commensurate with his social rank; he
did not aim to generate a surplus in order to produce larger quantities
of goods for a subsequent cycle.
What he produced was highly labour-intensive and not capital-
intensive. The tools were simple and tailored to the needs of a
craftsman who had acquired the skill of using them through an
apprenticeship under the guidance of another worker. In this sense
there existed a close link between the worker and the means of
production. Accordingly there was no division of labour in the
workshops. Only one craftsman handled a product from start to
linish. But there was a professional division which often reached
extreme forms. As early as 1300, there existed in Paris more than 300
handicrafts. More than 200 different handicrafts have been found to
have been practised in Frankfurt in the 14th and 15th centuries. Thus
the carpenters were divided into joiner, turners, tub-makers, coopers,
mill-wrights and wheel-wrights. This professional fragmentation
 Introduction 9

was a result of the lack of a division of labour in the workshop.

Rarely was an individual craftsman so skilled as to be able to produce
different goods of consistently high quality.
The individual craftsmen were organized in guilds. As compulsory
associations, they fulfilled two roles: they were concerned with ‘the
internal regulation of labour and external monopoly’ (Max Weber).
Both functions were intimately intertwined and were designed to
secure the livelihood of the guild members. For this reason, the guilds
fixed production quotas and supply; they restricted price and quality
competition among the members; they delayed the introduction of
new products and technologies; they limited access to the market and
tried to operate as monopolists in the raw materials and finished
goods markets. The idea was to safeguard equality of the terms of
production among the associates, to block differentiation and to
prevent the formation of what Weber has called ‘capital leverage’
(Kapitalsmacht). The economic policies of the guilds were not totally
inimical to growth. Yet whenever economic growth and social
equilibrium came into conflict, the guilds would opt in favour of the
latter principle.
The towns were both centres of the production of manufactured
goods and market places. They hence formed not merely the one of
the two pillars of a town-and-country division of labour that had
developed since the high middle ages; they were also the point where
economic transactions took place. The town was therefore charged
with the task to coordinate and organize a trading economy based on
the division of labour. Merchants assumed these functions with the
exception of those cases where the producer was able to sell directly to
the consumer. The merchants mediated between those two sides and
tried to make a profit by selling goods at a higher price than they had
purchased them. Once this cycle of exchange had been completed, it
made sense to continue it on a larger scale and thus to accumulate
capital. This kind of economic behaviour was all the more attractive
to the merchant as an expansion of his business promised economies
of scale, thanks to reduced overheads per unit. The utility value, the
creation of which had guided the producers’ economic activity, lost
its earlier significance. As A. Genovesi observed in 1765, ‘although
the merchant likes the prof its already made, his sights are nevertheless
invariably fixed on future profits’. Thus the sphere of the circulation
of goods rather than the sphere of production came to gam
supremacy. The deployment and accumulation of commercial
capital became the decisive stimuli in the development of the non-
agricultural economy until the onset of industrialization.
 10 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

There are a number of reasons for this. For one, the productivity of
the craft shops was too low and lacking a potential for development to
enable the artisans to make larger profits. The guilds also did their
best to prevent an evolution towards capitalism. If there were any
potentialities for increased production and hence increased profits,
they existed at the level of the inter-regional and international
division of labour. So long as these markets lacked transparency and
there were no generally accepted standards of value, it was in this field
that large profits could be reaped.
The ways in which the merchants accumulated capital did displäy
capitalist features quite early on. But they were even more deeply
moulded by the conditions which were set by the prevailing feudal
system. Towns and merchant capital found themselves in a
relationship of ‘internal externality’ vis-a-vis the feudal mode of
production, as J. Merrington has put it. However dynamic the
merchants may have been, there was no denying the fact that their
activities were based, directly or indirectly, on the rents which the
landlords—the ‘productive class’ in F. Quesnay’s words—were able
to raise. In this sense the relationship which the merchant capitalist
established with production was similar to that of the feudal lords.
The merchants established fields of activity for which they obtained
sanction from the feudal authorities in the form of monopolies and
privileges. The frequently observed tendency of merchant capital to
‘refeudalize’ itself neatly conforms with this development. One
merchant family after the other turned its back on trade and
commerce and acquired an estate in the countryside. Merchant
capital became landed capital. Capitalist ground rent and the system
of feudal rents became inextricably intermeshed.
The dynamics of craft production and commerce tended, more or
less, to follow the movements of the agricultural sector; but it was not
an identical development. Except for the trade in agricultural
pioduce, the non-agricultural sector of the European economy was
less affected by the long-term upswings and crises which have been
discussed above. The price movement of manufactured goods tended
to undulate with that of basic foodstuffs; but the vacillations were far
less marked. By and large the former lagged behind the latter in
periods of boom. On the other hand, non-agricultural prices were
liable to drop less sharply than agricultural ones in times of
depression. There were two reasons for this: (1) Unlike food
production and exceptions apart, the production of manufactured
goods is not subject to the law of diminishing returns. (2) Demand for
manufactured goods is, again unlike that for basic foodstuffs,
 Introduction 11

dependent on disposable incomes and hence elastic.

At first glance the short-term cycle appears to be more important
for the development of the non-agricultural economy than the long¬
term waves. As soon as grain prices were pushed up in the wake of a
had harvest, demand inevitably focused on the agricultural sector in
order to provide for basic needs. Demand for manufactured products
declined. Thus an ‘agricultural underproduction crisis’ (E.
Labrousse) unleashed an underconsumption crisis in the manu¬
facturing sector. What made short-term crises of the traditional type
so significant for this sector was that all long-term calculations
involved a considerable risk. This in turn reinforced the merchants in
their proclivity to keep away from the production sphere altogether.
However, the question of short-term or long-term cycles quickly
turns out to be a fallacious one. As we have seen above, both were
closely related. And finally the repercussions of the agricultural crises
upon the manufacturing and commercial sector add force to the
argument that it was, its relative autonomy notwithstanding, still
tied to the feudal system as a whole (see Figure 3).
It was only around 1500 that the capacity for change inherent in the
feudal system and its manufacturing and commercial appendices
became visible to some small degree. But before this potential is
examined, it is important to be aware of the obstacles which socio¬
economic change was likely to encounter. The peasant community

Figure 3:
Index of the underproduction crisis in
manufacturing at Lille in 1662/63
(1666/70 =100)
 12 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

and the guilds were centres of this resistence. Both were forms of
organizations which the small agricultural producers and artisans
had created in order to arm themselves against outside intervention,
especially on the part of the feudal lords and the merchants. The two
organizations were also designed to prevent a destruction of the
existing internal socio-economic equilibrium as a result of the
infiltration of capitalist modes of production; this is why the
members had subjected themselves to firm regulations and had
allowed their freedom of movement to be curtailed. The impact of the
feudal system was ambivalent. It left the peasant in control of the
labour process; but the path of agricultural progress was blocked as
long as the landlords appropriated to themselves a large part of the
production and as long as the community insisted on the
maintenance of existing collectivist ties to the soil. On the other hand,
it is true that feudal dues and state taxes pushed the peasant into
producing for the market and thus increased the economic
contribution of the agricultural sector. In this way the pressures of
exploitation could equally well act as a stimulus to the
commercialization of agriculture.
It is not possible to explain the crisis of the' urban export trade
purely in terms of the economic depression and external factors, like
wars. Rather it must be seen in connection with the promotion, by the
merchant capitalists, of manufacturing in the countryside and the
mobilization of the underemployed rural labour force for this
purpose. Two factors, above all, induced the merchants to adopt this
strategy. Firstly, at a time when wages in the towns were, broadly
speaking, moving upwards, it seemed logical to shift production to
the countryside where wages were considerably lower. In the vicinity
of Amiens, for example, they are supposed to have been 50% to 73%
below the rates paid in the town itself. This discrepancy was due to
the fact that the small rural producers were without protection
against the diktat of the merchants. 7 hey did not have the backing of
a guild, and sheer desperation forced them to accept the terms
imposed upon them, lip to a point, families engaged in the rural
cottage industries were able to survive on relatively low wages because
many of them owned a plot of land, at least during the early phase
and were able to grow some food for self-provision. Moreover, unlike
the artisans who belonged to a guild, they could rely on all members
of the family to collaborate. Thus the Town Clerk of Bielefeld by the
name of Consbruch wrote about the linen weavers of the Ravensberg
region in 1794 that ‘most of them live on their own produce and this
enables them, in view of the lower cost of living in the countryside to
 Introduction 13

make more attractive goods and to sell them at a lower price than the
weavers iti the towns. This is why few people in the towns can he
persuaded to take up weaving and why the location and expansion of
the craft in the countryside is, in all respects, extremely
advantageous.’ The merchant capitalist who put out this work was
therefore able to pocket a differential profit, at least for as long as the
new system had not yet generally established itself.
The second reason for the move of manufacturing to the
countryside was the insufficient flexibility with which the urban
economies responded to demand. Indeed in many cases it was a
deliberate policy of the guilds to keep supplies limited. The result was
that the urban manufacturers were unable to keep pace wdtb rising
demand. This demand expanded particularly rapidly in the
international markets and above all those of the colonial world
which, in the age of a ‘new colonialism’ (E.J. Hobsbawm), assumed
increasing importance for European manufactured goods. In regions
where urban production had been badly affected by the ravages of
war, merchant capitalists felt an even greater compulsion to exploit
the industrial potential of the countryside. In Silesia, for example,
where in 1618 there existed in all probability more looms in the
countryside than in the towns, urban weavers, with a few exceptions,
had their trade ruined by the Thirty Years’ War. By 1648 some 81% of
all Silesian looms were located in the countryside. The rise of rural
linen production was steep also along the West coast of France. In
1686, the town of Cadiz received linen worth 3,750,000 livres; it was
known as bretanas produced to the south-west of St. Malo in Brittany.
About 90% of this linen was for the American market.
The reproductive behaviour specific to those engaged in these
cottage industries and the supra-regional character of the markets for
their products, often reaching out far into the colonial world,
determined the growth of these ‘proto-industrial’ areas, as they are
now being called. The families were able to guarantee the elastic
supply of labour which proto-industrialization as a dynamically
expansionist system required. The world market which was slowly
coming into existence acted as the engine of proto-industrial growth.
Given the conditions of the time there was only one way of
transcending the limitations of the domestic markets and to increase
demand: through the ‘appropriation of foreign purchasing power’
(W. Hoffmann). One of the key features of the proto-industrial system
was that labour costs were being ‘externalized’, i.e. the merchant
capitalists took over no more than a fraction of the labour costs and
off-loaded most of them on to the rural sector. A pre-capitalist peasant
 14 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

society was thus incorporated into the reproduction and accumula¬

tion machinery of merchant capitalism.
What kind of tremendous opportunities lay dormant in the
expansion of rural manufacturing, may be discovered if the
development of England is compared with that of the northern parts
of the Netherlands. The countryside had been the preferred location
of English textile manufacturing since the late middle ages.
Consequently there was little room here for a conflict between town
and country to become a factor in urban crisis in the 17th century.
However, the concentration of rural industries in regions which had
specialized in stock-rearing and dairy farming as well as the decline of
the old draperies and the rise of the new draperies constituted crisis
elements; for a number of regions failed to make the transition from
heavy cloths to new draperies.
As far as the manufacturing and commercial sphere is concerned,
everything hinged on how the merchant capitalists responded to
varying demand and what attitude they took vis-h-vis the production
sphere. If they were content to market those goods which were
produced by the artisans in the towns, no great changes were to be
expected. The production sphere and the circulation of goods
remained separate. The circulation sphere was preponderant only in
a formal way. Changes occurred, however, once the merchants were
no longer prepared to acquiesce in the production monopoly
established by the guilds and tried to break or circumvent it. It was
difficult to break it because any attempt to build up production
associations which were independent of the guilds encountered the
fierce resistance of the established associations. Notwithstanding the
successes which the merchant capitalists had, for example, in the
Italian cities of the late middle ages, often there was no alternative but
to move production to the countryside or to small village-type towns
where there were no guilds.
I wo developments favoured this solution. We have seen how
accumulation and population growth created a stratum of
agricultural producers with little or no land who were dependent on a
subsidiary source of income. It was on these people that the
merchants were able to rely, if they opted for building up production
centres in the countryside. Especially in linen and cloth manufacture
they were able to link up with the traditional rural production of
goods for home consumption. These small rural artisans continued
to produce utility values, but, unlike their counterparts in the urban
guilds, they were now subject to the whims of the merchants It was
the latter (rather than the guild) who dictated the terms And once
 introduction 15

merchant capital had freed the production of goods from the shackles
of the guild system, there were few obstacles to further expansion, at
least for the time being.
These developments, which took place in the fold of the feudal
system and were to undermine it in the long run, were barely
discernible at the turn of the 15th to the 16th century. Nevertheless,
with the benefit of hindsight, it seems clear that the two trends which
affected the agricultural sector, on the one hand, and the
manufacturing-commercial sector on the other, were intimately
connected. Areas of concentrated rural manufacture could develop
and grow only if the surrounding region supplied them with
foodstuffs. These regions generated an essential part of the demand
for the manufactured goods produced in such zones. Specialization in
one region was predicated on the specialization of the other region. It
was only in the course of this process that the markets expanded
geographically. Households which hitherto had been involved in
both agricultural and non-agricultural production, concentrated on
the one or the other, and by doing so they generated a demand for
goods which they had stopped producing.
Specialization increased agricultural productivity. The vagaries of
the seasonal harvest cycle diminished. A growing economic inter¬
dependence made it possible to balance harvest failures in one region
by using the surpluses of another. Short-term crises of the traditional
type lost much of their devastating impact. Demand on the domestic
market did not only grow, but it also became less volatile. And
finally there was growing demand from overseas. This became an
important factor once the metropolitan countries of Europe had
established their formal or informal domination over the extra-
European world and had integrated it into their economies. The
stimulus which was provided by both domestic and overseas demand
furthered manufacturing in early modern Europe.
More important than the sheer quantitative growth were the social
changes that resulted from these developments. In the regions with
concentrated manufacture traditional feudal dependencies became
overlain by new relationships, which were, in embryo, capitalist; the
structures of a society beyond feudalism began to assume shape.
The emergent state machines were to play an extremely important
role in this process of socio-economic transformation. Taxes
supplemented, but also competed against feudal dues. Above all,
taxes increased so drastically over time that they began to outpace the
latter, thereby restricting the landlords’ freedom of manoeuvre. At
first there emerged a ‘centralized feudalism (G. Bois) which did not
16 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

replace, but supplemented the original type of feudalism. Its essential

feature was that it redistributed to the feudal lords the revenue which
had flowed into the state’s coffers. But soon the state developed a more
ambiguous role, trying, as it were, to satisfy two claims upon it at
once, i.e. the maintenance of feudal domination and the stimulation
of economic growth. Ultimately the state became a mirror of several
modes of production which existed side-by-side. Its relative
autonomy was strengthened, and the discrepancy between its own
fiscal system and that of feudalism became more marked. Its role as
the steering centre of a ‘centralized feudalism’ receded into the
background.
The state alone, owing to its monopoly of violence which it
claimed and slowly succeeded in asserting, was in a position to
impose wage labour conditions upon the production sphere,
institutionally to guarantee the freedom of exchange of goods in the
commercial sphere and, finally, to formalize the legal framework
without which the nascent capitalist society would not have been able
to exist. Also, by expanding the transport infrastructure, it promoted
the general conditions required in an economy which produced
goods for the market.
Genet ally speaking, particulanst forces remained strong enough,
however, to ptevent centralization from becoming overpowering and
to keep the state bureaucracies from arresting the socio-economic
change which had begun. The decentralized and fragmented
structures of exploitation typical of European feudalism exerted such
a lasting influence on the fibre of European society that it provided a
new and secure basis for the rapidly expanding non-agricultural
sector. In this decentralized nature, European feudalism differed
fundamentally from the Asiatic mode of production and laid the
dtcisive structuial foundations for the rise of Europe
I here is no doubt that this process which finally ended in the
Industrial Revolution was a violent one. The burden of dues, which
the peasants had to pay to the landlords and to the state, forced them
to seek access to the market and to reinforce their production for the
market. If the land which they had at their disposal became too small
they would try either to work as wage labourers for wealthier peasants
or on the estates of the landlords; or they would try to supplement
their income in the rural cottage industries. If they opted for the latter
alternative, they would throw themselves into the arms of the
merchant capitalists. 1 his enfored commercialization’ (W Kula)
was not infrequently followed by the disintegration of the rural
community as a local point of reference. The socio-economic process
 Introduction 17

assumed its most violent forms in the serf labour of the peasants on
the T'orwerke of Eastern and East-Central Europe, on the one hand,
and on the slave labour plantations of Central and South America, on
the other. Elsewhere the fragmented structures of exploitation left
possibilities of resistance open to the dependent sections of the
population. Here they were able to prevent the economic pressures on
them from becoming intolerable.
 1. The Age of the Price Revolution
In the second half of the 15th century the long-drawn-out crisis of the
late middle ages was followed by a period of long-term growth. The
population grew, agriculture and manufacturing expanded; markets
stretched far into overseas territories; the volume of trade and the
circulation of money increased. At the same time prices saw a rise, in
particular those for basic foodstuffs. Contemporaries were struck by
this change. In his dispute with de Malestroit, Jean Bodin in 1568
traced the origins of the inflation to the silver imports from the
Americas. Many scholars have been inclined to agree with him to this
day. But the causes of the inflationary development are more likely to
have deeper roots.

1.1 The Growth of the Population

The population of Europe increased slowly, though not un¬

interruptedly, from the second half of the 15th century. Its index rose
from 100 to 127 in the western parts of Europe, with the figures for
Eastern and South-Eastern Europe being too unreliable for quotation
(see Table 1, p. 3). If, by using J.C. Russell’s calculations, one takes
1450 as the starting point, the index figures would be 100 (1450), 155
(1500) and 195 (1700).
This would seem to indicate that population growth in the 16th
century slowed down appreciably by comparison with the second half
of the 15th century. And indeed, once the losses which had been
inflicted by the plagues of the 14th and early 15th centuries had been
made good, the tempo of demographic change decelerated. However
the global figures quoted above conceal the fact that the population
grew more rapidly in some regions than in others. A slow growth
occurred in Central, Western and Southern Europe with the index
rising to 123; Northern and North-western Europe, on the other
hand, saw a rapid expansion, with the index climbing as high as 156
Ehe population of the Province of Holland grew particularly fast
reaching 328 index points in 1650, with 197 for the northern Low
Countries as a whole. The discrepancies in growth between Southern
Europe, on the one hand, and Northern and Northwestern Europe on

18
 The Age of the Price Revolution 19

the other, may be taken as one piece of indirect evidence that the
former region was losing its leading economic position to the latter.
But what were the reasons for the overall growth? It is probable that
control mechanisms existed in European society as early as the high
middle ages which were designed to prevent the tensions between the
rise of the population and the scarce resources of agriculture from
becoming acute. The most important mechanisms which were at the
disposal of both the landlords and the communities were: (1) To tie
the permission to marry to the availability of a full-time occupation
either in the form of a farm or a craftshop and, closely related to this,
(2) to force those who did not meet this qualification (e.g. farm hands,
maids, journeymen) to remain single.
The inevitable result of such policies were a late marriage age and a
high percentage of bachelors and spinsters. As P. Chaunu has put it,
the increased marriage age was in effect the ‘contraceptive weapon of
classical Europe’. For it is the marriage age of the women which
decides whether her reproductive potential is fully available. Fertility
in pre-industrial Europe was hence controlled via the marriage age
and, in the second place, by the frequency of marriage. Birth control
within marriage was initially without major importance and became
a factor in various places only in the 17th century. Nobility and
bourgeoisie appear to have led the way in this respect, even if
exceptions have been found to exist among these groups, too.
Since there was plenty of unused land available around the middle
of the 15th century, the above-mentioned checks on marriage coidd be
relaxed. It appears that the marriage age was correspondingly lower.
Thus, if the few references that have been found for France are
reliable, it was by then between 21 and 22 years of age. It was slightly
higher in England. The marriage age for women was also low among
the English nobility and the bourgeoisie of Geneva (see Table 2). In
view of this, the birth rate was also correspondingly higher,
sometimes reaching a level which is to be found in the Third World
today.
Population growth in the late 15th and 16th centuries does appear,
however, to have been less a result of higher fertility than of a lower
mortality rate. Positive checks’, as Malthus was to call them in
contradistinction to ‘preventive checks’, lost some of their efficacy
once the economy picked up and the supply of the population with
food improved. The link between the harvest cycle and the death rate
became more tenuous. With the plague being on the retreat,
‘autonomous’ mortality which was purely biologically conditioned
(J.D. Chambers) and unconnected with socio-economic factors
20 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

appears to have changed. Still, the death toll among the population
continued to be very high by present day standards. Of 1,000 newborn
babies 200 would die before their first birthday, and in years of crisis
this figure would rise to 300. Only two-thirds would live up to the age
of 15. In 1561-1600, average life expectancy in Geneva was 23 years
and less than 29 years among the city’s bourgeoisie; around 1600 it
was 26.6 years in the Venetian Terra Ferma, but about 43 years in
Colyton in Southwest England (1538-1624; see also Table 2).

Table 2:
Selected demographic indicators for 16th-century Europe

Colyton1 Terling2 Bourgeoisie English High

of Geneva Aristocracy
1538/99 1550/1624 1550/99 1550 99

Av. marriage age of

women 27.0 24.5 21.4 22.8

Infant mortality per

1,000 (0-1 year) 120-140 128 - 190

Child mortality per

1,000 (1-14 years) 124 149 - 94

Child mortality per

1,000 (1-19 years) - - 519 -

Av. life expectancy 40.6—45.83 - 28.5/9 37.0

‘Village in Devon/England; 2Village in Essex/England; 31538-1624

The population growth slowed down in the second half of the 16th
century and in particular since the famine of the early 1570's
‘Preventive’ as well as ‘positive’ checks now reduced the growth rate
People were forced to change then reproductive life. The marriage
age rose again. But the adaptation to the deteriorating economic
situation did not occur fast enough. The size of the population and
available resources were still too far apart. Thus famines, epidemics
and wars once again assumed the role of establishing a new
equilibrium.

1.2 The Expansion of Agriculture

Extension and intensification of production had marked the

agricultural crisis of the late middle ages which had succeeded the
growth period of the high middle ages. This meant that, on the one
 The Age of the Price Revolution 21

hand, land which had been used for grain-growing was transformed
into meadows and pastures. Grain production was restricted in
favour of stock-farming; on the other hand, land was also taken into
intensive cultivation for the production of wine, fruit and other
marketable produce. The population decline of the late middle ages
lay at the heart of both processes; for it was this decline which
stimulated the production of foodstuffs that were not directly exposed
to demographic change. The 16th century then saw a reversal of this
earlier development under the pressure ol a growing population;
fields and pastures were again taken under the plough for grain
production. If a rising number of people was to be fed, cereals offered
a more economical way of mobilizing potential than livestock¬
rearing.
But this proved insufficient. New land had to be developed and, as
the Zimmern Chronicle, dated ca. 1550, reports, forests were cleared
and land claimed even in remote.and mountainous regions. New
regulations tried to stop the destruction of trees and shrubs. The
reclaiming of land in swampy areas and the building of dykes were
also widespread, most successfully on the North Sea coast. The
average index for land reclamation per annum in the northern Low
Countries rose from 100 in 1515-39 to 346 in 1540-64; it dropped to 75
in 1565-89 during the Wars of Independence, hut moved back to 340
in 1590-1614 and even to a high 419 in the period 1615-39. Along the
German North Sea coast it proved impossible to recover the
enormous land losses of the late middle ages. Nevertheless, through
the building of dykes some 48,000 hectares of land were reclaimed in
the 16th century up to the beginning of the 1600s.
All in all the trend was towards extensive agriculture, and there
was little intensive cultivation. This basic pattern did not prevail
around towns or in areas of widespread urbanization as in the Po
Valley in Italy and in the Netherlands. Nor did it apply to countries
such as England where there existed favourable conditions for a
commercialization of agriculture (for the development of seed-yield
ratios see Table 3).
This was also the time when patterns of production developed in
opposite directions in Western Europe, on the one hand, and Eastern
and East-Central Europe, on the other. What in economic terms had
long been a sliding scale, now became a contrast which was to be a
distinguishing feature between East and West in subsequent
centuries, with the River Elbe acting as the dividing line. At the one
end of the scale, in England, we witness the beginning of a
commercialized agriculture; at the other end, in the East, there
22 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 3:
Average yield ratios of wheat, rye and barley in different parts
of Europe, 1500-1820 (multiples of seed)

England/ France/Spain Germany/ Russia/Poland

Netherlands Italy Switzerland/ Czechosl./
Scandinavia Hungary

1500-49 7.4 6.7 4.0 3.9

1550-99 7.3 - 4.4 4.3
1600-49 6.7 - 4.5 4.0
1650-99 9.3 6.2 4.1 3.8
1700-49 - 6.3 4.1 3.5
1750-99 10.1 7.0 5.1 4.7
1800-20 11.1 6.2 5.4 -

occurred the refeudalization of agriculture with the transition to

Gutswirtschaft. The River Elbe thus became the most significant
socio-economic divide in Europe. East-Central Europe, as an
exporter ot grain and timber became economically dependent on
Western Europe in a way that was not dissimilar to the more recent
dependency of the suppliers of raw materials in the developing world
on the industrial countries of the West.
1 he transformation of 1 ields into pastures for sheep farming slowly
came to a halt in England in the first half of the 16th century and
under pressure from a growing and land-hungry population which
protested against sheep that ‘eat up and swallow down the very men
themselves ( Th. More). 1 lus did not imply a return to a grain¬
growing monoculture, though. Rather grain production and stock-
farming began mutually to complement each other. This was known
as up-and-down husbandry , i.e. land was turned into pasture, to be
ploughed up again at some later date. I his technique improved the
quality of the grassland; no less importantly, manure which would
otherwise be lost on the common was absorbed to fertilize what would
one day be taken under the plough again.
I he introduction of ‘up-and-down husbandry' was related to
changes which were to affect the social structure of the village very
profoundly. The technique could be established only if the land had
either been ‘enclosed’ or ‘put in severalty’. Wherever enclosure took
place, the rights of other villagers to use this land, and grazing rights
in particular, were abolished. The joint use which had been typical of
the ‘open field' economy came to an end. Enclosure was frequently
preceded by a consolidation of farm-holdings which was to safeguard
 The Age of the Price Rei’olutioti 23

a more efficient use of the land. Thus hedges and fences became
symbols of a new age, for everyone to see. They reflected the victory of
‘agrarian individualism’ (M. Bloch) over the collectivism which had
been the key feature of the village economy. This traditional system
with its joint land use had become an obstacle to the evolution of
agriculture’s productive forces and was hence destroyed. However, it
would be wrong to exaggerate the extent of the enclosure movement
of the 16th and early 17th century. Leicestershire, for example, which
was relatively widely affected by it, saw no more than 1.0% of its
agricultural land enclosed (see Table 4).

Table 4:
Enclosures in Leicestershire, 1450-1850

Period % of Cultivated land

1450-1607 10
1608-1729 52
1730-1850 38

100

Nor would it be correct to reduce the socio-economic pressures

behind the enclosure movement simply to a discrepancy between
production forces and production relations. The growth of the
population had unleashed a wave of claims on common land and
wasteland. There was a threat that this land might be withdrawn
from common use, and landlords as well as yeomen tried to block this
possibility by resorting to enclosure. Moreover, the population
growth pushed up prices; increased demand created the pre¬
conditions for greater productivity and for establishing property
titles which excluded the rights of other parties. A further decisive
factor was that demand rose not only for cereals and vegetables, but
also for wool which was required by the textile industry. This
demand declined somewhat in the second half of the 16th century,
when wheat prices trebled, but the price of woqI no more than
doubled between 1541-50 and 1601-10. In many ways it was less the
demand for grain and—to a lesser extent—meat than the demand of
the textile industry for wool which accelerated the pace of the
commercialization of English agriculture. The wool trade became the
pace-maker of capitalism in the countryside.
The landlords were the early protagonists of the enclosure
movement. The price revolution had put them into a difficult
24 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

position: while prices were rising, their rent income remained

stagnant. A redistribution of agricultural income in favour of the
peasants was hence almost inevitable. The property rights of the
latter made an adjustment of feudal dues to the rising price levels in
many cases impossible. Wherever the landlords had a free hand, two
options were available to them: they could either try to increase rents
or resort to enclosure in order to lease the land again at a higher rent.
Fhe advantage of the second option was that it was possible to
demand a larger sum for enclosed property. In the first half of the 16th
century the initiative for enclosure in Leicestershire came in about
70% of the cases from the landlords. But after the middle of the
century, the peasants themselves became active, once they had cpnie to
see the benefits of enclosure. Thus market considerations began to
affect the behaviour of the hardcore of agrarian society in England.
On the European Continent, the tensions generated by population
growth tended to be sharper than in England, with the exception of
the Netherlands. The return to grain production assumed more
extreme proportions. On the other hand, the beginnings of
commercialization of agriculture were more modest. In France stock¬
farming and intensive agriculture lost out. In the Languedoc in the
South pastures were ploughed up and grazing rights were restricted.
Livestock gave way to the production of cereals and vegetables.
Vineyards fell victim to this process in the Languedoc and Maine.
I hete were, to be sine, marked differences in the development of the
economic system in various regions. But there was a general trend
towards a leasing of land. In the Hurepoix region south of Paris, the
expropriation of the peasants had progressed so far by 1547-64 that
they had no more than about 40% of the land (see Table 5, based on
seven seigneunes only). The remaining 60% was shared between the
nobility and the bourgeoisie. The strong position of the latter was a

Table 5;
Distribution of landed property in 7 seigneurial districts in
the French Hurepoix region. 1547-64

Hectares O/
/o

Peasants
2048.51 33 8
Seigneurs (self-managing) 1938.65 'll 9
Parisian bourgeoisie 1416.27 23 3
Local bourgeoisie 355.71 S 9
Others
310.39 5.1
Total
6069.53 100,0
 The Age of the Price Revolution 25

peculiarity which could be found in particular in the vicimtyof cities

Generally speaking, it was the landlords who initiated the
expropriation of the peasants, and for the same motives as their
English counterparts. But it is typical of the relative backwardness of
France vis-a-vis England that the landlords in the West and the South
of the country resorted to ‘metayage’, a system which generally left
them with half the value of the net production. In this way, feudal and
capitalist elements became inextricably intertwined.
Sixteenth-century Spain saw the growth of an opposition
movement by agricultural interest groups against the Mesta, the
national organization of sheep farmers whose flocks moved across the
Iberian peninsula with the changing seasons. The Mesta had enjoyed
the support of the monarchy for fiscal reasons, above all during the
reign of Ferdinand II, Isabella and Charles V. But it had some dif¬
ficulty in maintaining its priviledged position under Philip II. The
rapid rise in demand for basic foodstuffs made it increasingly difficult
to continue a policy which clearly favoured sheep farming against
agriculture. The number of sheep held by the Mesta, which had
reached a maximum of three million around 1520, declined after 1556
to about two million. But this reduction was still insufficient so that
by the end of the century it was virtually impossible to supply the
population of Spain with enough food.
Agriculture made great strides in Northern and Central Italy. It
also expanded in the South and in Sicily, but growth was not of the
intensive kind. The ‘return of the Italians to agriculture’ (R.
Romano) had begun in the 15th century. Francesco Guicciardini
relates with some pride that Italy was being cultivated up to her
mountain tops. Considerable sums of capital reached the countryside
from the towns. Land purchases of the Venetian oligarchy in the
Terra Ferma region became so extensive that the income drawn from
these investments rose four-fold between 1510 and 1588. But, like in
Spain, the position of the peasants was liable to deteriorate, and
quasi-feudal elements began to reappear in the highly commercial¬
ized Italian agricultural system.
In Germany west of the River Elbe agriculture once more became
the dominant activity. Stock-farming experienced a marked decline
and became a supplier of draught animals and fertiliser. Wine¬
growing expanded in the south-west; but it declined in other regions,
especially in the north and east, where it had spread in the late
middle ages. Although more land was made available for grain
growing, productivity improved but marginally. There -were
exceptions to this rule, mainly in the vicinity of some towns, in the
26 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

lower Rhine region and in Schleswig-Holstein. The latter area in

North Germany saw the proliferation of a variant of up-and-down
husbandry, known as Koppelwirtschaft.
The slow change in productivity was accompanied by an equally
slow change of the production system. It was only in the Rhineland
that short-term leases replaced the older forms of feudal rent on a
larger scale. Generally speaking, the landlords did not extend the
land which they kept under their own management. The system by
which they extracted their income from the peasants remained feudal.
The growth of territorial states in Central Europe meant that the
landlords faced fresh competition for the allocation of their main
source of revenue. The state was interested in preserving a dues-
paying peasantry and hence resisted attempts by the landlords to
extend their holdings. These tensions gave the peasants more
breathing space which increased their chances of survival.
Agriculture reached its highest degree of intensification in the
Netherlands in the 16th century. The old three-field system was
replaced by new forms of agricultural production. One of these was
not to allow land to lie fallow until the fourth, fifth or even sixth year.
I here was also a system of up-and-down husbandry as wTell as a
‘system with cultivation of fodder crops’, as Slicher van Bath put it,
on the fallow or in connection with crop rotation. The production of
commercial crops was expanded. These developments must be seen
against the background of the high level of urbanization and a well-
established manufacturing economy, both of which increased
demand for the produce of intensive agriculture. Moreover, there
were the grain imports from the Baltic Sea region, which filled the
gaps left by the trend towards specialization in agricultural
production. Grain imports amounted to at least 13—14% of the total
requirement between 1562 and 1569. Specialization and commercial¬
ization in the northern parts of the country were also furthered by the
fact that there were but few landlords. Consequently the peasants
were not subject to any major restrictions in their economic activity.
Whereas small-scale, but intensive agriculture predominated in the
southern parts of the Netherlands, the north became a region with
wealthy farmers who formed the nucleus of an agricultural
capitalism.

Willielm Abel has spoken of the ‘ThUnen Circles' which began 10

emerge around Che Netherlands and Western Europe in general in

the 16th century. By this he means a zone of intensive agriculture
which also included the dairy farming in the'marshes along the
German North Sea coast and the Koppelwirtschaft of Holstein; and
 The Age of the Price Revolution 27

this zone was in turn surrounded by a ‘grain belt' in which the three-
field system predominated. Beyond this belt was a grassland zone
stretching from Jutland, the Danish Isles and Russia across to the
Ukraine and Hungary which supplied Western Europe with
livestock. The emergence of these belts was less a result of natural
conditions than of those of the market and of relative location and
cost advantages. As a rule production methods became less intensive
with growing distance from the central zone of consumption around
the densely populated Low Countries. This relationship is neatly
reflected in the price differentials between East and West. Thus
during the years 1551-1600 average grain prices in Danzig were only
53% of those paid in the Netherlands; prices for oxen ex Danzig were a
mere 27% of the levels at Antwerp. The Netherlands were able to
impose production structures on their suppliers which were tailored
to the requirements of the market in that Northwestern corner of
Europe. Indeed, trade relations between the Low Countries and the
Baltic regions assumed a quasi-colonial character.
Concentration on grain export inevitably also left a deep mark on
the economic system in large parts of East-Central Europe. However,
there were other preconditions which facilitated a restructuring of the
economy in those countries. The agricultural crisis of the late middle
ages undermined the earlier gains by the peasants in terms of feudal
rights and obligations and prepared the way for a reversal in two
ways. Firstly, the decimation of the population created the material
prerequisites of the expansion of the demesnes. The scarcity of labour
to which the landlords responded by tying their peasants more firmly
to the land generated the social conditions for what Friedrich Engels
called the ‘second [wave of] serfdom’. Nor were there many
institutional obstacles to seigneurial actions because the state had lost
the means of influencing this development once colonization had
taken place and German law had been established. It was partly
preceded, partly accompanied by the ‘immunity movement’ which
granted privileges to the nobility. Thus the state became an
instrument in the hands of the feudal lords and was in no position to
counteract the growing pressures exerted by the landlords on the
peasants.
It was left to the export boom of the 16th century to set free forces
which transformed the old system based on feudal payments to one
relying on the serf labour to work the Vorwerke of East-Central
Europe. Searching for a solution to the decline of their incomes and
keen to participate in the expansion of the economy, the landlords
expanded the land under their own management and increased the
 28 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 6:
Some structural features of the ‘Vorwerk’ in Poland, 1500-1655

1500/50 1551/80 1580/1605' 1606/301 1631/55'

Size of Vorwerk
(in Hufen) 3.1 3.6 4.0 4.4 6.2
Size of peasant
holdings (in Hufen) 6.5 4.5 ~ - -
Ratio of peasant Hufe
to Vorwerk-Hufe 2.1 1.3 0.9
Weekly serf labour per
Hufe (in days) 1.7 3 32 42 52
Percentage of serf
labour used for culti¬
vation of Vorwerk area 57 63 52 68 60

'Greater Poland; 2Eastern parts of Greater Poland; 1580-1612, 1613-26,

1627-55; Western parts of Greater Poland; 1580-94, 1695-1615, 1616-55.

labour services (see Table 6). Thus the Vorwerk of a Polish aristocrat
grew from an average of 3.1 Hufen 1500-50 to 3.6 Hufen in 1551-80
By 1631-55 it had reached the size of 6.2 Hufen for the whole of Greater
Poland. In 1551-80 the ratio between land held by peasants and that
managed by the landlords was about 1.3:1. The labour services which
had been limited to a few days in the year during the high middle ages
rose to two days per week between 1500 and 1550 and to three in 1551-
80. By this time no. less than 63% of the labour on the demesnes was
piovided by serfs, with the remaining 32% coming from wage
abourers employed by the landlords. In 1551-80 some 93.9% of the
landlords income was raised through the Vorwerk economy Dues

aAnH wPaymrntSufr0m the peasants dloPPed to a mere 6.1%

motlin'Tt1 d°ne 3 Cakulatl°" which shows the high
profitability of this economic system: in 1551-80 the income of a
nobleman in the western parts of Greater Poland would have dropped
by about one third, if the mixed system of serf labour and wage labour
had been ^placed by one relying exclusively on wage labour
In the decade of the 1560s Poland exported about 6%of its net grain

Z^h^ abOU; 15'20% °f the S— which was sent toTe

market, the hgures for rye, the main crop, were 12% and 40%
TTilh V The «-"denburg Mark which, together w„h the res “
Elbia, expenenced a development similar to that of Poland was
qually closely tied into the East-Central European grain trade
Danzig rose the postt.on of the most important po!t for grat
 The Age of the Price Revolution 29

exports in the Baltic region. Between the end of the 15th century and
the 1710s, exports increased ten-fold from 10,000 Last per annum to
100,000 Last. In 1619 some 175,000 Last are assumed to have reached
Danzig (see Figure 4). The Polish estate-owners transported their

Figure 7:
Volume of grain exports from Danzig
1557-1700 (quinquennial averages in Last)
Last

grain down the River Vistula on rafts to sell in Danzig. Some of these
noble families shipped up to 800 LaV per annum. While Danzig saw a
period of great prosperity, other Polish towns declined. Internal trade
contracted. The peasants, pushed to the margins of the economy,
were cut off from the market and hence also disappeared as buyers of
basic manufactured goods. Those elements of the szlachta (middle
nobility), who benefited from the export boom, tended to buy foreign
luxury goods. Shrinking demand and foreign competition put the
screws on the artisans in the towns. At the same time Polish
merchants suffered from the policies adopted by the nobility which
aimed to establish a direct link between the large-scale grain
producers and foreign merchants.
The introduction of a Vorwerk economy and the labour policies
adopted by it amounted to a retrograde step away from the simple
market economy which had emerged elsewhere. East-Central Europe
returned to forms of appropriation which had existed in the past. In
this sense the refeudalization of agriculture in these parts of Europe
represented the most extreme contrast to the rise of a commercialized
system in England. And yet it was not a mere reversal of earlier
30 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

historical trends. What was new was that the world market rather
than the seigneurial estate provided the central reference point; new
was also the division of labour which, although it remained
unchanged on the estates, came to be based at a higher level on the
above-mentioned regional differentiations and was dictated by the
highly developed commercial zone in the northwestern corner of
Europe. Feudal ties had been loosened in the high middle ages which
saw the emergence of a simple market economy. In the 16th century
this process became reversed under the impact of a world market
which thrived on unequal terms of exchange. The world market was
not always the point of reference of the Vorwerk economy, though.
Eins economy also developed, albeit more slowly and hesitatingly, in
regions which were outside the Baltic sphere. According to J.
ropolski there appear to have been two types of Vorwerk systems.
I he first one was linked to the export market; the other one was part
of the domestic economy. Export demand and domestic demand
therefore combined to effect the transition to a J'orwerk economy.
The first impetus for the change came from the regions which
exported grain to Western-Europe; but the success of these exports
acted as a stimulus to other regions which were not part of the export
network.
There was furthermore the export of livestock from Eastern Europe
and Denmark which assumed enormous proportions in the 16th
century. Hungarian traders sold more than 180,000 oxen in Vienna
between 1549 and 1551. In the 1560s and 1570s annual exports from
Hungary were about 150,000 head. The share of livestock in terms of
total Hungarian exports (excluding copper and precious metals) rose
from about 55% at the beginning of the 16th century to 93.0% in 1542.
I he tiade in Denmark and Schleswig was no less significant. It
grew' from 20,000 head per annum between 1480 and 1500 to 55-60 000
m the period 1660-1620. The customs post at Gottorp in Hols’tein
handled 12,813 head in 1485; by 1612 this figure had reached its
absolute maximum of 52,350 head (see Figure 5). In good years an
estimated 40T00 oxen were exported from Western Russia and the
Ukraine. As Duke Johann Friedrich the Elder of Saxony claimed, the

^ Buo‘tStadt near Weimar often received ‘15[,000],

6[,000 and even 20,000 oxen’. One prerequisite of such huge
livestock exports was, of course, the existence of large concentrations
o consumers, e.g. in the Netherlands; but there is also .the expansion
of grain production at the expense of livestock farming to be
considered which occurred in Western and Central Europe Its
volume notwithstanding, the livestock trade did not have
 The Age of the Price Revolution 31

repercussions on the system of production which were in any way

comparable to the impact of the grain exports on Eastern Europe
agriculture.
Figure 5;
Volume ol oxen driven over land loErisia
and the Netherlands, 1491-1700 (ten-year
averages of animals registered by Gottorf
customs post)
Oxen

Turning farther east, Russia was still outside the ‘Thünen Circles’
in the 16th century. Nevertheless, her agriculture was exposed to
developments which were very similar to those in East-Central
Europe. In both regions a decimation of the labour force as a result of
epidemics, famines and wars in the late middle ages created the
preconditions of change. The policy of tying the peasants to the land
reached its first climax in 1497 when the possibdity of opting out of
feudal services was limited to the period around St. George’s Day (26
November). Thenceforth the landlords extended their estates, and the
transition to the Vorwerk economy set in. The great crisis of 1560-
1620 proved to be the turning point. The pressure of serfdom became
so intolerable that the peasant economy began to crack. Many peaants
opted out of the system by escaping to the fertile Black Soil regions of
the Southeast. The only solution which the Tsarist autocracy and the
feudal lords could.think of when faced with this depopulation was to
tie the peasants even more firmly to the land and to expand their
demesnes. However, the point of reference of this ecönomy was not
the world market, but the domestic market.

1.3 Crafts, Commerce and Finance

The crisis of the late middle ages had been less damaging to
manufacturing than to agriculture. Manufactured goods were less
32 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

sensitive to income fluctuations. One response by the artisans to the

crisis was to form cartels. What ended the crisis in the 16th century
was an increased demand for goods by a growing population and new
opportunities resulting from the opening up of markets overseas.
However, the end of the century saw a gradual decline in the
effective growth rate for manufactured products where the demand
was generated by population growth; by then inflation had begun to
undermine the spending power of the consumer; declining real
income also caused demand to concentrate increasingly on basic
foodstuffs. Although the colonial system of the 16th century, as will
be seen later, (pp. 42ff.), was based primarily on plunder and
exploitation, the non-European world, and the American colonies in
particular, nevertheless assumed an increasing importance as
markets for finished goods from Europe, even if this trade was not to
be compared with that of the late 17th and 18th centuries. Thus a
lemaikable correlation has been found to exist between the
fluctuations in the production of textiles at Lille and the trans-
Atlantic trade of Seville which seems to indicate that exports to the
Americas were far from insignificant. Overall the growth of the
European economy brought about a number of marked shifts in the
tegional distiibution of craft production. In the late middle ages
Nuremberg and Augsburg became centres of the Upper German
region which emerged as a major area of manufacturing next to those
in Upper and Central Italy and the Netherlands/ Metal goods
production provided the main basis of Nuremberg’s economic
position. Augsburg’s steep rise, on the other hand, was due to the
production of a cloth based on a mixture of linen and cotton, known
as fustian.

a stronghold of the
Uppei German merchants. At the beginning of the 16th
e 16th century, the
 The Age of the Price Revolution 33

Table 7:
Size of the Hungarian copper trade of the Fuggers, 1497-1539
(annual averages in tons and percentages)

Exports to Antwerp Exports to Venice

Tonnage of
Period via Danzig and Stettin and Trieste
total exports
(in %) (in %)2

1497-1503 1390.4 12.3' 32.1

1507-09 1476.8 49.3 13.3
1510-18 1625.2 55.8 2.6
1519-26 1367.3 35.2 4.5
1527-39 1099.1 53.9 10.2

1 1497/99: 0,48 % The remaining exports went to Nuremberg, Leipzig,

Hamburg, Frankfurt and Lüneburg; but the final destination of large parts
of these exports was probably again Antwerp.

Upper German region, Northern and Central Italy and the southern
parts of the Netherlands still held their uncontested leadership
position in manufacturing. But in subsequent decades the northern
parts of the Netherlands as well as England and France moved to the
forefront. The older commercial countries declined. Spain and
Poland became importers of goods.
A few regional exceptions apart, textiles were the leading sector
both in terms of national income and of the number of people it
employed. There was little change in this respect up to the first phase
of the Industrial Revolution. The industry’s dominant role was due
to the fact that, next to food, textiles satisfied a basic human need.
Initially the share of textile production for self-provision continued
to he high; but there was a growing number of people who were
dependent on the market. Fashion transformed traditional clothing
habits. The market grew not only in size, but also experienced a
change in quality standards.
England which had risen from an exporter of wool to one of textiles
succeeded in securing for itself an important position in the heavy
cloths market. Exports rose by 96% in the first half of the 16th century
(1499/1500-1549/50). In the peak year of 1549-50 the country ex¬
ported 147,161 ‘shortcloths’ (the unit of calculation then in use).
There was a recession in the 1560s before exports regained a fairly
stable level in the last quarter of the century (see Figure 6). Between
1606 and 1614 exports averaged about 179,000 'shortcloths per
annum. A structural change occurred in the sense that the cheapei
and lighter kerseys gained ground vis-a-vis the traditional heavy
34 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Figure 6:
Quinquennial averages of English
shortcloth exports, 1501- 1640'
shortdoths

150000—,

100000 —

50000— s
Ex London
40000 Total

T
1501/05 1521/25 1546/50 1571/75 1596/1600 1636/40

‘From 1606/10 excl. of cloths exported by foreign merchants.

cloths. Kerseys still belonged to the category of ‘old draperies’; but

their emergence points to a trend which ultimately led to the so-called
‘new draperies’ taking the lead on a broad front.
The ‘new draperies’ were relatively cheap and light textiles which,
like linen, were an outgrowth of the ‘commercialization of rural
techniques (D.G. Coleman). These fabrics gained their popularity
first in the southern parts of the Netherlands. Their success is closely
related to the decline of the textile industry of the Flemish towns.
Indeed, the ‘new draperies’ made a major contribution to the collapse
of the ‘old draperies’, with Hondschoote becoming the most
important centre of the new industry. This town exported an average
of 86,956 pieces per annum in the 1560s and 1570s. After its
destruction in 1582, Lille took over as the metropolis of the Flemish
nouvelles draperies’. Other refugees from the southern Netherlands
re-established the industry further north and in England. Thus some
58,627 pieces were produced in Leiden by the beginning of the 17th
 The Age of the Price Revolution 35

respond to changes in fashions. It was also of vital importance to their

success that the Italian colony of merchants in Antwerp opened up
the Mediterranean markets which were to become the most important
for these fabrics.

Table 8:
Cloth exports of London and provincial ports in the first half
of the 17th century (000s)
Provincial
London ports Total
No. of No. of No. of
pieces £ pieces £ £ %
pieces

1606/14: Shortcloths 132 880 47 313 179 1193 77

New draperies - 267 — 80 - 347 23
Total 1147 - 393 - 1540 100

ca. 1640: Shortcloths 87 580 40 267 127 847 58

New draperies - 515 - 90 - 605 42
Total - 1095 — 357 — 1452 100

It was not only the new draperies’, but also linen which benefited
from the structural changes in demand that spelled the end of the
manufacturers of ‘aristocratic’ cloths. The linen industry spread
above all throughout Western and Northwestern France, Flanders
and Germany, i.e. regions in which climatic conditions were
favourable for the growing of flax. In the German-speaking lands,
East-Central Europe and Silesia gained increasing importance beside
the traditional regions of Upper Swabia and Westphalia. It was
merchant capitalists from Upper Germany and from Nuremberg in
particular, who moved into these new regions. They secured the
production for themselves by concluding collective agreements with
local guilds. Around 1610-20 some 4,400 masters were covered by
such agreements. Dutch and English merchants emerged as rivals of
the Upper German firms around the turn of the century. These men
brought the rural production under their control with the help of
local landlords and by circumventing the towns. It was a
development which, as Herbert Kisch has observed, resembled the
‘classic pattern of colonial penetration’. Slowly the Upper German
cloths began to lose out. As late as 1595, it is true, some 410,000 pieces
of fustian were taken to the Augsburg Schau, an institution which
controlled the quality of products. But in the long run these materials
coufd not compete against the cheaper linen, on the one hand, and
on the other, the more expensive high-quality textiles of the time.
36 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Except for the production of yarns, towns tended to remain the

centres of textile manufacture and trade. It was only in the second half
of the 16th century that the industry spread into the countryside,
following a trend which had set in in England and Flanders long ago.
There, wool manufacture had shifted from the town to the country
since the late middle ages and had established itself as a ‘cottage
industry’ among small-holders and landless rural producers. This
‘industry’ was organized as a putting-out system: whereas production
was on a family basis, both marketing of the finished goods and the
acquisition of the necessary raw materials was taken over by merchant
capitalists. The small producers became dependent on this type of
entrepreneur (Verleger) who provided them with raw materials,
offered credit facilities and sold the goods, taking advantage of his
knowledge of the markets. Only where the acquisition of raw
materials, as in the case of linen manufacturers, did not present any
difficulties and production required no supervision, did a system of
direct purchasing (Kaufsystem) survive which left the producer with a
modicum of formal independence ins-a-vis the merchant. Elowever,
these putters-out were not always merchant capitalists in terms of
their backgrounds. In some cases, producers succeeded in
establishing themselves as Verleger of their co-producers. It also
happened that those artisans were able to work their way up to this
position who were the'last in the production and finishing process In
Calw, for example, the dyers became the I'erleger of the weavers.
Mining, metal production and the iron trade were far less
significant than textiles in the 16th century. This did not prevent
modes of production to emerge much earlier in these industries which
were clearly capitalist. Next to timber, iron was the most important
industrial raw material. However, at the beginning of the 16th
century its production was still quite limited. It is estimated that it
amounted to some 70,000 tons of wrought iron, half of which was
produced in Central Europe. Output probably doubled in the course
of the century. Furnaces and the related indirect techniques of non¬
making, which had spread from Northern Italy in the late middle
ages, slowly established themselves. Although production in the
l pper Palatinate around the mining towns of Amberg and Sulzbach
declined in the course of the 16th century, this region continued to be
he most important in Europe in terms of output. In 1609 some 178
forge hammers were in operation there. The total number of workers
was around 10,550 of whom 40% were engaged in charcoal
production. More than 20%of the population of the Upper Palatinate
m the 16th century earned their livelihood in the iron industry
 The Age of the Price Revolution 37

Silver and copper mining expanded from (he middle of the 15th
century. The growth of the former was due to the demand for silver
coins in a growing economy. Production was concentrated in
Thuringia, the Erzgebirge south of Dresden, the Carpathian
Mountains and in the eastern Alps. It reached its peak in 1526-35,
with an annual output of about 96 tons. This was five times of what it
had been in H50. Up to the eve of the Thirty Years' War, production
slipped back to around 24 tons. This decline was due to the
competition of silver from the Americas which began to appear on the
European markets.

Figure 7:
Volume of Central European copper
production, 1501-1620 (ten-year
averages in tons)
tons

Production of copper rose until the second decade of the 16th

century, before it began to stagnate; it fell markedly after the middle of
the century (see Figure 7). It is possible that the declining per capita
income of the European population led to a shrinking of the demand
for manufactured goods based on copper. Ihe most important
regions with an 80-90% share of total European output were Schwaz,
Täufers, Rattenberg, Röhrer Bühel and Radmer-on-Hasel in Iyrol;
of Neusohl in Upper Hungary (known as Banska Bystrica in
Czechoslovakia today) and of Mansfeld and Eisleben in Thuringia;
Sweden emerged as the fourth major producer only towards the end of
38 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

the 16th century. The copper market developed into something like
an oligopoly after the beginning of the century. Between 1500 and
1546 the Fuggers held a partial monopoly together with the Thurzos,
a family of mining engineers from Cracow. They controlled copper
production in Upper Hungary and dominated the marketing of
Tyrolean copper. The Fuggers determined pricing policies within
the oligopoly. According to the Fuggers’ balance sheet of 31
December 1546, their stocks of copper amounted to one million
guldens out of total holdings worth 1.25 million guldens (see Table
10, p. 00). After the Fuggers had dropped out, none of the other Upper
German firms which continued to dominate the market succeeded in
gaining a comparable position in the copper trade for a similarly
long time. Also the vertical concentration achieved by the Fuggers in
linking copper mining with copper manufacture remained more or
less an exception.
If traditional co-operative structures were destroyed in the mining
and smelting industries, it was less due to the demand for working
capital, as had been the case in the urban crafts system,'than the need
for fixed capital to finance technological innovations. The co¬
operative which held a share in the mines and mined the ore
themselves were in no position to raise larger sums of money for
investments. They had to rely on merchant capitalists or to give way
to other associations which came from the outside and had the
necessary funds at their disposal. The masters of small furnaces or
forges often found themselves in a similar predicament. Thus the
putting-out system became the dominant form of organization in the
mining and metal industries. Yet time and again, the merchant
capitalists were forced to take production into their own hands. This
is true, for example, of the copper mines at Neusohl which were
jointly exploited by the Fuggers and Thurzos. Consequently there
emerged at Neusohl a centralized mining company the likes of which
did not exist elsewhere in the 16th century. By 1527 the Fuggers had
invested some 210,000 guldens in this venture, rising to 368 000
guldens by 1536. But the putting*», system also requfred large in
me case* even enormous, sums, in particular in areas where a
sovereign had taken mines and furnaces in to his own possession The

b“o® th?f
300 non m fdmily,of f°;example- madc “ with
the Count of Mansfeld for the purchase of
300,000 guldens worth of copper. F
j he emergence of large firms was accompanied by a concentration

cemurTsome
cemuty some H MO miners
II.500 "°' '*<'n ^
were $° ^ ,n,he
employed themiddlc of lhe
Tyrolean 16*
mining
 The Age of the Price Revolution 39

district of Schwaz, of whom 7,460 worked in the Falkenstein pits

alone. A trucking system and other exploitative practices-were
widespread. The labourers in turn developed forms of collective
resistance. The Mansfeld miners repeatedly went on strike to protest
against unpaid wages. I here are reports of similar protests from other
regions. The conflict between capital and labour began to manifest
itself.
As far as metal manufacture was concerned, Nuremberg was able to
maintain its pre-eminent position, based as it was on the adjacent
mining area of Upper Palatinate. Other regions, like the English
Midlands and those around Aachen, Liege and the Bergisches Land
east of Cologne, did not reach a similar importance. Iron and brass
goods as well as precision instruments from Nuremberg were
exported throughout the world. The city’s metal brooches, pots,
bowls and kettles were much in demand in Africa. As the arms
manufacturers of the Holy Roman Empire, the Nurembergers were at
times inundated with orders, especially during the wars against the
Turks. In 1557, the city’s blade-smiths are said to have produced
between 90,000 and 100,000 blades a week. This was possible only
because the merchant capitalists and the masters dependent upon
them were able to rely on a veritable industrial ‘reserve army' (H.
Aubin) in the shape of labourers engaged in piece-work. According to
some estimates, they comprised one third of the population working
in crafts and trades.
The sources of energy on which the manufacturing economy could
grow, continued to be very limited. Human and domestic animal
labour, water-power and wind-power apart, there existed only
organic substances, above all, wood. Owing to the great demand for
wood in the iron industry, supplies were insufficient. If the industry
therefore wished to expand beyond the confines set by existing
sources of energy, coal had to be brought in to substitute wood.
England appears to have made most progress along this route. For
technical reasons, it was not yet possible to use coal for iron-smelting,
but it came to be utilized for other purposes, leading to a relaxation of
demand for wood. Coal mining quickly assumed capitalist features.
There was barely another branch in which the share of fixed capital
was as high as in this industry. Soon the sums invested surpassed the
£1,000 mark. The Newcastle mines employed some 5,800 people in
1637-38, of whom some 3,000 were face-workers. The Liege region
gained in some respects a comparable position on the European
Continent. About 50,000 tons of coal were mined there around the
middle of the 16th century.
40 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Nevertheless, despite these activities, the age was shaped not by

manufacturing capitalists, but by the merchants. They appeared to
instil it with a dynamic which knew no bounds. As K. Marx put it,
‘commerce dominated industry’; yet, a few exceptions apart, the
merchant capitalists did not penetrate into the production sphere and
organized it to manufacture goods for their account. The putting-out
system turned out to be the appropriate form for controlling
production without a direct involvement in it. But only the
merchants were able to accumulate funds of the size required as
working or, occasionally, as fixed capital for the manufacture of
goods. Their role was therefore not merely to organize production
and the exchange of goods on an interregional and international
level, but also to engage in capital formation.
Commerce expanded throughout Europe in the 16th century, be it
on land or on water; be it in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, along the
Atlantic coast or in Central Europe. To it must be added the trade
with the Americas and Asia. The European market widened to form
the world market. In 1497, 795 ships passed through the Sound; by
1557-58 this figure had risen to 2,251 ships, to reach an annual
average of 5,554 ships in 1591-1600. In 1607-8 some 1,407 ships
docked in Livorno, the port of the city of Florence; a year later the
number was 2,454. In the last quarter of the previous century, the
figure had been rarely more than 500 ships per annum. Sailings to the
Far East rose from an annual average of 21 in the decade
1491/2-1501/2 to 114 between 1591-2 and 1600-1. At the same time
the share of Portuguese ships was eclipsed (see Figure 16, p. 86), when
the Dutch and the English successfully undermined the monopoly
w uch the Portuguese had been holding in the Far Eastern trade. The
Spanish trade with the Americas experienced an enormous
development. Between the years 1506-10 and 1591-1600 the number
o sailings between Seville and Spanish-America increased 45 to 186
with total tonnage growing from 4,480 to 36,140 tons (see Figure 8, n.
). 1 his, to be sure, was no more than approximately 6-7% of the
tonnage passing through the Sound at this time! This picture is
totally changed however, if one calculates the silver value of the
goods imported from overseas as against that of the grain shipped
fiom the Baltic region, as can be seen from Table 9
In other words, the value of the gram imports from the Baltic
region was a mere 64% of the value of the spices from the Far East and
2 ,° ° he Precio^s metal imports from the Americas. And yet it was
only the trade in Central Europe, in the Baltic and along the Atlantic
coast which assumed modern features. As we have seen, it comprised
 The Age of the Price Revolution 4]

Figure 8:
Volume of sea traific in quinquennial averages between
Seville and Spanish-America, 1506-1650 (both ways)
tunä

mass consumption goods, above all cereals, livestock and copper

from Eastern Europe and textiles and metal goods from the Western
parts of the Continent. There was also salt from Southwestern
Europe. Some 90% of Polish exports were in grain, livestock and furs.
Hungary’s exports of livestock and copper were probably even
higher. Textiles led the list of imports, comprising 48% of the goods
imported to Poland by sea in 1565-85 .and 68.7% of Hungarian
imports in 1542.

Table 9:
Imports into Europe, 1591-1600 (annual averages)
Value
Region of origin Type of goods Weight (in tons) (in tons of silver)

Baltic Grain ca. 126 109.4 ca. 87.51

Asia2 Spices ca. 2 712.0 ca. 136.83
America Precious metals ca. 287.7 ca. 309.4

'Based on grain prices on Amsterdam market in 1591/1600. 2Ca. 1600.

"Based on prices on Antwerp market and, where source not indicated, on
German prices for spices.
42 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

The intercontinental trade, on the other hand, continued to follow

the traditional pattern, with a heavy emphasis on spices and precious
metals. Some 95.6% of the goods reaching Spain from the Americas
in 1594 were precious metals; by 1609 the figure was 84%. Spices had a
similarly high share of Portuguese imports from East India.
The trade with the Americas differed from that with the Far East in
that it began to depart from the traditional one-way pattern. A
growing volume of goods—wine, oil, linen, cloths—flooded into
America from Spain. The Spanish mother-country achieved a high
trade surplus through its link with its American colonies. By the
beginning of the 1570s, almost half of the silver shipped to Spain was
used in payment of imports to America. All in all, however, European
overseas trade remained dominated by precious metals and spices. At
the end of the 16th century pepper fetched six or seven times the
original purchase price, and profits amounted to as much as one third
of the final retail price. The speculative character of the spices and
precious metals markets promoted the accumulation of merchant
capital, but it also kept the merchants away from the production
sphere and hence contributed to a conservation of the existing system
of production.
4 his leads us to consider the stimuli behind the overseas expansion
of the Spaniards and Portuguese. It was the search for gold which
caused the latter to venture into Africa; their desire to undermine the
Venetian monopoly in the profitable spice trade pushed them beyond
Africa towards East India. Gold was also the lure in the conquest of
America, as the log-book of Christopher Columbus demonstrates.
The discovery of America was not, to quote Pierre Vilar ‘a
coincidence unrelated to economic factors’, but rather the
culmination of an internal evolution of the Western economy’. This
economy had grown since the middle of the 15th century. Yet this
growth would only continue if metal coins were available in
sufficient quantities. And thus the re-emergence of the occidental
economy unleashed a further process which ended in the subjugation
o t e non-European world to the metropolitan centres of Europe
This connection arose in the case of the Iberian peninsula under
specific conditions There overseas expansion offered a solution to
e problem o declining incomes which the nobility, impoverished
y the crisis of the late middle ages as it was, had experienced The
landlords extei nalized the crisis, and they combined with mercantile
interests which had their base in the Mediterranean. At first the feudal
e ement continued to be the determining one; for the methods
adopted in the conquest of America were no more than an extension
 The Age of I he Price Revolution 43

of the medieval reconquista. Pierre Vilar has quite aptly spoken of

‘Spanish imperialism’ as ‘the highest stage of feudalism’.
Looting, plunder and naked exploitation were the main features of
the colonial system of the 16th century. The feverish search for
precious metals overruled all moral scruples. Faced with the
conquistadores and the excessive demands which they made on native
labour, the demographic and economic equilibrium of the old
American culture collapsed. The population of the Antilles was
exterminated within a few decades. The population of Mexico which
had numbered 25.3 million in 1519 slumped to one million by 1600.
The inhabitants of Peru were in all probability similarly decimated.
The plantation economy whose origins go back to the first half of the
16th century pointed to a later era of colonial exploitation. Towards
the end of the century these plantations were not yet of major
importance, however. Silver mining in Mexico and Peru dominated
the field. Its productivity was so low that it could be continued only
because native labour cost next to nothing. The Potosf mines in Peru
were so high in the mountains that work there was way above what
was physiologically endurable. In short, the silver mines of Central
and South America cost millions of lives.
Although Europe’s overseas trade continued to be structured along
traditional lines, the first contours of an asymmetrically organized
world market began to emerge in the 16th century. It was at this time
that the metropolitan centres in Western Europe started to integrate
regions which were more or less dependent on them into a system of
an unequal division of labour. Whereas the centres reserved the
manufacture of finished goods for themselves, the peripheral regions
were restricted either to the production of basic foodstuffs (as in the
case of East-Central Europe) or of precious metals and expensive
foods (as in the case of the Americas though, with regard to the latter,
only in embryonic fashion). Fundamentally different forms of work
organization were characteristic of this new system: formally free
labour, on the one hand, and serf or slave labour, on the other.
One consequence of this was that the division of labour between
metropoles and peripheries assumed the form of an unequal
exchange between the two spheres. To begin with, there was the direct
one-way transfer resulting from plunder, but also from the sending
back of profits to Europe; it came to be complemented by indirect
transfers because the labour that went into products from the
periphery was less well paid than that contained in metropolitan
goods. The metropolitan centres stood to benefit from the difference,
provided it was not wiped out by lower productivity on the periphery.
44 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

The Far East was not yet included in this system of an unequal
division of labour. No attempts at colonization took place there
comparable to those in the Americas. Portugal, it is true, succeeded in
bringing the trade inside the Asian continent under her control; but
she failed when she tried to cut off Venice from the spice trade which
went through the sea ports of the Levant. The share of the European
pepper trade along the South African route rose to 55% between 1505
and 1549. But it dropped back to 45% in the second half of the 16th
century. The Portuguese Estado da India began to operate
independently from Portugal and transformed itself into an
institution which lived on the tributes which it imposed on the inner-
Asia tiade and on the ships passing through the Red Sea. Two figures
may be given to illustrate that Asia’s position in the world of the 16th
century cannot really be compared to that of the Americas; no more
than about 13% of the spices from the Far East were exported to
Europe; on the other hand, 75% of America’s precious metals were
shipped acioss the Atlantic. And even these figures do not tell the
whole truth; for it would surely be quite illegitimate to mention the
murderous mining techniques applied in the Americas and the
methods of spice cultivation in the same breath.
Europe's expansion overseas led to tangible changes in the
economic balance within the European Continent. Antwerp became
the most important trade centre. Its power was based on cloths from
England, Central European silver and copper and luxuries from
overseas; its trade with the colonial dependencies provided the
stimulus
,
lor Antwerp’s
.
dynamic economy.
j
The
-—
upswing in the trade
»» 111^ XU iiiv UdUC

on [he Continent which was borne by the merchant capitalists of

l pper Germany and the overseas trade converged in that city. Its rise

•p„lmIol‘r„T!d““'the 16‘h “‘“7 »a, made possible by a

When Antwerp declined from the late 1560s

as a result of political
 The Age of the Price Revolution 45

and religious troubles, a number of other cities initially benefited

from this, among them Genoa, Livorno, London, Amsterdam and
Hamburg. But ultimately Antwerp’s position was inherited by
Amsterdam. Whereas the rise of the former had been due to its role as
an intermediary between England, Central Europe and the overseas
territories, Amsterdam’s commercial strength came to rest on its trade
in commodities from the Baltic and from the Atlantic coast. Grain
and timber from the countries along the south coast of the Baltic Sea
and iron ore and copper from Sweden were exchanged for salt from
Portugal and the Bay of Biscay and herrings from the North Sea.
Amsterdam became the most important centre of the grain trade in
Europe when the Iberian peninsula and Italy were hit by serious
shortages. Towards the end of the 16th century, Holland was the
main commercial power in Europe. It held a quasi-monopoly over
the Baltic trade. The share of ships arriving from the Baltic in
Amsterdam (and in other parts of the Northern Netherlands, but
excluding local traffic) rose from 56% in 1557-60 to 79% in 1611-20. In
terms of tonnage, the share was even as high as 85%. Around 1570 the
city’s commercial fleet had a capacity of 232,000 tons; the fleet of the
Hanseatic League was second with 110,000 tons. Less than a century
earlier both the Dutch and the Hanseatic fleets had had roughly the
same size of 60,000 tons.
Techniques and organizational forms of this trade were slow to
change. In this respect Europe did not see a revolution, hut rather the
proliferation of the methods developed by the Italians. Private
companies dominated the scene, either as pure family enterprises or
as firms with outside partners. It was only in the second half of the
16th century that innovations were made when the joint-stock
company and the voor-compagnieen emerged in England and
Holland respectively. Thus the Russia Company was founded in
1555. The Levant Company was established in 1581, followed by the
East India Company in 1600. These joint-stock companies differed
from the loosely organized ‘regulated companies’, like the Company
of Merchant Adventurers or the Eastland Company whose members
conducted their business on their own account. The joint-stock
company had, as indicated by the name, a capital stock which was
issued in the form of shares to merchants and investors. A similar
system was adopted for the Dutch voorcompagmeen which emerged
in 1595 and which were given this name because they preceded the
United East India Company. The joint-stock company was
developed because the capital requirements for large-scale and long¬
term overseas transactions were often beyond the means of family
46 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

firms; it was also a way of distributing the risk of dangerous ventures

on to several shoulders. In short, the vagaries of the market forced the
merchants to develop new forms of organization. The establishment
of these forms went hand-in-hand with a growing emphasis on
calculability and ‘rationality’ which Max Weber has written about.
Double-entry bookkeeping which had been confined to Italy up to the
late middle ages now became a widespread practice.
The credit system likewise saw an extraordinary expansion in an
attempt to satisfy the growing requirements of the merchants. Bills of
exchange came to be used throughout Europe as a means of payment.
Towards the end of the 16th century they also became negotiable. In
this respect the bill of exchange was preceded in Northwestern
Europe by the bill obligatory’ (cedule obligatoire;schulderkenning).
I he discounting of both types of bill became general practice.
Antwerp and Lyons emerged as Europe’s leading clearing and
financial centres up the second half of the 16th century. The former
operated within the Spanish monarchy, the latter within France. But
the bankruptcies of the two states in 1557 ushered in the decline of the
two cities.
At first the clearing business was conducted in both cities in
connection with a fair which took place four times a year. Gradually
the fair centres changed into financial centres, a metamorphosis in
which Antwerp gained a lead over Lyons. The credit business which
was centred around the new’ exchange established in 1531 continued
to coincide with the four annual fairs; the commodities business on
the other hand which was taken over by the ’English’ exchange came
to be transacted on a permanent basis and independently of the fairs.
The financial practices adopted and developed further by Antwerp
prepared the way for banking in the centuries to come. Thev were to

...v WLU.U. ui me worm through Genoa.’

 The Age of the Price Revolution 47

The rapidly growing credit requirements of the state authorities

were at the heart of the expansion of high finance in the 16th century.
Spain’s public expenditure experienced a growth in real terms by
some 80% between 1520 and 1600, and state revenue could not possibly
keep up with this. In certain years the Castilian monarchy spent twice
the amount of what it received. Loans became the only solution.
Other monarchies were in a similar predicament, and the rise of the
Fuggers to the position of one of the major financial powers of the
16th century is therefore intimately connected with the inadequate
financial base of the early modern state. After the Fuggers had laid the
foundations of their empire as merchant capitalists they made credits
available to the Habsburgs, and this in turn gave them access to the
silver and copper mines of the eastern Alps. These mines and the
Fuggers’ commitments in Upper Hungary helped them to gain
control of the European copper market. Beside the trade in ores, the
loan business became their main activity. In 1546 Emperor Charles V
alone owed two million guldens of a total of 3.9 million guldens
which the Fuggers had given in loans (see Table 10).

Table 10:
Balance-sheet of the Fugger firm for year ended 31.12.1546
(000s gulden)

a) Assets b) Liabilities

Landed estates and Short-term debts 1300

mines 800 Long-term debts 700
Stock 1250 Capital stock 5100
Cash-in-hand 250
Outstanding debts 3900
7100
Partners' private acc. 400
Mi sc. 500

7100

The larger a particular state, the more it depended on the credit

facilities of the great commercial families. Increasing territorial
expansion also meant a growing distance between those parts where
revenue was raised and where it was needed. I he costs of extracting
silver from the Americas could only be covered with the help of
international finance capital and could be mobilized only by means
of exchanges. As Richard Ehrenberg has correctly observed, ‘it was
not the Potosi silver mines, but the Genoese fairs of exchange which
made it possible for Philip II to conduct his world power policy
decade after decade’. Although this capital became increasingly
centralized, by the end of the 16th century its earlier close links with
48 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

merchant capitalism had been loosened and it began to play a role of

its own. It was only in a very indirect way, i.e. through the military
expenditure of the State, that it was of benefit to the production
sphere.

1.4 The Price Revolution and Socio-Economic Change

The cumulative effect of inflation on grain prices in the 16th century

was on average about 1.4% per annum. By 20th century standards, this
might be considered insignificant and the term ‘price revolution’
hence seem inappropriate. A more definitive verdict will not be
possible, however, until we have taken due account of the economic
and social context in which inflation occurred. If grain prices were at
100 index points in 1501-10, they rose as follows in the course of the
16th century:

England (see Figure 9) 425

Northern Netherlands 318
Southern Netherlands 380
France 651

Spain (New Castille and Valencia) 376

Germany 255
Austria 97 j

Poland 4ns

Prices for manufactured goods did not rise quite so steeply and merely
doubled, rhe price rises which deserve to be called a ‘price
revolution , it is true, hit most countries only in the second half of the
6th century; but price levels generally began to move up from the

beginning of the century at the latest. If one does not include the
Central European production of silver, it is therefore problematical
to reduce the cause of the so-called price revolution to the imports of
gold and silver from the Americas. These imports did not reach
Europe on a larger scale until the second half of the 16th century
They amounted to 236.3 tons in 1531-40, rising to 755.5 tons in the
l eCa,<?e ,15f/r60 and finally to 3093-9 tons in 1591-1600. After this they
fihh ^ 1° f irV SU 'SCque,lt four decades at a figure which was one-
20 664 r ' ™ximum <see Figure 9). All in all some
20.664 tons of silver and gold (gold = ca. 10.8% of this total) were

Sd andTs 1503 ”? 1650' ><> «tima.es b^ F

Biaudel and F. Spooner, these tmports me,eased the amount of
prectous metals emulating in coins Europe b less °
best. In order to salvage their hypo,bests tha, these tmports fuelled
 The Age of the Price Revolution 49

Figure 9:
Index of nominal prices in ten-year
averages for England, 1450-1649
(1450/99 = 100)

Figure 10:
Volume of exports in precious metals
from America to Europe, 1503-1730
(ten-year averages in tons silver)
tons

inflation, both authors had to take recourse to the argument that the
increased speed of money circulation was responsible for the price
rises. In line with monetary theory, this would mean that prices
would rise equally for all products. But as Figure 10 shows, this was
50 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

not at all the case. In short, the discrepancy between the prices for
basic foodstuffs and those for other goods put a question mark behind
this theory.
It is therefore safer to assume that the growth of the money in
circulation is, in conditions of economic expansion, more probably a
reflection of this expansion than its cause. The above-mentioned
price discrepancies would, moreover, appear to make it likely that
other non-monetary factors unleashed the ‘price revolution’; Spanish
silver at least played no more than a secondary role. The gap between
the prices for basic foodstuffs and those for other products can only be
explained in terms of the different elasticities of demand for food, on
the one hand, and manufactured goods, on the other, among a
growing population. Rising prices for basic foodstuffs do not result
in a reduced demand; it is inelastic. The opposite is true of non-
essential goods; here rising prices tend to depress demand. In short, in
times of a population growth with which supply fails to keep up,
food puces are liable to rise more steeply than prices for
manufactured goods (see Table 11). Rising demand and insufficent
supply also affected production costs in differing ways. It was the
same problem of diminishing agricultural returns as in the high
middle ages; an expansion of grain production at the expense of
stock-farming reduced the quantity of manure and hence the fertility
of the soil. Productivity declined. Moreover, poor soil was ploughed
up for production and its yield was correspondingly very low. All this
was bound to push up prices which were determined by the unit costs
of grain produced on the poorest soil. Manufactured goods on the
other hand, were not affected by these mechanisms. Their production
and costs could be adjusted more flexibly to changing demand
resulting in the above-mentioned price discrepancies.
Inflation was only one aspect of the price revolution of the 16th

Table 11:
Index of estimated rents and prices in southern England
1510/19-1650/59
Rents1 Prices for wheat Prices for wool
1510/19 100 100 100
1550/59 308 253 171
1600/09 672 435 262
1650/59 845 573 (117)
‘Un new takings on the Herbert Estates, Wiltshire.
 The Age of the Price Revolution 51

century. It was paralleled by a rise in ground rents and fall in real

wages. The economic mechanisms underlying these developments
benefited the peasants in the first instance and increased their income,
unless they were marginal producers who sent very little of their
produce to the market. And indeed the records speak of well-to-do
peasants at this time. Yet rising peasant incomes were bound to call
the landlords onto the scene. They saw, especially in areas where they
received cash rents, how the price revolution redistributed
agricultural income to their disadvantage. Consequently they tried to
prevent or reverse a reduction of their percentage. Where rent
increases were difficult to achieve, they raised other contributions,
such as entry fines. Many landlords did quite well out of this. The
Holy Spirit Hospital at Biberach-on-Riss increased these fines so
steeply (1500-9 = 100; 1620-29 = 1,085) that the real value of the feudal
rent remained unaffected by the inflationary devaluation of the cash
payments. Newly rented land on the Herbert Estates in Wiltshire in
South England was so expensive that the landlord’s total gains in
some years rose faster than the price of wheat (see Table 11). On the
whole, the landlords fared best where they enlarged their own
property in order to lease it as happened in England or Western
France or in order to manage their estates themselves with the help of
serf labour.
There are many difficulties in producing a balance-sheet from
what has been said so far. Thus it was by no irfeans certain from the
start which group would gain the larger share of the increased wealth.
What was decisive in this respect was the property structure and the
economic behaviour of the feudal lords. In general it seems safe to
assume that, disregarding exceptional developments, feudal burdens
diminished in Western Europe, at least initially. East of the River
Elbe, by contrast, the balance tilted clearly towards the nobility.
Meanwhile the fall in real wages assumed catastrophic
proportions. In England nominal wages rose from 100 index points
in 1501-25 to 131 in 1575-1600; the equivalent figures for France and
Germany were 126 and 157 respectively; Austria, where nominal
wages declined to 95, and the Southern Netherlands, where they rose
as high as 282, remained exceptions. But real wages fell, i.e. wages
lagged behind prices for manufactured goods, not to mention grain
prices. Thus the real wage index for building workers dropped by
more than 50% between 1476-1500 and 1591-1600 (see Figure 11).
Recent research has shown that a building worker in Augsburg was
able adequately to maintain his wife and two children from his annual
income during the first three decades of the 16th century. Thenceforth
52 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Figure 11:
Index of real wages of building workers in relation to a ‘basket’ of
goods in the age of the Price Revolution (1521/30 = 100)

his living standard began to fall. Between 1566 and 1575 and from
1585 up to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War his wages could no
longer pay for the subsistence minimum of his family. Meat slowly
disappeared from the diet of the poorer sections of the population. In
the late middle ages, annual meat consumption had reached the
figure of 100 kilos per person—an incredible quantity by today’s
standards, lip to the beginning of the 19th century, this figure
declined to less than 20 kilos. Sheer need forced people to eat cheaper
and less nutritious food. As Wilhelm Abel put it, the ‘meat standard of
the late middle ages' was replaced by the ‘grain standard of the early
modern period’.
The reasons for this fall in real wages are not difficult to discern.
Population growth multiplied the supply of labour. But demand for
labour did not increase commensurately. Hence wages did not keep
up with the rising cost of living. Per capita production declined at
the same time and per capita income followed suit. The wage-
earning population like the small-holders' were pushed into a
margina! existence. They precipitated, as Marx, quoting William
Th. Thornton, put it, ‘from the golden age straight into the iron one’
The dynamic development of the 16th century which profoundly
affected all spheres of life ended up in another general crisis
Conditions of economic growth reversed to usher in a period of
decline. 1 he rapid growth of the population which had been one of

Lrowr?hmTh1SSerS °f UPSWm§ beCame 3 barner whlch rifled

growth. The process of expansion did not merely come to a halt;
 The Age of the Trice Revolution 53

worse, it deteriorated into what G. Bois lias described as a period of

‘stagflation . I hus agricultural output began to stagnate from the
middle of the 16th century, if not before, and soon began to fall. In the.
Cambresis in Northern France grain production reached its peak as
early as 1520 before it went into a slow decline. Taking 1370-79 as 100,
the index had dropped to 70-80 by 1450, moved back to 80-90 around
1520, but fell again to around 75 in 1600-30. A similar situation arose
in the eastern parts of Normandy. And Polish agricultural
production was on the decline since the end of the century.
But while food production continued to stagnate and even fell, the
population did not stop growing. The gap between needs and
resources widened. Prices rose. At the same time the conflict between
peasants, landlords and the state over the distribution of agricultural
income became more acute. We have looked at the different policies
which the landlords adopted in Western and Eastern Europe in the
previous crisis (see above pp. 20ff.). Now they turned the screw again.
But there were also increased tax burdens. In Spain they doubled in
nominal terms between 1556 and 1584. The picture for France
emerges from Table 28 on p. 93 below. Soon the incipient Malthusian
crisis escalated into a major social crisis. The more the new century
approached, the more serious and devastating became the supply
problems. At the beginning of the 1570s Europe was hit by a famine
worse than any of the previous ones. Portugal, Spain and Italy
became dependent on grain deliveries from the North. In Italy which
had been suffering from bad harvests since 1586, the situation reached
crisis point in 1590. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, with Venice
following in his footsteps, sent his agents as far as Danzig to buy up
grain. Some 16,000 tons of Northern and East-Central European
grain reached the port of Livorno in 1593. Between 1590 and 1593
some 78 ships from Amsterdam, 59 ships from Hamburg and 29 ships
from Danzig docked in the harbour. The inelasticity of demand for
basic foodstuffs and the economic contradictions inherent in the
feudal system were beginning to undermine the earlier expansion.
Although, as has been seen (above, p. 49), prices for non-
agricultural goods rose less steeply than grain prices, the increased
strains within the economy were also having their effect on the
manufacturing sector. As real incomes declined in the face of rising
grain prices, demand began to focus on basic foodstuffs. Inevitably,
the production of other goods was adversely affected by this. Even in
Antwerp where real wages fell less sharply than elsewhere from 100 in
1450-59 to 82.7 in 1594-1600, a mason with a family of four had to use
78.5% of his income for the purchase of foodstuffs. Accommodation,
54 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

heating and light swallowed up another 10.4% so that a mere 10.1%

was left for clothing and other needs. However, those industries
which were engaged in the production of luxury goods very likely
suffered less under the depression. The social groups which would
buy such luxuries tended to benefit from the redistribution of wealth
which occurred during crisis periods. Other trades were correspon¬
dingly worse hit by the slump in mass demand for their cheapei
products, and demand in the underdeveloped and colonial world was
not yet so important as to be able to fill the breach. In short, the ups
and downs in the agricultural sector continued to dominate the
overall economic situation without being able to determine the
situation of the manufacturing sector completely.
These economic developments and the problems they generated
were accompanied by changes in the social structure of the European
countries. The crisis sharpened the differentials in income and
property. Pauperization and proletarianization were paralleled by an
increased accumulation of wealth. Soon contemporaries began to
get worried about the growth in the number of beggars and vagrants.
The Magistrate of Berlin warned in 1540 that ‘many alien beggars are
milling about'. Vagrants and bandits posed a threat to the
countryside. The beggars were driven from the towns at periodic
intervals; but soon they were back again. The English Poor Laws
with their draconian penalties go back to this time.
I he number of landless peasants and small-holders also increased
disproportionately. There were the small-holders, hancotiers,
‘gardeners’ and others who had some land. They must be ue
distinguished from the cottagers, manouvriers and Bildner who in
most cases at least owned a small house and a plot. And finally there
were the wage labourers and Einlieger (lodgers) who lived on the
faims of the landlords and wealthier peasants, sometimes having
rented a small piece of land from their employer. In Saxony 25.8% of
the population living in the countryside belonged to the first two
categories in 1550 (see Table 12). In 1577 some 43.2% wer small-
holders anti cohagers (see Table 44. p. 149). In the Principality of
Schweidmtz-Jauer, the number of peasants declined to 20.5% up to
l.6!9, Wlt^n1^ SharC °f small-holders, cottagers and wage labourers
rising to 69.6%. In Ovenjssel in the Low Countries some 64.4% were
peasants as against 38.6% small-holders and cottagers in 1602. There
is also the example of a French grain-growing village which
comprised up to 72 manouvriers as against 100 laboureurs (peasants)
The percentage of the rural poor in terms of the total population in
the English countryside is thought to have been between one quarter
 The Age of the Trice Revolution 55

Table 12:
Social structure of the population of Saxony, 1550-1843

1550* 1750 1843

abs. % abs. % abs. %

Citizens 116 000 26.7 200 000 19.7 300 000 16.2
Urban Inwohner 22 000 5.1 166 000 16.3 326 500 17.6

Peasants 215 000 49.5 250 000 24.6 250 000 13.5
Cottagers 20 000 4.6 310 000 30.4 869 000 46.8
Village Inwohner 55 000 12.6 82 000 8.1 100 000 5.4

Clergy 3 500 0.9 4 500 0.4 4 500 0,2

Seigneurs 2 400 0.6 5 500 0.5 6 000 0.3
Total 434 000 100.0 1018 000 100.0 1856 000 100.0

‘Excl. Upper Lusatia

and one third. In some areas, such as the Languedoc, demographic

pressures caused a fragmentation of land ownership. The number of
medium-sized farms declined as small-holdings and, to a lesser
extent, large units proliferated. As E. Le Roy Ladurie has observed,
the property structure became ‘crystallized around two extremes’
which were functionally interdependent. The small-holders who did
not produce enough to feed themselves had to hire themselves out to
the large farms which filled their manpower requirements in this
way.
However, the population growth was not exclusively reponsible
for the emergence of this stratum of small-holders or landless people
in the countryside. No less significant was the social polarization
which took place within the village community under the impact of
economic change. Some peasants succeeded in enlarging their landed
property; but the majority were pushed to the margins of the
economy. High prices and low wages created favourable conditions
for accumulation, and the famines of the late 16th and early 17th
century merely accelerated this process. Work on Chippenham in
Cambridgeshire has shown that the bad harvests of those years
resulted in a decisive shift. Between 1544 and 1712 the medium-sized
farms all but disappeared. At the same time the proportion of
properties of 90 acres or more rose from 3% to 14%; households
without land increased from 32% to 63% (see Table 13). The
concentration of land as well as the population explosion was
contained only in those cases where the landlord and the village were
strong enough to control these developments.
56 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 13:
Sizes of peasant holdings in Chippenham
(Cambridgeshire/England) 1544-1712

Size of holdings 1544 1712

No. % No. %

90 acres and above 2 3.0 7 14.3

ca. 60-75 acres1 8 12.1 2 4.1
ca. 30—45 acres2 11 16.7 0 0
ca. 15 acres3 and less 10 15.2 4 8.2

Over 2 acres 31 47.0 13 26.5

2 acres and less 14 21.2 5 10.2
Landless households 21 31.8 31 63.3

Totals 66 100.0 49 100.0

1 — 2 — 254 yardland; 2 - 1 - 1!4 yardland; 3 = yardland

\ et whatever the dividing lines which emerged between poor and

wealthier peasants, the feudal relationship with the landlord
continued to be the crucial factor. As long as the price revolution was
underway, the system of feudal appropriation tended to encounter
special difficulties, as we have seen above (p. 24). the upper nobility
in pat ticulai had problems to maintain its share of income from
landed property. In the Hennegau, in the southern Netherlands, for
example, it declined from 59% to 47% between 1502 and 1564-73. The
French noblesse d epee likewise became impoverished, and more than
one of its members was forced to hand his property over to bourgeois
money-lenders. Only where they succeeded in adapting the
management of their estates to the conditions of an age of rising
agricultural prices, were they able to survive. In England, the gentry
prospered; together with the yeomen, they had been the promoters of
agricultural modernization. In Warwickshire, the gentry’s income
increased almost four-fold. The aristocracy, on the other hand, was
much less successful in adapting to changing economic condi tions. A
peer’s income fell by about 26% between 1559 and 1602, and the
average number of manors per family declined from 54 to 39. fudging
from such losses, the financial crisis of the English aristocracy
reached its climax between 1585 and 1606. And although the real
mcome of the peers started to rise again until it reached its 1559 level
in 1641, the number of manors continued to fall. It may be assumed
that the aristocracy’s share in the national product which had seen an
overall rise also experienced a drop (see Table 14).
 The Age of the Price Revolution 57

Table 14:
Estimated net income and number of manors of some
aristocratic families in England, 1558/59-1641

1558/59 1602 16-11

No. of peers

to
00
63 121
Mean net income in pounds 2 200 2 930 5 040
Mean net income at 1559 prices 2 200 1 630 2 290
Index of net income 100 74 104

No. of families 63 57 121

No. of manors per family 54 39 25
Index of manors per family 100 72 46

The structure of landed property in Poland changed in the

opposite direction from that of England. There the owners of the very
large estates strengthened their position vis-a-vis the minor nobility
by systematically exploiting the opportunities provided by the export
of grain. As Witold Kula has been able to demonstrate, the magnates
who, unlike the middle nobility, sent their grain to Danzig on their
own account were able to offer much better terms of trade than the
szlachta. More and more, the land became concentrated in the hands
of the former. Only West Prussia which was dominated by the minor
nobility and regions like Masovia where noblemen populated the
area like a ‘swarm of locusts’ escaped this development. Thus in the
administrative district of Cracow the share in the land by the
magnates (with ten or more villages) rose from 8.7% in 1581 to 24.8%
in 1629. The democracy of nobles which had existed in 16th century
Poland thus lost its main supports.
In terms of the total population, the lower strata grew
disproportionately faster both in the towns and in the country. In
Saxony residents (Inwohner) of towns who, though not necessarily
belonging to the lower strata, did not possess citizens’ rights made up
15.9% in 1550 (see Table 12, p. 55). In Lyons the menu peuple
numbered between 6% and 8% of the population in normal times. But
this figure rose to 15-20% during famines. The percentage of groups
which lived on the starvation line in English towns was even higher.
In Leicester and Exeter it is deemed to have been one third and in
Coventry even one half.
The growth of the lower classes also led to an increased inequality
of income and wealth. Whereas the lower orders saw their income
eroded under the impact of inflation and a surplus of labour, other
groups and above all merchants were able to participate in the growth
 58 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

of the economy and to strengthen their position both in relative and

in absolute terms. In Augsburg some 6% of those eligible to pay taxes
owned 87.7% of the total taxable wealth in 1618. At Exeter,
Nottingham and Leicester roughly two-thirds of the wealth was in
the hands of respectively 7.7%, 12.5% and 13.5% of the population. Yet
despite these trends, towns began only slowly to develop something
like a class structure. Only where a cottage industry emerged and
large sections of the population became dependent on a putting-out
system or worked in larger manufacturing units did a class dichotomy
become a determining feature. Yet time and again this dichotomy was
overlain by the older conflicts between rich and poor which exploded
over such central questions as food supplies and taxation. Still, there
is little doubt that these conflicts also fuelled class divisions. Both,
after all, were closely interrelated. The experience to be at the mercy of
others who employed them began to imprint itself upon the
consciousness of many artisans and wage labourers. The journeymen
in the Parisian and Lyonnais printing industry, for example, who
carried on a dispute with their employers for over 30 years between
1539 and 1572, charged the latter that they were enriching themselves
at the expense of then journeymen’s ‘sweat, admirable zeal and even
their blood’.
The growing tensions within the European social structure
exploded in a large number of violent outbursts, uprisings and
revolts. The Peasants War of 1525 in Germany no doubt occupies a
special place among these conflicts because it covered a much larger
geographical area than any other rising in the 16th century. Several
factors both of a structural and conjunctural nature combined to
generate the situation which resulted in this war. Serfdom, a product
of the crisis of the late middle ages, was the most important bone of
contention. The combination of material and personal dependence
which was characteristic of serfdom was not only designed to prevent
the depopulation of the countryside, but also to secure for the
landlords a higher share of the agricultural income in times of crisis.
Serfdom, it is true, weakened from the end of the 15th century But the
economic predicament of the peasants did not improve. On the
contrary, it worsened as various pressures increased. Once the
population had begun to grow again, the ratio between the size of the
population and the available land deteriorated. A large number of
small-holdings emerged. Farms were divided up. Conflicts over
h ^ge 'f801,11068’ above a11 the commons, increased. Here and there
the landlords put up feudal rents. They tried to restrict the use of the
common and of the woodlands. State taxes merely exacerbated the
 The Age of the Price Revolution 59

situation of the peasants. The dynamite which had accumulated over

a longer period exploded at the beginning of 1525 in Upper Swabia.
From there the revolt spread as far as Thuringia. But by the beginning
of June the poorly organized peasant armies had been defeated. The
chronicles report that 100,000 people died.
Another consequence of the slowly unfolding socio-economic
crisis was that capital was taken out of the commercial sector and
invested in landed property. It was a process which can be observed
throughout Europe. But its causes were not so much a lack of
investment opportunities in manufacturing and trade than the
different time-scales along which the ups and downs in the
agricultural and commercial sectors evolved. The growing gap in the
supply of and demand for agricultural produce not only caused the
demand for manufactured goods to peter out, but also favoured the
transfer of capital to the agricultural sector. The retreat of the
Fuggers, the eminent merchant family, into landownership is one of
the most famous cases in point. The size of their landed property
increased to 230-250 sq. kilometres by the end of the 16th century and
was valued at more than two million guldens. This was almost the
same amount as the family lost in the 1607 bankruptcy of the Spanish
state. The Fuggers became feudal landlords. They thus integrated
themselves into a social order which was opposed to the one from
which they had emerged. Fernand Braudel has spoken in this context,
not without dramatic effect, of the ‘treason of the bourgeoisie’. But
the bourgeoisie of the 16th century did not have a consciousness of
itself. The nobility, to quote Braudel again, continued to be its ‘sun’.
As early as 1531, Anton Fugger justified the acquisition of landed
estates not in terms of their economic benefits but in terms of the
honour’ attached to them. This raises the question of what was the
status system of the 16th century and what were the channels of social
mobility at this time.
The system of stratification into feudal estates (Stände) which had
existed in the middle ages survived well into the modern period. It
was vertically structured, like a pyramid, and extended from the
landless and propertyless poor all the way up to the upper nobility. In
principle it encompassed the whole of society, although there was a
town-and-country differentiation at the lower end of the scale. Side-
by-side with this stratification into feudal estates there emerged, as
Lawrence Stone has shown with reference to England, status
hierarchies for which ‘profession was the determinant. Stone
included the merchants, judges, clerics and royal officials among
these. These groups which were initially regarded as inferior by the
60 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

nobility succeeded in narrowing the social distance to the latter and to

constitute themselves as separate status groups. Ignoring the
exceptional situation in the commercial city republics, English
society appears to have progressed farthest in the direction of these
differentiations in the 16th century. The social mobility which
facilitated this development reached unprecedented dimensions
during the century which preceded the English Revolution. There
was the combined effect of an economic boom which strengthened the
forces of the market and of a massive turnover in landed property
which resulted from the sale of Church property. Thus, while the
total population doubled between 1540 and 1640, the upper classes
trebled in size. The gentry’s share of land under cultivation almost
doubled (see Table 15).

Table 15:
Distribution of land by social groups in England and Wales,
1436-1873 (%)

14361 ca. 1690 ca. 1790 1873*

Great owners 15-20 15-20 20-25 24
Gentry 25 45-50 50 55
Yeomen/freeholders 20 25-33 15 10
Church and Crown 25-33 5-10 10 10
'excl. Wales

On the European Continent the traditional system of stratification

pioved much more durable. While commerce was becoming
increasingly attractive to the English gentry, merchants on the
Continent were increasingly inclined, towards the end of the century,
to see themselves as part of the feudal society and their activities as ‘a
stage on their way up into the noble estates’ (R. Gascon). The
acquisition of landed property and, especially in France, of offices
was the means towards this end. As noblesse de robe, large sections of
the French bourgeoisie made then way into the feudal upper stratum.
\ lereas the crisis of the aristocracy paved the way to revolution in
ng and, the economic difficulties of the noblesse d’epee enabled the
French monarchy to divest the old nobility of its ‘official’ functions
and to establish an absolutist system with the help of the noblesse de
robe. At the end of a century of unprecedented economic expansion
everything converged to bring about a renewed strengthening of the
traditional structures of European society.
 2. The Crisis of the 17th Century
The long-term crisis which grew out of the ‘price revolution’ of the
16th century did not affect all European countries evenly. That
revolution ended in Spain, Italy and France between 1590 and 1600; in
Germany it lasted until the 1620s and 1630s and in England and the
Low Countries even until the 1640s. Yet even those countries where
the change was delayed experienced minor crises earlier on. The crisis
of the years 1619—1622 may not possess the general importance
which Ruggiero Romano had ascribed it; nevertheless, it was not just
confined to the European South. The Spanish trade with the
Americas was affected by it, but so were English textile exports and
the trade with the Baltic region. As early as the beginning of the 17th
century Germany was hit by a trade and credit crisis. Grain prices
stopped rising. Many farmers and landowners were unable to repay
the credits which they had taken up in the earlier days of expansion.
Grain yields began to decline on the demesnes in the Brunswick
region east of Hanover towards the end of the 16th century; the
productivity of the soil had become exhausted. Some countries were
more seriously affected by the crisis of the 17th century than others. It
spelt the final decline for Spain and Italy. England, on the other
hand, was relatively less badly affected. It was in this period that she
gained an advantage over France with which the latter was unable to
catch up.

2.1 Stagnation and the Demographic Crisis

The growth of the population of the 16th century came to a more or

less abrupt end in Western and Southern Europe (see Table 1, p. 3).
Demographic figures stagnated or declined slightly, as Table 16
demonstrates. But the extent of the crisis is actually hidden by these
figures. The Thirty Years’ War had catastrophic consequences as far
as Germany is concerned. It has been estimated that population losses
amounted to 40% in the countryside and to 33% in the towns.
Brandenburg, Saxony and Bavaria lost about half of theii
populations. While North Germany was able to maintain its
62 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 16:
Indices of population growth in 17th-century Europe

1600 1700

Northern and Northwestern Europe 100 128

Central, Western and Southern Europe 100 105

Total 100 109

numbers, the losses in Pomerania, Hesse, Palatinate and

Württemberg were two-thirds and above. In Bohemia the population
declined from 1.7 million in 1618 to 930,000 in 1654. The Swedish-
Polish War of 1654-60 wrought similar havoc to Poland. The
population of Poland and Masovia fell from 3.83 million in 1655 to
2.5 million in 1660. The Great Northern War of 1700-21 once more
reduced the population (which had grown again to 3.25 million by
1700) to 2.85 million in 1720. Italy’s population contracted from 13.3
million to 11.5 million between 1600 and 1650, to reach 13.4 million
by 1700. The Spanish population declined from 7.68 million in
1587-92 to 5.25 million in 1646-50. It increased slightly thereafter and
amounted to seven million by 1712-17. The population of France
remained relatively stable in the 17th century, but this facade of
stability veils fluctuations of up to 20%. The catastrophes of the late
16th century were followed by a slight increase which was halted in
different French provinces between 1630 and 1660-70. Thenceforth
figures stagnated or began to decline. The violent crises of the period
after 1691-93 depressed the number of people to an absolute low
In,the Lan§uedoc the rural population fell by 18% between
16/7 and 1714. Demographic developments in Northern and
Northwestern Europe differed considerably from the picture
presented so far. There growth continued, albeit at a reduced pace.
The population index which had been at 100 in 1600 rose to 128 in
1700 (see Table 16). Stagnation set in only in the second half of the
century after growth rates had continued to be relatively high in the
first half. Thus the population of England and Wales which had
reached 100 index points in 1603 increased to 141 in 1670 Thereafter
the rise was negligible (144 in 1731). A similar trend can be observed
nn Zn 7" paUS,0f.lhe N«herlands. Starting from a base l.neof
100 in 1600, the population climbed to 125 in 1650 and to 126 in 1700
Trends varied from province to province. Thus the index fell in
Holland and Frisia from lOOin 1650 to 98 and 90 respectively in 1700-
on the other hand, there was an increase in other provinces.
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 63

The 17th-century reversal of the population growth of the previous

century had many causes. Wars, epidemics and famines come to mind
most immediately. But they present no more than the surface of
events. Disregarding primarily exogenous factors like the Thirty
Years’ War and other military conflicts, the demographic movement
of the 17th century was a reaction to the excessive population growth
of the 16th which ended in a deterioration of the overall economic
situation and also led the landlords to appropriate a larger portion of
the agricultural income to themselves. In this sense demographic
decline was a reflection of both a ‘Malthusian’ and a social crisis.
However, it was not clear from the start how the adjustment would
take place; or, to use Malthusian terminology, whether it would occur
through ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ checks. Nevertheless, one thing is
certain: given the relatively autonomous way in which demographic
factors tended to operate in society, it was bound to take quite a long
time before family life and birth patterns would adapt to the new
economic situation. Only by bearing this in mind can we explain why
food supply problems arose in the first place. Only when these
problems became acute, did people change their reproductive
behaviour. Thus the average marriage age began to rise again. In
France it increased from 21-22 to about 25 years of age; in Colyton in
Southwest England, where it had been very high as early as the second

Table 17:
Some Indicators of changes in the marriage age of women,
16th-18th century

1550/99 1600/49 1650/99 1700/49 1750/99

27,02 27,1 29.4 28.3 26.3

Colyton1
- 25.7 26.4 27.5 26,5
Bottesford3
- 28 .1 27.4 24.14
Shepshed3
- - 24.16 24.96 26.26
Tourouvre-au-Perche5
- - 24 ,98 25.58
Meulan7
- - 24.110 25.810 23.810
Heuchelheim9
- 25.412 24.312 24.312 —
Giessen“
21.4 24.6 25.7 26.3 24 0
Bourgeoisie of Geneva
22.8 23.4 23.6 24.6 25.0
English High Aristocracy

■Village in Devon/England; 2Figure for 1538/99; 3Village in

Leicestershire/England; "Figure for 1750/1824; «Village northwest of
Chartres/France; «Figures for 1665/99, 1700/34, 1735/70 respectively;
’Small town northwest of Paris; «Figures for 1660/1739 respectively;
■■Village west of Giessen/Hesse; ‘»Figures for 1691/1700, 1701/1800
respectively; “Town in Hesse; '“Figures for 1631/50, 1651/1700, 1701/30

respectively.
64 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

half of the 16th century (27.0 years), it went up to 29.4 years between
1650 and 1699 (see Table 17). As Colyton also saw a decline in marital
fertility, it has been conjectured that people there practised certain
forms of birth control.
It was in these ways that control mechanisms established
themselves in response to changing economic and social conditions.
They were designed to prevent a f o ther widening of the gap between
population size and available i .'sources. Yet, as these mechanisms
became effective too late all too often, it was left to famines to reduce
the population to a size which was commensurate with the means of
subsistence. However, the crisis of the 17th century was evidenced by
the fact that in some places the population continued to decline even
after a new equilibrium between its size and the available resources
had been established.
The general demographic trend which characterized the 17th
century is marked by a number of deviations in regions where there
existed concentrations of rural manufacturing. Here the mechanisms
developed by European society to restrict its demographic growth
were put out of action. The possibility of finding a steady subsistence
m the rural cottage industries for generation after generation made it
unnecessary to make the conclusion of a marriage conditional on the
availability of a full-time occupation. Here the ‘iron chain of
biological reproduction and inheritance’ was broken (Ch. and R.
Tilly). Indeed it was a prerequisite of rural industrial activity to
found a family since wife and children were indispensable
conti ibutois to the family economy. In other words, the marriage age
tended to decline and the size of the population to increase in proto-
industrial legions because the above-mentioned demographic
control mechanisms were less strong and because the merchant

Table 18:
Growth of 62 agricultural and 40cottage-industrial villages in
Nottinghamshire, 1674-1801:
No. Av. numbe r of people

1674 1743 1764 1801

abs. Index abs. Index abs. Index abs. Index
Agricultural
villages 62 166 100 187 113 199 119 276 176
Cottage-ind.
villages 40 230 100 340 148 462 201 908 395
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 65

capitalists had installed a production system in the countryside

which suited their requirements. The weavers of Schweidnitz
reported in 1619 that the number of Pfuscher (workmen) was growing
in the villages: ‘What happens is that the son of a small-holder or
cottager, once a mere 17 or 18 years of age, will be poorly trained by a
Pfuscher and will learn to weave in the shortest of time; he will then
find himself a woman and will produce more Pfuscher who will all sit
in their cottage like swallows in the rafters.’ Figures from England
confirm this picture. In Nottingham the population of purely
agricultural villages increased by 12.7% between 1674 and 1743;
villages with cottage industries, on the other hand, grew by 47.8% (see
Table 18).

2.2 Agriculture: Crisis and Resurgence

The agricultural crisis of the 17th century did not assume the same
proportions as that of the late middle ages. Nevertheless, there are
many similarities, between the two periods. Prices for cereals began to
drop. Thus the index for grain prices in France which had been at 100
points in 1625-50 declined to 59 in 1681-90 and, after a brief recovery,
slumped to 50 in 1741-50. The picture was similar for the rest of
Europe (see Figure 1, p. 4). However, the downward trend began to
reverse in Germany and Austria as early as the end of the 17th century.
Real wages rose slightly without being able to balance out their
catastrophic fall during the 16th century. Agriculture thus came
under pressure. Ground rents declined and pulled property prices
down with them. There was less incentive to develop new land. In the
northern parts of the Netherlands the index for land reclaimed from
the sea reached its nadir between 1665 and 1730. France experienced a
reduction of the gross agricultural product, as is demonstrated by the
development of tithe yields. Following the serious crisis of the late
16th century, the ten-year averages had once more reached their 16th
century level by 1680; but, as can be seen from Figure 12, the
downward trend recommenced thereafter and lasted until the end of
the reign of Louis XIV. In Poland, where the index of grain
production had been at 100 in 1580, it had reached 87 some 75 years
later. The destruction wrought by the Swedish-Polish War pushed
the index even further down so that it finally reached a disastrous 43
in 1660.
Change also occurred in other respects. Thus a trend towards
extensive agriculture in some areas was paralleled by a move towards
more intensive cultivation elsewhere. On the one hand, fields weie
turned into pastures and grassland. Along the Alps where grain-
66 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Figure 12:
Quinquennial averages of tithe income
using the index of grain production in
France 1541-1760 (1551/60 = 100)

growing had been expanded to considerable altitudes in the

mountains in the 16th century, land was left to grow over to be used
lor stock-farming. The Limburg region east of Liege presents a
particularly extreme example: there the proportion of arable land fell
from 67% to 19% between the 16th and the 17th century. Spain
witnessed a further reduction of the influence of the Mesta, but this
did not prevent a renewed expansion of sheep farming on a local
basis. On the other hand, there was more intensive cultivation in
parts of Spain and in the South of France where the vineyards were
extended^ at the expense of agriculture. The wine-growing area
around Sete and Montpellier increased bv me 20% between 1676 and
1734. In Flanders, Brabant, Zeeland and Frisia grain-growing was
reduced in favour of flax, hops, rape and other crops. The boom of
tobacco cultivation in the central and eastern parts of the northern
Netherlands was very impressive, particularly if compared with
import figures of colonial tobacco from England (see Table 19). The
expansion of tobacco was clearly linked to the crisis of the 17th
century, as is also demonstrated by its decline a century later.
In Germany, but also in the Languedoc, the Roman Campagna
and in Spanish Castille, villages, farmsteads and fields became
deserted. In 1600 the proportion of land used for agriculture on East
Prussian estates was 57.8%, by 1683 it had been reduced to a mere
32.4%. The wasteland on the estates of the Archbishop of Gnesen
(now Gniezno in Poland) which comprised 34% of the arable land in
1685 increased to 65% by 1739.
Meanwhile international trade and commerce shrank. The annual
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 67

Table 19:
Production of tobacco in the Northern Netherlands and
imports of colonial tobaccos via England, 1675-1750
(mill, of Amsterdam pounds)

Prod, of domestic English exports to Holland

Period
tobacco of colonial tobacco

ca. 1675 5- 6 4
ca. 1700 9-10 8
ca. 1701 15-18 7
ca. 1730 8-10 10
ca. 1750 11-12 17

Figure 13:
Volume of grain shipments to
Western Europe through the Sound,
1562-1780 (ten-year averages in Last)
Last

Total grain shipments

Shipments on Dutch ships
Price of rye per Last in the Netherlands

averages of grain shipped westward through the Sound from the

Baltic region decreased from 68,500 Last in 1600-49 to 55,800 Last in
1650-99 and finally to 21,800 Last in 1700-49 (see Figure 13). Grain
exports from Danzig which had seen an enormous expansion in the
16th century stagnated as early as the first half of the 17th. Decline
followed from the middle of the century (see Figure 4, p. 29). The
 68 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

downward trend for livestock exports from Denmark, Schleswig and

Southern Sweden began soon after the outbreak of the Thirty Years’
War. After 1630 these regions exported no more than 20-30,000 head
.per annum (see Figure 5, p.31). Nor did the Hungarian livestock
trade experience anything but a marked decline.
The crisis of the 17th century widened the gap between the two
geographic poles while pushing the evolution of European
agriculture in different directions. At one end, in Eastern and East-
Central Europe, the system of serfdom was tightened. England, at the
opposite end of the spectrum, on the other hand, made decisive
progress on the path towards a commercialized agricultural system.
The English farmers’ response to the crisis which had started from the
middle of the century enabled him to gain an advantage over virtually
all other European countries. With prices for animal products rising
faster than the price for grain, there were clear benefits in growing
forage crops like sainfoin, clover and turnips. These crops were
interchanged with different cereal crops as part of a new system of
crop rotation which had not existed outside the Netherlands up to
now. The most famous among these was to be the Norfolk System
with its four-yearly sequence of wheat, turnips, barley, and clover.
The production of animal fodder made it possible to keep larger
and better nourished herds. This, in turn, meant larger quantities of
manure which contributed to higher agricultural yields. The
growing of forage crops also increased the fertility of the soil, thus
avoiding the earlier cycle of diminishing returns. The introduction of
crop rotation was accompanied by a growing regional differentiation
and specialization in respect of agricultural production. Stock
rearing and dairy farming concentrated in the Lowlands which had
plenty of water and rich soil. Grain growing became the speciality of
areas with light soil which were better suited to the new methods.
The transition to crop rotation was predicated on the at least
paitial dissolution of the older types of communal agriculture. The
land had to be enclosed or, where ‘open fields’ existed, to be put in
severalty. This meant that ‘common rights’ could no longer interfere
with cultivation. However, there were also the property titles of
peasants which stood in the way of the new system. Buying up their
land hence became a prerequisite of successful enclosure.
More importantly the crisis contributed to the decline of the
peasantry less through the above-mentioned improvements than
through another and more direct mechanism. It was stagnant if not
smking, incomes, violent price fluctuations and heavy taxation
which pushed the peasants into a situation in which the sale of land
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 69

to a landlord appeared to be the only way out. Gregory King has

estimated that in 1688 there were some 150,000 families with an
income of £6.6 million on tenant farms as against 180,000 families
with freehold properties and an income of £10.36 million (see Table
30,p. 100). But around 1790 some 85%of the land was farmed by tenant
farmers. Those of the gentry with smaller holdings found themselves
in similar difficulties, and not infrequently they were forced to sell
out. All this tended to favour the large-scale landowners, and once the
expropriation of the peasants had been more or less completed,
English agricultural society was divided into three groups: the
landlords, the land labourers and tenant-farmers who rented land to
run their farms on a commercial basis.
At the other end of the spectrum, in Eastern and East-Central \
Europe, the trend was not towards expropriation but towards what J
was called adscnptio glebae. In other words, the crisis of the 17th £
century accelerated the process of refeudalization to the east of the /
River Elbe. What promoted this process was above all the shortage of
labour, the losses of lives resulting from the wars of the 17th century ^
and migration to the Black Soil region of Russia. It is also important
to remember that the devastation inflicted by war broke the capacity
of the peasants to resist. Thus the legal framework of serfdom was
extended and further strengthened. The Compromise which the
Great Elector concluded with the Brandenburg Estates in 1653 and
which was to become the basis of the Brandenburg-Prussian military
state pushed the peasants in to the hands of the Junker. It was now up
to a peasant who claimed to be free to prove that he was not a serf. In a
number of Eastern German territories, the peasants were treated as
persons who were excluded from the right to inherit land or propel ty;
alternatively they were pressed to become short-term tenants whom
the nobility could remove from the land at will. David Mevius, a
lawyer from Mecklenburg, admitted around the middle of the 17th
century that it had become ‘almost common practice to trade and deal
in serfs in the same way as was done with horses and cows’. With the
help of rigid manorial regulations the landlords moreover tried to lay
their hands on the labour of peasant children.
A fully-fledged system of serfdom finally developed in Russia. The
distinction between bondsmen and peasants who were personally free
disappeared. Tabour services increased. To have to render these
services for six days of the week was no exception in Russia. Polish
peasants in the 17th century were obliged to work between four and
five days per Hufe and week on the landlord s l orwerke (see Table 6,
p.28). But there were also discrepancies between the legal norm and
70 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 20:
Wage labour and serf labour on the ‘Vorwerke’ of the Korczyn
district in Poland, 1533-1660 (days per ‘Vorwerkshufe’)

1533/38 1564/72 1600/16 1660

days % days % days % days %

Wage lab. on Vorwerk 268 35 200 19 181 15 85 5

Draught services 490 65 551 53 475 40 598 33
Manual services - - 280 28 540 45 1102 62
Total 758 100 1031 100 1196 100 1785 100

actual practice which, in many cases, were considerable. For example,

in 1650 a number of villages in the i/ukov administrative district
complained that they were expected to render 12 days’ service per
Hufe and week although the legal obligation was for no more than
four days, the 12 days’ service being the equivalent of the labour force
of two serfs. In the long run the number of servants on the estates was
reduced, to be replaced by members of the landless rural proletariat
who rendered manual services (see Table 20).
Bohemia and Moravia likewise saw an extension of robot services,
as serfdom was called here. The land registers of estates of the
Imperial Count of Colonna of 1674 state that ‘the peasants are obliged
daily to undertake with their draught animals all work which is
allocated to them. By the special grace of the Count and for the better
conservation of his subjects, the robots are given one day of the week,
usually the Saturday, off so that they may look after their own land'!
This would seem to indicate five days of serf labour per week. In
Russia there was also an increase in the Vorwerk acreage which a
farmstead or a male ‘soul’ was expected to work.

2.3 Proto-Industrialization and Merchant Capitalism

One of the most significant developments of the 17th-century crisis is

the shift away from the Continental countries and towards the sea
powers as the centres of economic growth. The Mediterranean
countries fell behind and lost out against their rivals to the North
The first signs of this North-South split can be discovered in the
commercial field as far back as the 16th century. The North Sea and
a tic Sea regions, as we have seen, developed their trade in products
for mass consumption at this time. The Mediterranean region on the
other hand continued to be dominated by its traditional trade in
spices and luxury goods from the Orient, however important the
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 71

grain trade may otherwise have been. Nor did the colonial trade of
Spain and Portugal diverge fundamentally from this pattern, ft both
reflected the level of socio-economic development of the Iberian
peninsula and helped to perpetuate the existing feudal mode of
production. But in the 17th century the structure of intercontinental
trade, and of trade with the Americas in particular, began to change.
Increasingly, America gained importance as a market for
manufactured goods from Europe while, on the other hand, the New
World emerged as an exporter of sugar cane to Europe. The countries
which benefited from these developments were not the ones which
promoted the expansion overseas in the 16th century, but Holland
and England. This was not an illogical shift, as the restructuring of
the inter-Continental trade had essentially been the work of the
Northwestern European sea powers. Holland had succeeded in
bringing the trade in the Baltic, the North Sea and along the Atlantic
coast under her control as early as the 16th century. With England on
their heels, the Dutch plugged themselves into the inter-continental
trading network. They began to adapt it to modern requirements and
to the exchange of bulk commodities, even if as competitors and
successors of the Portuguese in the Far East they remained wedded to
the colonial practices of the 16th century. The evolution of commerce
was completed by England which thus created one of the
preconditions for her susbequent rise to the position of the ‘First
Industrial Nation’ (Ph. Deane).
The share of East-Central Europe in the international trading
system declined in parallel with the vigorous expansion of the trans-
Atlantic trade. The demand for agricultural goods decreased on the
Western European markets. The long-term fall in grain prices also
worsened Eastern Europe’s terms of trade, as prices for manufactured
goods did not decline as sharply. Just as East-Central Europe,
Southern Europe was also negatively affected by the shift in the
international trade pattern. But worse was to come. Like the East-
Central European regions before it, the South was demoted to the
position of a supplier of raw materials. The Mediterranean was
incorporated, by the metropolitan centres of merchant capitalism in
the North-West (which were soon joined by France), into their system
of an unequal division of labour. This system left the South, just as
the overseas territories, with little room for manoeuvre. The
rerouting of the sea lanes which occurred from the 16th century
onwards was no accidental development. Rather it refers us back to
the phenomenon of economic growth which proceeded at a dilferent
pace in different parts of Europe. Rapid commercial expansion
72 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

overseas obviously provided an additional stimulus to the economic

growth of the metropolitan centres at the hub of the system.
There are various similarities between the decline of Italy and
Spain in the 17th century. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to
compare the two countries in one breath. In Italy textile manufacture
as a whole was affected by the crises. Venetian cloth production which
had reached its peak in 1602 at 28,729 pieces dropped to little more
than 2,000 pieces by the beginning of the 18th century (see Figure 14).
Between 1560-80 and 1589-1600 output in Florence had already
slumped from about 30,000 to 13,500, only to reach a new low by
1641-45 with an average of 6,114 pieces. In Milan losses in production
were even more drastic. Around 1600 some 60-70 firms had produced
about 15,000 pieces there. Yet in 1709 only one was left which sent a
mere 100 to the market. Textile manufacture in other Italian towns
met a similar fate. The silk trade also began to suffer. In Genoa the
number of silk looms declined from about 10,000 in 1565 to 2,500 in
1675. Export markets in the Mediterranean, especially in the Levant,
were lost to Holland and England. As early as 1611, the Venetian
ambassador to Constantinople reported that English fabrics were

Figure 14:
Quinquennial averages of cloth production,
1581-1700
pieces/livres

Leiden: pieces of taken

11 pieces of other materials
Lille sayettene and bourgeterie
(tax product in Uv res)
Venice: pieces of woollen cloths
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 73

given preference to Venetian ones in Turkish markets because they

were cheaper. Venetian observers also pointed to the fact that English
cloths were more attractive both in shape and colour. It turned out to
be a disadvantage that Italian fabrics were of better quality. The way
to overcome this disadvantage would have been for Italy to move into
the new draperies’ market which had made it possible for the
Northwestern European manufacturers to strengthen their position.
Yet the guilds prevented all innovation. High taxation, high wage
levels and, above all, a rigid guild structure made it impossible for the
Italian cloth manufacturers to respond flexibly to the new conditions.
What ultimately sealed the fate of the industry was that the weavers
successfully avoided their subordination to the merchant capitalists
and established a system of production which was dominated by
small workshops and the guilds. By the end of the 17th century, Italy
was well on her way to becoming a country which imported primarily
finished goods and services and exported raw materials.
This is also true of Spain and in particular of Castille, the main
base of the Spanish monarchy. The Spanish artisans shared the fate of
their Italian counterparts. Cloth manufacture is Segovia, next to
Cordoba the country’s most important manufacturing centre, fell
from about 13,000 pieces in 1570-90 to some 3,000. Spain’s American
colonies quickly lost their significance as a market for the country’s
products. Seville’s trade with the New World had begun to lose much
of its earlier dynamic from the 1550’s, although it reached its peak in
absolute terms only in 1608. But after the crisis of 1619-1622 the city
likewise began to fall behind (see figure 8, p. 41). The demographic
disasters which had ravaged Spanish-America in the 16th century
now reduced the size of its markets. Moreover production structures
became so similar to those of the mother country that the basis of
close commercial relations began to disappear. Ships that left
Seville on the voyage across the Atlantic were filled with goods of
non-Spanish origin. Foreign merchants gained control of the trade.
By the end of the 17th century a mere 5% of the trans-Atlantic trade
were still in Spanish hands. The trade with other countries was in no
better shape. At the end of the 17th century only the Spanish balance
of trade with the Hanseatic cities was in surplus. Meanwhile the trade
deficit of the city of Barcelona increased from 285,000 to 721,000
Catalan pounds between 1664-65 and 1695-96. Imports consisted of
luxury goods and goods destined for the Americas; raw materials were
being exported. The Spanish manufacturers who were unable to
survive foreign competition; they became the victims of the new
international division of labour which separated individual
74 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

countries into the industrial nations, on the one hand, and the
suppliers of raw materials, on the other.
Nor did the manufacturing economy of Central and Western
Europe escape the impact of the crisis; but the response to it was
different from that of Spain and Italy. These were the regions which
saw an expansion of rural industries. The Upper German economy
had lost much of its dynamism since the decline of silver and copper
mining (see Figure 7, p. 37). There was also the deterioration of the
relationship between the Upper German merchant capitalists and
Portugal as well as the crisis of fustian manufacture. The urban
economy of the 17th century was badly hit by the Thirty Years’ War in
Central Europe and by the Fronde in France. These events resulted in
a drain of capital and reduced demand. In Nuremberg the number of
workshops dropped by one third; not even in the 18th century did they
regain their former level. The fustian weavers of Augsburg suffered
badly. The number of masters declined from 3,024 in 1612 to 468 in
1720; their output slumped from 430,636 pieces to 60,500. Similar
figures pertaining to other towns in Germany could be added.
Textile production stagnated in France throughout the reign of
Louis XIV. Virtually nowhere were the high production figures of
the years 1625-1635 ever achieved again. In Beauvais, to the north of
Paris, output of expensive fabrics fell by roughly one half between
1624-34 and 1710-20. Serge, on the other hand, which was lighter and
cheaper, stood up well to the competition. The slump in production
was no less dramatic in Amiens and, from 1667, in Lille. In both
cities, and more so in Amiens than in Lille, textile manufacturing
enjoyed a marked recovery after 1680, the first signs of which can be
discerned between 1660 and 1680 (see Figure 14). The decline of
Hondschoote which had been annexed by France in 1688 proved
irreversible. The town had seen record exports of 60,720 pieces in
1630, before its position began to deteriorate rapidly on account of the
Franco-Spanish War of 1635-59.
There were also elements promoting changes to the feudal mode of
production itself. The long-term upswings furthered accumulation.
The rise in grain prices and the above-mentioned drop in real wages
favoured larger farms and opened up possibilities for enlarging the
land held by them. Underproduction crises which occurred with
gieatei frequency, especially at the end of a long-term growth period,
tended to accelerate the concentration process. Large farms profited
from the crisis; deliveries to the market, it is true, declined; but, thanks
to the high level of grain prices, returns were higher. Small-holdings,
on the other hand, were pulled down by the crisis. Small peasants not
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 75

only had to abandon their deliveries to the market, but in many cases
they were even forced to provide their most basic needs through
purchases on that market and to go into debt in order to be able to do
so. At the end of the day, the sale of parts of the land was frequently the
only choice, and if neither the landlords nor the communities could
stop this decline, accumulation was bound to continue. However, the
fibre of peasant society was threatened with destruction only if
attempts were made at the same time to secure the property titles to the
land against claims by other village members. That such attempts
should be made in the first place was a response to the population
explosion and the increased use of communal privileges which this
explosion had unleashed. But soon they went beyond their original
objective and the aim was now to obtain free disposal of land,
untrammelled by communal rights of any kind; to achieve what
became known as ‘enclosure’ in England. It was these tendencies
which challenged the viability of peasant society in a very
fundamental way. Yet, at the same time, they represented one of the
decisive preconditions for the introduction of new farming
techniques and for an increase in agricultural productivity.
It also happened quite frequently that accumulation by the
peasants was undermined and ultimately nullified by accumulation
in the hands of the feudal lords. For, in search of maintaining his
income in the face of an agricultural crisis, the landlord might
expand his own holdings by withdrawing land from the peasants and
incorporating it as part of his demesne. This opened up two
possibilities: (1) The nobles managed these enlarged holdings
themselves, relying on serf labour, as in Eastern and East-Central
Europe (known as Gutswirtschaft or Vorwerkswirtschaft). (2) The
landlord released the confiscated land again, but this time on terms
which made it easy to adjust rents to the current price level.
The first solution, and in particular the reintroduction of the
Vorwerk system, was» of course nothing but a refeudalization of
agriculture. The second alternative, on the other hand, pointed
towards solutions which transcended the feudal mode of production,
and very definitely so if it were supplemented by enclosure, as
happened in England. In this case the peasants were virtually
expropriated. The market became the mechanism which regulated
the relationship between the landowner and those who rented his
land. The feudal rent had been transformed into a capitalist ground-
rent. Thus, seen in historical perspective, the ‘English solution’ of
eliminating the peasantry was the major alternative to what E.
Hobsbawm has called the ‘peasant path towards capitalism’.
76 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

The twists and turns in the fate of urban textile manufacturing

under the impact of foreign competition and proto-industrialization
emerge from the case of Leiden. There the nieuwe draperie, after a
period of prosperity, lost ground in the 1630s. It was squeezed out by
English competition which disposed over better raw materials and a
proto-industrial rural labour force. On the other hand, the oude
Leidsche draperie enjoyed a revival in this period which lasted into
the first decade of the 18th century. These draperies were made with
Spanish wool and ‘Turkish’ camel hair. They were relatively
expensive and less labour intensive, and this secured them a niche in
the market. Ultimately they shared the fate of the ‘new draperies’ of
Leiden when they were overcome by their competitors in the area of
Verviers, Eupen and Monschau south of Aachen whose organization
was proto-industrial. In the final analysis the victory of proto¬
industry was thus total. And as far as the struggle between the English
and the Dutch textile industries is concerned, it appears to be a
harbinger of later developments: England conquered the markets for
relatively cheap goods of mass production: her competitors managed
to survive only in the markets for luxury goods (see Table 21 and
Figure 14, p. 72).
Leiden was probably the largest textile centre of the time, but the
northern parts of the Netherlands were also important in other
respects. And again they were threatened by foreign competition,

Table 21:
Estimated volumes and values of textile production at Leiden
1630-1701 (%)

1630 1654 '551 1701

Vol. Value Vol. Value Vol. Value
Old draperies
Woollen cloths 1.6 2.7 16.3 43.7 34.7 71.1
New draperies
Greinen ? 2.8 26.8 32.8 33.0 20 3
Fustians, etc. 84,9 62.5 36.8 13.6 16.2 37
Warpen, bayen 13.5 29.5 20.1 9,4 16 1 46
Others ? 2.5 ? ?
0.5 0.3
Totals (in %) 100.0 100,0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100 0
Totals (in prices
resp. 000s guilders) 108 156 4 000 113 583 9 160 74 682 5 910
Index 100 100 105 229 69 148
1 Vol. for 1655, value for 1654
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 77

dependent as they were on raw materials from abroad and on external

markets for their finished products. The Dutch frequently succeeded
in taking charge of those stages in the production process which were
particularly profitable and which enabled them to control the
markets for finished products. German, Flemish and French linen
was bleached in Haarlem; Italian silk was prepared in Haarlem,
Amsterdam and Utrecht. This was bound to generate animosities in
other countries. Thus in 1614-17, a group of London merchants led
by Alderman Cokayne tried to prevent the outfitting of English wool
fabrics in Amsterdam by inducing the King to ban the export of
undyed cloths. They failed. Sugar refineries and the tobacco trade
emerged because Holland became the world's warehouse until it was
squeezed out by England in the 18th century. A proto-industrial
development took place only in Twente and was started by the local
linen trade there.
Unlike in Holland, the development of manufacturing in England
was more firmly rooted in a growth of the domestic economy; it was
not just a product of a previously achieved strong position in world
trade. This was to be of some importance for the future, because it
helped industrial capitalism in England to emancipate itself from the
grip of the merchant capitalists.
Gregory King has estimated that in 1688 some 70-80% of the
English population was predominantly employed in agriculture. Yet
agriculture generated no more than about 56% of the national
income. Next to agriculture, textiles made the largest contribution to
the gross national product among the manufacturing branches of the
economy. But decline appears to have set in. Although textile exports
increased absolutely, their share in total exports by England
(excluding re-exports) fell from 80-90% at the beginning of the 17th
century to 70.9% in 1699-1701. The process of restructuring which
affected the English economy in this period may be gauged even more
clearly by looking at the growing importance of coal as a source of
energy. The rise in coal output between 1551-60 and 1681-90 was
around 1,400%, but most of this increase happened in the 17th
century. In 1651 Newcastle was celebrated as the English Peru. Both
the private and commercial use of coal expanded. London became the
largest consumer once coal was established as a domestic fuel. It was
carried to the capital from Durham and Northumberland by sea. It
has been calculated that the coal industry employed some 8,000
people in 1650. A hundred years later, the figure was 15,000 of whom
3,500 were miners. The advance of coal was particularly fast in those
industries in which the substitution of wood by the new fuel posed
 78 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

few or no problems. This was true of soap-making, brick

manufacture, brewing, refining of salt, alum and sugar and glass¬
making. The smelting of ores was more complicated. Thus the
question of producing iron with the help of coal remained
technologically unresolved, although processes using the new fuel
had been developed by the end of the century for the production of
lead, tin and copper.
Those industries which replaced wood by coal were able to increase
their output considerably. But the iron manufacturers, having
recovered from the crisis of 1620-60, also did well. The number of
furnaces declined, but overall capacities rose. All in all, production
went up by 30-40% in the course of the 17th century. On the other
hand, there were almost no technological innovations or structural
changes in the manufacturing sector throughout the century. Output
increased as much in individual branches as the available equipment
permitted. Changes occurred in this respect only towards the end of
the 17th century. As far as their organization was concefned, tex-tiles
and large parts of metal manufacturing remained dominated by
either the Kauf system or the putting-out system. More modern modes
of production developed only in those branches, such as brewing,
glass-making, paper manufacture, refining of salt and sugar, which
required a high concentration of fixed capital.
Merchant capitalism, not industrial capitalism, thus continued to
be the force that shaped the 17th century. Amsterdam rather than
London remained the centre of the tvorld trading system. Exchange
with the Baltic region was Amsterdam’s moeder commercie (as a
contemporary source put it), i.e. the city’s economic basis until its
decline in the 18th century. By 1670 the Dutch fleet had a capacity of
about 568,000 tons. Some 36.4% of this were taken up by the Baltic
trade and only half of this percentage in shipping on the routes to
Guinea, the West Indies and East India. However, it was precisely the
Bal tic connection which did not remain untouched by the crisis of the
™ C!?tury; ^ was first hit by a crisis which lasted from 1618-21 to
1630. There followed a long drawn out depression in the 1650s which
punctuated by a brief upturn in the 1680s, continued into the second
decade of the subsequent century. Between 1641 and 1650 some 2,139
i7ln on üPS Sailed thr°ugh the Sound out of a total of 3,597. By
1711-20 this figure had declined to 880 ships out of a total of 1,755
rhe reason for this drop would appear to be, above all, the
reduction in grain shipments from the Baltic region which has
already been mentioned It must be added, though, that, whereas the
total amount of grain fell by 18.5%, the amount transported by Dutch
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 79

ships between 1600-49 and 1650-99 decreased by a mere 8.0% (see

Figure 3, p. 11). In other words, Dutch grain traders were affected less
seriously by the crisis than their competitors. We have as yet no
knowledge of whether and how far the losses in the Baltic trade were
made good by gains from the prosperous colonial trade, even if the
former continued to be the cornerstone of the commercial empire
which the Dutch established in the 17th century.
Meanwhile the Spanish and Portuguese colonial systems
experienced major upheavals. The colonial and quasi-colonial
settlements of the 16th century in Asia and the Americas began to
emancipate themselves from their mother countries. Spanish-
America became independent of Spanish food supplies and thereby
gained a greater measure of autonomy. However, contrary to a view
which was widely accepted until recently, exports of precious metals
did not decline, but continued to rise in the second half of the 17th
century (see Figure 10, p. 49). The Estado da India was less and less
concerned with promoting exports to the mother country. Rather it
tried to secure its own survival by subjecting the inner-Asian trade to
its authority to extract tributes from it. To put it crudely: it was not
the route around the Cape, but that through the Red Sea which
became its main artery.
These tendencies were reinforced by the pressure which the
Northwest European sea powers—Holland, England and France—
exerted on Spain and Portugal. These countries not only disrupted
the trade of the Iberian powers with Asia and America, but also built
up commercial networks of their own. They occupied the Caribbean
islands one after the other and set up on them plantation colonies like
those in Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. And along the east
coast of North America these colonies were complemented by settler
colonies. By 1700 British North America had as many as 275,000 white
inhabitants.
The plantations of Brazil and the West Indies which were based on
slave labour became the most important new element of the 17th
century colonial system. With the products of this economy
appearing on the world market, intercontinental trade assumed a
more modern structure based on a division of labour. Sugar cane had
reached Brazil from the Mediterranean via Madeira, the Azores and
the Canary Islands. The first sugar plantations were founded there
before the middle of the 16th century. In 1576 there were some 40 of
them. But by the end of the first quarter of the 17th century, this figure
had risen to 180. By 1576 no more than 60 sugar mills were in
operation. By 1629, there were 346 of them, rising to 528 in 1710.
80 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Production rose from 2,050 tons in 1570 to 22,700 tons a hundred years
later. Sugar plantations spread from Brazil to the West Indies which
had meanwhile been taken over by the French and the English.
Around the middle of the 17th century they succeeded in squeezing
out tobacco-growing whose main centres thenceforth were Maryland
and Virginia.
Tobacco had at first been a ‘free man’s crop’ (R. Pares) and up to
about 1700 this was true as far as Virginia was concerned. But soon
tobacco production, like that of sugar, became inseparably connected
with the slave trade—one of the most brutal chapters in the history of
merchant capitalism. The link can be most conclusively established
by looking at the English colony which was founded on Barbados in
1627. Initially the main crop there was tobacco which was grown with
the help of white labour. But the overproduction crisis of the 1630s
induced the planters to switch to sugar production. The white
population declined. On the other hand, the black slave population,
which had been very small as late as 1629, rose to 20,000 by 1655. In
1684 Barbados numbered 19,568 white and 46,602 black inhabitants.
It was the emergence of sugar plantations which led to the use of
slaves, imported from Africa, in Brazil was well as in the West Indies.
When the native Indian population, in so far as it had not yet been
dtcimated as in the West Indies, failed to withstand the strains of

Figure 15:
Imports of slaves in 25-year, 20-year and 10-year
averages, 1451-1870
s/aves
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 81

Table 22:
Estimated imports of slaves into the Americas, 1451-1870 (000s)

Region 1451/1600 1601 '1700 1701/1810 1811/70 Totals

Brit. North Am. _ _ 496.0 51.0 547,0

Spanish Am. 75.0 292.5 (623,1) 606.0 (1596.6)
Brit. Caribbean - 263.7 (1513.5) - (1777.2)
French Caribbean - 155.8 (1448.9) 96.0 (1700.7)
Dutch Caribbean - 40.0 380.0 - 420,0
Danish Caribbean - 4.0 24.0 - 28.0
Brazil 50.0 560.0 1909.7 1145.4 3665.1
Fur./Sao Thonre'/Atl.Is. 149.9 25.1 - - 175.0

Totals 274.9 1341.1 6395,2 1898,4 9909.6

Annual averages 1.8 13.4 58.1 31.6 23.6

working in sugar cane production, Brazil’s plantation owners

increasingly used African slaves since the beginning of the 17th
century. The crucial precondition for the operation of the plantation
system was the provision of slaves in sufficient numbers and at a low
price.
The origins of the slave trade between West Africa and the Americas
go back to the beginnings of colonization. Some 17 slaves are reported
to have been shipped to the West Indies as early as 1505. The asiento,
the granting of an import monopoly for slaves into Spanish-America,
dates back to 1518. In the last quarter of the 16th century about 3,800
slaves were transported per annum to Europe, the Atlantic Isles, to
Sao Thome' and America. One hundred years later the annual average
was 24,100. Up to 1700 some two million Africans were forced to leave
their homelands to be sent on the way into a terrifying future (see
Figure 15 and Table 22). The mortality rate during the passage to
America was around 20%. At first the slave trade was a monopoly of
Portuguese merchants. They dominated the markets both in West
Africa and in Brazil and the West Indies. The asientos were granted
mainly to Portuguese citizens. In 1637 Portugal lostElmina.aforton
the Gold Coast, and in 1641 Luanda on the Angolan coast to Holland.
Moreover, in 1640, Spain abolished the asiento system after the
secession of Portugal. Thenceforth the Portuguese merchants
encountered a serious competitor in the shape of the Dutch East India
Company. In 1654, it is true, the Company was forced out of Brazil
which it had partially taken away from Portugal. But it now
organized the illegal slave trade to the Spanish possessions and
participated in the asiento which had been re-established in 1662. The
82 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Company also supplied the French and English islands in the

Caribbean with slaves. Yet even during its peak period, the Dutch
slave trade continued to rank second behind the Portuguese. The
Dutch share was about 20%. Around 1675 the English pushed them
into third place, and at the end of the century the French had demoted
them to the fourth rank.
Between 1673 and 1711, the Royal African Company which had
been specifically established to trade in slaves in 1672 imported an
average of 2,327 slaves per year to the West Indies. It sent metal goods.

Table 23:
The triangular trade of the Royal African Company,
1673-1713 (annual averages)

No. Weight Value

in tons £ %
Exports to Africa (1673-1704)
Metal and metal goods 7071.3 15.5
Brit, woollens
10210.3 22.4
East India textiles 5351.4 11,7
Other textiles 6252,3 13.7
Gunpowder, firearms, knives 3485.5 7.6
Beads, corals, cowries 4323.9 9.5
Misc. 8 965.6 19.6
Totals
45 660,3 100.0
Imports from Africa to Engl.
(1673/74-1711/13)
Gold
0,10 14 042.5 81.1
Ivory
21.7 ca. 2 353.0 13.6
Wax
8.5 ca. 749.5 4.3
Redwood
3.7 ca. 180 1.0
Totals
34.0 17 325,0 100,0
Imports of Slaves from Africa
to West Indies (1673-1711)
2327 ca. 35 700
Imports from West Indies to
England (1673-1707/11)
Sugar
918.2 ca. 28 437 68.0
Ginger
10.6 ca. 322 0.8
Indigo
2.3 ca. 1 181 2.8
Cotton
3.9 ca. 226 0.6
Silver
0.21 1 894.5 4.5
Bills of Exchange
9 748,6 23.3
Totals
935.2 41 809.1 100.0
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 83

textiles, including linen from Silesia, fire-arms, gun powder and

knives to Africa. In return it acquired not only slaves, but also gold,
ivory, timber, furs and wax which were shipped to England. In the
West Indies the Company exchanged mainly sugar for its slaves; it
was loaded onto the returning slave ships (see Table 23). The slave
trade thus became the stimulus which gave rise to a triangular trade
relationship between the European metropoles, Africa and the West
Indies. This triangle demonstrates very clearly how the various
production centres and markets of the Atlantic region were
functionally orientated towards, and dominated by, the merchant
capitalists of Europe.
The Far Eastern trade experienced major structural changes when
both the English and Dutch East India companies penetrated the
Indian Ocean. The Portuguese had more or less integrated themselves
into the structures which they found upon their arrival in Asia.
Consequently the overland trade routes between Asia and Europe
were hardly ever seriously threatened. As late as 1600, between 60%
and 80% of Asian exports to Europe (in terms of volume) reached the
Occident on land. When the above-mentioned Companies appeared
on the scene at the turn of the 17th century, these patterns changed
dramatically. The land routes became almost totally insignificant.
Hormuz, the Portuguese fort at the entry to the Persian Gulf which
had been the departure point of the caravans to the ports along the

Table 24:
Trading activities of the Dutch East India Company in Asia
in triennial periods, 1619/21-1693/1700 (%)*

1619/21 1648/50 1698/1700 1778/80

Spices 17.6 17.9 11.7 —

- 26.4 24.8 24.4

Pepper 56.4 50.3 11.2 -
- 32.9 13.3 11.0
Tea, coffee - - 4.3 -
— - 4.1 22.9
Textiles, silk, 16.1 14.2 54,7 -
cotton — 17.5 43.4 32.7
Other 9.9 17.6 18.1 -
- 23.2 14,4 9.0

Totals 100.0 100.0 100.0 —

— 100.0 100.0 100.0

Totals in guilders (000s) 2943 6257 15 026 -
— 8771 21 032 28137

'First line of figures = purchases; second line - sales.

84 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 25:
Trading patterns of the English East India Company with
Asia, 1661-1760, (ten-yearly averages in pounds sterling)

1661/70 1691/1700 1721/30 1751/60

Exports 133 464 3326132 650 008 988 588

— Precious metals1 67.0 71.4 83.6 65.7
Imports 101 6803 173 080 633 293 778 658
— Pepper4 20.0 8.3 2.8 4.7
— Textiles4 62,5 68.6 65.5 53.7
— Tea4 0.1 1.8 9.6 21.7

‘As percentage of total; 21692/1700; 31664/70; 4As percentage of total

Levant coast, was captured in 1622. The Companies succeeded in

bringing the trade with the Ear East under their control.
At the same time, trade became more diversified. As far as imports
from Asia were concerned, pepper and other spices lost their lead over
textiles. The purchases of spices by the Dutch East India Company
dropped from 74.0% in 1619-21 to 22.9% in 1698-1700 in terms of the
Company’s overall imports. The share of textiles and raw materials
for textile manufacture, on the other hand, increased from 16.1% to
54.7% during the same period (see Table 24). Imports of calicoes to
England increased on average from 198,815 to 295,755 pieces between
1664-70 and 1691-1700. By the 1690s they made up no less than 86.6%
ol Asian imports (see Table 25). The European balance of trade
continued to be in deficit. Between 1660 and 1700 a mere 24% of the
English East India Company s exports were in finished goods; some
76 o were in precious metals. Elowever, the Companies tried to reduce
their exports of precious metals to Asia by engaging themselves
increasingly in the inner-Asian trade. The profits they made in these
ventures were used to finance their imports to Europe.
The oveiseas expansion of the European commercial metropoles
obviously also required an organizational and financial corset. It was
impossible for a private company to finance the protection of its
trade, the establishment of agencies and overseas branches as well as
to satisfy the demand for working capital for its trading activities
I here were, moreover, great risks in this trade which were increased
by the vast distances involved. The state had an interest in controlline
overseas trade directly or indirectly and this was achieved with the
establishment ol monopoly organizations. In Spain and Portugal the
authorities exercised this control through the Casa de la Contratacion
at Seville and the Casa da India at Lisbon. The difference between the
two organizations was that the Casa da India was not merely a
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 85

supervisory and control institution, but also exercised a trade

monopoly for such important commodities as spices, copper and
silver.
In the countries of Northwestern Europe more or less private firms,
most of which were joint stock companies, were granted by the state a
trade monopoly in a certain overseas territory together with
sovereignty rights. I he most famous of these companies were the
English East India Company which received its charter in 1600 and
the Dutch Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie of 1602. Others were
the Dutch West Indies Company of 1621, the English Hudson Bay
Company of 1670, the Royal African Company of 1672 and the
French Compagnie des Indes Orientales of 1664 which was hapless at
first and merged with the Compagnie des Indes in 1719.
The common feature of these Companies was that, being chartered,
they were quasi-public bodies. However, their actual raison d’etre
was to maximize profits. Thus the state, by granting a charter, created
the organizational preconditions for the accumulation of commercial
capital. Another common characteristic of the Companies was that
they were no longer organized as ‘regulated companies’ but as ‘joint-
stock companies’. They were equipped with a capital stock which
could be subscribed. Initially the funds thus accumulated were used
exclusively for particular trade expeditions to be repaid, plus any
profits, after the expedition had been completed. The Dutch East
India Company had a permanent capital stock from the start. It was
only in 1657 that the English East India Company also adopted this
form of financial organization. The dividends paid by these
Companies were considerable. The average dividend of the Dutch
East India Company, which existed from 1602 to 1798, was 18.2%. In
thirteen of these years, investors received 40% and more. The
dividends of the English East India Company averaged out at 20.3%
between 1661 and 1691. But in the 18th century they dropped to 10%
and below. The reasons for the impressive successes of the Companies
may be found in the ‘internalization of the protection costs’ (N.
Steensgaard). In order to protect their trade, they built up forces of
their own. This made them independent of those powers which had
hitherto provided the protection for caravans and ships. The price at
which this latter protection was offered was not only well above their
own costs, but could largely also not be calculated in advance.
While Dutch and English overseas trade continued to prosper,
Spain and Portugal suffered considerable losses. In 1641-50 total
Spanish tonnage on the trans-Atlantic route had been 22,528; by
1701-10 this figure had declined to a mere 4,950 tons carried by 15
86 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Figure 16:
Volume of sea traffic from Europe to Asia,
1491/92-1700/01 (ships sailing to Asia in ten-year
periods and by country)

ships

Total
200 —
-Portui
-Hollar
- Eng!at
Franct

300 ~

200 -

l\
wo-I V
I
5 0-1

1291/92 1521/22 1591/92 1621/22 1691/92

-1500/01 -1550/51 -1600/01 -1650/51 -1700/01

ships (see Figure 8, p. 41). The fall in the tonnage was partially made
good because the products sent to the Americas tended to be more
valuable. Between 1601-2 and 1610-11 some 69 ships sailed to Asia
from Portugal. By the final decade of the 17th century there were just
2.4. Meanwhile Dutch, French and English figures showed a steep
increase. Again, taking the first and the last decades of the 17th
century, Dutch, English and French traffic to Asia rose from 59 to 241,
20 to 134 and 2 to 40 ships respectively (see Figure 16). The purchases
of ^utch ^ast India Company in Asia increased five-fold between
1619-21 and 1692-1700. I urnover in Amsterdam shot up by 140%
between 1648-50 and 1698-1700. Imports by the English East India
Company saw a 70% rise from 1664-70 to 1691-1700. Unfortunately
there are no figures relating to the total overseas trade of the northern
pai ts of the Netherlands. English exports increased by more than 50%
between 1663-69 and 1699-1701. Whereas the share of exports to West
Afnca, America and Asia in terms of total English exports (excluding
re-exports) was no more than 14.9% around the turn of the rPn„„,
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 87

Table 26:
Share of Europe, Asia, Africa and America in foreign trade of
London and of England, 1663/69-1699/1701 (%)

Europe1 Asia, Aft ., America Totals

1663/69 1699/1701 1663/69 1699/1701 1663/69 1699/1701

I I II I I II I I II

Exports 65.9 50.3 58.7 6,9 12.0 10.3 72.8 62.3 69.1
Re-exports ? 31.7 25.9 ? 6.0 5.0 27.22 37.7 30.9
Totals ? 82.0 84.6 ? 18.0 15.3 100.0 100.0 100.0

Imports 76.3 65.3 68.1 23.7 34.7 31.9 100.0 100.0 100.0

I = London, II = England
'Incl. Ireland and Turkey; 2Estimate

world like tobacco, sugar and calicoes which went primarily to the
European Continent. The share of these re-exports in terms of total
English exports rose from 22% in 1663-69 to 30.9% in 1699-1701.
Holland, not England was the warehouse of Europe in the 17th
century, though. This activity formed the basis of its dominating
position in trade and finance. In 1728 Daniel Defoe gave an apt
description of Holland’s role in international trade when he wrote:
‘The Dutch must be understood as they really are, the Carryers of the
World, the middle Persons in Trade, the Factors and Brokers of
Europe: that, as is said above, they buy to sell again, take in to send
out: and the Greatest Part of their vast Commerce consists in being
supply’d from all parts of the World, that they may supply all the
World again.’
Amsterdam was the centre of trade and finance in this period. Its
population grew from about 30,000 in 1567 to over 200,000 by the
early 1780s. Its exchange, which was accommodated in a splendid
building erected between 1609 and 1611, took the same development
as Antwerp’s before it: it created a commodities market, but also a
system of payment which was independent of the fairs, even if it
did not operate’through its own framework, but through a bank of
exchange which will be mentioned in a moment. In 1585 some 20a
different commodities were traded at Amsterdam; in 1675 there were
as many as 491. In the same year the London exchange listed the
prices of 305 commodities. From 1609 a weekly bulletin was
published which gave the prices of various products. The stock
exchange soon emerged side-by-side with the commodities trade.
Initially it was above all the shares of the Dutch East India Company,
 88 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

soon also those of the West Indies Company, which changed hands.
Later still, bonds issued by the two Companies were added, but above
all loans of the City of Amsterdam, the Province of Holland and the
United Provinces. Towards the end of the century, foreign
governments also tried to place their loans. Finally speculative
futures markets developed in both commodities and shares against
which all bans proved powerless.
One of the main reasons for Amsterdam’s rise to the position of the
largest financial market in Europe was the founding of the
Wisselbank in 1609. It was this bank which broke the hegemony of the
Genoese markets, until then the most important international
clearing centre. Being a clearing bank, the Wisselbank was nothing
new, but formed the terminal point on a ‘tradition-bound axis’ (H.
van der Wee) in the history of European banking. It was only the
Antwerp-London axis which opened up new perspectives. The
number of deposit accounts held at the Wisselbank rose from 708 in
1611 to 2,698 in 1701. Total deposits increased from 925,562 guilders
in 1610 to 16,248,849 guilders in 1700.
Ehe Wisselbank was not a credit bank. It gave credits only to either
the City of Amsterdam or generally the Dutch East India Company.
The Wisselbank made Amsterdam the most important market for
Precious metals in Europe.' Between 15% and 25% of the silver which
reached Spain from the Americas was sent directly to the Netherlands.
It was used for balancing the accounts for trade and services between
Spain and Spanish-America, on the one hand, and the northern
Netherlands, on the other. A roughly similar percentage of American
silver probably got to Holland through other channels. This means
that the financial world of Amsterdam was able to dispose over a
significant part of the Spanish silver imports. In the second half of the
17th century a fleet of 30-50 ships accompanied by war ships sailed
into Amsterdam harbour every autumn. The city’s dominant
position in international finance was reflected in an enormous export
of capital which was related to investments abroad. Governments in
need of funds turned to Amsterdam and sought to place loans on its
capital market. It was in connection with such financial transactions
that the Dutch capitalists gained control of Swedish copper and the
mercury deposits in Idna. Louis de Greer estabjished a financial
empire in Sweden the likes of which did not exist elsewhere
The leading role of the Northern Netherlands in international trade
and finance mobilized their neighbours. The English tried to oust the
Dutch from their position as intermediaries and to gain control of
world trade. They also aimed to establish a system of entrepots of their
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 89

own. The Navigation Acts of 1651 and 1660. the acts of 1662, 1669,
1673 and 1696 as well as the trade wars of 1652-54, 1665-67 and
1672-74 are reflections of these policies. Above all, England was keen
to disrupt the trade links which the Dutch had established with the
English settlers in the West Indies and along the eastern seaboard of
North America and to take the foreign trade of the colonies into their
own hands. The English colonial system whose constitutional
foundations had been laid in the Restoration period left little room
for the trade relations of other nations. However, the significance of
the Navigation Acts and the legislation that followed lay in
something else. These laws established a tradition of trade policy¬
making which was no longer based on the monopoly of individual
companies, but on ‘a national trading interest’ (Chr. Hill). There was
no place in this system for monopolistic trade companies, unless they
were prepared to subordinate themselves to the ‘national monopoly’.
The outcome of the Anglo-Dutch Wars cleared the way for England
to become the dominant trading nation in Europe. Between 1629 and
1686 her commercial fleet trebled, even though its size in 1686 of
340,000 tons was still well below that of the Dutch fleet. However,
English re-exports rose from 100 index points in 1663-69 to 221 in
1699-1701, reflecting England’s growing importance as the
emporium for goods from the under-developed and colonial world.
Capital which would have been invested in landed property only a
century ago was now put largely into foreign trade. Issues of shares
for joint-stock companies were frequently subscribed with surprising
speed. Nor was it difficult to place debentures. In many cases shares
were held by very few people. In 1675 some 700 investors owned the
capital of the three most important trading companies, the East India
Company, the Africa Company and the Hudson Bay Company. The
medium-size investors tended to dominate the Africa Company. 7 he
East India Company, on the other hand, was increasingly controlled
by a few very wealthy merchants. In 1691, more than a quarter of the
total capital was held by eight people. Josiah Child, the Governor of
the Company, owned 6.9% of it, amounting to £51,150.
As far as the development of financial institutions was concerned,
England was even farther behind Holland than in her trade. A
noteworthy stock-market did not emerge until the 1690s. But
thereafter it expanded very quickly and assumed modern features.
Antwerp rather than Amsterdam became the model for the structure
of the English system of credit and finance. Antwerp’s financial
techniques, in particular those of endorsement and the discounting of
debt certificates and bills of exchange, spread throughout England,
90 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

soon giving the English a lead over the Dutch. Next to the acceptance
of deposits and the issue of bank notes, the discounting business
became the most important activity of the London bankers, most of
whom were goldsmiths by professional origin. The Bank of England
also adopted these practices after it had been founded as a joint-stock
company in 1696 to reorganize the English state debt. This made the
Bank of England the most modern financial institution in Europe
which left the exchange banks of the Continent well behind.
The 17th century was the high noon of merchant capitalism both
in the Northern Netherlands and in England. In a few places it got
involved in manufacturing, but this did not mean that these
interests received much attention. The circulation sphere and the
production sphere moved on different levels and an identity of
interests between trade and manufacturing was lacking. Free Trade
prevailed in the one sphere; protection of the domestic market against
foreign competition, in the other. The growing volume of re-exports
in Dutch and English foreign trade benefited the manufacturing
sector only in a Very limited way. The expansion of merchant
capitalism threatened to hold back the development of manu¬
facturing. However, in the 18th century industrial capital succeeded
in establishing itself as an independent factor in England next to
merchant capital. And once the Government had abolished the
controls over the country s economic life during the Revolutionary
period and had scrapped the monopolies in trade and industry, the
system of industrial production could be put on a new footing.
Moreover, in February 1700, the domestic manufacturers achieved an
important victory against the commercial interests of the East India
Company when they succeeded in getting legislation passed which
was directed against the imports of Persian, Indian and Chinese silk
and cotton products.
Nothing like this ever happened in the Netherlands. There the
merchant capitalists and the financiers upheld their hegemony. As
Marx put it succinctly: ‘The history of the collapse of Holland as the
dominant trading nation is the history of the subordination of
commercial capital to industrial capital’. Proto-industrial develop¬
ments within the national boundaries of their competitors deprived
Dutch manufacturing with its low adaptability of its foreign markets
By the beginning of the 19th century textile production at Leiden was
down to 30,000 pieces. Other crafts did not fare much better
Although the volume of trade declined but marginally, Holland’s
strong position in world trade was undermined. Between 1701-5 and
1771-75 her share of imports into England slumped from 11.2% to
 The Crisis of the 17tli Century 91

Table 27:
Anglo-Dutch Trade, 1701/05-1771/75
(quinquennial averages)

1701 05 1771 /75

jC(000s) % £ (000s) %

Total Brit, exports 2 048.0 34.9 1 846.0 11.7

Exports to Holland 5 866.4 100.0 15 832.6 100.0

Total Brit, imports 562.0 11.2 457.0 3.5

Imports from Holland 4 794.2 100.0 12 884.4 100.0

3.5%. Only 11.7% instead of the previous 34.9%of English exports still
passed through the Dutch entrepots (see Table 27). By 1771-80 a mere
27.6% of the ships sailing through the Sound flew the Dutch flag.
International finance now became the focus of the country’s
economic activity. But unlike in 19th-century England, Dutch
foreign credits were not accompanied by stepped-up exports of
manufactured goods. It is one of the ironies that the northern parts of
the Netherlands should be overtaken again by their southern
counterparts. As Maurice Dobb has rightly emphasized: ‘The
launching of a country on the first stages of the road towards
capitalism is no guarantee that it will complete the journey.’

2.4 The Crisis of the 17th Century in its Socio-Economic Context

The crisis of the 17th century started off as an agricultural crisis

which was rooted in the price revolution of the previous century. It is
possible that it was exacerbated by climatic changes. Some people
have spoken of the ‘little ice age’ which is assumed to have afflicted
Europe. The demographic aspects of the 16th-century history have
already been analysed (see above p. 18). However, by the turn of the
17th century and definitely by the middle of that century there was a
reversal of earlier population trends. The size of the population
began to stagnate or even declined. It did not take long for the
economic repercussions of this development to be felt, above all in
agriculture. Demand for basic foodstuffs dropped, because, as we
have seen before, it was more directly linked to varying population
sizes than were more expensive manufactured goods.
It might be objected that, as the size of cultivated land was also
shrinking, food supplies would presumably have fallen in
proportion to the demographic losses. However, it must be taken
into consideration here that the food crisis of the 16th century had led
 92 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

to large areas of marginal soil which yielded very little being

taken under the plough. When the economy turned around, these
fields were probably the first to be abandoned. This meant that the
production of cereals did not decline to the same extent as the
population had done and that the marginal cost of agricultural
production also decreased. In other words, when the supply was
greater than the demand and productivity saw at least a slight
increase, prices were bound to fall. And this is precisely what
happened up to the early decades of the 18th century (see Figure 1, p.
4). A further factor must be added when one looks at the development
in England and the northern parts of the Netherlands. There the
decline in prices was presumably due not merely to demographic
change, but also to a growing agricultural output. This stepping-up
of production was the specific manner in which the Dutch and
English farmers responded to the crisis.
However, the crisis of the 17th century was not just and not
exclusively a ‘Malthusian’ crisis. It also gave rise to tremendous social
problems. There are many indications that the growing subsistence
crisis became exacerbated because the feudal lords tightened their
grip on agricultural incomes. They increased their pressure in the
struggle for the distribution of these incomes once it became clear that
their own losses could not be made up from other sources. Thus the
Languedoc witnessed a ‘rent offensive’ (E. Le Roy Ladurie) in the first
six decades of the 17th century. Rents increased from 1-1.5 hecto-litres
of grain per hectare around 1550 to three or more hecto-litres.
Increases by 100% occurred in the Paris region and in the Soissonais.
In some other regions such as the Hurepoix and the Poitou, south of
the River Loire, 17th-century levels had been reached as early as 1560.
In some parts of England payments to the landlords rose more steeply
than the price of grain (see Table 11, p. 50). The feudal lords, it is true
were forced, as the crisis deepened, to reduce the contributions if they
wished to avoid their own ruin. But in many cases the state appeared
on the scene to grab what the lords had left. Soon indirect state taxes
surpassed the reductions in direct rents, squeezing the peasant
economy even further. Everything pointed towards an irresistible
downhill slide. In the Languedoc rent rises came to a halt by 1675-80
at the latest; there now followed a fall in rents which amounted to 20%
in some cases and 50% in others. Meanwhile, the taille which had
doubled between 1580-90 and 1650 from 6.2% to 13% of the gross
agricultural product was pushed up even more massively after 1690
These new burdens spelt the doom for many a peasant. If one
calculates the tax burden of the French population in terms of work
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 93

days, it becomes clear that it trebled between 1588 and 1683. The tax
rate rose from 5.0% to 15.5% (see Table 28). In the Beauvaisis north of
Paris the share was even 20% to which must be added another 20% for
rent.

Table 28:
Growth of tax burdens in France, 1515-1683

Total taxes Gross agric. (A) as a Taxes pet- Taxes

levied product % of head of calcul. in
(A)1 (B)1 (B) family (C)2 workdays (D)3

1515 3.5 53.7 6.5 0.8 6.4

1547 7.4 178 4.2 1.4 7.0
1588 24 480 5 6 10.0
1607 31 389 8.0 4.8 13.6
1641 78 533 14.6 28 34.4
1661 79 744 10.6 18.1 20.8
1675 98 514 19.0 25.2 34,0
1683 106 690 15.4 23.6 31.2

1 = millions of 'livres tournois’; 2 = ‘livres tournois’; for a family of four;

3Based on wage levels of Parisian building-workers.

In Western Europe the agricultural crisis resulted partly from the

combined pressure of landlords and the state. In Eastern Europe, on
the other hand, it was an outgrowth of the more traditional feudal
mode of production and its contradictions which had undergone a
fresh twist when the landlords decided to rely primarily on serf labour
services. Thenceforth the Vorwerk became the focal point of the rural
economy and its constitution. The peasant economy found it
impossible to expand production the more it lost control of its labour
process and the more it was incorporated into the seigneurial
economy. With the end of the 16th century boom approaching, feudal
pressures on the peasants increased. The landlords tried to meet the
reduction in the returns from the sale of their produce with increased
production and a cutting of their costs. Hence they enlarged their
Vorwerke, reduced the workforce and the number of animals and
relied on the services of the peasants. The consequences were
pernicious for both the demesnes and the peasant economy. Yields
declined and so did the number of peasants. The size of cultivated
land and of livestock contracted. Ultimately the landlords even had to
provide the peasants with draught animals to be maintained by the
latter, if they did not want to jeopardize production on the Vorwerke
(see Table 29). Thus excessive exploitation helped to trigger off the
crisis.
94 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 29:
Index of changes in the structure of agriculture in the Kalisz
province (Poland), ca. 1600-ca. 1650

ca. 1600 ca. 1650

1. Land farmed by peasants

I I Total acreage 100 64-72
1.2 Land per peasant-holding 100 80-85
2. Wüstungen (total acreage) 100 400-500
3. 1'orwerk land
3.1 Noble demesnes 100 113
3.2 Ecclesiastical demesnes 100 116-130
3.3 Royal demesnes 100 126-145
4. Total cultivated land 100 87-89
5. Population size of villages 100 75-80
6. Draught animals
6.1 Total 100 60-70
6.2 Per peasant-holding 100 80-85
6.3 In relation to acreage 100 95-100
6.4 Supplied by demesnes 100 200

War and uprisings also contributed to the pressures on the peasants

and to seal the collapse of the rural economy. These were of course
factors which cannot always, and sometimes no more than partially,
be included in a discussion of the socio-economic aspects of the crisis.
The Thirty Years War or the various wars in Northern Europe in the
second half of the 17th century were more-extraneous. The Fronde in
France, on the other hand, was both a reflection of, and an element in,
the crisis. Other factors, above all plagues and epidemics, must be
added. And again it will have to be left to further research to decide
how far they represented the culmination of a long-drawn-out crisis.
I he manufacturing sector followed the general course of the
agricultural depression. But its specific characteristics prevented it
from following exactly the same path. Exceptions always admitted,
prices for manufactured goods did not decline as sharply as those for
grain. As before, these goods proved less susceptible to demographic
fluctuations. Moreover, once the economy began to slacken,
purchasing power became available which had thus far been
absorbed by the higher cost of food and drink. On the other hand, it
must be remembered that the gains made in the purchasing power of
wage earners and small craftsmen were counterbalanced by losses on
the part of the agricultural producers. In the long term, however,
changes in the demand structure were more important than those
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 95

which, like the ones mentioned above, can be directly related to the
ups and downs in the economy. There was the disproportionately
large growth of the cities from the 17th century, the incipient
commercialization of agriculture and proto-industrialization. These
developments led to an increase in the number of households which
were dependent on the market.
Even more important than the fall in prices and wage rises was the
manner in which the merchant entrepreneurs and Verleger reacted to
the fact that their profit margins were being reduced at both ends.
This reaction took three forms:
(1) Rising labour costs induced them to move manufacturing to
the countryside on an even larger scale and to rely on the rural labour
potential.
(2) Falling prices led them to turn to mass production which
reduced unit costs through higher output and thus enabled the
merchant capitalists to maximise profits by means of a larger turnover
rather than by trying to increase their gains through higher unit
prices. The changeover from expensive ‘old draperies’ to cheap
‘new draperies’ and from fustian to linen, which have been discussed
earlier (see above p. 34), are cases in point.
(3) The merchant capitalists stepped up the expansion of trade
with the underdeveloped and colonial world in an attempt to shore
up the precarious demand situation in the domestic markets. In this
process, the ‘old colonial system’ based on extraction was replaced by
a ‘new form of colonialism’ represented by the plantation economy
(E.J. Hobsbawm).
These responses of the merchant capitalists to the crisis stimulated
the production of goods. On the other hand, the crises tended to
deepen where the new methods were not adopted. The extension of
craft production into the countryside was a very serious blow to the
urban export economy which was constrained by the guild system.
Those regions which did not switch from old to new draperies in
time, were badly hit by the crises. With the emergence of Holland,
England and France as the centres of the embryonic capitalist world
system, the countries of the Mediterranean slipped into a position
half way towards the periphery. The expensive goods of their
manufacturers were squeezed out of the international markets. A
proto-industrial development which might have put them in a
position to keep up with their competitors in North-western Europe
failed to take place. How far the manufacturing sector in the
Northwest began to diverge from that of the South may be gauged
from the output of the Tolfa alum mining works near Rome and the
 96 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

customs accounts of the Sound. The Tolfa works held a quasi-

monopoly of alum which was indispensable for the dyeing of textiles.
But after 1614 production at Tolfa declined steadily. On the other
hand, exports of raw materials such as iron ore, flax and hemp from
the Baltic region rose from the middle of the 17th century, while the
grain trade fell behind (see Figure 17). Iron ore exports from
Stockholm rose by 85% between 1648 and 1700. Some 44% of all these
exports went to England.

Figure 17:
Index of exports by volume of different
commodities to Western Europe through
the Sound, 1562/66-1770/80
(1731/39 = 100)

Eric Hobsbawm has argued that ‘the “crisis” itself created the
conditions which were to make the industrial revolution possible’ In
making this statement he thought above all of the concentration
movements and shifts which were unleashed by the crisis and then
sharpened that crisis. It appears that these shifts occurred on the
international and interregional level, i.e. from the land powers
towards the sea powers and from grain production towards stock¬
farming and proto-industry. The interregional shift was accom¬
panied by a move away from urban manufacturing towards rural
cottage industries. These developments accelerated a division of
labour on an international, interregional and societal plain and
boosted the exchange of goods. Thus the flow of information was
improved within the trading network which emerged in North¬
western Europe and which was soon to stretch across the globe. At
t e same time the costs of commercial transactions decreased The
emergent interregional division of labour made intensified
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 97

agricultural production a more attractive proposition. But it also led

to a reallocation of rural labour either in favour of farming or of
proto-industrial production. In either case the rural populations
ceased to produce goods or food for their own consumption. The
system of partial barter which had been a feature of a peasant
economy began to disintegrate. The latter became a demand factor of
the national economy concerned. The market principle established
itself, and the division of labour became firmly entrenched.
Once the population trend had been reversed, the demographic
problem which had caused the most serious tensions in the social
structure of Europe in the 16th and early 17th centuries began to
disappear. The slight rise in the level of real wages worked in the same
direction. This rise was due to the fact that the supply and demand of
labour started to converge while per capita output rose and the cost of
living declined. And yet neither the demographic shift nor the short¬
lived increase in real wages were able to arrest a long-term
pauperization process. There was no relief for peasants whose
burdens continued to increase as taxation or feudal services rose in
Western and Central Europe and in East-Central and Eastern Europe
respectively. Famines and wars had permanently weakened the
productive potential of the peasant economy. Indebtedness assumed
enormous proportions. For the Beauvaisis the records of some 60 suits
have been investigated which were initiated between 1683 and 1685 in
protest against high tax demands. These cases showed that the
indebtedness of only nine peasants was less than one quarter of their
total assets; in 14 cases it was half and in 29 slightly above that; in the
case of eight peasants it was even above that percentage. Thus
indebtedness became a decisive stage on the road which ended in
expropriation. And indeed expropriation made rapid strides unless
the landlords or the village were prepared, and able, to stem it. In
some regions of France the percentage of peasants farming their land
dropped to less than one third, the new owners were the noblesse de
robe, the Church and—especially in the vicinity of larger towns—the
bourgeoisie. Up to a point, the French peasants therefore shared the
fate of their English counterparts.
Central and Eastern Europe were spared from the process of
expropriation. Where it can be demonstrated to have taken place, it
remained within the rural community. Indebtedness did not result in
dissolution, but led to the transfer of property titles within peasant
society. The Thirty Years’ War had put no more than a temporary
halt to the process of differentiation within the peasantry, and
although this process amounted to an expropriation of some
 98 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

peasants, it nevertheless remained internal to the rural economy. In

general, those peasants who actually owned their land remained
unaffected and in fact stood up to economic pressures relatively well.
East of the River Elbe, on the other hand, they did not always escape
the effects of the proliferating Vorwerk system. Thus in 1569 tenants
of the King in Masovia holding more than half a Hufe made up 36% of
the peasant population. By 1616 they had been decimated to 10%, and
by 1660 they had all but disappeared. At this time 40% of the farms had
a size of between a quarter and one half of a Hufe; 43% had a quarter
and 17% even less than that. But these figures assume their
significance only if one remembers that a peasant on half a Hufe of
land lived on the verge of the subsistence minimum.
Expropriation, pauperization and differentiation created the
preconditions for the emergence of proto-industrial regions. Once
lural manufacturing had established itself in a particular area, the
number of people living on the margins of peasant society grew
quickly, ultimately to reach a size which society as a whole proved
unable to cope with. In 1660 some 62.1% of the households of
Rossendale and four other villages in the textile region of Lancashire
held plots of land worth less than £5. In large parts of East-Central
and Eastern Europe, on the other hand, where the demesne
monopolized the labour market the path for a proto-industrial
development was necessarily blocked.
The pressures which the peasants were forced to live under led them
to stage innumerable uprisings in the 17th century. These uprisings
broke out all across Europe, from England to the frontiers of the
Russ,an Empire in ihe Southeast. They were most numerous in
!t'‘Te; ,'Vhe7 ?,"e Upnslng followed ‘he other between 1624 and
75. The rebellions of the Nouveaux Croquants of 1636 in the
Southwest, of the Nu-pieds of 1639 in Normandy, of the Sabatiers in
, Sologne (1658), of the Lustucrus in ihe Boulonnais (1662) and of
the Bonnet Rouges m Brittany (1675) are just a few examples in a long
ciam. esentments against the seigneurs combined in these
uprisings with resistance to taxation, with the latter being the
deciswe cause except for the 1675 rebellion in Brittany

Xe
crisis of n!h daSSeS d'd k°‘ remain °°mPlete|y unscathed by the
cnsts of the 17th century either. However, unlike Ihe peasants they
succeeded tn developing policies which cushioned them against it!
effects comparatively well and which are best descXed a
nationalization and 'ohgarchization. What is meant by these terms
is t at the nobility formed an alliancewiththe state. Thisenabled the
anstocracy to participate in the distribution of tax revenues ex“ Xed
 The Crisis of the 17th Century 99

by the state from the peasantry and thus to make up the fall in feudal
rents. However the nobles had to pay for this by allowing the state to
divest them of their original feudal privileges, to recruit them into its
service and to emasculate them politically. On the other hand, in
order to cement the social status hierarchies, they sealed themselves
off from inferior social groups.
The tendency to form oligarchies which can be observed
throughout Europe at this time even reached England and the
northern parts of the Netherlands. The successful revolt of the
Netherlands against Spain saw the rise to power of the wealthy
merchants who represent the upper crust in the cities, with major
changes taking place only in Amsterdam in this respect. These oligarchies
determined the political fate of the Republic until 1795. The nobility
was ousted and since then lived no more than a shadow existence. The
conduct of state business had been taken over by the merchant
capitalists. However, there was a reversal of this development from
the second half of the 17th century. The patricians turned their backs
on commerce, lived as rentiers and tried to establish themselves as a
new aristocracy.
England’s unprecedented social mobility of the years 1540-1660
lost its momentum with the end of the price revolution, the growth of
the population and the contraction of the property market. The
aristocracy and the upper gentry succeeded in expanding their
holdings of land at the expense of the lower gentry and the peasants.
Moreover, they tried to erect barriers between themselves and the social
groups below. The exercise of political power was in the hands of this
extremely wealthy and influential land-owning class. But side-by-
side with the ‘feudal’ hierarchies which they promoted there emerged
other status hierarchies which had a decisive impact on the shape of
English society. In 1688, Gregory King counted as many as 10,000
‘merchants and traders by sea’, 10,000 ‘persons in offices and places’,
10,000 ‘persons in the law’, 10,000 ‘clergy-men’, 15,000 people ‘in
liberal arts and sciences’ and 9,000 army and naval officers. King
estimated that their combined income surpassed that of the 16,586
noble households by as much as 36% (see Table 30). These groups and
the first four in particular increasingly enjoyed recognition by the
aristocracy, not least because many sons of aristocratic families who
were excluded from inheritance by the system of primogeniture were
accepted into these other groups. Intermarriage was no exception.
The merchant capitalists, it is true, remained excluded from the
centres of political power. On the other hand, monied and landed
interests had already become too closely intertwined for the ruling
 100 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

oligarchies to be able to ignore the former completely. To this extent

the emergent status system of England is a pointer of later
developments. Meanwhile the blatant inequalities in the distribution
of wealth remained untouched by these developments (see Table 30).

Table 30:
Gregory King's scheme of social structure and income of
England for 1688

No. of households Income in pounds

abs. % per household total %
Aristocracy 186 2 590.3
1 481 800
Gentry 16 400 f 13.0
L2 315.5 5 174 000

Merchant and Traders by Sea 10 000 240.0 2 400 000

Persons in Offices and Places 10 000 180.0 1 800 000
Persons in the law
10 000 140.0 1 400 000
Clergy-men
10 000 48.0 480 000
4.8 17.7
Persons in Lib. Arts &
Sciences 16 000 60.0 960 000

Naval 8c Military Officers 9 000 71.1 640 000

Freeholders 180 000 -I 57.6 10 360 000
Farmers 150 000 44.0
•31.6 6 600 000
Shopkeepers, Tradesmen, 48.6
Artisans 100 000 -> 42.0 4 200 000
Labouring People,
Outservants 364 000 15.0 5 460 000
Cottagers and Paupers 400 000 62.4 5.0 2 000 000 20.6
Common Seamen and Soldiers 85 000 17.5 1 490 000
Vagrants [30 000]' [2.0]' 60 000 0.1
Totals 1 360 586 100.0 31.9 43 505 800 100.0
'No. of persons, resp. income per person
 3. The Upswing of the 18th Century
Just as the crisis of the late middle ages was followed by the price
revolution of the 16th and early 17th centuries, the crisis of the 17th
century led to a new phase of economic expansion in the 18th. Once
the tensions within the productive sectors of the economy had been
removed, once the balance between population and food supplies had
been restored and the ravages of the wars overcome, a longer period of
growth could begin. This upswing was reinforced by the process of
industrialization which started in England in the 18th century and
somewhat later on the European Continent and which resulted in the
largely self-sustained, though still crisis-prone, growth of industrial
capitalism. Periodic food crises, to be sure, continued until the
middle of the 19th century—the last one of the traditional type being
the crisis of 1845-47 which preceded the 1848 Revolution; but the
agricultural revolution gradually began to flatten out the
fluctuations of the harvest cycle. The growth period spread to Central
Europe around the turn of the 18th century. The economies of other
countries followed suit in the 1730s and 1740s.

3.1 Population: From Crisis to Growth

The demographic trend underwent another shift in the 18th century.

The growth which set in at this time ultimately reached its climax in
the population explosion which accompanied the Industrial
Revolution. It lasted until the late 19th century when a different
balance began to emerge which was characterized by declining birth
and mortality rates as well as a smaller demographic surplus.
All in all, the population growth of the 18th century took place
within quite narrow limits. As can be seen from Table 31, it did not
surpass that of the 16th century. Nor did the divergent growth
patterns change which were characteristic of North and Noith-
western Europe, on the one hand, and Central, Western and Southei n
Europe, on the other, and which we had occasion to observe for the
16th and 17th centuries. This did not prevent some regions, in
particular in East-Central Europe, from developing growth rates

101
 102 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 31:
Index of population change, 1700-1800

1700 1800
Northern and Northern Europe 100 166
Central, Western and Southern Europe 100 138
Totals 100 144

which outpaced those of England and the southern parts of the

Netherlands. Germany, on the other hand, recovered but slowly from
the population losses of the Thirty Years' War. It appears that they
had not been made good even as late as 1700. Württemberg reached its
pre-1618 level only in 1730. Similar figures apply to the Electorate of
Hesse. Ehus, while the population of the western German territories
increased relatively slowly, that of East Elbia grew all the more
rapidly. Between 1748 and 1800 the population of the Prussian core
provinces (i.e. excluding the Prussian possessions in Western
Germany) rose from 100 index points to 161. In Erance, though she
remained the most populous state of Europe, the size of the
population went up from 100 in 1700 to 134 in 1800. The figures for
Italy are similar: 100 in 1700, rising to 135 in 1800.
Meanwhile the population of the northern parts of the Netherlands
was almost stagnant, growing from 100 in 1700 in 111 in 1800. But the
country s southern parts saw an extraordinarv expansion from 100 in
1700 to 194 a hundred years later. These rates were considerably
higher than those for England and Wales which rose to 157 by 1800.
roadly speaking, the rate of expansion accelerated not insignifi¬
cantly in the second half of the 18th century. To quote but one
example; the English rate shot up from 0.10% to 0.79% per annum.
is must je taken as an indication that demography in the 18th
century is part of a more comprehensive process of change. In this
respect it differed fundamentally from the population growth of the

As far as the causes of the 18th-century expansion are concerned

everything appears, a, ftrs, glance, to point to the tnrportance of

a iFm™"3 720 a‘e!'1 he,P('agUe' hav‘"S'=>ged in Marseille for the

ast time in 17.0, retreated from Europe. The advance of medical
knowledge continued to be small. Nevertheless, inoculation against
small-pox which was pioneered in England in the late 18th century
was no, without effect. Famines became less severe without, however!
isappearing completely, rhe food crisis of 1771_72 was
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 103

particularly serious in Central Europe. For example, in the Electorate

of Saxony mortality rates doubled in 1772. Until then there had been a
surplus of births over deaths. But now 64,532 more people died than
were born. Yet such crises were no longer able to determine the
broader demographic trend in any decisive way. Mortality rates,
calculated over the century as a whole, were on the decline,
particularly in the second half. Average life expectancy increased.
However, it would be rash to explain the population growth of the
18th century exclusively in terms of falling mortality rates. The
marriage age, as we have seen, had gone up again from the end of the
16th century. It would therefore not be illogical to assume that people
married younger again once the new growth cycle had set in. Indeed
there are a number of examples of this, such as Coly ton, Shepshed and
Heuchelheim (see Table 17, p. 63). But large parts of France did not
follow this pattern. Instead, from the middle of the century a further
rise occurred in the average marriage age. Birth control continued to
spread so that in 1778 a French writer felt obliged to speak of ‘dark
secrets’ which had reached the countryside. ‘Nature is being outwitted
even in the villages’, he wrote. It would seem plausible that birth
control was a response to a growing population. Above all, it is not
sufficient to explain regional differences in population growth in
terms of economic fluctuations and variations. We must search for
factors which were operative only in the region concerned. Proto¬
industrialization and the commercialization of large-scale agri¬
culture in East-Central Europe were such factors.
Proto-industrialization became one of the most important engines
of population growth. Whereas Silesia had no more than 49
inhabitants per sq. kilometer, the figure for some districts in the
mountainous parts of that region was 71-80, rising to 135 inhabitants
per sq. kilometer in zones of concentrated manufacturing. Thus in
the Upper Eichsfeld region southeast of Göttingen, the production of
textiles had spread to the countryside, and in 1792-3 Johann Wolf, in
his Political History of the Eichsfeld, described the situation as
follows: ‘Precisely the opportunity of making a living from weaving
and spinning, has made marriage, on which agriculture and the
absence of anything beyond essential crafts had imposed their limits
in earlier times, very much easier and has filled the countryside with
people.’ Wolf’s explanation of these developments was essentially
correct. The marriage age came down and the number of children per
marriage went up. These trends emerge very clearly, especially for the
second half of the 18th century, from a glance at Table 32 and Figure
18 which juxtapose the demography of Shepshed, a stocking weavers’
104 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 32:
Indices of population change in the villages of Shepshed and
Bottesford in Leicestershire/England, 1700-1824

Shepshed Bottesford
1700/49 1750/1824 1700/49 1750/99
No. of births per female1 3.94 5.53 4.65 4.10
Percentage of surviving
children 66.8 68.6 63.3 70.2
Percentage of children
marrying 85.2 91.8 85.0 87.0
Marrying daughters per
mother2 1.12 1.74 1.25 1.25
Annual growth rate (%) 0.35 1.74 0.70 0.69
No. of years for population
to double 200.6 40.1 100.0 101.4

‘Revised Gross Reproduction Rate (GRR); 2Net Reproduction Rate (NRR)

years

Figure 18:
Mean age at first marriage
in the stocking-weavers
village Shepshed,
1700-1799 (ten-year
cohorts)

village, with that of Bottesford, a peasant village. It was proto-

mdustrialization which freed population growth from its traditional
constraints. It thus prepared the way for living conditions which were
to become the dominant pattern in the phase of capitalist
industrialization.
In East-Central Europe another factor stimulated population
growth no less than proto-industrialization. This was the
replacement of the Vorwerke (using serf labour) by self-managed
estates based on wage labour, the beginnings of which can be traced
back to the middle of the 18th century. We have seen how the system of
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 105

agricultural production in the East had come to rely primarily on serf

labour. Only a small force of unattached land labourers and domestic
servants was required under this system. But things began to change
again from the second half of the 18th century, and landlords started
to employ wage labourers in larger numbers for whom a multitude of
small jobs, together with living quarters, had to be created. And once
these had become full-time positions capable of supporting a family,
it is not surprising that the birth rate should rise and the population
grow quite rapidly. The commercialization of the large estates of
East-Central Europe unleashed a population boom.

3.2 Agriculture: Expansion or Revolution?

The upturn on the agricultural markets set in around the 1730s and
1740s. It was only in Central Europe that it started as early as the late
17th century, and only to experience a serious setback at the
beginning of the 18th. Starting from an index position of 100 for
1730-41, grain prices rose to the following figures up by the 1790s:
Germany = 169; Austria = 130; Poland = 123; Northern Italy = 182;
New Castille = 230; France = 150; England = 190; northern parts of
the Netherlands = 200 (see Figure 1, p. 4). Prices for animal products
and manufactured goods did not keep up with those for grain. Higher
grain prices were bound to affect ground rents. Land and rents
became more expensive. The cost of leases for land which had not
been enclosed rose by around 40-50% in England between 1750 and
1790; they doubled and trebled in France between 1730-39 and
1780-89. Only towards the end of the century was Central Europe
affected by a similar boom.
The slowly improving price and cost positions of agriculture
encouraged the expansion of agricultural production, and not only
in respect of the acreage taken under the plough, but also in respect of
the amount of capital and labour deployed. This expansion reached
its limit when marginal yields began to balance out marginal costs
although the pressures of poverty frequently pushed small units, run
by a family without wage labour, beyond this limit.
As in the two earlier periods of growth in European agriculture, the
use and cultivation of land was extended. Thus the 18th century is the
third great period of agricultural expansion in European economic
history. Reclaiming work assumed considerable dimensions in
Brandenburg-Prussia where it was supported by the state. The
swampy regions along the rivers Oder and Warthe (Oderbruch and
the Warthebrüche) as well as the Have Hündische Luch near Berlin
 106 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

were drained. Of more immediate benefit to the farmer than these

ambitious undertakings was the reclaiming work done around the
estates and farms by the owners themselves. In Schleswig-Holstein
acreage increased by 20% when parts of the region’s moors and heaths
were taken under the plough. As was reported in 1811: ‘Just as
wastelands were ploughed up and woodlands which were
economically useless were cleared, trenches were dug in moor-like
fields, on which up to now nothing but miserable reeds had grown
(which, whether green or dried, did not provide good fodder for the
animals); drained of its acids, the soil was made available for the
cultivation of rye.’
Agricultural land in the Breisgau in Southwestern Germany
increased by nearly 74% between 1699 and 1798. The percentage
growth of newly cultivated vineyards and vegetable gardens as well as
of pastures was even larger. In Catalonia, too, agricultural land was
extended, ponds were drained and forests were cleared. The
institution which was to become the Academy of Sciences at
Barcelona asserted in 1770 that the extension of agricultural land had
continued without interruption since 1720. In the northern parts of
the Netherlands efforts were stepped up after 1765 to reclaim land
through the construction of dykes. The index of reclaimed land rose
from 94.8 in 1740-64 to 168.3 in 1765-89. France went so far as to
introduce a number of laws in 1761, 1764 and 1766 which promoted
an extension of agricultural land by granting tax relief. However, the
scheme did not have much success. The size of agricultural land
probably increased by much less than 10% between 1730 and 1789. It is
more likely that social tensions rose (E. Labrousse) as a result of
these policies because the clearing of woods and wastelands tended to
impinge upon common rights.
In England the enclosure movement experienced a veritable boom
fiom the middle of the 18th century. Between 1721 and 1750
Parliament passed no more than 100 bills of enclosure. However,
their number went up to 156, to 424 and finally to 642 in the following
three decades respectively. The movement reached its climax during
the Napoleonic Wars (see Figure 19, which also relates enclosures to
the price of grain). These figures do not include ‘enclosures by
agreement’ even if these, too, were frequently effected under pressure
It has been estimated that about half of the land changed hands by
agreement, with the other half being enclosed by Acts of Parliament
The enclosure of ‘open fields’ did not affect the total amount of
cultivated land. Only where enclosures included wasteland and
common land was this amount pushed up. The motives behind the
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 107

No. of Enclosure Acts

Figure 19:
Number of
enclosure acts of
Parliament and
development of
wheat prices in
England, 1721-
1820 (quinquen¬
nial averages)

enclosure movement were mainly financial. Income from leases of

enclosed land were on average twice as high. Yields on investments
which were related to enclosure were between 15% and 20%.
For the first time, common land came under pressure also on the
Continent. A policy known as Verkoppelung made considerable
progress in the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein as well as in the
regions bordering on them. Verkoppelung related to fields and
commons (Koppeln) which were removed from collective use. The
Allgäu and the area north of Lake Constance saw an accelerated
Vereinödung, i.e. the depopulation of villages and hamlets in
connection with the creation of larger units and the abolition of
common rights. In other places changes such as these proceeded
much more slowly, however vigorously the authorities and
agricultural experts may have advocated them. What generally
frustrated their efforts was the resistance of those who thought they
had most to lose. They were usually people from the lower strata of
the peasantry, but not infrequently also landlords, especially where
they owned large flocks of sheep which they sent across the peasants’
grain fields after the end of the harvest.
The intensification of agricultural production at first developed
along the lines with which we are already familiar from our analysis
of the 16th century. Grassland was taken under the plough; stock¬
farming gave way to agriculture. The ‘greed for agricultural land’
assumed proportions that shocked many contemporaries; but this
was not even the end of it. This time the rural economy broke out of
the narrow framework of intensification alternating with extensive
agriculture. Thenceforth intensification did not merely amount to
 108 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

extending the acreage of the land under cultivation, but it also began
to affect the structures of agricultural production as a whole.
The fallow was the first to catch the attention of those who aimed to
increase the productivity of agriculture. The method was to replace
the three-field-system by what was called the ‘improved three-field-
system’. The triannual rhythm was retained, but the fallow was
planted with summer crops such as peas, beans, sweet peas, clover,
lupins and flax. Potatoes were also grown, though only in limited
quantities at this time. Western Germany was the region in which the
fallow was vigorously reduced through the introduction of fallow
crops. However, the farther east one moved, the smaller was the
proportion of these crops in relation to the total area under
cultivation. Around 1800 the share of these crops was 14% for the
whole of Germany; but it was 25% in the Schwarzbrache (fallow)
regions. The traditional three-field-system remained the pre¬
dominant mode of production in East-Central and Eastern Europe.
Attempts to modify the system in these parts of Europe were few and
far between. Little progress was also made in France. As late as 1840
the fallow comprised 27% of total acreage. To some extent this maybe
due to the setbacks which the process of agricultural innovation
suffered during the French Revolution. There were not just technical
difficulties preventing a reduction of the fallow. The changes met
with resistance because they were predicated on the abolition of
grazing rights on the fallow which were held by villagers and the
landlords. The new methods ultimately called the entire rural system
of production into question.
I o this extent, the introduction of Koppelwirtschaft in Schleswig-
Holstein, Denmark, Mecklenburg and Brandenburg was a much
bigger step forward than the growing of summer crops on the fallow.
This type of system had been developed in Schleswig-Holstein as
early as the 16th century. In the 18th century, then, it spread north and
tom there further east. The term derives from the practice of turning
cultivated land into pastures. After a number of years in which the
land had been used for grain-growing there followed a period in
which it was left for grazing. Under certain circumstances it was also
ldt allow for one or two years. But as Johann Heinrich von Thlinen
the famous agronomist of the 19th century, noted, Koppelwirtschaft
was economical only in periods of high grain prices, since it was
considerably more intensive than the three-field-system The 18th
inMUerrirShSUCh 3 KoPPelwntsch^ began to establish itself
in Mecklenburg towards the end of the 17th century. Butwas only a
ctntury latei that it had become the dominant system of land
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 109

cultivation. It then spread to Brandenburg where it became known as

märkische Koppelwirtschaft because of the introduction of root crops
into the cycle.
The most intensive form of agriculture, known as crop rotation,
gained a foothold on the European Continent but very slowly. In line
with Thünen’s model—the Thünen Circles—it was to he found
primarily in the vicinity of large towns. A few estates adopted crop
rotation around the turn of the 19th century, after a variant, the so-
called ‘englische Wirtschaft' (English System) had proliferated from
the 1760s onwards. The first beginnings of crop rotation can be traced
to the Netherlands in the 16th century, and here it also established
itself most widely by comparison with other Continental countries.
In England the transition to crop rotation was completed during the
crisis period of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Tull,
Townshend and Coke of Norfolk who were once seen as the inventors
of the new methods were the ones who popularized them in the 18th
century. By the time grain prices began to rise again in the second half
of the century, crop rotation had firmly established itself. There was
hence no danger that forage crops might be restricted again in favour
of grain production. On the contrary, the enclosure movement which
accelerated under the impact of the agricultural boom created the
preconditions for the use of crop rotation even in those areas where
the fragmentation of the land had prevented its introduction until
then. Thus enclosure contributed not merely to an extension of arable
land, but also to an intensification of agricultural production.
The gap between England and the Netherlands, on the one hand,
and the rest of the Continent, on the other, is very clearly reflected in
the ratios between seeds and yields for grain. The figures in Table 3
(see above p. 22) show that the ratios were around 1:10 in the
Netherlands and 1:7.5-8 in England. In France they were 1:6 and a
mere 1:4.9 in Germany. The figure for Schleswig-Holstein was 1:6.5,
which provides an indication of the progress made there when
Koppelwirtschaft was introduced.
Stock-farming in the 18th century, not unlike that of the 16th, was
very much in the shadow of the booming grain trade. Prices for
animal products lagged behind those for cereals. Regional exceptions
apart, stock-farming was put in the service of agriculture. In Prussia
animal products amounted to no more than 24% of the total cash
value of agricultural production as a whole. However, some of the
developments which took place in agriculture were also to the benefit
of animal husbandry. The transition to the improved three-field-
system, to Koppelwirtschaft and to crop rotation provided increased
 110 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

quantities of forage. Thus the notion of round-the-year indoor

feeding was no longer a remote possibility. Indeed it was already
being practised in some areas. In England there was also a greater
emphasis on systematic breeding. The number of animals increased,
and this in turn had a beneficial effect on agriculture which could not
contemplate a marked increase in production without the availability
of additional manure. ‘Progress has the smell of manure’ was
therefore a very apposite contemporary saying.
Production relationships in the 18th century moved along the
tracks which had been laid by developments of the two previous
centuries. England approached the completion of a rural society
differentiated into landlords, lease-holders and land labourers. By the
end of the 18th century, peasants owned no more than about 15% of
the land used for agricultural production. This decline, as we have
seen, is closely linked with the crisis of the 17th century. The
enclosures of the second half of the 18th century do not appear to have
been of major importance anymore as far as the disappearance of the
peasantry is concerned. Rather they represented the terminal point in
a process of erosion which had gone on for a long time before. The
rest of the agricultural land, i.e. about 85%, was in the hands of lease¬
holders. But also the number of small lease-holders decreased in
parallel with the decline of the peasantry. We have figures for a
number of estates which show that farms of between 21 and 100 acres
diminished by half, whereas those of over 100 acres saw an increase
(see Table 33). I his development was in the interest of the landlords
who desired a consolidation of their estates, as only large farms could
be run efficiently. The cottagers and squatters, on the other hand,
weie demoted to the position of pure wage labourers who were forced
to seek employment with the lease-holders. Another alternative was
to make a living in the cottage industries although this choice was not
always available. Common lands and wastelands had disappeared

Table 33:
Changes in the size of farms in the Bagot Estates
(Staffordshire), 1724-1764
Farms of 21-100 acres I*arms of more than 100 acres
Year
No. Av. acreage No. Av. acreage
1724 49 46
16 135
1744 31 54 21 173
1764 24 55
23 189
 The Upswing of the 18th Century

with the enclosure movement, and an essential source of maintenance

had thus been destroyed. As the Hammonds put it succinctly, ‘before
the enclosure the cottager was a labourer with land; after the
enclosure he was a labourer without land'.
While the seigneurial structures survived in Germany west of the
River Elbe, they were increasingly challenged in France. On the eve of
the Revolution and with marked regional variations, only just over
one third of the cultivated land was held by peasants, as against 90% in
West Elbian Germany. Of the rest, the nobility owned about 20-25%,
the Church 6-10% and the bourgeoisie 30%. This land was also
worked by the peasants, the difference being that he was not the
tenant. In most cases the French peasant was an ‘occupant’, as well as
a lease-holder, with both legal arrangements frequently being caught
up in an impenetrable tangle. The expropriations which had begun
to hit the peasantry assumed a new quality in the 1740s, when the
seigneuries became ‘modernized’ (E. Le Roy Ladurie). Whereas the
peasants were more or less successful in defending their ‘occupancy’
of the land against outside attempts to take it away from them, the
landlords also tried to enlarge their estates mainly at the expense of
the common land. Thus common lands were carved up, forests were
closed and grazing rights suspended. Production on the estates
became more rationalized, also in the sense that the landlords tended
to rely on thegro5 fermiers. The latter in turn usually leased the land
to the peasants, thus interposing themselves between the landlords
and the mass of the peasants. They were, as E. Le Roy Ladurie has put
it, ‘agents of seigneurial repression and capitalist modernization’ at
the same time. It seems that France was about to take the same route as
England. However, it should not be overlooked that the transition to
leasing was a stimulus to a modernization of the system of
agricultural production only in a very limited sense. Rents were often
combined with contributions which were typically feudal. Lease¬
holders did not pay in cash, but made payments in kind, in particular
in the form of metayage. Leasing became an instrument for pushing
up the rate of exploitation of the peasant masses. Thus about 20% of
the income was siphoned off in cash payments, whereas by and large
some of the net yield had to be handed over as payments in kind. For
this reason alone the system was unable to function as a pace-maker
for the transformation of agricultural production.
In East-Central and Eastern Europe the Vorwerk economy survived
beyond the 18th century. But the labour relations on which it was
based were slowly modified and called into question. The transition
to new forms of land cultivation increased the demand for workers on
 112 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

the large estates beyond the capacity of the traditional system of serf
labour. It became necessary to supplement serfs with wage labourers,
intimately the latter came to replace the former, as the landlords,
having begun to manage their estates themselves, did not want to
demand further labour services which would threaten the viability of
the peasant economy. These developments made the emergence of an
agrarian capitalism unavoidable. How far this new system had
advanced in some areas may be gauged from the case of the
Boitzenburg Lordship which is situated on the northern fringe of the
Brandenburg Mark (see Table 34).

Table 34:
Estates of the Lordship of Boitzenburg (Brandenburg),
ca. 1800
No. of No. of Size of
Size of Land cul¬
villages Peas, and land
arable tivated
provid. small¬ worked by
land1 in 1799'
seif lab holders
4 estates with
serf and wage
lab. 8 129.2 ca. 3 417 9 156 ps 1908
9 estates with 6 sm
wage lab.
only 5 847.6 ca. 3 8002

13 976.8 156 ps
ca. 7 217 9 1908
6 sm

'In Magdeburg Morgen; 2Probably much less.

These four demesnes were worked partly by serfs who provided

some 55.8% of the labour and partly by wage labourers. Another nine
demesnes relied exclusively on wage labour. If all thirteen are taken
together, three-quarters of the land in the district were worked by
wage labourers and no more than one quarter by serfs. Nevertheless
the conservative forces prevailed. The growth potential of the older
system had not yet been exhausted. Nor were the landlords prepared
to abolish serfdom. Yet the negative effects of these attitudes on the
system of agricultural production and on the domestic market
became more and more obvious. This is why the authorities were
undei some pressure to reform the Vorwerk system. Thus the
Prussian minister Friedrich Leopold von Schroetter wrote in 1802:
o dom and tiue industry are clear contradictions. Serfdom does not
exist in any country or province m which agriculture and
manufacturing prosper. Wherever it does exist, creative and
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 113

manufacturing industriousness is really being smothered.’ Yet for the

time being the Prussian authorities merely decided to introduce some
reforms on the royal demesnes. From 1799, serfdom was replaced by
payments in cash; the legal rights of peasants were improved, though
not in all districts. Joseph II did away with serfdom in the Habsburg
Empire through his decree of 1789. This decree went well beyond the
Prussian solution because it affected the land ownership of the
nobility at large and not just his own estates. The abolition of
serfdom had first got underway on the royal demesnes in the mid-
1770s. However, the decree of 1789 was rescinded immediately after
the untimely death of the Emperor. Finally, there is the Polish case.
On 7 May 1794 a famous decree was issued in PoJaniec during the
Kosciuszko Uprising. It granted personal freedom to the Polish
peasants, but left the I'orwerk economy and its labour system
untouched.
The emergence of an agricultural capitalism and government
efforts to reform the traditional relationship between peasants and
landlords notwithstanding, trends even within the larger countries of
East-Central and Southern Europe did not all point in the same
direction. In Poland serfs were being replaced by wage labour on a
large scale on the latifundia. But the lesser nobility did not
participate in this development; indeed they relied even more heavily
on serf labour. Mecklenburg and Russia deviated most from the
general pattern, though they moved towards opposite extremes.
When the Mecklenburg landowners introduced Koppelwirtschaft on
their Vorwerke, they reallocated peasant holdings on a large scale.
Above all, they pushed the peasants off the land. Clearly the
fragmentation of the land into Vorwerk fields interspersed with
peasant holdings impeded the creation of Koppeln. Nor were the
landlords as dependent on serf labour as before once more wage
labourers became available. Hence the equilibrium of the Vorwerk
economy was no longer put in jeopardy as a result of the removal of
the peasants. By the turn of the century, the decline of the peasantry in
Mecklenburg reached its nadir. In 1719 the number of peasant
holdings in the manorial villages of the Stargard district was 319;
some eighty years later, in 1801, no more than 140 were left.
Meanwhile the expansion of Russian agriculture occurred
exclusively within the framework of serfdom. Rising grain prices
induced the nobility to extend their estates and to give preference to
barshchina (serf labour) rather than to obrok (rent). At first grain
exports to Western Europe, which began to gain major importance in
the second half of the 18th century, were of little significance in this
114 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 35:
Forms of feudal obligations by region in Russia,
1765/67-1858 (%)

Serf labour Rent

1765/67 1858 1765/67 1858

Northwestern Russia 66.2 66.5 33.8 33.5

Smolensk district 66.5 73.0 33.5 27.0
Central non-Black Soil region 40.8 32.5 59.2 67.5
Central Black Soil region 75.0 72.7 25.0 27.3
Middle Volga region 66.2 77.2 43.8 22.8

Totals 54.7 56.6 45.3 43.4

respect. These exports came from Livonia, Lithuania, Bielorussia

and the Ukraine west of the River Dniepr. At the same time Russia
tightened the laws relating to serf labour. Serfdom assumed forms
which were without parallel in East-Central Europe. The expansion
of Russian agriculture was preceded by the emergence of an
interregional division of labour. Ehe seigneurial economy became
concentrated m the Black Earth regions in the South East. The other
less fertile areas of Western Russia, on the other hand, turned to the
pioduction of manufactured goods. Accordingly, rents prevailed in
duse pai ts ol Russia, whereas labour dues were typical of the Black
Eaith legions (see Table 35). A similar division can be observed in
East-Central Europe: the Vorwerk economy dominated in the fertile
plains; manufacturing, by contrast, was taken up in the more
mountainous regions where the restrictions were fewer.
All in all, not only the feudal system, but also the collectivism of the
village community were fast becoming the decisive impediments to a
further expansion of the productive potential of agriculture on the
European Continent. Major changes could only be expected to come
d this system was turned upside down. Such an upheaval was a
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 115

the village community and its economic rights. Both currents

combined to block the evolution of the agricultural system.

3.3 Towards Industrial Capitalism

At the beginning of the 18th century manufacturing and trade found

itself in a situation which was different from that of agriculture. A
number of countries, especially in East-Central and Southern
Europe, had been struck by severe structural crises in the previous
century. These crises continued in the 18th century, even if there were
sporadic improvements. The remaining countries had experienced a
drop in prices for manufactured goods; but the results of this had been
positive, especially in England, as the path towards industrialization
in a capitalist framework was, to some extent, cleared by these
developments.
The state, in responding to these crisis phenomena, had begun as
early as the 17th century to protect the domestic market from foreign
competition by erecting high tariff walls; it had also moved to
support the merchant capitalists in their struggle for foreign markets
and, especially in the countries of the European Continent, to
introduce measures designed to further manufacturing and trade at
home. These policies remained unchanged. The state saw it as its
special task to make improvements to the country’s infrastructure,
and the road networks of today therefore go back to the 18th century.
In 1747 the French founded the Ecole des Fonts et des Chaussees
which stimulated the development of new techniques for the
building of roads capable of coping with the heavier traffic
requirements of the time. The French network expanded rapidly and
became a model which was much admired in the rest of Europe. Other
countries were also very active in this field. And it was not just roads
that were being built. Europe was seized by a veritable canal-building
fever. In France and in the northern parts of the Netherlands the
beginnings of this building activity go back to the 17th century.
Canal-building in Prussia reached its peak during the reign of
Frederick II (Frederick the Great). Eighteenth-century England came
to be the land of canals. The country’s canal age became a precursor of
the railway age. The first wave of canal-building in England occurred
in the 1760s and early 1770s, followed by a second wave in the 1780s
and above all the early 1790s. The boom was triggered off in the years
1759-61 when the Duke of Bridgewater constructed a canal between
Manchester and the collieries at Worsley. In the same way, most other
canals in England were used primarily for transporting coal. Where
 ] 16 Peasants, Landlords and Merc harrt Capitalists

England differed from the Continent was that her canal-building was
privately financed. The same is true of road maintenance.
Mercantilist policies on the European Continent did not confine
themselves to improving the general infrastructure of the economy;
the state also intervened directly, even if the forms of intervention
varied greatly. Mercantilism, as Alexander Gerschenkron has put it,
was ‘a function of the degree of economic backwardness of the
countries concerned’. The aim of mercantilist interventionism was to
buttress the foreign trade position of a particular country by
promoting the development of the domestic economy. The hope was
to catch up with the leading economic powers of Northwestern
Europe. Mercantilism therefore differed from country to country and
depended on the degree of relative backwardness. At the one end of the
spectrum was Russia where the state was ubiquitous. There workers
and entrepreneurs were virtually created by decree and the population
was subjected to policies which aimed to increase the power of the
state with the help of economic development. The establishment of
Manufakturen (manufactures) became a special concern of state
economic policy on the Continent. These centralized enterprises
were, in the view of the governments concerned, particularly worthy
of support. It seemed that with the help of such Manufakturen it
became possible to reach the production levels of more developed
lival nations in one step, as it were, by skipping the intermediate
stages of Kauf system and putting-out system which have been discus¬
sed above (see p. 36). A host of separate measures was taken to promote
these enterprises: workers and entrepreneurs were recruited from
other countries; direct or indirect subsidies were paid by the Treasury;
tiade privileges and sales monopolies were granted. The success of
these policies was limited. There was something artificial about
many Manufakturen, especially if they had been established as
prestige objects by some sovereign and were hence built up without
much regard for market demand. In this case, they remained
ependent on state subsidies. Other enterprises may have prospered at
first. But as soon as they lost their privileges and monopoly rights
they were frequently pushed to the wall by their competitors and
orced to close down. And in those places where the old feudal order
was still more or less intact, government attempts to promote
manufacturing tended to be frustrated from the start

Growing demand both at home and abroad was a prerequisite of an

expansion of industrial production. Population growth resulted in a
grow h of demand for items of mass consumption. However there
were limits to this nexus because real wages tended to decline'in the
 The Upswing of llie 18th Century 117

face of rising food prices. On the other hand, price rises for food raised
agricultural incomes and this, in turn, raised the demand for
manufactured goods. It also seems that there was an increased
demand from among the urban middle classes. Still more important
was another development: the number of households which were
dependent on the market increased very rapidly, once the
commercialization of agriculture had set in and proto-industries as
well as large cities proliferated. There was a gradual decline in the
number of households which were removed from the existing market
structures. The domestic market widened. Nor was it without
significance that the impact of the traditional underconsumption
crises in the manufacturing sector lost some of its force once
agricultural productivity and technology had been improved and the
recurrent supply crises had become less devastating than in the past.
The role played by foreign demand in economic growth differed
from country to country. In England it assumed considerable
importance, but must be seen in conjunction with a steadily growing
domestic demand. England succeeded in gaining control of the sea, in
ousting her competitors from the underdeveloped and colonial
markets and in expanding her position on the world market to one of
virtual monopoly. From the middle of the 17th century English
merchant capitalists had no scruples to employ war as a means of
politics. Their aim was to extend their economic activities for the
purpose of capital accumulation in their struggle with their foreign
rivals. Trade wars and accumulation entered into a close symbiotic
relationship. In the 17th century Holland had been England’s main
enemy. France assumed that role from the end of that century. As a
result of her struggle with France during the Spanish War of
Succession (1701-1713/4), England succeeded in gaining hold of the
asiento, the monopoly of the slave trade with Spanish-America,
which had been held by the French Guinea Company since 1701. She
had also gained access to the Portuguese and Brazilian markets as
early as 1703 in the Treaty of Methuen. The Austrian War of
Succession (1740-1748) and the Seven Years War (1756-1763) sealed
the triumph of England over the French monarchy. The capacity of
the French fleet in 1786-7 was estimated to be about 729,340 tons;
England’s was 1,055,000 tons in 1788. This meant that it had not only
grown three-fold since 1686, but was also 42% larger than that of
France.
The outlines of an asymmetrically organized world market had
first emerged in the 17th century and now, in the 18th centuty, its
contours were thrown into sharper relief. A capitalist world system
 118 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

came into existence which was based on the subjection of the

peripheral regions of the globe to the production requirements of the
metropolitan countries. In the 18th century its centre of gravity
finally shifted towards England. France secured the second place for
herself, while Holland fell back to the third rank. Spain and Portugal
were able to hold on to their colonial empires; but their economic
exploitation of these areas was increasingly organized by English and
French merchant capitalists. There were indications of a reversal of
this process in the second half of the 18th century, but these tendencies
failed to assert themselves.
The economy of the Atlantic region, whose structures were
determined by the triangular trade between Europe, West Africa and
the plantations in the Americas, grew in the 18th century to become
the most dynamic region of the world economy. Europe supplied the
finished goods, Africa furnished the slaves and the Americas sent
precious metals, raw materials and colonial produce. It was to be of
git at significance that the slave plantations of the West Indies and,
from the 1790s, those of the American South, became the suppliers of
raw cotton to the English textile industry. The slave trade was the
vital element in this triangular system. It provided the urgently
required workforce for the labour-intensive plantation economy.
I his is why Malachy Postlethwayt has called the slave trade ‘the first
principle and foundation of all the rest, the mainspring of the
machine which sets every wheel in motion’. Accordingly there was a
further rise in the number of slaves shipped across the Atlantic (see
I able 22, p. 81 and Figure 15, p. 80). The trade reached its absolute
maximum between 1781 and 1790 when some 88,600 slaves were
exported per annum. Between 1700 and 1810 about 6.4 million
Africans were imported as slaves to the Americas. In the 1730s
England succeeded Portugal as the leading slave-trad.ng nation!
Between 1761 and 1810 about 43.3% of the trade was English-
Portugal s and France s share was 28.2% and 15.9% respectivelv the
remaining 12.6% were divided between North America. Holland and
Denmark at /.9%, 3.1% and 1.6% respectively. Ltverpool and Nantes
were the centres of the Western European slave trade, and the profits
were sizeable. It has been estimated that, as far as England is
concerned, they averaged around 9.5% between 1761 and 1807
However, there were sharp fluctuations, as the slave trade involved
great rtsks. The Hawke, a slave-ship from Liverpool, for example
made a net pro ,, of 73.6% on her firs, voyage ,n 1779-80. In Ae
follow,ng year she made a second journey in the course of which she
setzed the Jeune Em,Ha. Ne, profus this „me were 147.1%. Bu, the
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 119

Table 36:
Outlays, insets and profits of the Liverpudlian slave trader
William Davenport, 1757-1784
Outlays Net insets Profits Profit rate
(in pounds) (in pounds)1 (in pounds) (%)
1757/67 54 066 55 383 1 317 2.4 %
1768/75 231 856 248 689 16 833 7.3 %
1776/84 76 033 96 807 20 774 27.3 %'

Totals 361 955 400 879 38 924 10.8 %

‘Without the "Hawke”: 12.6%.
third journey which she started in December 1781 ended in a write-off:
the Hawke became herself the victim of French pirates. This disaster
notwithstanding, the ship still netted her owners a profit of £13,841,
the equivalent of a profit rate of 66.4%. Such a performance was
exceptional in every respect. The profit rate of the Liverpool slave-
trader William Davenport and his associates, who also operated the
Hawke, amounted to 10.8% for some 74 transactions in which they
engaged between 1757 and 1784 (see Table 36). If the speed with which
his firm’s capital was turned over is taken into consideration, the
profit rate was 8.1%. However, these figures mask considerable
fluctuations from one year to the next.
As the 18th century wore on, there occurred a gradual shift in the
balance and direction of the Atlantic trading links. In the case of
England, direct trade with North America gained ground vis-a-vis the
traditional exchange with the triangle. Imports to England from the
West Indies were over three times higher than those from North
America in the last decade of the 18th century. Exports to the West
Indies, on the other hand, slowly fell back in comparison with those
to North America. By 1791-1800 exports to the North exceeded those
to the Caribbean by 71%. North America came to be the biggest
overseas export market for English goods. In this respect it made little
difference that the 13 American colonies had declared their
independence from the Empire in 1776.
The enormous expansion of American silver mining and of
Brazilian goods production gave a fillip to Spain s and Portugal s
trade with their American colonies. At first this trade was of no more
than limited benefit for the two mother-countries. The Western
European merchant capitalists were the ones to profit from it in the
first place. They were in a better position to satisfy demand in Central
and South America for manufactured goods. Between 1698-1702 and
1756-60 English exports to Portugal (from where they were re¬
exported to Brazil) rose by 266%. The upswing of the Brazilian
 120 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

economy and above all the booming gold business played a key role in
this impressive growth. Brazilian gold triggered an expansion of
Anglo-Portuguese trade. It acted almost like a magnet for English
merchants with their manufactured goods. Since wine was essentially
Portugal’s only export item, her imports from England had to be paid
for in gold. This also explains why the expansion of Anglo-
Portuguese trade came to an abrupt end in the 1760s when Brazilian
gold production was struck by a crisis (see Figure 20). Spain,
on the other hand, remained the domain of French merchants up to
the 1760s.

Figure 20:
Quinquennial averages of Anglo-
Portuguese trade, 1701/05-1796/1800
(£000s)
woo £

A new development began in the second half of the 18th century

krom 1780, Portuguese overseas trade experienced a revival In the
meantime there had emerged a number of industries which exploited
the drastic reduction in imports from England in the wake of the
decline of Brazilian gold production. These industries were now able
to profit from the renewed upswing. In 1796 some 45.1% of exports
rom Portugal to Brazil had been produced at home. The share of
domestic industries in terms of total exports was 24.5%; that of foreign
manufacturers amounted to 38.5%. Having taken Seville’s place in the
 The Upswing of the 18th Ce?itury 121

trade monopoly with Spanish-America, the monopoly was

successively demolished from 1765; all Spanish ports became freely
accessible to traders from 1765. The amount of commercial traffic
trebled between 1778 and 1788. The extraordinarily vigorous
expansion of Spanish-American silver production, which rose by
about 179% between 1701-20 and 1781-1800, provided the decisive
impetus for this traffic. A growing percentage of the goods which
were shipped from Spanish ports to the American colonies,
originated in Spain herself. In 1784 the share was 45%, rising to 50%
five years later. Thanks to the trade with the colonies the
accumulation of merchant capital also advanced in Barcelona.
Economically speaking, Catalonia rose to become the leading
province of the Spanish monarchy. It was only the wars at the turn of
the 19th century which cut off these developments. Spanish-America
as well as Portuguese-America fell prey to English merchant
capitalism. Portugal became dependent on England once more.
Lip to this point, Asia had remained a region ‘external’ (Immanuel
Wallerstein) to the emerging capitalist world system. For the large-
scale agrarian societies of Asia trade with Europe had no more than a
marginal significance. Enclaves engaged in the export business
developed around the factories established by European trading
companies. The vast hinterlands of the Asian continent remained
virtually untouched by their activities. It was only when colonization
began that the decisive step was taken to incorporate Asia into the
capitalist world economy. The Dutch were the first to proceed in this
direction in Indonesia from the end of the 17th century. The English
followed suit from the middle of the 18th century when they
established themselves in India, with the Anglo-French conflict
providing a welcome pretext for this move. I he Dutch East India
Company promoted the establishment of its territorial dominance
over Indonesia in the hope of gaining control of the areas in which its
commodities for export to Europe were grown. The territorial
expansion of England in India must also be seen in this context. The
main objectives of the two countries were to secure and to extend the
supply markets for goods which formed the basis of the trade both
inside Asia and with Europe. Thus the English merchants who had
established themselves in India in the wake of the East India
Company promoted the occupation of the Gujarat in Western India
in order to obtain a hold over the cotton production of this province.
As before Europe’s balance of trade with Asia remained in deficit
throughout the 18th century. However, there was a marked
improvement in the import-export ratio in Europe s favour.
 122 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 37:
Values of English exports to India and China,
1719/62-1763/1806 (annual averages)

1719/62 1763/1806

£ % £ %

Silver 526 291 71.9 342 574 27.4

Goods 205 792 28.1 905 643 72.6

Totals 732 083 100.0 1 248 217 100.0

Gradually the markets of Asia were being opened up to textiles and

metal goods from Europe. As is demonstrated by Table 37, silver
exports to Asia declined, while exports of manufactured goods
increased. Moreover England moved into the inner-Asian trade, and,
by gaining a monopoly position in this so-called ‘country-trade’,
English merchants also succeeded in financing their exports to
Europe in part with the profits made inside Asia and hence to some
extent at Asia’s ‘expense’. The exploitation of the Bengal had similar
results. It has been calculated that, as a consequence of these practices,
England between 1757 and 1780 received annual exports from India
worth £1.6 million which were not offset by English exports to India,
be it in silver or in the form of goods.
Finally there was also a change in the composition of Asian
imports to Europe. Between 1698-1700 and 1778-80 the share of tea
and coffee in relation to the total turnover of the Dutch East India
Company at Amsterdam rose from 4.1% to 22.9%; the share of textiles
and textile fibres, on the other hand, fell from 43.4% to 32.7% (see
I able 24, p. 83). This shift emerges even more clearly if one looks at
the types of goods imported from Asia to England. Although textile
imports continued to rise absolutely, the percentages experienced a
decline. In 1699-1701 textiles and textile fibres had made up 70 3% of
all Asian imports into England; by 1772-74 the figure had slumped to
481%- Meanwhile the spice trade dropped in both absolute and
relative teims. The share which had once been 15.4% was a mere 3.8%
by the 1770s. Instead tea, which became something of a national
everage in England in this period, was imported in growing
quantities. Its share of Asian imports shot up from 1 l%to44 0% The
phenomenal success of the tea trade led to a shift in the balance of
commerce within Asia. India declined in importance, at least for the
time 3cing. On the other hand, China moved up as a supplier of tea.
Ships from Europe crowded the docks of the city of Canton, the only
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 123

English tons

Figure 21:
Tonnage of European
and North American
ships docking at
.. Total
_English ships (total) Kanton, 1721-1800
_ Ships of the East
India Company (quinquennial
Privately-owned English
_

ships (figures only from

averages)
1766/70)

port which the Chinese authorities had opened to foreigners (see

Figure 21). And here, too, just like in India the English East India
Company squeezed out all its rivals. In 1792-98 it dealt with 69.8% of
all exports which left Canton for Europe.
The underdeveloped and colonial world as a whole was of growing
significance to Europe in several ways. To begin with, it was an

Table 38:
Values of English re-exports, 1699/1701 and 1772/74
(000s of pounds sterling)

Re-exports (according to coun'ries of origin)1 Imports

Manuf. Food- Raw (totals)
Totals %
products stuffs materials %

1699/1701
Europe 302 100 232 634 31.9 68.2
America - 732 47 779 39.2 18.9
Asia 444 109 20 573 28.9 12.9

Totals 746 941 299 1 986 100.0 100.0

1772/74
Europe 390 330 454 1 174 20.2 47.4
America — 2 735 210 2 935 50.6 37.5
Asia 1 172 477 50 1 699 29.2 15.1

Totals 1 562 3 542 714 5 818 100.0 100.0

‘Calculated from share of imports

 124 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 39:
Structure of England’s foreign trade, 1699/1701-1772/74 (%)

Asia, Afr.,
Europe Total s
America
1699/1701 1772/74 1699/1701 1772/74 1699/1701 1772/74

Exports
Woollen 43.2 18,2 4.3 8.5 47.5 26.7
man n I.
Other
manuf. 3.5 6.2 4.8 21.2 8.4 27.4
Foodstuffs 6.7 2,7 7.6 3.7 0,9 TO
Raw
materials 5.3 4.7 0.3 0.4 5.6 5.1
Totals 58.7 31.8 10.3 31.1 69.1 62.9
Re-exports 25.9 30.5 5.0 6.6 30.9 37.1
Exports &
re-exports 84.6 62.3 15.3 37.7 100.0 100.0
Imports

Manuf. 22.1 10.7 9.5 6.2 31.7 16.9

Foodstuffs 15.5 12.0 18.1 38.9 33.6 50.9
Raw
materials 30.5 24.7 4.3 7,5 34.7 32.2
Totals 68.1 47.4 31.9 52.6 100.0 100.0

exporter of goods. In 1699-1701 some 31.9% of imports into England

originated in America and Asia; by 1772-74 the figure had risen to
52.6% (see Table 39 and, for France, Table 40). Initially these imports
were less important as such than as items to be re-exported by the
commercial metropoles of Europe. In 1772-74 some 79.8% of English
re-exports were of American or Asian origin, an 11.7% increase over
the 1699-1701 figure (see Table 38). Profits from this trade (and the
finishing business related to it) were extraordinarily high. In 1772-74
?ne ntexp°rt value of sugar’ tobacco and coffee was 91%, 97.8% and
106.7,o respectively above the import value. The re-export trade
cieated dense networks, and via the respective entrepdts not only
Amrn1Cua?d ASia WCre linkedwith Europe, but a connection wasalso
established, albeit in one direction only, between Asia and America.
rhese networks and the credit institutions supporting them fulfilled
several functions and could also be mobilized at any time for the
export trade of goods produced in England. As can be seen from Table
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 125

38, America’s weight increased in comparison with Asia’s in the

course of the 18th century. The Asian share of imports earmarked for
re-export began to stagnate; America’s share, on the other hand, saw a
marked rise.
Secondly, the underdeveloped and colonial world became a
recepticle for European exports, even if it assumed this role for the
European metropoles but gradually. In 1699-1701 a mere 15% of all
English goods produced for export went to Asia and America; by
1772-79 the figure had gone up to 49.7%. The Americas, and North
America in particular, were far more important than Asia as buyers of
English export goods. Thus in 1699-1701 some 12.2% of all goods
produced in England for export were shipped across the Atlantic, as
against 2.8% which were sent to Asia; by 1772-74 America’s share of
42.4% was way above the 7.3% for Asia. Indeed, this was the time when
the Atlantic trade became the engine of growth in the European
economy. As will be shown in a moment, the linen industries ol
Western, Central and East-Central Europe became the appendices of
the trans-Atlantic connection.
Thirdly, the underdeveloped and colonial world promoted capital
accumulation in Europe. It made a major contribution to this
process, given the relations of unequal exchange which had
traditionally existed between Europe and the non-European
periphery as well as the enormous profits to be made through re¬
exports, slaves, the Asian ‘country trade’ and last, but not least,
through plain plunder and looting, of which the exploitation of the
Bengal is a good example. The surpluses which were not consumed
in the metropolitan countries opened up fresh possibilities of
reinvestment so that the exchange cycle continued on an even larger
scale than before.
We have seen that the beginnings of this capitalist world system
went back to the 16th century and that Europe remained its centre of
gravity in the 18th. It was during this latter century that regions
became incorporated which had hitherto been outside the system and
that the system itself assumed greater inner cohesion. Europe’s
merchant capitalists built up a network which spread around the
globe. The non-European world became part of a system of exchange
whose rules were determined in the commercial capitals of Europe.
The most important of these rules were: discrimination, an unequal
division of labour orientated towards the imperial requirements of
the metropoles and, in many cases, unashamed exploitation. I he
subjugation of the periphery to the needs of the European centre was
not without significance as regards the revolutionary change that was
126 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

(o affect the manufacturing base of Europe. For the underdeveloped

and colonial countries, on the other hand, European practices spelt
stagnation and retrogression. This political economy of dependency
experienced further solidification once the process of capitalist
industrialization had set in. At this point it entered a new stage which
was to determine the subsequent relations between the European
centre and the non-European periphery.
The growth of Europe’s foreign trade provides a gauge for the
dynamism with which the capitalist world system unfolded itself.
Thus England’s foreign trade expanded but slowly in the first half of
the 18th century. Its average annual growth rate between 1700 and
1745 was 0.5%. However, once the crisis which the American War of
Independence had unleashed had subsided, the annual rate, which
had been 2.8% between 1745 and 1771, j umped to an unprecedented
4.9% in 1779-1809 (see Figure 22). It is significant that re-exports
continued to rise, but they ceased to be the crucial element in the
dynamic economic process (see Table 39). Their role was taken over
by the proliferating exports of goods manufactured in England (with
the exception of woollen cloths). The phenomenal rise of the export
trade was primarily due to a growing demand in the non-European
world, above all in North America, even if by this time the latter
region is no longer to be counted as part of the periphery. The

Figure 22:
Quinquennial averages of foreign
trade of England and Wales,
1697-1790 and of Britain, 1776-1800
(£000s)
loooe
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 127

importance of the North Atlantic route emerges from the following

set of figures: in 1699-1701 a mere 16.4% of English manufactured
goods earmarked for export went across to America; by 1772-74 it was
55%. England’s foreign trade entered into a new phase, once demand
for her home-produced goods rose rapidly, especially in North
America.
French foreign trade expanded even more vigorously than that of
England. It grew three-fold between 1716-20 and 1784-88, as
compared to a 2.4-fold growth of English foreign trade. On the other
hand, it must be remembered that the respective patterns were
reversed: unlike England’s, France’s average annual growth rates
were as high as 4.1% in 1716-48, but decreased to 1.0% between 1749
and 1778, rising again only slightly to 1.4% from 1779. French links
with the underdeveloped and colonial world were strengthened in the
18th century, especially after 1750. In fact M. Morineau has spoken of
a ‘colonialization’ of France’s foreign trade. By 1787 some 30.3% of her
foreign trade was conducted with these regions, a marked rise on the
1716 figure of 17.4%. The corresponding figures for England were
23.3% in 1699-1701 and 44.4% in 1772-74. The nominal increase of
trade with the French possessions in the Caribbean was 1350% between
1716-20 and 1787-89. And Table 40 demonstrates that French re¬
exports can stand comparison with those of England. Nevertheless, a
decisive difference strikes the eye: on the eve of the Revolution, French
foreign trade had reached a stage which England had long left behind
her. In 1787 only some 34.2% of Prance’s exports were in
manufactured goods; in England these goods amounted to 54.2% as
early as 1772-74. The reasons for this lag are to be found in the severe
setbacks which France’s ancient textile industries had experienced on
the Southern European markets in the 1760s. Textile exports declined
in relative terms, and it was only thanks to the colonial trade that they
were able to maintain their absolute position within France’s foreign
trade structure in comparison to the base-line of 1750, when textile
exports were 40.2% of total exports.
Holland’s foreign trade went into decline from the 1740s onwards.
Her 17th-century role as the warehouse of the world had largely come
to an end. In the Central European region, Hamburg emerged as a
serious rival of Amsterdam. For Hamburg’s merchants the Seven
Years’ War of 1756-1763 meant the beginning of a period of great
prosperity. The number of ships docking at Hamburg and the size of
the city’s merchant navy grew by leaps and bounds in the 1780s and
1790s. In 1780, some 2,084 vessels dropped anchor in the port of
Hamburg. A considerable portion of English, French, Dutch and
 128 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 40:
Structure of France’s foreign trade, 1716-1787 (%)

Asia, Afr.,
Europe Totals
America
1716 1787 1716 1787 1716 1787

Exports
Textiles 27.1 16.9 2.6 7.3 29.7 24.1
Other
manuf.
goods 5.6 6.5 1.4 3.5 7.1 10.1

Foodstuffs 30.0 17.4 3.0 6.2 33.0 23.6

Raw materials 4.5 4.6 2.0 1.7 5.2 6.3
Misc. 6.0 2.2 0.5 7.2 2,7

Totals 73.2 47.6 9.0 19.2 82.2 66.8

Re-exports 17,8 32.8 0.4 17.8 33.2
Exports 8c
Re-exports 91.0 80.4 9.0 19.6 100.0 100.0
Imports
Manuf.
goods 12.6 15.1 _ 3.8 4.5 16.4 19.6
Foodstuffs 19.5 13.2 0.1 19.5 13.3
Raw
materials 21.8 25.0 1.0 4.8 22.8 29.8
Colonial
goods 12.2 7.5 23.1 27.7 35.3 35.2
Misc. 5.4 2.1 0.6 60 2.1
Totals 71.5 62.9 28.5 37.1 100.0 1000

Spanish re-exports to Central Europe was channelled through this

city. The main exports were linens from Central Germany and Silesia
most of which went to Spain and Spanish America, to be
supplemented by grain, once England had become an importer of
cereals from the 1760s onwards. Hamburg also had close links with
Leipzig in Saxony which acted as the main exchange and turntable
tor goods in the heart of Central Europe.
However, Amsterdam remained the financial centre of European
commerce beyond the 17th century. It was only in the 19th century
that the city was replaced by London. As Charles Wilson has put it: ‘A
bill [o exchange drawn] on Amsterdam was to the eighteenth century
what the bill on London was to become to the nineteenth century. If a
French merchant wished to import flax from Eastern Europe, he
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 129

would mobilize his agent in Königsberg in East Prussia. Once (he

deal had been completed, the latter, in order to obtain his money,
would draw a bill on an Amsterdam banking house with which be
was accredited through his French partner. Thus a multilateral
international credit system emerged by the second hall of the 17th
century. This system replaced the existing bilateral system of
payment which had been rather cumbersome because it could not
function without the export of precious metals. The bill of exchange
now took the place of these metals in the new multilateral system.
Bills facilitated cashless payments; they dispensed with the
traditional bilateralism of trading relationships and ‘inter¬
nationalized- the latter. Thenceforth exports of precious metals were
necessary only in exceptional cases.
The differentiation of the banking system into a public and a
private sector suited the needs of commerce on the whole well. It
served the interests of manufacturing only to a limited extent. Ehe
Amsterdam Wisselbank retained its lead among the traditional
exchange banks. It provided the model for a number of other banks
which were founded in the 18th century. These ‘medieval' banks, as
P. Leon has called them, were much less modern than the state banks
which were beginning to assume the leading positions. After the
establishment of the Bank of England in 1694 there followed the Bank
of Scotland a year later, the Royal Giro-mid Lehnbanco of Berlin in
1765 and the Bank of San Carlos at Madrid in 1782. A comparable
institution was founded in France only in 1776 when the Caisse
d’Escompte came into existence. The bank which had been founded
by a Scotsman, John Law, in 1716/18 was dragged down by the
collapse of the entire system established by him. Next to the
municipal and state banks, private bankers remained indispensable.
There were the London bankers in Lombard Street, the Huguenot
bankers in France most of whom had immigrated from Geneva, or the
private bankers of Frankfurt; all of them were harbingers of the age of
high finance in the 19th century.
England also occupied first place among the European nations as
far as the density of the branch network of private banks is concerned.
In the course of the 18th century there emerged the so-called ‘country
banks’ in the provinces which were connected with the London
bankers. By the early 1780s, there were more than 100 of these banks in
England. These institutions were designed to attract the savings of
private individuals which would otherwise have remained untapped.
And they facilitated capital formation in trade and manufacturing.
However, their contribution to the Industrial Revolution was more
 130 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

indirect. They provided industry not so much with long-term

investment credits as with short-term loans. This enabled the
entrepreneurs to keep a comparatively large share of their own funds
as fixed capital in their companies. Moreover, industrialization
would have been unthinkable without the existence of a viable
commercial network in the financing of which the banks were also
involved. Indeed commerce and banking could not be clearly
delineated from each other at this time. Finally, there were the various
capital markets in London and the provinces, with something like a
national capital market developing only towards the end of the 18th
century. The influence of these markets extended far beyond the area
which was controlled by the banks. It included the large joint-stock
companies as well as insurance companies which began to
mushroom in this period; it also comprised the multi-faceted world of
commerce and stretched as far as the sphere of personal friendships
and family ties.
The English public debt formed the bedrock on which the financial
system of the London City rested. It had risen continuously from
£14.2 million in 1700 to £78.0 million in 1750 and £167.2 million in
1780. It reached a staggering £426.6 million by the end of the century.
This debt provided investment opportunities which were very secure.
Purtheimore the bonds which were issued by the state enabled the
business world to erect a pyramid of loans’ (A. H. John) upon the
public debt. It is improbable that the London City would have risen
to the position which it assumed in the 19th century had it not been
for the enormous public debt of the English state. Nor, on the other
hand, would it have been possible to conduct the wars of the 18th and
eaily 19th centuries had the banking system not organized the cover
for this debt. During these wars more than one third of state
expenditure was at various times raised with the help of loans. The
secret of this success was described by Isaac de Pinto towards the end
of the Seven Years’ War; The inviolable and scrupulous punctuality
with which those interest payments were always made and the notion
o a §uarantee by Parliament have established the English credit
system so strongly that loans could be floated which have surprised
and astonished Europe.’ The capttal market which expanded so
vigorously in this way wasable to rely on the profits which were being
made in commerce, and, above all, in overseas trade.
Looking at the problem with the benefit of hindsight, the
accumulation of capital proved to be a necessary, though not
exclusive, prerequisite of capitalist industrialization. As has been
mentioned above, the merchant capitalists provided the nascent
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 131

industries with the required working capital. Capital for long-term

investments was not yet required on a larger scale. Certainly its lack
did not present an obstacle when the transition to factory production
was made. The ratio of working to fixed capital changed but slowly in
favour of the latter. Industry was still a long way from the
concentrations of fixed capital which were to characterize it from the
19th century onwards. It was not the supply side, but rising demand
that unleashed the process of industrialization. This demand arose
not only in England and Europe, but in those underdeveloped and
colonial markets which the merchant capitalists, following the laws
of accumulation, had created. It was not merchant capitalism as such
which produced the factory system. Rather it emerged on the
foundations of the world trading system which it had established.
Once merchant capitalists had paved the way for the rise of industrial
capitalism, their historical role had come to an end. Industry freed
itself from the hold of the merchant capitalists. The process of
industrial production, as Marx put it, ‘absorbed the circulation of
capital as one of its elements’.
The manufacturing industries responded to the growing demand
both at home and abroad by increasing their output. While the
production of cloths at Leiden had fallen to 29,434 pieces in 1800,
France stepped up her production. Between 1700-4 and 1785-87
quantities rose by 126%; the increase in terms of value was even
higher: 265%. However, there were considerable variations from
region to region. The centre of gravity was the French North with a
share of almost 50%. The English cloth manufacturers were able to
more than double their output between 1695 and 1772. It was only in
the last quarter of the 18th century that the annual growth rate began
to slow down. Yorkshire emerged as the most important region of
English woollen cloth manufacture. Around 1700 its share of exports
had been less than 20%; by the early 1770s it was around 50%. Linen
manufacture which had developed close ties with the markets of the
underdeveloped and colonial world since the 16th century saw an
even more impressive expansion. In France production doubled in
some regions and trebled in others. In a few places it quintuplicated.
English linen manufacture did not make more than moderate
progress and even had to cut production froro the 1780s. However,
output of the newly-established Scottish linen industry which was
completely unknown before 1700 rose seven-fold between 1728-32
and 1798-1802. The Irish linen manufacturers, who rose to the top
rank of the British linen industry towards the end of the 18th century,
succeeded between 1710 and 1800 in increasing their exports twenty-
 132 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

fold. On the Continent, the centres of linen manufacture were, apart

from those on the French west coast, in Flanders, Eastern Westphalia,
Lower Hesse, Swabia, the Upper Lusatia northeast of Dresden and in
Silesia. But up to now few statisticsareavailableon these regions. We
know that the number of pieces which the linen weavers in the
villages around Ghent sent to the Ghent market doubled between
1700 and 1780. Linen exports from Landeshut in Silesia rose two-and-
a-half-fold between 1763-65 and 1786-90.
If the growth rates of the traditional branches of the English textile
industry began to decline in the last quarter of the century, this may
be taken as a reflection of the rise of cotton manufacture. Rather
insignificant until the 1760s, cotton experienced a staggering boom
in the second half of the 1770s. Between the beginning of the 18th
century and 1775-84 net imports of cotton rose seven-fold. The French
cotton industry, it is true, reached comparable growth rates. But it must
be remembered that France started from a lower level. In effect, by
1787-89 England used twice as much cotton ^s France. Cotton manu¬
facture also flourished in Saxony, the eastern parts of Switzerland, in
Catalonia and elsewhere in the second half of the 18th century. But no¬
where else was the development as spectacular as in England.
Mining and the iron industry likewise participated in the general
economic upswing. English coal production doubled between 1760
and the 1780s alone. This must be compared to an increase from just
under three million tons to five million tons in the previous seven
dtxades between 1681-90 and 1760. France, too, mined seven to eight
times more coal in 1789 than she had done at the beginning of the
century. But the quantities produced by her were no more than 6-7%
English production. On the other hand, the French were ahead of
then rivals across the Channel in iron production. Here output
trebled up to 1789 and was 130,000-140.000 tons at this time;
England’s, on the other hand, was a mere 68,000 tons. However, the
English iron industry, which more than doubled its output after 1760
ollowing a period of slow growth, was well ahead of its French
counterpart in technological terms. In England coke was used to
smelt 79% ol the iron; in France it was no more than 1.4-2%. It was due
to this technological advantage that the English iron masters were
able to overtake the stagnant French industry before the end of the
century. By 1806, they produced around 250,000 tons. Pig iron
production also increased in Germany. In fact, at the end of the 1780s
it appears not be have been far below the English output. Yet here
too, technological change and the substitution of charcoal by coke
were slow to come.
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 133

Calculations of the annual growth rates of industrial production

are available so far only for France and England. According to these
calculations, rates for the two countries between 1700 and 1790 were
1.5-1.9% and 1.17% respectively. But these figures are no more than
rough estimates, and it may well he that the percentages were much
closer together than is now' known. What is more, however important
exact quantification of economic performance may be, it does not
answer the question of the forces that were behind these growth rates.
Was grow'th due to a quantitative expansion of the existing
production apparatus? Or was it made possible because of qualitative
changes both in respect of technology and socio-economic
organization?
At first the growth of manufacturing industry occurred along
traditional lines. Proto-industrialization proliferated and reached its
climax. Dense rural manufacturing industries which produced for
supra-regional markets covered 18th-century Europe like a veil.
Regions, which had hitherto depended on agriculture alone, were
transformed into mixed zones in which agriculture and rural
manufacturing existed side-by-side. Thus we read in 1797 in a report
on the stocking weavers in the vicinity of Chemnitz in Saxony: ‘At
first they established themselves in the villages; Limbach, a manor
two hours outside Chemnitz, was the first to have stock weavers
among its inhabitants. From here they moved into the neighbouring
villages and successively into the entire area. Their main residence
have been the villages up to now. In the town of Chemnitz there are no
more than 80 masters, 10 apprentices and around 50 journeymen. In
1709 there were a mere five looms in the town and not even 20 in the
entire vicinity. Now some 2,500 looms are being operated in an area of
not quite four sq. kilometers around Chemnitz’.
It was in this way that peasant villages were transformed into
weavers’ villages. The linen-weaving village of Großschönau in the
FTpper Lusatia presents a good case in point (see Figure 23). Until

600

500-

400-
EÜÜ3 Peasants
300
□
-

200-
Gardeners' Figure 23:
777?1 Cottagers Number of peasant and
100 -

Lodgers cottager households in

0 -
Großschönau (Upper
Lusatia)
134 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

1730, the share of the peasant population declined to 9% there.

Cottagers and lodgers who outnumbered the peasants by 9.9:1 and
4.4:1 respectively dominated the village. Most of these people worked
in the linen industry. Another example are the villages of the
Gleichenstein district, a centre of the new draperie industry in the
Upper Eichsfeld region southeast of Göttingen. Although the figures
in Table 41 are probably not fully comparable, it appears that the
proportion of weavers, spinners and wool-combers in terms of the
total population rose from around 29% to over 58% between 1766 and
1796. By 1806 there were 96 looms there per 1,000 population. In the

Table 41:
Structure of the textile industry in the Gleichenstein district
(Upper Eichsfeld, southeast of Göttingen), 1766-1796

1766 1796
No. % No. %
Raschmacher 692 9.1 1 225 10.4
Linen weavers 74 1.0 7 9
Wool spinners 1 319 17.3 5 217 44.4
Yarn spinners 124 1.6 ? 9
Wool combers ? ? 426 3.6
Totals 2 209 29.0 6 868 58.4
Total population 7 620 100.0 11 751' 100.0
‘Figure for 1792

Table 42:
Stiucture of the textile industry in the Picardie (France),
ca. 1785

No. of 1<toms
Type of trade In towns In country Totals (B) as percent
(A) (B) (C) of (C)
Wool 5 700 5 300 11 000 48
Fine linen 500 5 500 6 000 92
Rough linen 500 3 500 4 000 88
Stockings 1 000 7 000 8 000 88
Cotton 100 100 0
Totals 7 800 21 300 29 100 73
Total population
533 000
Looms per 1000
[inhabitants
55
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 135

French Picardy north of Paris about 73% of all looms were operated in
rural areas around 1785. Some 30% of the local population were
employed in the textile industry at this time (see Table 42). Between
1660 and 1710 about one third of the adult males whose professional
status is known worked in the metal industries in the English West
Midlands. They were nail-makers, lock-smiths, scythe-smiths etc. A
further 27% found employment in other trades. In some cases such
concentrations of rural manufacturing became conurbations which,
in turn, attracted further villages into their orbit and permeated them
with proto-industries. Roubaix near Lille, Verviers east of Liege and
the Wupper River valley east of Düsseldorf are but a few examples.
The Wuppertal became one of the most astonishing manufacturing
regions in Europe. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, when submitting his
report to the Electoral government at Düsseldorf in 1773, counted 100
bleacher’s workshops, 2,000 hairlooms and 3,500 broad-looms;
according to his estimates, the export value of the Wuppertal industry
was 3,267,664 thalers. It was a common feature of these regions that
manufacturing was not regulated by guilds. This was a point made in
1790 by the cloth manufacturers of Lennep south of the Wupper
River valley who were permanently at loggerheads with the local
shearman s guild. They argued: ‘How much more flourishing,
perfect and profitable are the factories of Verviers, Eupen [south of
Aachen], Bourscheid [now Burtscheid southeast of Aachen], Monjoie
[now Monschau southeast of Aachen]. . . and several other places ...;
and this is so only because in these factories there are no guilds and
hence there is no compulsion; nor hence is there an opportunity to
treat the fabrics incorrectly or even to ruin them; a reason for causing
damage and for engaging the factories in legal quarrels which are so
detrimental to them just does not exist.’ The urban manufacturers
were frequently unable to stand up to the competition of their rural
counterparts and saw their position permanently weakened. The
cloth makers of Aachen suffered considerable losses. They were due,
as a contemporary observer, Georg Forster, put it, to the despotism of
the craft guilds’. It was the latter who, he believed, were ‘the
immediate cause of the decline of the cloth industry’ in the city, while
the manufacturers of Vaals, Burtscheid, Stolberg and Monschau to the
south-east continued to prosper. Elsewhere, as in Northern krance,
there developed a dynamic alliance between rural and urban
manufacturers on the basis of a division of labour. This enabled the
towns to partake in proto-industrial production, occasionally even in
a prominent position.
The forces which promoted proto-industrialization were not
 136 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

fundamentally different from those which had been at work since the
end of the 16th century. There was increased underemployment in the
countryside once population growth began to accelerate and the
trend towards greater accumulation and concentration of economic
power proved relentless. We have a submission, dated 1700, which
complains that the majority of the inhabitants of Viersen west of
Düsseldorf did not have more than 2-6 Morgen (= 0.6-1.9 hectares).
‘This is why’, so the document continues, ‘they have to work in the
factories and workshops in order to be able to subsist.’ The merchant
capitalists frequently had little choice but to mobilize the unused
labour potential in the rural areas, if the process of accumulation was
to continue without interruptions. The cloth manufacturers of
Monschau which must be regarded as a centre of proto¬
industrial production put forward precisely this argument to defend
themselves against the reproach that they employed sub-contracted
putters-out (Baasenmeister) in the Limburg area. They replied: ‘Just
as our factories have grown thanks to the use of Baasenmeister in the
region, they would lapse back into their former languid state if these
people were dismissed.’
Wherever proto-industry had taken root, the process continued in a
cumulative fashion. The small producers adopted a specific pattern
of reproductive behaviour which caused the existing balance
between demography and economy to collapse. It was replaced by a
new demo-economic high-pressure system’. This system secured the
further evolution of the proto-industrial process because it kept the
supply of labour flexible. In fact, the new patterns of demographic
behaviour provided the internal stimulus of proto-industrialization.
The external stimulus, on the other hand, was provided by the
demand for proto-industrial goods on supra-regional and inter¬
national markets. Thus the European linen industry came to be an
integral part ot the Atlantic economic system in the course of this
proto-industrial development. In 1787, C.L.P. Hüpeden, in writing
about the linen trade in Hesse, spoke of a ‘Hessian Peru and East
India . He added that this trade ‘is the main channel through which
Spanish gold and silver flow into our coffers’. In the second half of the
18th century about 90% of the bretanas, which were exported from the
sea ports of Brittany, went to Spain and thence to Spanish-America
Between 1748/49 and 1789/90 some 75.6% of Silesia’s linen exports
went to Western Europe and overseas (see Fig. 24). By 1791/2 the
export quota of Silesian linen was around 75.5%. Bretanas were
pioduced almost exclusively for export from France. In 1695 the
English cloth manufacturers sent about 40% of their production
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 137

mill, thalers

Figure 24:
Value of Silesian
linen exports,
1748/49-1789/90
(mill.Thalers)

abroad; by 1799 the quota was over 67%. That of Yorkshire alone
reached 72.3% in 1771-72.
Proto-industry was a cottage industry. In essence it was made up of
small manufacturers who produced for the market and who
organized their households as a family economy. Unlike the
household of the artisan who was organized in a guild, the proto¬
industrial household mobilized its productive energies through the
co-operation of all family members, i.e. wife and children. In this
respect both the peasant household and the proto-industrial
household, which had after all emerged from the former, possessed
the same organization. But the proto-industrial family was only
partially market-orientated. Whenever its socio-culturally deter¬
mined standards of subsistence were reached, it would abandon its
proto-industrial activity; the availability of labour began to
diminish. If the family’s subsistence level was not secured, it was
forced to step up its labour input, often to a level of ‘self-exploitation’
(A. V.Chayanov). This nexus did not escape contemporary observers.
Thus we find the following comment of 1785 on the Silesian linen
industry: ‘Grain prices which are too low are detrimental to the linen
trade and reduce the diligence of the spinners and weavers . . .; on the
other hand, business in the mountainous regions has never been
difficult in times of inflation (teure jare).’
However, once the putting-out system had established itself, the
preconditions began to disappear for the small producers to adopt an
anti-cyclical economic behaviour. These new realities are reflected in
a statement by the weavers of Monschau who complained in 1769:
‘The entrepreneurs provide work for all weavers; but they distribute it
in such a way that, once one of them has been given a piece to do, he
will then have to wait and go hungry for 4, 5 or more weeks before
another order is placed with him.
 138 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

The production system which evolved in the course of proto¬

industrialization also took account of the fact that the rural producer-
households were able to sell their goods directly to the consumer only
in exceptional cases. The trader and retailer usually acted as the
intermediary between the producer and the consumer, as the small
producers were unable to reach the relatively remote markets with
their goods. Nor did they have the working capital required to bridge
the time-lag between production and marketing. They also lacked
information on changing market conditions. All these things were
provided by the merchant capitalists. Their role as go-betweens also
enabled them to engage in ‘exploitation through trade’ (M. Dobb)
and increasingly to dominate the small producers. The latter retained
a degree of formal independence wherever the merchant purchased
the goods from the producer (Kaufsystem as opposed to the putting-
out system). The Kauf system obtained above all in the linen industry;
but it was also operative in large parts of the Yorkshire textile
industry. F. Zöllner described the system with reference to Silesia as
follows: ‘The merchants sit around in the exchange [Kaufhaus] on a
slightly elevated chair. The weaver who would like to sell a piece of
linen hands it to one of these gentlemen. The latter inspects and
fingers it and states what he is prepared to pay; if the weaver is happy
with the price, the merchant chalks the amount and his trade-mark on
to the pieces; the weaver takes the linen to the merchant’s office where
he receives his money.’
The proto-industrial household lost the formal autonomy which it
had under the Kaufsystem, if the merchant capitalist succeeded in
subjecting the small producer to his control and in incorporating his
workshop into a putting-out system. This happened when he
advanced credit for the acquisition of raw materials and/or provided
the raw materials, in some cases even the tools. The merchant thus
intruded into the production sphere without, however, taking full
control of it. The Verleger assumed control of the product; the small
producei, on the other hand, kept control of the work process.
Nevertheless, the production process was no longer self-contained. It
was drawn into the circulation sphere which retained its dominant
position. Especially in those areas in which the raw materials had to
be delivered over longer distances and a segmentation of the labour
process was unavoidable, the merchant was able to move into the
production sphere as a buyer of raw materials and organizer of
production. He became a Verleger. A book, published in 1796, on the
cloth industry of Eupen which was organized on a putting-out basis
described the system as follows: ‘The merchant or the manufacturer is
 The Upswing of the 18th Ceritury 139

the mainspring, the heart of the whole system; he keeps many people
active, all of whom work for him and receive their livelihood through
him; . . . this merchant, in other words, acquires the raw materials of
distant countries; he gets Spanish wool, oil, soap and hair for the
loom and whatever else the workers need.’
The widely scattered workshops of proto-industry were often
complemented by centralized enterprises which have come to be
called Manufakturen (manufactures). They tended to organize the
preparatory work processes and, more importantly, the finishing
processes—the latter not least because they were decisive for the sales
prospects of the product concerned. The cloth manufacturers of
Monschau did the cleaning and dyeing of the wool in their own
workshops; they then put it out to the local spinners and weavers. The
final preparation of the fabrics was again undertaken under their own
roof. As the author of the above-mentioned book on the Eupen cloth
industry wrote: ‘. . . the merchant keeps . . . shearmen, pressers and
happers in his house and under his supervision all of whom work for
a wage.’
However, the number of workers employed in these centralized
workshops was small in comparison to proto-industrial households
organized in a putting-out system. In 1768, the Krefeld silk firm of
von der Leyen had about 12% of all its employees directly on its pay
roll; the same figure for the cloth industry of Vervier near Aachen in
the 1780s was extraordinarly high, namely 25%. The capital which
was invested in such workshops was in general not so large as to result
in a situation in which it dominated, by virtue of its size, the
production process. In 1789 a mere 5.8% of the balance-sheet total of
the firm J.H. Scheibler & Sons, by far the most important enterprise of
the Monschau cloth industry, were for buildings, tools and
machinery (see Table 43).
Working capital was clearly dominant over fixed capital. It was
also part of the Verleger’s investment strategy to give preference to
investments which, like buildings, were relatively versatile, nor, in
view of the vagaries of the market, did they concentrate their capital in
one area alone; rather they spread their investments so as to have
several escape routes in a crisis. Thus for the Verleger the decisive
criterion of his investment strategy remained the versatility’ of his
capital, to quote Werner Sombart.
Apart from Manufakturen which complemented proto-industrial
production in the way described thus far, the 18th century also saw the
establishment of other manufactures which were unconnected with
rural industry and operated completely indpendently. Enterprises
 140 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 43:
Balance-sheet of J. H. Scheibler & Sons for the year ended
31.12.1789
a) Assets b) Liabilities
Reich thalers % Reit h thalers %

Factory buildings 9 100 Creditors 304 000 44,8

Factory tools 26 400 Cap. stock 374 000' 55.2
Other 4 000 /678 000 100,0
39 500 5,8
Raw materials 80 500
Finished/
semi-fin.
cloths 207 000
287 500 42,5
Debtors 346 000 51,0 /
Bills Sc cash 5 000 0.7/
678 000 100,0
‘Actual source gives: 374,301 Reich thalers

which were organised on this basis could be found above all in cotton
pi inting as well as in the manufacture of porcelain, fayence and glass,
d he first of these was an industry which experienced its most dynamic
development in the 18th century. Towards the end of that century it
employed more than 100,000 people. The largest of these enterprises
had an annual output of between 20,000 and 40,000 pieces, with
500-800 workers on the payroll. Profit rates were exceptionally high
in some cases. Capital multiplied within a few years. Thus the
Fabnque-Neuve of Cortaillod, the most important cotton-printer in
the Neuchatel region in Switzerland, achieved a profit rate (calculated
in terms of the firm’s productive capital) of 35% in 1783-91 and of 50%
in 1792-98 (see Figure 25). Occasionally such a centralized
Manufaktur became partially decentralized. This happened if,
instead of using cotton fabrics made in India or elsewehere in Europe,
it took production into its own hands and organized it on a proto-
mdustrial basis. Finally, there were the porcelain manufactures
w uc became the special concern of the German princes. The most
famous among them in Germany was the one at Meissen in Saxony
which was established in 1710. This Manufaktur employed 76
workers in 1765.
What was new about this type of enterprise was not the
introduction of machines. Indeed the manufacturing process
continued to be dominated by manual production. The advance
consisted rather in a different organization of the process. As it was
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 141

Figure 25;
Quinquennial production averages of the
cotton printing firm La Fabrique-Neuve in
Coital loid, 1754-1809

pieces livres

concentrated in a single building or complex of buildings, it became

possible to compartmentalize and co-ordinate production, and
occasionally this led to a marked increase in productivity. Seen in
perspective, the significance of the Manufaktur lies above all in the
fact that it represented an important link in the transition from proto¬
industrial production to factory production. This was less so in a
micro-economic sense as few manufactures, in particular the cotton¬
printing enterprises among them, played a major role in the process
of industrialization; but it is true in a macro-economic sense:
Manufakturen pointed the way forward to the factory by bringing
closer to a solution the problems raised by the centralization of
production.
Centralized enterprises were not merely limited to the narrow area
of Manufakturen. They were also to be found quite frequently in
mining and the iron industry, and it was not rare for them to achieve a
remarkable size. The Anzin mining company near Valenciennes in
Northern France produced 310,000 tons of coal in 1790. This is the
equivalent of about half the total production of the country. The Le
Creusot iron works with its four blast furnaces, its forge hammers and
steam engines was celebrated as one of the world wonders . Le
 142 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Creusot also produced the first iron in France smelted with the help of
coke.
As the end of the 18th century approached, there were growing
signs that the prevailing system of production had reached the limits
of its capacity. Under the increasing pressure of demand both at home
and abroad the inner contradictions of the proto-industrial system,
particularly in England, became so acute that its ‘manageability’ (M.
Godelier) was called more and more into question. We have seen that
the proto-industrial family had a propensity to reduce its output
precisely in periods of boom; this was because, as the return per unit
rose, its subsistence needs could be satisfied with a smaller labour
effort. It was this behaviour which brought about the transformation
of the proto-industrial system. In late 18th-century England a
decline of proto-industrial productivity could only toa limited degree
be made up with the help of additional labour. New forms of
organization had to be found. Other problems were no less serious.
The more a Verleger extended his putting-out network geographic¬
ally, the sooner he was bound to reach the point at which his
marginal costs per unit would rise. The speed with which his capital
was turned over decreased; distribution costs rose. It became more and
more difficult for him to supervise the proto-industrial producers and
to protect himself against fraudulent use of the raw materials
he was distributing to the families which were part of his network.
There was also the problem that at least five spinning wheels were
needed to supply sufficient yarn for one loom. This imbalance
between yarn production and weaving capacity came to be a
dysfunctional element, once labour to operate the spinning wheels
was no longer plentiful in the centres of the textile industry Wages
rose (see Figure 28, pp. 147), and the inelastic supply 'of yarn
threatened to block an increase in output beyond a certain level and
ence to arrest the expansion of textile manufacturing. As R. Guest
reported in 1823, it was not unusual for a Lancashire weaver in the
1760s ‘to walk three or four miles in a morning and to call on five or
six spinners before he could collect weft to serve him for the
remainder of the day.’

diff °nly alternatlvc whlch promised a way out of the above

difficulties of the proto-industrial system was greater mechanization
production made possible through centralization. The cotton

SLnSTfh iT brarf.t0 taCkIe these »ns from theendof

“ 11 fUS be,Came the Pace-maker’ (E.J. Hobsbawm) of the first
p ase of industrialization. Hargreave’s ‘Jenny’ was still primarily
operated in the proto-industrial workshop. But Arkwright’s ‘water
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 143

Figure 26:
Index of net
cotton imports to
England and
exports of cotton
fabrics from
England in quin¬
quennial
averages, 1751-
1800 (1761/65 =
100)

frame’ and Crompton’s ‘mule’ began to appear in factories and

facilitated a solution not only of the traditional imbalance between
yarn production and weaving capacity which has just been
mentioned, but also of one of the central problems of proto¬
industrialization, namely the control and supervision of production.
Arkwright opened his factory in Nottingham in 1769; three years
later, some 300 people worked there. His Lower Mill at Cromford
near Matlock employed about 800 people at the end of the 1770s.
Around 1780 there existed some 20 water-powered cotton mills. By
1797 their number had risen to about 900. They had an estimated
fixed capital of £2.5 million. In facilitating this industrial break¬
through the importance of home markets and overseas markets
varied at different times. Figure 26 shows that supplies of raw cotton
rose more quickly than exports of cotton products during the crucial
1760s and 1770s. This lends support to the assumption that the
home market was the decisive factor at this time. Only around the
turn of the century were the scales tipped in favoui of exports abroad.
The English iron industry was faced with difficulties which were
no less formidable than those of the textile manufacturers. Charcoal
became more scarce and expensive; marginal costs increased. The
bottle-neck was overcome, however, when charcoal was replaced by
coke. It was Abraham Darby who, around 1709, invented a process by
which iron could be produced with the help of coke. Yet it took
several decades before this technique was generally adopted. Its
triumph came when Watt’s steam engine made it possible to fit the
first mechanized bellows to John Wilkinson’s furnace at Willey south
of the Coalbrookdale complex in 1776. Subsequently Henry Cort
developed the puddling and rolling process which was patented in
 144 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

1783-84, and this enabled the iron masters to use coal also for the next
production stage, i.e. the making of wrought iron.
Thus coal became the primary source of energy of the 'First
Industrial Revolution’; the steam engine converted coal into power
for industrial use. The history of the steam engine is inseparably
connected with the rise of the English coal industry. As the mines
reached greater and greater depths, it became increasingly difficult to
keep them free of water. The steam engine offered a solution to the
problem. It could be used without great difficulty to drive water
pumps. Its evolution started in 1698 with Thomas Savery’s ‘fire
engine’; in 1712 Thomas Newcomen developed his steam engine; it
then took until 1765 for James Watt to invent the separate condenser
which enabled him to build a much more powerful engine at
Boulton’s factory in Soho in 1775. From now'on the steam engine w'as
also used outside the mines.
The glowing demand for industrial goods enforced the substitution
of scarce resources, such as labour, wood and water-power, by
resources which were relatively abundant, such as capital, coal and
steam power. It also brought about the transformation of proto¬
industrial production into factory production. The evolution of the
productive forces had reached its ceiling in 18th-century England.
These barriers could be removed only if improved steering
mechanisms became available both in the field of technology and of
the social organization of labour. It w'as precisely in these areas that
the process of capitalist industrialization began.
Around 1790, the new system of production was still confined to a
small part of the manufacturing sector. Nevertheless, the contours of
a new age with new modes of production became discernible in the
cotton industry. It was to be an age which was characterized by the
eployment of capital and the division of society into capitalists and
wage-labourers. However, the rise of the cotton industry marked not
merely the beginning of a different social formation, but it also re¬
minds us of the international context of the industrialization process.
o begin with, it was the calicoes which the trading companies had
imported from India that stimulated demand for cotton fabrics in
Europe. They had been re-exported by the European trading centres
and this had ed to the creation of a network which could equally well
x used for the marketing of cotton fabrics which the metropolitan
countries had themselves produced. Moreover the finishing of cotton
products from overseas had given rise to the textile-printing industry

t p“ ,mPOrtam ,mPUlSe fOT th<' 'ndustrializatio„ of

 The Upswing of the 18th Century 145

Secondly, it must be remembered that the raw cotton which was

imported into Europe originated from the slave plantations of Brazil,
the Caribbean and the American South. In 1786-87 some 69.3% of'
English cotton imports came from across the Atlantic; in 1796-1805 it
was 87.5%. As Eric Hobsbawm has aptly written: ‘The most modern
centre of production thus preserved and extended the most primitive
form of exploitation.’
Finally there is the fact that, in the 19th century, the cotton industry
found markets in the underdeveloped and colonial world which
facilitated its unprecedented expansion. In the course of this process
occurred the destruction of the Indian domestic cotton industry
which had been standing at the cradle of its later English rival.

3.4 Population Growth, Economic Growth and Society

Like the high middle ages and the 16th century, the 18th century was
one of the great periods of economic growth in European history. The
crisis of the 17th century had prepared the ground for renewed growth
in the sense that it increased the margins of the peasant economy.
Indeed from the middle of the 18th century the economy was once
more on an expansionist course. The population grew. Agriculture
and manufacturing increased their output. The volume of trade
expanded. And yet fresh tensions arose in the pattern of supply and
demand. Agricultural production could not keep pace with a
growing population. Prices rose, especially those for basic foodstuffs
where demand was inelastic. Prices for manufactured goods likewise
experienced a rise, but it was less steep than that of grain. I his was
partly because demand for these goods was more elastic, but also
because their supply can be organized much more flexibly than that
of agricultural produce. On first impression it looks as if monetary
factors were responsible for the inflationary development. Between
1701-20 and 1781-1800 production of precious metals in the Americas
increased from around 369 tons to 1,065 tons per annum an increase
by some 189%. But on close inspection it seems more likely that, like
in the 16th century, other, non-monetary factors were behind the
long-term price rise. For it must be remembered that a growth in the
circulation of money is just as little an autonomous element of the
economic process as population growth. An expanding economy
tends to create the money which it needs for its expansion. Thus, if
one wishes to explain the inflation of the 18th century, one cannot
avoid examining the supply of, and demand for, goods within the
overall economic process. And the forces that were at work in this
 146 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

sphere were rooted in the phenomenon that a growing demand, in

particular for basic foodstuffs, could be satisfied only at inflationary
prices. Thus the growth of the population was initially a stimulus
to economic growth; but it soon became detached from the economic
process and began to overstretch the strength of the national
economies of Europe.
Nor did demographic change and price development fail to have
their effect on the distribution of incomes. Ground-rents rose because
proceeds from agricultural production improved. By making this
point, nothing has as yet been said about who pocketed the higher
returns. Did they remain with the peasants or were they taken away
by the landlords who succeeded in aligning incomes to the rising
price level? We have the same difficulties to provide a clear-cut answer
to this question as we have had for the 16th century. Favourable was
above all the position of those peasants whose feudal contributions
consisted, inter aha, of fixed cash payments. The value of cash
payments made by East Prussian peasants between 1770 and 1800.
calculated in terms of price equivalents for rye, declined by more than
one thiid because grain prices kept rising. Their income, on the other
hand, again computed on the basis of rye equivalents, improved by
15-25%. In other words, the percentage of feudal contributions
declined.
We have seen how those landowners in England and, to some
extent, in France who had extended then land in order to lease it
again were best able to counter these economic developments They
could easily increase the rent and thus enforce an inflationary
adjustment to the distribution of agricultural income. On the other
hand, wherever there existed a Vorwerk economy like in East-Central
and Eastern Europe, the nobility benefited directly and automatically
from the rise in ground rents.
Wages took the opposite development from agricultural incomes,
hey fell, while marginal costs rose. As regards income distribution
this meant that labourers had their share reduced. Nominal wages
teld up in most cases and occasionally even experienced a rise; yet the
abundance of labour, which was a consequence of the population
growth condemned to failure all attempts toadjust them to the rising
cos of living Thus the drop in real wages continued which, as we
lave seen, had started in the 16th century and which had temporarily
been stopped in the 17th and early 18th centuries. In 1650-79 the daily
wage of a worker in the quarries of Würzburg in Franconia wal
quiva ent to the value of 12.7 kilograms of rye; by 1760-99 his daily
wage would buy him no more than 4.8 kilos. The purchasing power
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 147

kilos

Figure 27:
Ten-year averages of daily
real wages in three German
towns, 1650-1799 (calcu¬
lated in kilograms of rye
equivalents)

of a journeyman mason from Augsburg for the same periods was the
equivalent of 18.3 kilos and 7.9 kilos of rye respectively (see Figure 27).
Ch.-E. Labrousse has calculated that the cost of living in France rose
by 62% between 1726-41 and 1771-89, whereas nominal wages
increased by about 26%. In other words, real wages declined by some
25% in comparison to their 1726-41 value. Meanwhile the
predicament of the wage-earning population in England was
somewhat less unequivocal. There real wages had actually risen up to
the middle of the 18th century. The picture became more complex
thereafter. Thus nominal wages in agriculture rose on average
around 25% between the late 1760s and 1795. But the cost of living
increased by about 30% and real wages hence actually experienced a
decline. Calculated from a base-line of 100 in 1651-75 real wages of
building workers in the English South also fell. In 1740-49 they had
reached 67 index points and 59 in 1780-89. The English North, on the
other hand, which was seized by the process of industrialization
presented a different picture. In Lancashire real wages continud to
rise overall in the second half of the 18th century, temporary setbacks
notwithstanding (see Figure 28).
The social groups which lived on a higher income were much less
directly hit be the rise in the cost of living because only a relatively

Figure 28:
Index of real wages in
quinquennial
averages in England,
1701/05-1791/95
(1701/05 = 100)
 148 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

small percentage of their total budget was spent on these items.

Merchants, Verleger and entrepreneurs moreover benefited from the
general upswing of the economy, and fairly frequently they were able
to net profits that were well above those made by the classe
proprietaire in agriculture. Prices for manufactured goods rose and so
did turnover. The volume of profit increased. In short, the growth
period of the 18th century set in motion a redistribution of the gross
national product: incomes from property were growing, whereas
incomes from manual labour kept falling. Even England experienced
a stagnation of her per capita income in the second half of the 18th
century. There is hence good reason to presume that per capita
income on the European Continent actually declined as it had done
in the 16th century.
Finally, there occurred a shift in demand (and hence also in supply)
as the general economic trend evolved. The lower classes in particular
had to reduce the purchase of goods which were not essential to their
livelihood the more food prices went up. In the early 1790s, miners in
Durham-(Yorkshire), for example, spent 72.4% of their budget on
food. A Berlin mason, who had to support a family of five, had to set
aside 72.7% of his income for food around the turn of the century.
I he more nutritious, but expensive foods were replaced by cheaper
ones. The consumption of meat declined even further. Demand
centred on vegetables. We have seen above (p. 52) how meat had
become replaced by cereals. Now potatoes began to substitute grain.
Occidental nutritional standards reached their lowest level in the first
half of the 19th century. People lived on the ‘potato standard’, as
Wilhelm Abel has termed it. The shifts in the demand pattern were
sooner or later bound to have a negative effect on the non-agricultural
sector, especially in those countries which did not possess foreign
maikets worth mentioning. However, to some extent these problems
weie mitigated by the fact that the disproportional growth of the
towns, the commercialization of agriculture and proto-industriali¬
zation had made a. steadily growing section of the population
dependent on the market. Thus socio-economic change provided a
paitial counterweight to economic recession. People could not
survive without going to the market.
I he effect of the triple pressure of population growth, inflation
and redistribution of incomes was that the social structures of Europe
were pushed and pulled in different directions. As these structures
were still determined by functional and status hierarchies which were
rooted in the feudal estates, demographic change, inflation and
income redistribution had a highly destabilizing effect on the
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 149

societies of Europe; for it was above all those lower strata which were
not part of a society divided into estates that grew disproportionally
both in the towns and in the countryside. By the end of the 18th
century these strata made up more than half the population in some
areas. Around 1750 the share of cottagers and Inwohner in terms of
the total agrarian population was 61.1% in Saxony; the percentage of
Inwohner in the towns was 45.4%. Nobles, clergymen, farmers and
burghers added up to no more than 45.2% of the Saxon population.
More than half the population there belonged to social groups
which were outside the estates system (see Table 12, p. 55). Even more
marked than in Saxony were the shifts in the social structures of
Silesian villages. In 1577 56.8% of the rural population there were
peasants. By 1787 the figure had slumped to 22.9%. The proportion of
cottagers increased correspondingly (see Table 44). And these
cottagers were particularly strongly represented in the mountainous
region of Silesia with its large share of small-scale manufacturing.

Table 44:
Social structure of the Silesian village, 1577-1787 (%)
Smallholders
Peasants obliged to render Cottagers
services

Totals for 1577 56.8 37.9 5.3

Totals for 1787 22.9 25.2 51.9
Districts (1787)
Eastern Silesia 30.4 27.3 42.3
Southwestern Sil. 16.4 18.8 64.8
Militsch-Ohlau 18.8 27.2 54.0
Central Silesia 20.6 32.7 46.7
Northwestern Sil. 26.6 20.6 52.8

Further north, in the Swedish parts of Pomerania, a mere 10.1% of

the rural population were peasants and small-holders in 1766; some
25.6% were lodgers and 51.3% worked as domestic servants and land
labourers. The development took a similar course in other parts of
Central Europe. Where, as in the Southwest, the land was divided up
between the heirs, fragmentation continued and began to reach
alarming proportions. In cities like Hamburg, Frankfurt and Basle,
the burghers soon found themselves in a minority vis-a-vis those
inhabitants and their families who enjoyed no citizen’s rights.
A glance at the regions beyond Central Europe confirms this trend.
On the royal estates of the Cracow Province no more than 35% of the
 150 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

farmsteads were held by peasants. The number of cottagers, on the

other hand, who accounted for between 43% and 47% of the rural
population in 1660, had meanwhile gone up to 56%. In the Dutch
Overijssel region the share of peasants declined from 61.4% to 49.6%
and that of cottagers from 38.6% to 34.8% between 1602 and 1795. At
the same time there emerged a landles proletariat which amounted to
some 18.3% of the population in 1795 and which was mostly
employed in the textile industry. Nor did the French village in the
18th century escape a rapid process of proletarianization. According
to statistics compiled by the Abbe Expilly, only around 13% of the
rural population were laboureurs (peasants) in 1778. The remaining
87% were day-labourers, manouvriers and wine growers. Day
labourers and manouvriers also made up more than 80% of the
population in some villages in Burgundy. In England the ratio of
lease-holders and peasants, on the one hand, and cottagers and land
labourers, on tbe other, was 4:7 as early as the end of the 17th century.
The number of the latter increased rapidly during the enclosure boom
of the second half of the 18th century. Worse, their position
deteriorated as they lost common rights and what little land they had
been tilling. In 1803, over one third of the population were the
‘labouring poor’, the beggars, soldiers, sailors, land labourers and
other desperately poor people at the bottom of the pile.
The accelerated growth of the lower class threatened to crush as
with a steam-roller the traditional social structures. However, this did
not mean as yet that these classes became the ferment of a new socio¬
economic order. At first their rise was no more than a symptom of
dec line of a social system which had reached the limits of its capacity
to integrate divergent forces. However, the swelling of the lower ranks
of society made the evolution of new forms of production
unavoidable; for these additional people could find a livelihood only
if more jobs were created for them in the non-agricultural sector of the
economy. To be sure, the growth of the lower strata had been a factor
in earlier times when manufacturing began to move into the rural
areas around towns. However, these industries did not merely move to
where there existed a reservoir of labour; as we have seen (above p.
136) they also stimulated demographic growth by undermining the
traditional reproductive behaviour of the peasant family. It is in this
way that the increasing population density in the major
manufacturing regions of Europe may be explained.
I he small pioducers, whom we encounter in these regions, occupy
a peculiar intermediate position in European social history. In many
ways they still lived in the world of the peasants. On the other hand,
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 151

their daily life and the articulation of their socio-economic and

cultural needs pointed frequently beyond the rural environment.
Thus the products of the proto-industrial household were, unlike
those of the peasantry, destined almost exclusively for the market, and
this the more so the further rural manufacturing emancipated itself
from its links with agriculture. This also implied that, conversely, the
proto-industrial family had to rely on the market to buy in basic
foodstuffs and other necessities. Small rural producers therefore
needed what Rudolf Braun has called a ‘bodenfremdes, exogenes
Medium', namely money, to pay for their livelihood. The
agricultural seasons and the resultant pressure to engage in some
kind of ad hoc economic planning lost their former importance. This
occasionally promoted a happy-go-lucky approach to life or even an
indulgence in luxuries which went beyond the means of the proto¬
industrial household. In 1765 the peasants of Grossröhrsdorf
northeast of Dresden, for example, voiced the following complaint
about the cottagers in the village, most of whom were ribbon makers
and linen weavers: ‘They showed off on all occasions and spent a lot
of money. They dressed their daughters like burghers’ daughters and
certainly above their status which had caused all sorts of things to be
put into disarray.’ And Solomon von Orelli reported on the weavers
of the Zurich Oberland that ‘sooner or later things began to go so far
that a young weaver’s woman could not be considered extravagant, if
she bought from her earnings a bed, a chest, a nice colourful Sunday
dress as well as a black one for the Holy Communion .. . Once these
items had been acquired it depended on the greater or lesser degree of
her vanity as to whether she would buy several attractive skirts or
would blow her money in other ways.’ Such behaviour was not just a
consequence of the dissolution of a subsistence economy in which the
peasant family consumed most of what it produced; it also testifies to
an attempt on the part of the rural manufacturers to demonstrate then
social difference to the outside world by ‘symbolic and ostentatious
consumption’ (P. Bourdieu). By doing this, they tried to break
through the confines of a society which was divided into feudal
estates.
It was this mass of landless rural producers, small-holders and the
proto-industrial manufacturers who came to be the labour force of the
above-mentioned Manufakturen and early factories. The conditions
under which they worked brought about the destruction of
traditional life-styles and behaviour patterns; but new ones did not
emerge immediately to replace them. Wage labour, to be sure, had
existed for centuries before. However, it assumed a different quality in
 152 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

the 18th century. Those who were forced to sell their labour to
entrepreneurs of factory owners found themselves working and living
in conditions which had not existed in this form before. Thus they
were subjected to a time- and work-discipline which could not be
reconciled with the life-styles they were accustomed to. For the factory
owners the irregular work rhythms of pre-industrial society were
unacceptable. What had determined the time-consciousness of that
society was the work that had to be done at a particular time of the day
or the season. It was industrial capitalism that introduced the idea of
measuring labour in specific units of time. It is no coincidence that
clocks and watches became very widespread in the 18th century. But
the work day was long and often extended beyond what was
physically tolerable. In the Manufakturen of Berlin people worked
for 14-16 hours per day. The figure for the English cotton mills was
around 12 hours. Female and child labour was used on a large scale,
above all in textiles, a practice which continued pre-industrial
employment patterns. Children tended to be involved in the
preparatory work, while women worked primarily as spinners. In
1789 only 14% of the work force in Arkwright’s factories at Cromford
were men.
The living conditions of this early proletariat were desolate.
Whether it was the cotton weavers of the Zürich Oberland. the silk
weavers of Lyons, the cotton printers of Chemnitz in Saxony or the
female labourers in the English mills, they all vegetated at the poverty
line. Only a small number of highly skilled workers were well paid.
Most of these labourers found it impossible to put aside savings for
emergencies so that they were without protection against the
vicissitudes of life. If demand was slack, poverty and desperation
became the general picture. When the Eichsfeld region southeast of
Gottingen was struck by a severe crisis at the beginning of the 19th
century, the authorities responsible for the area at Heiligenstadt
reported as follows: 'The weavers are unable to find the large sums
required for the purchase of wool; they are faced with the bitter
necessity of having to sell and pawn their goods and chattels which
they have worked hard to acquire in better times; and this enables
them to buy a bit of wool from the agents (Aufkäufer) on whom they
aie dependent so as to be able to carry on their trade on a quite pitiful
basis.’
Poverty increased the more the ‘safety net’ which state and society
had tradmonaHy provided was being dismantled in the course of the
th century. The state no longer regarded it as a task of public
welfare to help the poor. The poor were seen as a problem for the
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 153

police and the judiciary. Poverty became a criminal offence. Poor-

houses, orphanages, workhouses and penitentiaries were established
whose objective it was to integrate the outcasts’ into the production
process. Most of these institutions supplied labour to the
Manufakturen, and to those of the textile industry in particular.
Occasionally the inmates were leased to the entrepreneur. The logical
complement of the criminalization of poverty was the replacement of
the 'old moral economy of provision' by the ‘new political economy
of the free market’ (E. P. Thompson). The lower classes were forced to
rely on their own resources and thus to offer themselves as wage
labourers. The grain trade was freed from all restrictions. The
regimentation of bread price was abandoned. State intervention in
the economy with the aim of safeguarding the provision of food came
to an end. The credo of laissez-faire which was characteristic of the
dawn of capitalism triumphed.
The victims of these processes initially continued to cling to
traditional thought patterns with which they tried to interpret and,
under certain circumstances, even to respond to the new situation. As
E. P. Thompson has shown, virtually uninterrupted chains of bread
riots came to be the concentrated expression of ‘the moral economy of
the . . . crowd’. They all revolved around the question of ‘setting’ the
bread price, i.e. they demanded its reduction. If the rulers failed to live
up to the expectations of the crowd, the latter believed to be justified
in its resort to violence in order to enforce the adoption of official
measures to bring down the price of bread. The manufacturing
population moreover evolved forms of struggle which went beyond
the simple bread riot. Even if, like the latter type of protest, they
amounted to a ‘collective bargaining by riot’ (E. J. Hobsbawm), the
object of the struggle was no longer the price of bread, but the cost of
raw materials, as in the case of the 1793 uprising of the weavers of
Landeshut in Silesia. On other occasions the protest was against the
low prices paid for manufactured goods by the merchants or piece¬
work wages. If tools and machines were smashed, this was done not
merely to pressurize merchants, Verleger and entrepreneurs into
making concessions, but also in order to enforce a sense of solidarity
among the rioters. All of these uprisings were usually brutally
suppressed by the authorities. Thus the state made its own specific
contribution to the establishment of a capitalist system of
production.
The genesis of an early proletariat was not a process which
unfolded independently of the economy. Rather it was the result of
the policies of employment and accumulation adopted by a nascent
 154 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

class of proto-industrial and industrial capitalists. However, it would

be wrong to assume that these people were the decisive element
within the bourgeoisie under theancien regime. That system, on the
contrary, was dominated by merchants, bankers, rentiers and
officials. As the societies of Europe found themselves in a transition
phase from one mode of production to another, a number of
capitalisms co-existed side-by-side: merchant capitalism, agri¬
cultural capitalism and, pointing towards developments beyond the
former, proto-industrial and industrial capitalism. Up to a point the
'bourgeoisie’, with its divisions, was therefore a reflection of these
divergent capitalisms. Investment in property, offices and state bonds
in order to obtain a fixed annual return continued to be very
important. According to recent estimates, more than 80% of private
wealth in France was generated in this traditional way. Nor were
income and property evenly distributed among this bourgeoisie. A
small group of extremely rich merchants, financiers and officials
must be sharply distinguished from a broadly-based lower and
middle stratum within the bourgeoisie. In 1749 some 14.1% of the
‘bourgeois’ who appear in Parisian marriage contracts had assets
worth less than 1,000 livres; on the other hand, 4.7% of this group held
100.000 livres and more. It is characteristic that 77.3% of these people
were rentiers, bureaucrats and professionals who were not directly
involved in commerce or production. Moreover, none of the large
wealthy bourgeois families could stand comparison with the wealth
accumulated by the nobility which resided in Paris. For one
bourgeois with property worth 500,000 livres there were 11 aristocrats
to match this figure (see Table 45).
It appears that wealth and income differentials between the
nobility and the middle class’ were just as marked in England as in
France. Where England differed, was that social barriers between
noblemen and ‘bourgeoisie’ were becoming less impenetrable.
Daniel Defoe noted in 1726 that ‘trade in England makes gentlemen
and has peopled this nation with gentlemen’. In considering social
mobility it is important, however, to remember that it worked in both
directions. The strict application of primogeniture induced many
members of the nobility to seek a ‘bourgeois’ livelihood. Property had
so much become the dominant criterion of a person’s status within
the system of 18th-century English society that ‘bourgeois’ status
hierarchies did not lag far behind the ‘feudal’ pecking order in
complexity.
I he bourgeoisie of the Central European towns had more simple
structures. Mainz, for example, numbered 30,000 inhabitants at the
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 155

Table 45:
Socio-professional stratification and distribution of wealth
in Paris (based on marriage contracts for 1749)1

Wealth (in 'livres tournois’)

Soc.-prof. category 1 000- 10000- 100 000
<1 000 Total
9 999 99999 und mehr

Wage lab. in crafts

and commerce, small 280 353 9 642
artisans 54.9s 31.2 3.0 _ 32.1
Master artisans and 72 357 120 — 549
merchants 14.1 31.6 39.2 27.4
Wealthy merchants 1 6 5 5 17
0.2 0.5 1.6 9.1 0.9
Domestic servants 94 245 29 2 370
18.4 21.7 9.5 3,6 18.5
Soldiers and petty 8 11 4 — 23
officers 1.6 1.0 1.3 _ 1.1
‘Bourgeois’2 55 155 116 17 343
10.8 13.7 37.9 30.9 17.1
Nobility - 4 23 31 58
- 0.3 7.5 56.4 2.9

No. 510 1 131 306 55 2 002

% 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

'Not representative for population as a whole because most members of the

lower classes did not conclude a marriage contract. Thus for 1749 contracts
exist for 60.9% of the marriages; Professionals, officials, rentiers
Percentages in italics

end of the 18th century and saw the rise of a new stratum of wealthy
merchants and entrepreneurs. Yet their influence remained limited in
view of the still strongly corporatist social structures of the time. Only
in cities like Hamburg, Frankfurt and Berlin do we encounter a
bourgeoisie whose weight is comparable to that of Western Europe.
The concentration of wealth in these cities assumed considerable
proportions. In the second half of the 18th century Frankfurt had no
less than 183 families with assets of 300,000 guldens, with eight of
these being millionaires. But the traditional status system had not yet
lost its pull. Some 32 Frankfurt merchants acquired aristocratic titles
in the course of the 18th century. As Dr. med. Johann Christian
Senckenberg remarked mockingly: ‘Wealthy merchants obtain
ennoblement, blow up their cheeks and insist on being called
“Gracious Gentleman”. Once they held a yardstick in their hands;
now they have a feather on their hat, having fixed the feather which
they wore behind their ear to their hat.’ And the farther we look
156 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

towards Eastern Europe, the less significant was the ‘bourgeoisie’. In

1775 Russian merchants obtained a higher status than the ‘lesser
burghers’ who were taxed on a per capita basis. But they nevertheless
continued to be strictly limited in their freedom of movement in the
face of the power of Russia’s ‘state feudalism’.
However, only in those regions did the bourgeoisie genuinely leave
behind the feudal world where it moved into the production sphere
and succeeded in gaining control of it. The merchant capitalists and
Verleger, as we have seen, directed production from the distribution
sphere, and whenever there was a crisis they would be prone to retreat
to their trading activities. The final and decisive step was taken only
when they established a factory. Factories represented concentrations
of fixed capital; when they emerged, the production sphere came into
its own vis-a-vis the distribution sphere. Yet for this shift to occur, an
important precondition had to be fulfilled. It was not enough merely
to centralize production, if the existing mode of production was to be
changed. Rather it had to be supplemented by a specific way of
utilizing capital; capital had to be accumulated. It was not allowed to
consume profits or to transfer them to the distribution sphere; profits
had to be used for reinvestment and for an increase of the capital stock
with the aim of expanding production. This type of economic
behaviour required, certain structural changes which have been
discussed above; but there is also a subjective context in which the
behaviour of the industrial capitalists must be seen. The system of
societal norms and values had to be favourable and possibly even
stimulating to an economic activity which was orientated towards
profit and the productive reinvestment of economic growth. The
same applied to the status system. Feudal society ascribed social
positions on the basis of birth and social origin. But this type of status
ascription was irreconcilable with social mobility without which a
class of industrial capitalists could not come into existence. Status
ascription had to be replaced by status achievement.
There can be little doubt that England had moved farthest from the
feudal system of status ascription. However, that system also began to
disappear, albeit slowly, on the European Continent, not¬
withstanding various attempts at reversing this trend. But economic
activity was by no means the highest societal value yet. European
society found itself in a period of upheaval in which several different
modes of production cut across each other. This is also reflected in the
criss-crossing of norms, values and status patterns of different
countries. The farther a particular country had advanced on the road
towards industrial capitalism, the more the traditional system of
 The Upswing of the 18th Century 157

norms and values had lost its former rigidity; the more was the
ascription of social positions within a feudal order being called into
question. Slowly the class societies of the 19th century began to take
shape within the framework of a capitalist-industrial economy,
which ultimately affected Western as well as East-Central Europe and
transformed even the landlords into a land-owning class. These
observations are not meant to imply that early modern Europe lacked
the elements of a class society. Pre-19th century European society was
also organized according to the principle of labour and the
appropriation of labour. But this reality was veiled by the fact that the
mechanism of appropriation was not directly rooted in the
production process. This is why the stratification system of this
society could gain, tendencially at least, a degree of autonomy vis-a-
vis its essential class character. However, this possibility began to
disappear increasingly from the 18th century onwards.
 Conclusion
By the end of the 18th century agriculture was still clearly the most
important creator of national wealth in Europe. According to J.
Marczewski, the share of manufacturing in the physical national
product (i.e. agriculture plus manufacturing) was 27% for France in
1803/12, 37% for Britain in 1811 (in both cases at British prices).
Around 1800, some 65% of the Prussian working population was
employed in the primary sector, with a mere 20% working in the
secondary sector and 15% in the tertiary one. In Britain, by contrast,
only 35.9% of the working population were employed in agriculture,
forestry and the fishing industry. Manufacturing, on the other hand,
absorbed 29.7%. These figures demonstrate just how large the gap
between the British Isles and the Continental competitors had
become.
The British lead became a factor which accelerated the revolution
of the mode of production on the Continent. The more marked this
lead was, the less the putters-out and merchant capitalists on the
Continent could avoid taking over the technologies developed across
the Channel and to enter the process of capitalist industrialization
aided by them. Any procrastination would only lead to domestic and
foreign markets being lost to their British competitors and to the
indigenous industries being obliterated. The existence of a world
market within which the production of manufactured goods occurred
made it imperative to industrialize. Yet, industrialization could take
place only in those regions in which favourable framework
conditions prevailed, and this meant:
(1) Whenever the production factors’ labour, land and capital had
been freed from their hitherto feudal resp. collectivist constraints- i e
wherever there existed free labour in a formal sense and, as Max
Weber has put it, the free appropriation of all material goods as freely
disposable property by autonomous private enterprises
(2) Wherever there existed general conditions of production in the
shape of a material, institutional and ‘human’ infrastructure, i.e. a
network of transport and communications, a legal system and
recruitable labour.

158
 Conclusion 159

(3) Wherever there were markets which were expanding and

capable of further expansion beyond the national frontiers and, above
all, inside these frontiers. Capitalist industrialization hence not only
amounted to a revolution of the mode of production, but was also
predicated on the sine qua non that the first transitional stage had
been achieved, i.e. that the feudal mode had already lost much of its
impact and that the capitalist mode had developed in embryo. Thus at
the end of this book the question is raised once again as to the forces
that were at work during the period covered by it—a period which saw
the transformation of European feudalism and which was at the same
time the formative period of European capitalism. The following
aspects are important here:
(1) The dynamic of the feudal mode of production which expressed
itself in the long waves of European agricultural development
unleashed processes of accumulation and de-accumulation in the
countryside which, in certain circumstances, might turn into
processes of modification and even of transformation, unless the
balance of class forces or the intervention of the state blocked such
changes. There emerged a process of capitalist commercialization. It
took the form either of a peasant capitalism, like in Holland, or of a
large-scale land-owners’ capitalism, like in England. As a
consequence, the feudal mode of production began to disintegrate.
East-Central and Eastern Europe, on the other hand, moved in the
opposite direction. There the re-feudalization of agrarian structures
prevented the emergence of an agrarian capitalism. It was only the
agrarian reforms of the late 18th and the 19th centuries which created
the preconditions of what might be called the ‘Prussian’ variant on
the path towards a capitalism in the countryside. Its basis was the
large-scale agricultural enterprise which had evolved from the
Vorwerk system.
(2) Merchant capital, which had initially been an integral part of
the feudal system, began to prise open the guild structures of
manufacturing and artisanal production once the pressure of demand
increased. Wherever the merchant capitalists found it impossible to
build up a production apparatus in the towns unhampered by guild
restrictions, they moved production to the countryside and expanded
it there on a large scale. In the countryside a labour potential had
grown up which, representing the reverse side of the accumulation
process described under (1) above, was the result of a process of de¬
accumulation. This potential was thus merely waiting to be used. But
the merchant capitalists did not merely circumvent the policies of the
guilds which prevented economic growth by locating production
 160 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

outside the towns: they also externalized part of the production costs
by burdening the agricultural sector with them. Large segments of
the peasant population were in this way transformed into an
‘accumulation fund’ with which the merchant capitalists promoted
the accumulation process in their hands. By the same token, the
erosion of the feudal system was accelerated by them.
(3) The commercialization of agriculture, proto-industrialization
and, not least, the disproportionate growth of the cities stimulated the
development of a domestic market which was to be of fundamental
importance for the triggering of industrialization. The more the
process of specialization advanced, the more the people who were
captured by this process were to become dependent on the market.
The more these same people were under a pressure to concentrate
their labour effort on the production for a market, the less they were
able to avoid covering a growing percentage of their needs through
purchases on the market. The market principle asserted itself: the
markets expanded.
(4) In this process of transformation which seized hold of the
societies of Europe, overseas expansion was to play an increasing
role; but it was by no means the factor which decided everything. As is
demonstrated by the inclusion of peasant society in the process of
consumption and accumulation, the ‘inner Americas’ (I. Wallerstein)
had by no means reached their limits. The movements of the
European economy were not yet totally dominated by the nascent
capitalist world system. Its genesis was a central element of the
process of transformation: but it was not its determinant.
(5) Noi did the state act as the propellant behind the socio¬
economic transformation; but its contradictions certainly furthered
this process. State taxes were initially an essential feature of a
centralized feudalism; yet the more these taxes reduced the scope for,
and superseded, the levy of feudal dues, the more they came into
conflict with the feudal system. The pressure to develop the
productive forces of society which moved the state’s economic policy¬
making stimulated the growth of manufacturing and thus promoted
the emergence of social structures which could no longer be
integrated into the feudal system.
The French Revolution accelerated this transformation process,
but not without retarding it at the same time. Its main direction and
main consequence were ‘bourgeois and capitalist’ (B. Moore) once the
popular revolution of the sansculottes, the last great protagonists of a
‘moral economy’ of welfare, had been defeated. On the other hand, it
was in the countryside that this bourgeois’ revolution suffered a
 Conclusion lb.

serious defeat in its confrontation with that of the peasants: the

beginnings of an agrarian capitalism were stunted and reversed;
small-holding property emerged strengthened. Outside France, the
Revolution and the popular movements which were partly connected
with it forced governments into initiating reforms of the existing
institutional framework. In this way decisive prerequisites were
created for a thorough revolution of the mode of production. The
upswing of the 18th century ended in a crisis at the beginning of the
19th. But it was a crisis of a new kind, which had little in common
with those which had struck Europe from the late middle ages to the
17th century. Grain prices dropped, not because demand declined,
but because too much was being produced. Proto-industry lapsed
into agonies, not because markets for its goods disappeared, but
because it was unable to cope with the competition of factory
production. Pauperism was spreading, and for those affected by it the
transition from an agrarian capitalist feudal system permeated by
proto-industry to an industrial capitalism proved to be extremely
painful.
 Annotated Bibliography

Abbreviations

AnnESC Annales. Economies, Societas, Civilisations

CEcHE The Cambridge Economic History of Europe
EcHR The Economic History Review
FEcHE The Fontana Economic History of Europe
GG Geschichte und Gesellschaft
JbWG Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte
JEcH The Journal of Economic Flistory
JEuEcH The Journal of European Economic History
Pb Paperback
PP Past and Present
VSWG Vierteljahrsschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte
Z. Zeitschrift

General Histories

The three most important general histories still are: The Cambridge Economic History
of Europe, vols. 4-5, Cambridge 1966-1977: The Fontana Economic History of Europe
ed. C. M. Gipolla, vols. 2-3, London 1973-1974 (pb.); Histone economique et sociale
du monde, ed. P. Leon, vols. 1-3, Pans 1977-1978. See also P. Leon, Economies et
soci dies preindus trie lies, vol. 2:1650-1780. Les origines dune acceleration de V histone
Parts 1970 (an excellent introduction; vol. 1 by R. Gascon not yet published), and R.
Davis, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies, London 1973.
Some of the older general histories are still useful: J. Kulischer. Allgemeine
Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, vol. 2. München 1929; see also
M. Weber, Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Abriss der universalen Sozial- und Wirtschafts¬
geschichte des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit. München 1923 (Engl transl ■ General
Economic History, Brunswick 1981) and W. Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, vol
1. 1-2 and vol. 2, 1-2, München H916(in contrast to Weber's study, this one is dated as
regards its analytical framework, but continues to be thought-provoking in certain
respects). C. M. Gipolla's Before the Industrial Revolution. European Society and
Economy, 1000-1700,London 1976 (pb.) represents a systematic analysis, but neglects
°f Production; based on the “property righ.ts''-concept: D. C. North and
frA 1h°maS' TheRlse °f the Webern World. A New Economic History, Cambridge
973 (pb'): from vanous aspects of material culture to the genesis of the capitalist world
system. L Braudel, Civilisation materielle, e'conomie et capitalisme, XVe-XVIlie

162
 Bibliography 163

siede, vols. 1-3, Paris 1979 (Engl, transl.: Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800,
London 1973.) See also O. Hufton, EcHR, 2nd. Ser., 35, 1982, pp. 140-145.
Individual countries: Germany: Handbuch der deutschen Wirtschafts- und Sozial¬
geschichte, eds. H. Aubin and W. Zorn, vol I, Stuttgart 1971 (particularly important
because of its annotated bibliography); F.-W. Henning, Das norindustrielle
Deutschland 800 bis 1800 (Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, vol 1) Paderborn 31977
(valuable as an introduction); H. Kellenbenz, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vol. 1,
München 1977 (more detailed than the book by Henning); H. Mottek,
Wirtschaftsgeschichte Deutschlands. Ein Grundriss, \ol. 1, Berlin 1957 (the Standard
textbook of East German historiography); K. Borchardt, Grundriss der deutschen
Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Göttingen 1978 (pb.; excellent, unfortunately too cursory for
the early period).
Britain: E. Lipson, The Economic History of England, vol. 2, London 1931 (still
interesting); S. Pollard and D. W. Crossley, The Wealth of Britain, 1085-1966, London
1968 (pb.); L. A. Clarkson, The Pre-Industrial Economy in England, 1500-1750,
London 1971 (pb.; both useful surveys); D. C. Coleman. The Economy of England,
1450-1750, Oxford 1977 (pb.; short, but excellent outline); from Social and Economic
History of England: W. G. Hoskins, The Age of Plunder. The England of Henry Till,
1500-1547, London 1976 (pb.); and Ch. Wilson, England's Apprenticeship, 1603-1763,
London 1965 (pb.; both stimulating analyses); finally vols. 2 and 3 of the Pelican
Economic History of Britain, with a stronger political orientation: Ch. Hill,
Reformation to Industrial Revolution, Harmondsworth 1969 and E. J. Hobsbawm,
Industry and Empire, Harmondsworth 1969; see also R. Floud and D. McCloskey, The
Economic History of Britain since 1700, vol. 1: 1700-1860, Cambridge 1981 (pb.).
France: Histoire e'conomique et sociale de la France, eds. F. Braudel and E.
Labrousse, vols. 1, 1-2 and 2, Paris 1970-1977 (the most important work); O. Goubert,
L’Anden regime, vol. 1: La sociele, vol. 2: Les pouvoirs, Paris 1969-1973 (excellent
textbook; Engl, trans.: The Ancien Regime: French Society, 1600-1750, London 1973).
W. Mager. Frankreich vom Ancien Regime zur Moderne. Wirtschafts-, Gesellschafts¬
und politische Institutionengeschichte, 1630-1830, Stuttgart 1980.
Italy: R. Romano, Lastona economica. Dal secolo XIVal Settecento (Storm d Italia,
vol. 2, 2), Torino 1974, pp. 1813-1931; A. Caracciolo, Lastona economica (ibid., vol. 3),
Torino 1973, pp. 511-569.
Netherlands: J. A. van Houtte, An Economic History of the Low Countries, ^
800-1800, London 1977; J. G. van Dillen, Van njkdom en regenten. Handboek tot de -
economische en sociale geschiedenis van Nederland tijdens de Republiek, Den Haag

Austria: F. Tremel, Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte Österreichs, Vienna 1969.

Poland: J. Rutkowski, Histona gospodarcza Polski (do 1864 r.) [An Economic
History of Poland to the Year 1864], Warsaw 1953; B. Zientrara, A. Mijczak et al., Dzieje
gospodarcze Polski do 1939 r. [An Economic History of Poland to the Year 1939],

Warsaw 1965.
Russia: P. 1. Liashchenko, History of the National Economy of Russia to the 1917
Revolution, New York 1949 (1939).
Sweden: E. F. Heckscher, An Economic History of Sweden. Cambridge, Mass. 1954
Switzerland: A. Hauser, Schweizerische Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte,
Erlenbach-Zürich 1961; J. -F. Bergier, Naissance et croissance de la Suisse industrielle,

Spain: J. Vicens Vives with the collaboration of J. Nadal Oiler, An Economic

History of Spain, Princeton 1969; J. van Klaveren, Europäische Wirtschaftsgeschichte
 164 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Spaniens im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart 1960; sec also the excellent regional
study by P. Vilar, La Catalogue dans l’Espagne moderne. Recherches sur les
fondements economiques des structures nationales, vols. 1-3. Paris 1962 (with the main
focus on the 18th century).
Demography: A. E. Imhof, Einführung in die historische Demographie, München
1977 (a good survey of the history, problems and the literature of 'historical
demography’); Population in History, ed. E. A. Wrigley, London 1969 (pb; the best
introduction into a historical theory of population); P. Guillaume and J. -P. Poussou,
De'mographie hislorique, Paris 1970 (a useful systematic and chronological study); M.
Reinhard et ah, Histoire ge'ne'rale de la population mondiale, Paris 31968 (a new
edition of this standard work of the history of population is in preparation); E. A.
Wrigley and R. S. Schofield. The Population History of England, 15-11-1871. A
Reconstruction, London 1981; Readers: Population in History, Essays in Historical
Demography, ed. D. V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley, London 1965 (pb.); Population and
Social Change, ed. D. V. Glass and R. Revelle, London 1972; Biologie des Menschen in
der Geschichte, Beiträge zur Sozialgeschichte der Neuzeit aus Frankreich und
Skandinavien, ed. A. E. Imhof, Stuttgart 1978 (together with the reader by
Glass/Eversley most highly recommended); European Demography and Economic
Growth, ed. W. R. Lee, London 1979.
Agrarian History: W. Abel, Agricultural Fluctuations in Europe from the
Thirteenth to the Twentieth Centuries, London 1980 (now considered a classic study in
agricultural historiography, this book places the history of the agricultural economy
within the long waves of the general economic development); B. H. Slicher van Bath,
The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500-1850, London 1963 (excellent
introduction); see also F. Lütge, Geschichte der deutschen Agrari'erfassung, vol. 3,
Stuttgart ’1967; G. kränz, Oieschichte des deutschen Bauernstandes, vol. 4, Stuttgart
-1976, and especially W. Abel, Geschichte der deutschen Landwirtschaft vom frühen
Mittelalter bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart 31978; F. -W. Henning, Landwirtschaft
und ländliche Gesellschaft in Deutschland, vols. 1-2, Paderborn 1978-1979; The
Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 4, 1500-1640, ed. J. Thirsk. Cambridge
1967 (vol. 5 in preparation); Histoire de la France rurale, vol. 2, 1340-1789, ed. G. Duby
and A. Wallon, Paris 1975 (superbly illustrated); Zarys historii gospodarstwa
wiejskiego w Polsce[Outline of Polish Agrarian History], ed. J. Leskieunczowa, vol. 2,
Warsaw 1964; Histona chtopow polskich [History of Polish Peasantry], ed. St. Inglot,’
vol. 1, Warsaw 1970; J. Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia. From the Ninth to the
Nineteenth Century, Princeton 1961 (pb.).
Urban History: 7oum in Societies. Essays in Economic History and Historical
Sociology, ed. Ph. Abrams and E. A. Wrigley, Cambridge 1978 (pb.); P. Clark and
P. Slack, English Towns in Transitions, 1500-1700, Oxford 1976 (pb.)- P Corfield
The Impact of English Towns, 1700-1800, Oxford 1982 (pb.); Histoire de la France
urbaine, vol. 3: La mile classique le la renaissance aux Revolutions, ed. Le Rov
Ladurie, Paris 1981.
History of Technology: A History of Technology, ed. Ch. Singer et al.. vols 3-4
Oxford 1957-1958; Histoire des techniques. Technique et civilisations, technique et
sciences, ed. B. Gilles, Paris 1978 (good introduction); D. Furia, P. -Ch. Serre,
Techniques et societes, liaisons et evolutions, Paris 1970 (useful textbook)- Moderne
Technikgeschichte, ed. K. Hausen and R. Rürup, Köln 1975 (excellent anthology yet
primarily focussing on the 19th and 20th centuries).
Quantitative sources of economic history: An Introduction to the Sources of
European Economic History. 1500-1800, vol. 1: Western Europe, ed. Ch. Wilson and
 Bibliography 165

G. Parker, London 1977 (with systematically structured chapters for individual

countries, this is an excellent tool); for a survey of anthologies of the history of the
development of prices and wages see W. Abel, Fluctuations-, B. R. Mitchell,
European Historical Statistics, 1750-1970, London 1975; for Britain see
the indispensable book by B. R. Mitchell, with the collaboration of Ph. Deane, Abstract
of British Historical Statistics, Cambridge 1962; see also Ph. Deane and W. A. Cole,
British Economic Growth, 1688-1959, Cambridge 21969. There are no comparable
works for other countries. J. J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and
America, 1600-1775, A Handbook, London 1978 (indispensable for the study of (he
development of currencies and exchange rates in the Atlantic economic area).

Introduction

The so-called Dobb-Sweezy Controversy is the starting point of any analysis of the
problems of transition. This controversy was carried on in the 1950s in the pages of
Science and Society and arose from Dobb’s investigations into capitalism: see M. Dobb,
Studies in the Development of Capitalism, London 21963 ('1946; still the best study of
the origins and history of capitalism) and M. Dobb et al., The Transition from
Feudalism to Capitalism (Introduction by R. Hilton), London 1976. The opposing
position taken up by Dobb and Sweezy in the debate continue to determine the
discussion to this day, as the controversy between R. Brenner and I. Wallerstein
demonstrates. Dobb emphasized the inner dynamic of the feudal system and in
particular the increasing exploitation of the peasants; Sweezy focused on commerce,
i.e. on external factors, as the main driving force behind the dissolution of the feudal
system. S. R. Brenner, ‘Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre¬
industrial Europe', in: PP 70, 1976, pp. 30-75; ibid., 78, 1978, pp. 24-55; 79, 1978, pp.
55-69; 80, 1978, pp. 3-65; 85, 1979. pp. 49-67; G. Bois, ‘Against the Neo-malthusian
Orthodoxy’, in: ibid., 79, 1978, pp. 60-69; I. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System 1.
Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the
Sixteenth Century, New York 1974; idem, The Modern World-System 11. Mercantilism
and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600-1750, New York 1980;
idem, The Capitalist World-Economy. Essays, Cambridge 1979; see also R. Brenner,
‘The Origins of Capitalist Development: a Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism', in:
New Left Review 104, 1977, pp. 25-92, and Kapitalistische Weitökonomie.
Kontroversen über ihren Ursprung and ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, ed. D. Senghaas,
Frankfurt 1979 (excellent reader; see especially the editor’s preface and the contribution
by H. Elsenhans); in their extreme form, the arguments of both Brenner and
Wallerstein would seem to go into the wrong direction. Brenner, because he puts so
much emphasis on the respective class constellation to the exclusion of other factors,
bars himself expressly from gaining an understanding of the dynamics of the feudal
mode of production. Wallerstein, on the other hand, maintains that the capitalist
world system emerged without any transitional phases from the crisis of feudalism in
the late middle ages. This leads him not only to reduce the phenomena of the socio¬
economic process to this world system and to reject the Marxian concept of commercial
capital, but also to deny that the Industrial Revolution had an epochal significance. As
a result, the transitional period loses its multifaceted variety andjanus-facedness. T his
study tries to restructure the problem of transition in a way which is inspired by the
concept of proto-industrialization, on the one hand, and by G. Bois’s attempt to
incorporate the theory of agrarian crisis into a theory of
166 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

the feudal mode of production, on the other; see G. Bois, Crise du je'odalisme.
Economie rurale et de'mographie en Normandie orientale du de'but du 14e siede au
milieu du 16e stiele, Paris 1976 (see also M. Aymard, ‘L’Europe moderne: Fe'odalite'ou
feodalites?’, in: Ann ESC 36, 1981, pp. 426-435; P. Kriedte, 'Spätmittelalterliche
Agrarkrise oder Krise des Feudalismus?’, in: GG 7, 1981, pp. 42-68) and P. Kriedte, H.
Medick, J. Schlumbohm, Industrialization before Industrialization. Rural Industry
in the Genesis of Capitalism. With Contributions from H. Kisch and F. F. Mendels,
Cambridge 1981; idem, ’Die Proto-Industrialisierung auf dem Prüfstand der
historischen Zunft. Eine Antwort an einige Kritiker', in: GG 9, forthcoming; see also
the important work by C. Lis and H. Soly, Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-industrial
Europe, Hassocks 1979.
Feudal mode of production: Feudalismus. Materialien zur Theorie und Geschichte,
ed. L. Kuchenbuch in co-operation with B. Michael, Frankfurt 1977 (highly
recommended as a reader); idem, ‘Zur Struktur and Dynamik der “feudalen”
Produktionsweise im vorindustriellen Europa', in: ibid., pp. 694-761; idem,
‘Gesellschaftsformationen in der Geschichte’ (special issue of Argument, vol. 32),
Berlin 1978, pp. 137-144; P. Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, London 1974;
on peasant societies see also E. R. Wolf, Peasants, Englewood Cliffs 1966; T. Shantn.
‘The Nature and Logic of the Peasant Economy’, in: Journal of Peasant Studies 1,
173/74, pp. 63-80, 186-206.
On the long waves of European agriculture, whose discovery essentially goes back to
Wilhelm Abel and which, at least as far as French economic historians are concerned,
provide the basic structure for almost all their studies, see W. Abel, Fluctuations,
(Agricultural History)-, idem, ‘Agrarkonjunktur’, in: Handwörterbuch der
Sozialwissenschaften, vol. 1, 1956, pp. 49-59; see also the attempt at theory formation
by Bots, op. cit. as well as the alternative model developed by E. Le Roy Ladurie,
L histoire immobile’, in AnnESC 29, pp. 543-567. Short cycle: Ch.-E. Labrousse,'
Esquisse du mouvement des pnx et des revenus en France au XVIle siede, vol. 2. Paris
1933, pp. 543-567; idem, La crise de l’economie fran^aise a la fin de PAnden Re'gimeet
au debut de la Revolution, vol. 1, Paris 1944, pp. XIII-XVI, 172-184; idem, in: Histoire
economique et sociale de la France, (see above section on General Histories), vol. 2, pp.
529-563; W. Abel, Fluctuations, (see above section on Agricultural History); idem,
Massenarmut und Hungerkrisen im vorindustriellen Europa. Versuch einer Synopsis,
Hamburg 1974, pp. 267-301 and passim; P. Vilar, ‘Re'flexions sur la “crise de landen
type . Inegalite des recoltes” et “sous-de'veloppement” ’, in: Conjoncture
economique, structures sociales. Hommage a E. Labrousse, Paris 1974, pp. 37-58.
Production of manufactured goods: K. Bücher, Gewerbe’, in: Handwörterbuch der
Staatswissenschaften, vol. 4, Jena H927, pp. 966-989 (still relevant today); M. Weber,
Economic History (see above section on General Histories; still valuable in
many respects); B. Geremek, Le salariat dans Vartisanat parisien aux Xllle-X Vesiecles.
Etude sur le marche de la mam-d’oeuvre au Moyen Age, Paris 1968, esp. pp. 13-25; R.
Ennen, Zünfte und Wettbewerb. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen zünftlerischer
Wettbewerbsbeschränkungen im städtischen Handwerk und Gewerbe des Spät-
mittelalters, Köln 1971 (systematic survey); E. Schlemmer, Die Wirtschaft Bayerns.
I om hohen Mittelalter bis zum Beginn der Industrialisierung. Bergbau, Gewerbe
Handel, München 1970, pp. 33-36, 472-479 (precise deftnmons of concepts)- K H
Kaufhold, Das Handwerk der Stadt Hildesheim im 18. Jahrhundert Eine
wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Studie, Göttingen 1968 (case study); on the gradual
geographic expansion of manufacturing see Kriedte, Medick, Schlumbohm
Industrialization, pp. 6-9, 12-33.
 Bibliography 167

Commercial Capital: K. Marx, Geschichtliches über das Kaufmannskapital’, in:

idem, Das Kapital, vol. 3 (Marx, Engels, Werke, vol. 25; still unsurpassed); see also
J. Merrington, Town and Country in the Transition to Capitalism’, in M. Dobbetal.,
The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, (see above), pp. 170-195.
On the role of the state: R. Robin, La nature de l’etat ä la fin de landen regime:
Formation sociale, e'tat et transition’, in: dialectiques 1/2, 1973, pp. 31-54; see also P.
Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, London 1974.

Chapter 1

Comprehensive studies: F. Mauro, Le XI7e siede. Aspects economiques (Nouvelle

Clio 32), Paris 1966 (with extensive bibliography); H. A. Miskimin, The Economy of
Later Renaissance Europe, 1460-1600, Cambridge 1977 (useful survey); for the
Mediterranean see esp. the main work of the Annales school: F. Braudel, The
Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, vols. 1-2, London
1976.

1.1 Surveys: Reinhard et al., Histone generale,(see abve section on General

Histories), pp. 108-127; Guillaume, Poussou, Demographie, (see above section on
General Histories), pp. 111-115.
Specialized studies: F. Koerner, Die Bevölkerungsverteilung in Thüringen am
Ausgang des 16. Jahrhunderts’, in: Wiss. Veröffentlichungen des Deutschen Instituts
für Landeskunde NF 15/16, 1958, pp. 178-315; A. Croix, Nantes et le Pays nantais au
XVIe siecle. Etude demographique, Paris 1974; idem, La Bretagne aux Xl'Ie et XVIIe
siecles. La vie, la mort, la foi, vols. 1-2. Paris 1981; see also below the literature for
Table 2.
Control of population growth: G. Mackenroth, Bevölkerungslehre. Theorie,
Soziologie und Statistik der Bevölkerung, Berlin 1953, pp. 408-432; J. Haynal,
‘European Marriage Patterns in Perspective', in: Population in History, ed. E. A.
Wrigley, (see above section on General Histories), pp. 101-143; see esp. J. Dupäquier,
‘De 1'aniAial ä l’homme: le mecanisme autoregulateur des populations traditionelles’,
in: Reime de l’Institut de Sociologie 45, 1972, pp. 177-211; see also Bois, Crise, (see
above Introduction), p. 331, note 5.

1.2 General: Abel, (see above section on Agricultural History); Slicher van Bath,
Agrarian History, (see above section on Agricultural History), pp. 195-205, as well as
the agrarian histories of individual countries listed above in section on General
Histories.
Enclosure movement in England: See despite many qualifications which have since
been added: R. H. Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century, New York
1967 ('1912) and also L. Stone’s introduction to the new edition; strongly influenced by
Tawney: B. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Lord and Peasant
in the Making of the Modern World, London 1967, pp. 3-14; on improvements in
agriculture see the somewhat controversial book by E. Kerridge, The Agricultural
Revolution, London 1967; see also idem, Agrarian Problems in the Sixteenth Century
and After, London 1969 (with documents); J. A. Yelling, Common Fields and
Enclosure, London 1977; based on the ‘property rights’ approach: C. J. Dahlman, The
Open Field System and Beyond, Cambridge 1980; J. A. Yelling, ‘Rationality in the
Common Fields’, in: EcHR, 2nd Ser., 35, 1982, pp. 409-415.
France: Esp. the grand hypotheses in: E. Le Roy Ladurie, Les paysans de Languedoc,
168 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

vols. 1-2, Paris 1966 (abr. pb. edition, Paris 1969) and J. Jacquart, La crise rurale en
Ile-de-France 1550-1670, Paris 1974; see also L. Merle, Le me'tairie et revolution agraire
de la Gatine poitevine de la fin du Moyen Age a la Revolution, Paris 1958: G.
Cabourdin, Terre et hommesen Lorraine 1550-1635. Toulois et Comte de Vaudemont,
vols. 1-2, Nancy 1977 and G. Durand, Vin, vigne et vigneronds en Lyonnais et
Beaujolais (XVIe-XVIIIe siecles), Lyon 1979; for a synthesis see E. Le Roy Ladurie, ‘Les
paysans fran^ais du XVIe siede’, in: Conjoncture economique (see above
Introduction), pp. 333-352.
Southern Europe: J. Klein, The Mesta. A Study in Spanish Economic History,
1273-1836, Cambridge, Mass., 1920; B. Bennassar, Valladolid au siede d’or. Uneville
de Castille et sa Campagne au XVIe sikcle, Paris 1967, pp. 307-328; R. Romano,
Agricoltura e contadini nell’Italia del XV e del XVI secolo’, in: idem, Tra due crisi:
Thalia del rinascimento, Torino 1971, pp. 51-68; F. McArdle, Altopascio. A Study in
Tuscan Rural Society, 1587-1784, Cambridge 1978, and the important anthology by C.
Poni, Fossi e cavedagne benedicon le Campagne. Studi di storia rurale, Bologna 1982.
Western Central Europe: D. Saalfeld, Bauernwirtschaft und Gutsbetrieb in
vorindustrieller Zeit, Stuttgart 1960 (on the Principality of Brunswick) and A. Strobel,
Agrarverfassung im Übergang. Studien zur Agrargeschichte des badischen Breisgaus
vom Beginn des 16. bis zum Ausang des 18. Jahrhunderts, Freiburg 1972.
Netherlands: B. H. Slicher van Bath, The Rise of Intensive Husbandry in the Low
Countries’, in: Britain and the Netherlands, ed. J. S. Bromley and E. H. Kossmann,
London I960, pp. 130-153; see esp. J. de Vries, The Dutch Rural Economy in the
Golden Age, 1500-1700, New Haven 1974 (based on the model of increasing
specialization).
Re-feudalization of agrarian structures east of the River Elbe: J. Topolski, La
refeodalisation dans l’economie des grands domaines en Europe centrale et orientale
(XVIe-XVIIIe ss.)’, in: Studia Histonae Oeconomicae 6, 1971, pp. 51-63 (survey); Le
deuxieme sewage en Europe centrale et orientale (Rechen hes inter-nationales ä la
lumiere du marxisme 63/64), Paris 1970 (a commendable anthology); M.Matowist,
The Economic and Social Development of the Baltic Countries from (he Fifteenth to
the Seventeenth Centuries’, in: EcHR, 2nd Ser„ 12, 1958/59, pp. 177-189; fora critique
of the 'colonial theory', as presented by Mafowist in particular, see J. Topolski,
Commerce des denrees agricoles et croissance economique de la zone baltique aux
XVIe et XVIIe siecles', in: AnnESC 29, 1974. pp. 425-436. The East German debate of
the fifties on the nature of the lorwerk economy (feudal or capitalist) is still interesting;
see J. Nichtweiss, 'Zur Frage der zweiten Leibeigenschaft und des sog. preussischen
Weges der Entwicklung des Kapitalismus in der Landwirtschaft Ostdeutschlands’ in-
Z. für Geschichtswissenschaft 1, 1953, pp. 687-717; j. Kuczynski, 'Zum Aufsatz von
Johannes Nichtweiss über die zweite Leibeigenschaft’, in: ibid. 2, 1954, pp. 467-471 |
Nichtweiss, Reply to Jürgen Kuczynski’, in: ibid., pp. 471-476, as well as further
contributions in: ibid. 3-5, 1955-1957 (Engl, transl. of these articles now in: Review 3.
L 1979); see also B. Zientara, 'Z zagadmen spornych tzw. "wtdrnego poddarfstwa” w
Europie Srodkowej’ [Some problems of the "second bondage" in Central Europe] nr
Przeglgd Historyczny 47, 1956, pp. 3-47 (with abstract in French and an excellent
survey of earlier research). Specialized studies: H. Harnisch, Die Gutsherrschaft in
Brandenburg', in. JbWG 1969, 4, pp. 117-147; see also H. Rosenberg. The Rise of the
Junkers in Brandenburg-Prussia, 1410-1653', in: American Historical Review 49 1943
pp. 1-22, 228-242, now extended and published as: Die Ausprägung der
Junkerherrschaft in Brandenburg-Preussen. 1410-1618’, in: idem, Machteliten und
Wirtschaftskonjunkturen. Studien zur neueren deutschen Sozial- und Wirt-
 Bibliography 169

schaftsgeschichte, Göttingen 1978, pp. 2-1-82, 298-308; A. Wyczariski, Stadia nad

folwarkiem szlacheckirn w Polsce w latach I “>00-1580 [Studies on the ' Vorwerk' of the
Nobility in Poland in the Years 1500-1580], Warsaw 1960 (synopsis in French in:
AnnESC 18, 1963, pp. 81-87); L. Zylkowicz, Stadia nad gospodarstwem wiejskim w
dobrach koscielnych XVI w. [Studies in the Agrarian Economy on the Estates of the
Church in the 16th century], Warsaw 1962 (with abstract in French); J. A. Tichonov,
Die Feudalrente in Zentralrussland zur Zeit der Entstehung der Leibeigenschaft’, in:
]b WG 1974, 4, pp. 184-201, as well as the superb survey by C. Goercke, in: Russland, ed.
G. Goercke et al. (Fischer Weltgeschichte, vol. 31), Frankfurt 1972, pp. 130-138,
149-157. W. kula's model of the Vorwerk economy in Poland is of fundamental
importance; see idem, Theorie economique du Systeme fe'odal. Pour an modele de
Ve'conomie polonaise, 16e-18e siede, Paris 1970 (Polish 1962; Engl, transl: An
Economic Theory of the Feudal System, London 1976).
Cattle trade: H. Wiese and J. Bolts, Rinderhandel und Rinderhaltung in nord¬
westeuropäischen Küstengebieten vom 15. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart 1966;
Internationaler Ochsenhandel (1350-1750), ed. E. Westermann, Stuttgart 1979.

1.3 Upper Germany: see the excellent surveys by E. Schremmer, in: Handbuch der
bayerischen Geschichte, ed. M. Spindler, vol. 3. 1-2, München 197), pp. 477-503,
1073-1100, 1371-1380; on the Fuggers (apart from the hardly manageable biographies
by G. von Pölnitz): idem, Die Fugger, Frankfurt 1960; L. Schick, Un grand homme
d’affaires au debut du XVle siecles, Jacob Fugger, Paris 1957; R. Hildebrandt, Die
“Georg Fuggerschen Erben”. Ihre kaufmännische Tätigkeit und soziale Position
1555-1600, Berlin 1966; R. Mandrou. Les Fuggers, Proprielaires fonciers en Souabe
1560-1618. Etude de comportements socio-dconomiques a la fin du XVle siecle, Paris
1969, as well as the chapter on the Fuggers which is still interesting in: R. Ehrenberg,
Das Zeitalter der Fugger, Geldkapital und Creditverkehr im 16. Jahrhundert, vols. 1 -2,
Jena 31922 (‘1896); a much abridged version was published in English as: Capital and
Finance in the Age of the Renaissance, New York 1928.
Textile industry: H. Heaton, The Yorkshire Wopllen and Worsted Jndustries,
Oxford 1920; E. Coornaert, Un centre industriel d’autrefois. La draperie-sayettene
d’Hondschoote (XlVe-XVIIIe siecles), Paris 1930; W. Troeltsch, Die Calmer
Zeughandlungskompagnie und ihre Arbeiter. Studien zur Gewerbe- und Sozial¬
geschichte Altwürttembergs, Jena 1897 (three fundamental regional studies); for the
evolution of the “new draperies” see D. C. Coleman, ‘An Innovation and its Diffusion:
the “New Draperies'”, in: EcHR 2nd Ser.,22.1969, pp. 417-429; on the English textiles
exports see R. Davis, English Overseas Trade, 1500-1700, London 1973, and the sources
for Table 8 below; for the linen industry: E. Sabbe, Histone de Industrie liniere en
Belgique, Brussels 1945; G. Aubin and A. Kunze, Leinenerzeugung und Leinenabsatz
im östlichen Mitteldeutschland zur Zeit der Zunftkäufe. Ein Beitrag zur industriellen
Kolonisation des deutschen Ostens, Stuttgart 1940 (very important); on the origins of
the relocation to the countryside see G. Heitz, Ländliche Leinenproduktion in Sachsen
(1470-1555), Berlin 1961; H. Aubin, Die Anfänge der grossen schlesischen
Leinenweberei und -handlung’, in: VSWG 35, 1942, pp. 105-178, and H. Kisch, The
Textile Industries in Silesia and the Rhineland: A Comparative Study in
Industrialization (with a Postscriptum)’, in: Kriedte, Medick, Schlumbohm.
Industrialization, pp. 178-200.
Mining and Metals: R. Sprandel, Das Eisengewerbe im Mittelalter, Stuttgart 1968;
Schwerpunkte der Eisengewinnung und Eisenverarbeitung in Europa, 1500-1650, ed.
H. Kellenbenz, Köln 1974; J. U. Nef, ‘Silver Production in Central Europe, 1450-1618’,
170 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

in: Journal of Political Economy 49, 1941, pp. 575-591; E. Westermann. Das Eislebener
Garkupfer und seine Bedeutung für den europäischen Kupfermarkt, 1460-1560, Köln
1971; Schwerpunkte der Kupferproduktion und des Kupferhandels in Europa, 1500-
1650, ed. H. Kellenbenz, Köln 1977; of special interest: R. Hildebrandt, Augsburger
und Nürnberger Kupferhandel, 1500-1619. Produktion, Marktanteile und Finanzier¬
ung im Verleich zweier Städte und ihrer wirtschaftlichen Führungsschicht’, in: ibid.,
pp. 190-224; on the structure of enterprises and production relations see J. Strieder,
Studien zur Geschichte kapitalistischer Organisationsformen. Monopole, Kartelle
und Aktiengesellschaften im Mittelalter und zu Beginn der Neuzeit, München 21925,
and M. Mitterauer, 'Produktionsweise, Siedlungsstruktur und Sozialformen im
österreichischen Montanwesen des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit’, in:
Österreichisches Montanwesen. Produktion, Verteilung, Sozialformen, ed. M.
Mitterauer, München 1974, pp. 234-315; on Nürnberg in particular: H. Aubin, Die
Stückwerker von Nürnberg bis ins 17. Jahrhundert’, in: Beiträge zur Wirtschafts-und
Stadtgeschichte. Festschrift für El. Ammann, Wiesbaden 1965, pp. 333-352; very
important: M. Myska, Pre-industrial Iron-Making in the Czech Lands: The Labour
Force and Production Relations circa 1350-circa 1840' in: PP 82, 1979. pp. 44-72;
Mining: J. U. Nef, The Rise of the British Coal Industry, vols. 1-2, London 1932;
J. Lejeune, La formation du capitalisme moderne dans la principaute de Liege au
XVle siecle, Paris 1939.
Commerce: P. Jeannin, Les Marchands au XVle siecle, Paris 1957 (excellent
synthesis); good surveys by K. Glamann, in: FEcHE2, 1974, pp. 427-526, and CEcHEb,
1977, pp. 185-289; complementary: P. Pach, ‘The Shifting of International Trade
Routes in the 15th- 17th Centuries’, in: Acta historica 14, 1968, pp. 287-321; for the
Mediterranean see I-. Braudel and R. Romano, Navires et marchandises a l entree du
port de Livourne (1547-1611), Paris 1951; for East-Central Europe see the anthology
Der A ussenhandel Ostmitteleuropas, 1450-1650, ed. I. Bog, Köln 1971; A. Attman. The
Russian and Polish Markets in International Trade, 1500-1650, Göteborg 1973; A.
Maczak, Mifdzy Gdanskietn a Sündern. Studia nad handlem battycki, od poEowy XVI
do potowy XVII w. [Between Danzig and the Sound. Studies in the Baltic Trade from
the Middle of 16th to the Middle of 17th Century], Warsaw 1972 (with synopsis in
Engl.); see also P. Jeannin, The Sea-borne and Overland Trade Routes of Northern
Europe in the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries’, in: JEuEcH 11, 1982, pp. 5-59.
Overseas Expansion: P. Chaunu, L’expansion europe'enne du XIIle au XVe siecle
(Nouvelle C.lio 26), Paris 1969; idem, ConquPte et exploitation des nouveaux mondes
(XI le siecle) (Nouvelle Clio 26 bis), Paris 21976 (two superb textbooks with extensive
bibliographies); for Spain see the work by H. and P. Chaunu (essential, but very
difficult to use) Seville et I’Atlantique (1504-1650), vols. 1-8, 2. 2, Paris 1955-1960;
drastically abridged edition: Seville et VAmerique aux XVle et XVIle siecles. Paris
1977; complementary: idem, Les Philippines et le Pacifique des Iberiques, vols. 1-2,
Pans 1960-1966; for Portugal most important: V. M. Godinho, L’economie de
l'empire Portugals aux XVe et XVle slides. Paris 1969; see also the comprehensive
study by C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825, London 1969;
important observations on individual aspects in P. Vilar. Or et monnaie dans
Vhistoire, 1450-1920, Paris 1974, pp. 57ff (Engl, transl, A History of Gold and Money
London 1976) and idem, 'The Age of Don Quixote', in: Essays in European Economic
History, 1500-1800, ed. P. Earle, Oxford 1974, pp. 100-112; on the involvement of
foreign capital see the contributions by J. Heers et al. in: Les aspects international de
la decouverte ocean,que aux X Ve et X VIslides, ed. M. Mollat and P. Adam, Pans 1966
pp. 273-374; on the system of unequal division of labour which emerged in the 16th
 Bibliography 171

century, see Wallerstein, Modern World-System (see above Introduction) and A. G.

Frank, World Accumulation, 1492-1789, New York 1978 (quite close to Wallerstein’s
conceptualization).
Antwerp and Amsterdam: H. van der Wee, The Growth of the Antwerp Market and
the European Economy (Fourteenth-sixteenth Centuries), vols. 1-3, Louvain 1963
(indispensable): complementary: idem, 'Das Phänomen des Wachstums und der
Stagnation im Lichte der Antwerpener und südniederländischen Wirtschaft des 16.
Jahrhunderts’, in: VSWG 54, 1967, pp. 203-249; on the rise of Holland see the works by
M. Matowist, in: idem, Croissance et regression en Europe. Xll'e-XI lie siecles.
Recueil d’articles, Paris 1972, pp. 91-173; H. Kellenbenz, ‘Spanien, die nördlichen
Niederlande und der skandinavisch-baltische Raum in der Weltwirtschaft und Politik
um 1600’, in: VSWG 41, 1954, pp. 289-332; see also A. A. Christensen, Dutch Trade to
the Baltic about 1600. Studies in the Sound Toll Register and Dutch Shipping Records,
Copenhagen 1941.
Credit and Finance: The work by Fhrenberg (see above 1.3) is still unsurpassed; see
also the syntheses by G. Parker, in: FEcHE2, 1974, pp. 527-594, and H. Van der Wee, in:
CEcHE 5, 1977, pp. 290-392; for Antwerp: idem, 'Anvers et les innovations de la
technique financiere aux XVIe et XVIIe siecles’, in: AnnESC 22, 1967, pp. 1067-1089;
for Lyons the great study by R. Gascon, Grand Commerce et vie urbaineau XVIe siecle.
Lyon et ses marchands, vols. 1-2, Paris 1971; for the Genoeses: J.-G. DaSilva, Banqueet
credit en ltalie au XVIIe siecle, vols. 1-2 Paris 1969.

1.4 Monetary theory, as an explanation of the price revolution, predominated into

the 1960s; see G. Wiebe, Zur Geschichte der Preisrevolution des XVI. und XVII.
Jahrhunderts, Leipzig 1895 (essential at its time); see esp. E. J. Hamilton, American
Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501-1650, Cambridge, Mass., 1934; F.
Braudel and F. C. Spooner, 'Les metaux mone'taireset l’e'conomie du XVIe siecle’, in: X
Congresso Internazionale di Scienze Storiche, Roma, 4-11 settembre 1955. Relazioni,
vol. 4, Florence 1955, pp. 233-264; idem, in: CEcHE 4, 1966, pp. 442-456. It is only
during the last two decades that, following W. Abel’s lead, those who try to relate the
development to manufacturing and commerce have gained ground; see esp. I.
Hammarstrom, ‘The "Price Revolution” of the Sixteenth Centrury: Some Swedish
Evidence’, in: Scandinavian EcHR 5, 1957, pp. 118-154; s.a. R. B. Outhwaite, Inflation
in Tudor and Early Stuart England, London 1969; The Price Revolution in Sixteenth-
Century England, ed. P. H. Ramsey, London 1971 (the articles in this volume are not
all exclusively concerned with England); see also the subtle contribution by M.
Morineau, in: Histone e'conornique et sociale de la France (see above section on General
Histories), vol. 1,2, pp. 867-1018. On the debate of Hamilton’s position and that of his
follower J. M. Keynes see esp. P. Vilar, Problems of the Formation of Capitalism’, in:
PP 10. 1956, pp. 15-38.
Statistics of precious metal imports from America are currently compiled by M.
Morineau- see idem, 'Gazettes hollandaises tresors americains’, in: Anuano de histona
economica y social 2, 1969. pp. 289-361; 3, 1970, pp. 139-209, and idem, Histone
e'conornique et sociale du monde (see above section on General Histories), vol. 2, pp.

Rising ground-rent: E. Kerridge, 'The Movement of Rent, 1540-160 , in: EcHR 2nd
Ser 6, 1953/54, pp. 16-34; Ch. Heimpel, Die Entwicklung der Einnahmen und
Ausgaben des Heiliggeistspitals zu Biberach an der Riss von 1500 bis 1630, Stuttgart

1966
Decline of real wages: D. Saalfeld, 'Die Wandlungen der Preis- und Lohnstruktur
 172 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

während des 16. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland', in: Beiträge zu Wirtschaftswachstum

und Wirtschaftsstruktur im 16, und 19. Jahrhundert, ed. W. Fischer, Berlin 1971, pp.
9-28; E. Fl. Phelps Brown and Sh. V. Hopkins, ‘Seven Centuries of the Prices of
Consumables, compared with Builders’ Wage-rates', in: Economica NS 23, 1956, pp.
296-314; idem, in: ibid. 24, 1957, pp. 289-306 and 26, 1959, pp. 18-37; D. Woodward,
Wage Rates and Living Standards in Pre-industrial England’, in: PP 91, 1981, pp.
28-46; M. Baulant, 'Le salaire des ouvriers du bätiment ä Paris de 1400 ä 1726', in:
AnnESC 26, 1971, pp. 463-483.
Reconstruction of agricultural production with the help of tithes: Lesfluctuations
du produit de la dime. Conjoncture decimale et domaniale de la fin du Moyen Age au
XVII esiecle, ed. J. Goy and E. Roy Ladurie, Paris 1972; E. Le Roy Ladurieand J. Goy,
Tithe and Agrarian History from the Fourteenth to the Nineteenth Century. An Essay
in Comparative History, Cambridge 1981; Bois, Cnse (see above Introduction), pp.
111-123, 329-342; H. Neveux, Vie et declin d’une structure economique. Les grains du
Cambresis (fin du XIJ'e—debut du XVile siede), Paris 1980; for Poland the estimates
by .!• Topolski, Croissance economique de la Pologne du Xeau XXe siede’, in: Studia
historiae oeconomicae 2, 1967, pp. 3-29; see also the contributions to the relevant
subject area Peasant, Dues, Tithes and Trends in Agricultural Production in Pre¬
industrial Societies’, in: Proceedings of the Seventh International Economic History
Congress, ed.JVl. Flinn, vol. 1, Edinburgh 1978, pp. 111-161; now complete: Prestations
paysannes, dimes, rente fonciere et mouvement de la production agricole ä l’epoque
preindustnelle, ed. J. Goy and E. Le Roy Ladurie, vols. 2-1, Paris 1982.
Food crisis at beginning of 1570s: Abel, Massenarmut (see above Introduction), pp.
70-98; comprehensive interpretation: D. M. Palliser, ‘Tawney’s Century: Brave New
World or Malthusian Trap?’, in: EcHR, 2nd Ser., 35, 1982, pp. 339-353 (in taking issue
with the works by Tawney, F. J. Fisher et al„ unfortunately confined to England).
Social development: H. Kamen, The Iron Century. Social Change in Europe,
1550-1660, London 1971 (good general survey); regarding the growth of the lower
classes (as a result of population growth and the accumulation process) see the author's
notes in: Kriedte, Medick, Schumbohm, Industrialization (see above Introduction), pp.
15f- with footnotes 14 and 15; on the problem of poverty see J.-P. Gutton, La societe et
les pauvres. L’example de la ge'neralite de Lyon (1534-1789), Paris 1971; idem. La
societe et les pauvres en Europe (XVe-XVIIIe siecles), Paris 1974; Th. Fischer,
Städtische Armut und Armenfürsorge im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert. Sozialgeschichtliche
Untersuchungen am Beispiel der Städte Basel, Freiburg i. Br. und Strassburs
Göttingen 1979.
Nobility: L. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641, London 1965,
abudged: Oxford 1967 (indispensable); on the gentry, apart from R H Tawney The
Rise of the Gentry, 1558-1640’, in: EcHR 11. 1914, pp. 1-38 (the starting point of a
debate which continues to this day) see the summary by G. E. Mingay, The Gentry The
Rise and Fall of a Ruling Class, London 1976; for Poland: A Maczak ’Zur
Grundeigentumsstruktur in Polen im 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert’, in: JbWG 1967, 4 pp
11-161. ’ ’
Towns: for England, the survey by P. Clark and P. Slack. English Towns (see above
Introduction); of paradigmatic importance: Gascon, Lyon (see above section 1.3) and
Bennassai, l alladohd (see above section 1 2)
Peasants War: D W. Sabean, Landbesitz und Gesellschaft am Vorabend des
Bauernkriegs. Eine Studie der sozialen Verhältnisse im südlichen Oberschwaben in
den Jahren vor 1525, Stuttgart 1972, and P. Blickle, Die Revolution von 1525, München
 Bibliography 173

Status system: L. Stone, 'Social Mobility in England, 1500-1700’, in: PP33, 1966, pp.
16-55.

Chapter 2

Excellent survey by J. de Vries, The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, Cambridge

1976; ditto: kamen. Iron Century (see above Section 1.4).
Crisis of 1619/22: R. Romano, ‘Tra XVI e XVII secolo. Una crisi economica:
1619-1622', in: Rivista storica italiana 74, 1962, pp. 480-531, Engl, transl, in: The
General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, ed. G. Parker and L. M. Smith, London
1978, pp. 165-225; B. E. Supple, Commercial Crisis and Change in England,
1600-1642. A Study in the Instability of a Mercantile Economy, Cambridge 1959; Abel,
Massenarmut (see above Introduction), pp. I3O7M7.

2.1 General surveys in Reinhard et ab, Histoire generale (see above section on
General Histories), pp. 146-196; Guillaume. Poussou,Demograp/he(seeabovesection
on General Histories), pp. 115-118, 135ff.; for Germany: G. Franz, DerDreissigjdhrige
Krieg und das deutsche Volk., Untersuchungen zur Bevölkerungs- und Agrar¬
geschichte, Stuttgart 41979; for France now most important: J. Dupaquier, La
population rurale du Bassin Parisien a l’epoque de Louis XIV, Paris 1979; for England
see the pioneering study by E. A. Wrigley, ‘Family Limitation in Pre-industrial
England’, im: Ec HR 2nd Ser., 19, 1966, pp. 82-109, and more recently: D. Levine,
Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism, New York 1977, pp. 103-115.
On proto-industrial population problems idem, op. cit., pp. 1-15, 58-87, and H.
Medick, in: Kriedte, Medick, Schlumbohm, Industrialization, (s. above Introduction),
pp. 74-93.
2.2 General: Abel, Fluctuations, (see above section on General Histories); Slicher
van Bath, Agrarian History (see above section on General Histories), pp. 206-220, and
the agrarian histories of individual countries (see above section on General Histories).
On the development of the agricultural product see above 1.4; see also H. -H.
Wächter, Ostpreussische Domänenvorwerke im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Wiirzburg
1958, and J. Topolski, Gospodarstwo unejskie w dobrach arcybiskupstwa
gnieznlehskiego od Xl'l do XVIII wieku [Agriculture on the estates of the
Archbishopric Gnesen from 16th to 18th Century], Poznan 1958 (with French
synopsis).
International commodity exchange: J. A. Faber, The Decline of the Baltic Grain
Trade in the Second Half of the 17th Century’, in: Acta Histonae Neerlandica 1, 1966.
pp. 108-131.
England: A. H. John. ‘The Course of Agricultural Change, 1660-1760’, in: Essays in
Agrarian History, ed. W. E. Minchinton, vol. 1. Newton Abbot 1968, pp. 2-3-253, E. L.
Jones, ‘Agriculture and Economic Growth in England, 1660-1750: Agricultural
Change,' in: JEcIl 25, 1965, pp. 1-18; Agriculture and Economic Growth in England,
1650-1815, ed. E. L. Jones, London 1967 (excellent anthology, but neglects relations of
production); H. J. Habakkuk, ‘La disparitiondu paysan anglais’, in: AnnESC 20,1965,
pp. 649-663 (indispensable).
East-Central and Eastern Europe: for the regions east of the River Elbe see Franz,
Dreissigj'dhriger Krieg (see above 2.1), pp. 114-127 (but gives Thirty Years' War too
much weight); for Poland: J. Topolski, ‘La regression economique en Pologne du
XVIe au XVIIIe siede’, in: Acta Poloniae Historica 7, 1962, pp. 28-49; Z. Cwiek, Z
dziejow wsi koronneij XVII wieku [On the history of the crown village in the 17th
 174 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Century], Warsaw 1966; for Bohemia: W. Stark, Ursprung und Aufstieg des land¬
wirtschaftlichen Grossbetriebs in den Böhmischen Ländern, Brünn 1934; for Russia:
Goehrke, in: Russland (see above 1.2), pp. 162-170.

2.3 On the decreasing importance of East-Central Europe: Zs. P. Pach,

Diminishing Share of East-Central Europe in the 17th-Century International Trade',
in: Acta Historien 16, 1970, pp. 289-306.
The Decline of Italy and Spain: C. M. Cipolla, ‘The Economic Decline of Italy’, in:
Crisis and Change in the Venetian Economy in the 16th and 17th Centuries, ed. B.
Pullan, London 1968, pp. 127-145 (ibid, also further articles); idem; Before the
Industrial Revolution (see above section on General Histories), pp. 236-244; J. H.
Elliot, ‘The Decline of Spain', in: PP 20, 1961. pp. 52-75; more differentiated: H.
kamen, ‘The Decline of Spain: A Historical Myth?’, in: PP 81. 1978, pp. 24-50: see
also the ensuing debate in: ibid. 91, 1981, pp. 171-185.
Central and Western Europe: for ETpper Germany see E. Schremmer, in: Handbuch
der bayerischen Geschichte (see above 1.3), vol. 3, 1-2, pp. 504-512, 1100-1117,
1381-1386; P. Deyon, ‘La production manufacturiere en France au XVIIe siecle etses
problemes’, in: XVIIe siecle 70/71, 1966, pp. 47-63; idem., Amiens, capitate
provinciate. Etude su la societe urbaine au 17e siecle, Paris 1967; P. Goubert, Beauvais
et le Beauvaisis de 1600 a 1730, vol. 1-2, Paris 1960; abridged version: Cent mille
provinciaux au XVIIe siecle-Paris 1968 (two studies of fundamental importance);
see also A. Lottin, Chavatte, ourvrier lillois, un contemporain de Louis XIV, Paris 1979
(evaluation of the diary of a wool weaver).
Proto-Industrialization: Apart from F. F. Mendels, ‘Proto-industrialization: The
First Phase of the Industrialization Process’, in: JEcH 32, 1972, pp. 241-261, and Ch.
Tilly and R. Tilly, ‘Agenda for European Economic History in the 1970s’, in: ibid. 31,
1971. pp. 184-198, see Kriedte, Medick, Schlumbohm, Industrialization (see above
Introduction), passim, in particular on the origins the contribution by the author, in:
ibid., pp. 12-37; F. F. Mendels, ‘Auxoriginesde la proto-industrialisation’, in -.Bulletin
du Centre d’histoire e'eonomique et sociale de la region lyonnaise 2, 1978, pp. 1-21; see
also the conference proceedings: ‘Industrie et artisans ruraux’, in: Deuxieme
Conference Internationale d’histoire e'eonomique, Aix-en-Provence, 1962, vol. 2, Paris
1965, pp. 363-484, and Agrarisches Nebengewerbe und Formen der Reagrarisierung im
Spätmittelalter und 19.120. Jahrhundert, ed. H. Kellenbenz, Stuttgart 1975; on the
decline of Leiden, see Ch. Wilson, ‘Cloth Production and International Competition
in the Seventeenth Century’, in'EcHR 2nd Ser. 13, 1960/61, pp. 209-221; for the
development of the trades in the northern Netherlands and in England see, e.g., van
Houtte, Economic History (see above section on General Histories) and Pollard and
Crossley, Wealth of Britain (see above section on General Histones).
Trade with the Baltic area: P. Jeannin, ‘Les comptesdu Sund comme source pour la
construction d indices generaux de l’activite e'eonomique en Europe (XVIe-XVIIIe
siecle)’, in: Revue Histonque 231, 1964, pp. 55-102, 307-340 (fundamental); see also
Faber, Decline (see above 2.2) and M. Morineau, in: Histone e'eonomique et sociale du
monde (see above section on General Histories), vol. 2, pp. 89-94.
Overseas expansion: F. Mauro, ‘Towards an “Intercontinental Model”: European
Overseas Expansion between 1500and 1800’, in: EcHR 2nd Ser., 14, 1961/62, pp. 1-17
(important); see also idem, L’expansion europe'enne 1600-1870 (Nouvelle Clio 27)
Paris 1964; for the Atlantic economic area: D. A. Farnie, ‘The Commercial Empire of
the Atlantic, 1607-1783’, in: EcHR 2nd Ser., 15, 1962/63, pp. 205/218; K. G. Davies,
The North Atlantic World in Seventeenth Century, Minneapolis 1974 (at present the
 Bibliography 175

best synthesis available); for Brazil. F. Mauro, Le Portugal el I’Atlantique au Xl'lle

siecle (1570-1670). Etude economique, Paris 1960 (indispensable); for the Caribbean:
R. Pares, Merchants and Planters, Cambridge 1960; R. S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves. The
Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713, Chapel Hill 1972; R. B.
Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery. An Economic History of the British West Indies,
1623-1775, Aylesbury 1974; M. Deveze, Antilles, Guyanes, la Mer des Caraibes de 1492 a
1789, Paris 1977, as well as the numerous works by G. Debien on the French Antilles
(quoted in Deveze, op. cit., p. 377); for North America: C. P. Nettels, The Roots of
American Civilization. A History of American Colonial Life, New York 21963 ('1938)
and G. M. Walton and J. F. Shepherd, The Economic Rise of Early America,
Cambridge 1979.
Interest in the slave trade has been revived since Ph.D. Curtin outlined its
quantitative dimensions more sharply for the first time in his The Atlantic Slave
Trade. A Census, Madison 1969; see e.g. the anthologies Race and Slavery in the
Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies, ed. St. L. Engerman and E. D. Genovese,
Princeton 1975; La traite des noirs par TAtlantique. Nouvelles Approches, Paris 1976;
The Uncommon Market. Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade,
ed. H. A. Germery and J. S. Hogendorn, New York 1979; different in nature, but not less
stimulating was E. Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, London 1964 (1944), even if the
later Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago linked slave trade and industrialization
too directly. On the triangular trade: K. G. Davies, The Royal African Company,
London 1957.
Relations between Europe and Asia: D. Rothermund, Europa und Asien im
Zeitalter des Merkantilismus, Darmstadt 1978 (excellent summary); more detailed: H.
Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800, Minneapolis 1976; A. R.
Disney, Twilight of the Pepper Empire. Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the
Early Seventeenth Oentury, Cambridge, Mass., 1978; on the penetration of the trading
companies into Asia see N. Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution of the
Seventeenth Century. The East India Companies and the Decline of the Caravan
Trade, Chicago 1974 (indispensable); on the two East India Companies and their trade
with Asia see K. Glamann, Dutch Asiatic Trade, 1620-1740, Copenhagen 1958, and K.
N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company,
1660-1760, Cambridge 1978.
On the trading companies in general see E. L. J. Coornaert, in: CEcHE 4, 1967, pp.
223-274; see also Steensgaard, op. cit., pp. 114-153; Companies and Trade. Essays on
Overseas Trading Companies during the Anden Regime, ed. L. Blusseand F. Gaastra,
The Hague 1981; L. Dermigny and K. Glamann, 'Le fonctionnement des compagnies
des Indes’, in: Societes et compagnies de commerce en Orient et dans I’Ocean Indien,
ed. M. Mollat, Paris 1970, pp. 443-479.
On the export trade of the European melropoles see Davis, Overseas Trade (see above
1.3); idem, ‘English Foreign Trade, 1600-1700’, in: EcllR 2nd Ser., 7, 1954/55, pp.
150-166; The Growth of English Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries, ed. W. E. Minchinton, London 1969 (very useful anthology); J. Delumeau,
‘Le commerce exterieur fran^ais au XVIIe siecle’, in: Xl'lle siecle 70/71, 1966, pp.
81-105.
On the position of the Netherlands in the world economy of the 17th century see Ch.
Wilson, The Dutch Republic and the Civilisation of the Seventeenth Century, London
1968; C. R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600-1800, London 1965 (good
survey); see also A. -E. Sayous, ‘Le role d’Amsterdam dans l’histoire du capitalisme
commercial et financier’, in: Revue Histonque 183, 1938, pp. 242-280; V. Barbour,
176 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Capitalism in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century, Baltimore 1950; Dutch

Capitalism and World Capitalism. Capitalisme hollandais el capitalisme mondial, ed.
M. Aymard, Cambridge 1982; on the Amsterdam “Wisselbank” see J. G. van Dillen.
‘The Bank of Amsterdam', in: History of the Principal Public Banks, ed. J. G. van
Dillen, ‘The Bank of Amsterdam’, in: History of the Principal Public Banks, ed. J. G.
van Dillen, The Hague 1934, pp. 79-123; on the Stock Exchange see the introduction to
N. W. Posthumus, Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland, vol. 1, Leiden 1946;
on the struggles with England, see esp. Ch. Wilson, Profit and Power. A Study of
England and the Dutch Wars, London 1957; on the decline in the 18th century, idem
‘The Decline of the Netherlands’, in: idem. Economic History and the Historian.
Collected Essays, London 1969, pp. 22-47 (the best survey); more detailed: J. de Vries,
De economische achteruitgang der Republiek in de achttiende eeuw, Leiden 21968
(1959).
The Rise of England: apart from the works already quoted, see R. Davis, The Rise of
the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, London
1962 (important); K. G. Davies, ‘Joint Stock Investment in the Late Seventeenth
Century', in: EcHR 2nd Ser., 4, 1951/52, pp. 283-301; J. Clapham, The Bank of
England. A History, vol. 1, Cambridge 1944; P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial
Revolution in England. A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688-1756,
London 1967 (fundamental); see also E. Schulin, Handelsstaat England. Das
politische Interesse der Nation am Aussenhandelvom 16. bis ins frühe 18. Jahrhundert,
Wiesbaden 1969 (analysis of the tract literature).

2.4 The starting point of the debate on the Crisis of the 17th Century was the
important article by E. J. Hobsbawm, The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century’, in:
Crisis in Europe, 1560-1660. Essays from Past and Present, ed. T. Aston, London 1965.
pp. 1-58 (1954); supplementary: idem, ‘The Seventeenth Century in the Development
of Capitalism , in: Science and Society 24, 1969, pp. 97-112. In this picture of thecrisis,
Hobsbawm failed to give sufficient weight to its demographic, agrarian. Malthusian
and social aspects. It was only in the ensuing discussion that these trends were taken
into account; see the anthologies Crisis in Europe (see above) and General Crisis (see
above 2) and the comprehensive study by M. Hroch and J. Petran. 17 stoleti—knze
feudalni spolecnosti? [The 17th Century—Crisis of Feudal Society?], Prague 1976;
extended version in German: Das 17. Jahrhundert. Krise der feudalen Gesellschaft,
Hamburg 1981. On various aspects see Abel, Agrarkrisen (see above section on General
Histories); see also the regional studies by Goubert, Le Roy Ladurie, Jacquart (see
above 2.3 and 1.2); N. Steensgaard, ‘The Seventeenth-Century Crisis’, in: General Crisis
(see above 2), pp. 26-56 (stresses pressures through tax, thecrisis not one of production,
but if distribution), and A. Wyczanski, ‘W sprawie kryzysu XVII stulecia [‘On the
Crists of the 17th Century’], in: Kwartalnik Historyczny 69. 1962, pp. 656-672 (on the
burdening of the peasants with the consequences of economic recession);
supplementary: idem, Polska—rzecz(i pospolit# szlachecka 1454-1764 [Poland—a
republic of the nobility, 1454-1764], Warsaw 1965, pp. 199-210, 301-326. On the
significance of the I lurry Years’ War see H. Haan, Prosperität und Dreissig jähriger
Krieg’, in: GG 7, 1981, pp. 91-118.
On the crisis of peasant society see the French dissertations quoted above and P.
Goubert, 'The French Peasantry of the Seventeenth Century: A regional Example’, in:
PP 10, 1956, pp. 55-77, and I. Gieysztorowa, ‘Guerre et regression en Masovie aux
XVIe et XVIIe s.ecles’; in: AnnESC 13, 1958, pp. 651-668; on Germany the notes in
Franz, Dreissigjahnger Krieg (see above 2.1). pp. 107-114; for Italy, the important study
 Bibliography 177

by G. Delille, Croissance d’une societe rurale. Montesarchio el la vallee caudine aux

XJ'IIe el Xl'IIIe siecles, Naples 1973.
With regard to the popular uprisings in France, a lively debate was caused by the
book of the Russian historian R. F. Porshnev, LessoulEuements populaires en France de
1623 a 1648. Paris 1963; see, apart from works by R. Mousnier (e g. idem, Fureurs
paysannes. Les paysans dans les revoltes du XJ'IIe siicle [France, Russia, China], Paris
1967, the regional studies, esp. Y.-M. Berce, Histone des Croquants. Etude des
soulevements populaires au XJ'IIe siecle dans le sud-ouest de la France, vol. 1-2,
Geneva 1974; see also idem, Croquants el nu-pieds. Les soulevements paysans en
France du XVIe au XIXe siecle, Paris 1974 (annotated extracts from sources);
comparatiste: G.S.L. Davies. Peasant Revolt in France and England: A Comparison’,
in: Agricultural History Review 21, 1973, pp. 122-134.
“Nationalization” and “Oligarchization”: J. Meyer, Noblesse et pouvoirs dans
VEurope d’ancien regime, Paris 1974; D. J. Roorda, ‘The Ruling Classes in Holland in
the Seventeenth Century’, in: Britain and the Netherlands (see above 1.2), vol. 2,
Groningen 1964, pp. 109-132; and esp. Stone, Social Mobility (seeabove 1.2); see also
H.-Ch. Schröder, Die neuere englische Geschichte im Lichte einiger Modern¬
isierungstheoreme’, in: Studien zum Beginn der modernen Welt, ed. R.
Koselleck, Stuttgart 1977, pp. 30-65 (an excellent survey).

Chapter 3

3.1 Surveys in: Reinhard et al., Histoire generale (see section on General Histories),
pp. 197-271; Guillaume, Possou, Demographie (see above section on General
Histories), pp. 118-121, 135ff.; J. Dupäquier, ‘Les debuts de la grande aventure
demographique’, in: Prospectives 3, 1974, pp. 7-38; on England esp. D. Levine, ‘Some
Competing Models of Population Growth during the First Industrial Revolution’, in:
JEuEcH 7, 1978, pp. 499-516 (good survey of the state of research); on proto-industrial
population see above 2.1; on the links between population growth and
commercialization of agriculture in East-Central Europe see EL Harnisch,
Bevölkerung und Wirtschaft. Über die Zusammenhänge zwischen
sozialökonomischer und demographischer Entwicklung im Spätfeudalismus’, in:
JbWG 1975, pp. 57-87.

3.2 General: Abel, Agrarkrisen (see above section on General Histories), pp. 196-219;
Slicher van Bath, Agrarian History (see above section on General Histories), pp. 221 ff.;
J. Blum, The End of Old Order in Rural Europe, Princeton 1978; for a comparative
discussion of France, Central and Eastern Europe, see the review by J. de Vries in:
EcHR 2nd Ser. 32, 1979, pp. 614L and also the agrarian histories of individual countries
(see above section on General Histories); on the development of the productive forces:
M. Morineau, Les faux-semblants d’un demurrage economique: agriculture et
demography en France au Xl'IIIe siecle, Paris 1971 (contests the existence of an
agricultural revolution in France, but not without underestimating the setback caused
by the Revolution of 1789); R. Berthold, ‘Einige Bemerkungen über den
Entwicklungsstand des bäuerlichen Ackerbaus vor den Agrarreformen des 19.
Jahrhunders’, in: Beiträge zur deutschen Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte des 18.
und 19. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1962, pp. 81-131; D. Saalfeld, ‘Die Produktion und
Intensität der Landwirtschaft in Deutschland und angrenzenden Gebieten um 1800’,
in: Z. für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 15, 1967, pp. 137-175; tax burdens: k. -
 178 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

W. Henning, Dienste und Abgaben der Bauern im 18. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart 1969; on
the significance of serfdom still: R. Rosdolsky, 'The Distribution of the Agrarian
Product in Feudalism’, in: JEcH 11, 1951, pp. 247-265.
England: apart from the literature listed in sub-sections 1.2 and 2.2 above, see J. D.
Chambers, and G. E. Mingay, The Agricultural Revolution, 1750-1880, London 1966;
as a complementary study see the short outline by G. E. Mingay, Enclosure and the
Small Farmer in the Age of Industrial Revolution, London 1968; J. M. Martin,
'The Small Landowner and Parliamentary Enclosure in Warwickshire’, in: EcHR 2nd.
Ser., 32, 1979, pp. 328-343; above all W. G. Hoskins, The Midland Peasant. The
Economic and Social History of a Leicestershire Village, London 1957, ibid. pp.
247-276 on the process of enclosure (less irenical than Chambers and Mingay); among
the older literature with a critical orientation: J. L. and B. Hammond, The Village
Labourer, London 1978 (1911); for Scotland now: E. J. Hobsbawn. ‘Capitalisme et
agriculture: les reformateurs e'cossais au XVIIIe siede’, in: AnnESC 33, 1978 pp
580-601.
France: esp. E. Le Roy Ladurie, ‘Revokes et contestations rurales en France de 1675 a
1788 , in: AnnESC 29, 1974, pp. 6-22; R. Moore, Social Origins (see above 1.2), pp.
40-69; M. Block, La lutte pour l individualisme agraire dans la France du XVIIIe
siede’, in: Annales d’histoire economique et sociale 2, 1930, pp. 329-383, 511-556; H.
Hinrichs, ‘Die Ablösung von Eigentumsrechten. Zur Diskussion über die droits
feodaux in Frankreich am Ende des Ancien Regime und in der Revolution’, in:
Eigentum und l erfassung. Zur Eigentumsdiskussion im ausgehenden 18.
Jahrhundert, ed. R. Vierhaus, Göttingen 1972, pp. 112-178; see also G. van den
Heuvel, Grundprobleme der Französischen Bauernschaft 1730-1794. Soziale
Differenzierung und sozio-ökonomischer Wandel vom Ancien Regime bis zur
Revolution. München 1982 (with a survey of research); for individual regions see Le
Roy Ladurie, Paysans de Languedoc {see above 1.2); P. de Saint Jacob. Les paysans de
la Bourgogne du Nord au dernier siede de l’ancien regime, Paris 1960; A. Poitrineau,
La vie rurale en basse Auvergne au XVIIIe siecle, vols. 1-2, Paris 1965.
Germany: see above 1.2; A. Straub, Das badische Oberland im 18. Jahrhundert. Die
Transformation einer bäuerlichen Gesellschaft vor der Industrialisierung, Husum
1977, Landwirtschaft und Kapitalismus. Zur Entwicklung der ökonomischen und
sozialen Verhältnisse in der Magdeburger Börde vom Ausgangdes 18. Jahrhunderts bis
zum Ende des ersten Weltkrieges, ed. H. -J. Rach and B. Weissei, vol. 1, Berlin 1978 (see
esp. the contribution by H. Harnisch); H. -H. Müller, Märkische Landwirtschaft vor
den Agrarreformen von 1807. Entwicklungstendenzen des Ackerbaus in der zweiten
Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts, Potsdam 1967, as well as the supplementary articles by
idem, in: JbWG, 1963-1966; of paradigmatic significance H. Harnisch, Die Herrschaft
Boitzenburg. Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung der sozialökonomischen Struktur
ländlicher Gebiete in der Mark Brandenburg vom 14. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, Weimar
1968; for Silesia still unsurpassed: J. Ziekursch, Hundert Jahre schlesischer
Agrargeschichte. Vom Hubertusburger Frieden bis zum Abschluss der
Bauernbefreiung, Breslau 21927.
Russia: M Confino, Domaines et seigneurs en Russie vers la fin du XVIIIe siecle.
Etüde de structures agraires et de mentalites economiques, Paris 1963 On the
beginnings of agrarian reform H. Sch.ssler, Preussische Agrargesellschaft im Wandel.
W irtschaftliche, gesellschaftliche und politische Transformationsprozesse von 1763
bis 1847, Gottingen 1978 (theory-orientated summary of latest research); H. Harnisch,
Die agraipolitischen Reformmassnahmen der preussischen Staatsführung in dem
Jahrzehnt vor 1806/07’, ,n: JbWG 3, 1977, pp. 129-153 (fundamental); K. Grünberg,
 Bibliography 179

Die Bauernbefreiung und die Auflösung des gutsherrlich-bäuerlichen Verhältnisses in

Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien, vols. 1-2, Leipzig 1893-1894; see also R. Rozdolski,
Die grosse Steuer- und Agrarreform Josefs II. Ein Kapitel zur österreichischen
Wirtschaftsgeschichte , Warsaw 1961; E. M. Link, The Emancipation of the Austrian
Peasant, 1740-1798, New York 1974, as well as the summary by Chr. Dipper, Die
Bauernbefreiung in Deutschland, 1790-1810, Stuttgart 1980

3.3 Mercantilism: E, F. Heckscher, Der Merkantilismus, vols. 1-2, Jena 1932

(indispensable standard work; Engl, version: Mercantilism, vols. 1-2, rev. ed. London
1955); see also Revisions in Mercantilism, ed. D. C. Coleman, London 1969 (pb.; a
collection of essential essays); esp. A. Gerschenkron, Europe in the Russian Mirror.
Four Lectures in Economic History, Cambridge 1970, pp. 62-96; latest study: F. Blaich,
Die Epoche des Merkantilismus, Wiesbaden 1973.
On the development of the Atlantic economic area: apart from the literature listed in
sub-section 2.3 above, see R. Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition,
London 1975 (Part 1); above all S. Drescher, Econocide. British Slai'ery in the Era of
Abolition, Pittsburgh 1977; see also the collections: H. S. Klein, The Middle Passage,
Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade, Princeton 1978, and Liverpool, the
African Slai>e Trade, and Abolition. Essays to illustrate Current Knowledge and
Research, ed. R. Anstey and P.E.H. Hair, n.p. 1976; on the economy of the United
States see D.C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860,
Englewood Cliffs 1961, Part 1; Portugal and Spain: M. Morineau, ‘Or bresilien et
gazettes hollandaises', in: Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 25, 1978, pp.
3-60; V. M. Godinho, ‘Le Portugal, les flottes du sucre et les flottes de For (1670-1770)’,
in: AnnESC 5, 1950, pp. 184-197; H.E.S. Fisher, The Portugal Trade. A Study of
Anglo-Portuguese Commerce, 1700-1770, London 1971; R. Herr, The Eighteenth-
Century Revolution in Spain, Princeton 1958, pp. 120-154; esp. Vilar, Catalogue (see
above section on General Histories), vol. 3, and D. A. Brading, Miners and Merchants
in Bourbon Mexico, 1763-1810, Cambridge 1971.
Asia: see the literature listed in sub-section 2.3 above; see also H. Furber, John
Company at Work. A Study of European Expansion in India in the Late Eighteenth
Century, Cambridge 1951 (indispensable); P. Nightingale, Trade and Empire in
Western India, 1784-1806, Cambridge 1970 (important, esp. for the underlying causes
of English expansionist policies); P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes. The British in
Bengal in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford 1976 (cautious in its judgment); L.
Dermigny, La Chine et I’Occident. Le commerce a Canton auXVUIe siecle, vols. 1-3,
Paris 1964 (important, but difficult to use).
On the foreign trade of the European metropoles: R. Davies, English Trade,
1700-1774’, in: EcHR 2nd Ser., 15, 1962/63, pp. 285-303 (fundamental); idem, The
Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade, Leicester 1979; Deane and Cole,
British Economic Growth (see above section on General Histories), pp. 41 -59; P. Leon,
‘Structure du commerce exterieur et evolution industrielle de la France ä la fin du
XVIIIe siecle’, in: Conjoncture economique (see above Introduction), pp. 407-432
(most important); see also M. Morineau, ‘1750, 1787: Un changement important des
structures de l’exportation franchise dans le monde saisi d’apres les e'tats de la balance
du commerce’, in: Vom Anden Regime zur französischen Revolution. Forschungen
und Perspektiven, ed. E. Hinrichs et al., Göttingen 1978, pp. 395-412, J. Tarrade, Le
commerce colonial de la France ä lafrn de 1’Ancien Regime. L’evolution du regime de
“L’Eclusif” de 1763 a 1789, vols. 1-2, Paris 1972; on the re-export trade see esp. P. Butel.
Les negociants bordelais, l’Europe et les ties au XI Ille siecle, Paris 1974, on the rise of
 180 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Hamburg see W. Kresse, Materialien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Hamburger

Handelsflotte, 1765-1823, Hamburg 1966, and H. Pohl, Die Beziehungen Hamburgs
zu Spanien und dem spanischen Amerika in der Zeit von 1740-1806, Wiesbaden 1963.
Credit and Finance: apart from anthologies listed in sub-section 1.3 above see J.
Sperling, ‘The International Payments Mechanism in the Seventeenth arid Eighteenth
Centuries’, in: EcHR 2nd Ser., 14, 1961/62, pp. 446-468; for England see the essential
monograph by Dickson, Financial Revolution (see above 2.3), as well as Capital
Formation in the Industrial Revolution, ed. F. Crouzet, London 1972 (excellent short
reader, see esp. the contributions by Crouzet and S. Pollard).
On the development of manufacturing general: Deane and Cole, British Economic
Growth (see above section on General Histories), pp. 50-62; P. Leon, in: Htstoire
economique et sociale de la France (see above section on General Histories), vol. 2, pp.
217-266, 514-528; T. J. Markovitch, Les industries lainieres de Colbert a la Revolution,
Geneva 1976 (quantitative study); E. Schremmer, Wirtschaft Bayerns (see above
Introduction); K. H. Kaufhold, Das Gewerbe in Preussen urn 1800, Gottingen 1978
(essential synchronic study).
Proto-Industrialization: see literature listed in sub-section 2.3 above; on the driving
forces behind proto-industrialization, see the author's contribution in: Kriedte,
Medick, Schlumbohm, Industrialization (see above Introduction), pp. 23-37; on the
proto-industrial familial economy, H. Medick, in: ibid., pp. 38-73; on production
relations, J. Schlumbohm. in: ibid., pp. 34-125; on the investment strategy of the
Verleger esp. S. D. Chapman, Industrial Capital before the Industrial Revolution: an
Analysis of the Assets of a Thousand Textile Entrepreneurs', in: Textile History and
Economic History. Essays in Honour of Miss J. de Lacy Mann, ed. N. B. Harte and K.
G. Ponting, Manchester 1973, pp. 113-137; on the role of the towns, see P. Kriedte, Die
Stadt im Prozess der europäischen Proto-Industrialiserung’, in: Die alte Stadt 9, 1982,
pp. 19-51; regional studies: apart from the works by Heaton and Troeltsch (see above
1.3) see A. P. Wadsworth, J.de Lacy Mann, The Cotton Trade and Industrial
Lancashire, 1600-1780, Manchester 1931 (still the most interesting British study); R. G.
Wilson, Gentlemen Merchants. The Merchants Community in Leeds, 1700-1830,
Manchester 1971 (important for the textile industries in West Riding); P. Hudson,
Proto-Industrialisation: the Case of the West Riding Wool Textile Industry in the 18th
and early 19th Centuries', in: History Workshop 12, 1981. pp. 34-61; S. D.
Chapman, ‘The Genesis of the British Hosiery Industry’, in: Textile Industry 3. 1972,
pp. 7-50; idem, ‘Enterpriseand Innovation in the British Hosiery Industry, 1750-1850',
in. ibid. 5, 1974, pp. 14-37; M. B. Rowlands. Masters and Men in the West Midlands
Metalware Trades before the Industrial Revolution, Manchester 1975; D. Hey, The
Rural Metalworkers of the Sheffield Region. A Study of Rural Industry before the
Industrial Revolution, Leicester 1972; ‘Aux origines de la revolution industrielle.
Industrie rurale et fabriques’, in: Revue du Nord 61, 1979, pp. 5-208; Aux origins de la
revolution industrielle, Fase. 2’. in: ibid. 63, 1981, pp. 5-251 (important collections of
essays); Ph. Guignet, Mines, manufactures et ouvners du Valenciennois au XVI lie
siede New York 1977; P. Bois, Paysans de VOuest. Des structures economies et
sociales aux options pohtiques depuis Pepoque revolutionnaire dans la Sarthe Le
Mans 1960 (abridged pb. edition, Paris 1971; contains important chapters on the linen
industry); J. K. J. I hompson, Clermont-de-Lodeve, 1633-1798. Fluctuations in the
Prosperity of a Languedocian Cloth-Making Town, Cambridge 1982- H Hasquin
Une mutation. Le "Pays de Charleroi” aux X Vile et XVI Ile si'ecles. Aux ongines de la
revolution industrielle en Belgique, Brussels 1971; P. Lebrun, L’Industrie de la lame a
Verniers pendant le XVlIle et le debut du XIXe siede. Contribution a Vetude des
 Bibliography 181

origines de la revolution industrielle, Liege 1918; F. F. Mendels, ‘Agriculture and

Peasant Industry in Eighteenth-Century Flanders’, in: Krieche, Medick, Schlumbohm,
Industrialization (see above Introduction), pp. 161-177; II. Kisch, 'Das Erbe des
Mittelalters, ein Hemmnis wirtschaftlicher Entwicklung: Aachens Tuchgewerbe vor
1790’, in: Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter’ 30, 1965, pp. 253-308; idem, 'Prussian
Mercantilism and the Rise of the Krefeld Silk Industry: Variations on an Eighteenth-
Century Theme’ Transactions of the American Philosophical Society NS 58, 7,
Philadelphia 1968; idem, 'From Monopoly to Laissez-faire: the Early Growth of the
Wupper Valley Textile Trades', in: JEuEcH 1, 1972, pp. 298-407; K. H. Kaufhold, Das
Metallgewerbe der Grafschaft Mark im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrjundert, Dortmund
[1976] St. Reekers, ‘Beiträge zur statistischen Darstellung der gewerblichen Wirtschaft
Westfalens um 1800', Part 1-9, in: Westfälische Forschungen 17, 1964 pp. 83-176, 18,
1965, pp. 75-130; 19, 1966, pp. 27-78; 20, 1967, pp. 58-108; 21. 1968, pp. 98-161; 23,
1971, pp. 75-106; 25, 1973, pp. 59-167; 26. 1974, pp. 60-83; 29, 1978/79, pp. 24-118; J.
Schlumbohm, ‘Der saisonale Rhythmus der Leinenproduktion im Osnabrucker Land
während des späten 18. und der esten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts', in: Archiv für*
Sozialgeschichte 19, 1979. pp. 263-298; A. Kunze, ‘Vom Bauerndorf zum Weberdorf.
Zur sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Struktur der Waldhufendörfer der südlichen
Oberlausitz im 16., 17. und 18. Jahrhundert', in: Oberlausitzer Forschungen. Beiträge
zur Landesgeschichte, ed. M. Reuther, Leipzig 1961. pp. 165-192, 350; B. Schöne, Kultur
und Lebensweise der Lausitzer Bandweber (1750-1850), Berlin 1977; Kisch. Textile
Industries (see above 1.3); A. Klima, The Role of Domestic Industry in Bohemia in the
Eighteenth Century’, in: EcHR 2nd Ser., 27, 1974, pp. 48-56; M. Kulczykowski,
Andrychowski osrodek plociennyczy w XVIII i XIX wiekufThe Centre of the Linen
Trade in Andrychow in the 18th and 19th Centuries], Wroclaw 1973, synopis in French
in: Ann ESC 24, 1969, pp. 61-69; V. K. Jacunsktj, Formation en Russie de la grande
industrie textile sur la base de la production rurale’, in: Deuxieme Conference
(see above 2.3), vol. 2, pp. 365-376; R. Braun, Industrialisierung und Volksleben.
Veränderungen der Lebensformen unter Einwirkung der textilindustriellen
Heimarbeit in einem ländlichen Industriegebiet (Zürcher Oberland) vor 1800,
Göttingen 21979 (essential reading for the world of the small manufacturers).
On the Manufacturer mainly in East-Central and Eastern Europe on which research
was focused up to the 1960s, see.e.g., H. Kruger, Zur Geschichte der Manufakturen und
der Manufakturarbeiter in Preussen. Die mittleren Provinzen in der zweiten Hälfte des
18. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1958; R. Forberger, Die Manufaktur in Sachsen vom Ende des
16. bis zum Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1958; Schremmer, Wirtschaft Bayerns
(see above Introduction), pp. 501-572; A. Klima, Manufacturm obdobw Cechach[The
Period of Manufacturers in Bohemia], Prague 1955; W. Kula, Szkice o manufakturach
w Polsce XVIII wieku [Sketches of the Manufactures in Poland in the 18th Century],
Warsaw 1956. • v
On the silk mills see C. Poni, ‘Archeologie de la fabrique: La diffusion desmoulinsa
soie “alia bolognese’’ dans les Etats venitiens du XVIe au XVIIIe siede', in: AnnESC
27, 1972, pp. 1475-1496 and idem, ‘AlForigine del sistema di fabrica: Technologia e
organizzazione produttiva dei mulini da seta nell Italia settentnonale (sec. XVII-
XVIII)’, in: Rivista Storica Italiana 88, 1976, pp. 444-497.
On textile printing see esp. P. Caspard, ‘L’accumulation du capital dans
l’indiennage au XVIIIeme siede’, in: Revue du Nord 61, 1979, pp. 115-124; idem. La
Fabrique-Neuve de Cortaillod, 1752-1854. Entreprise et profit pendant la revolution
industrielle, Paris 1979; idem, ‘Die Fabrik auf dem Dorfe’, in: Wahrnehmungsformen
und Protestverhalten. Studien zur Lage der Unterschichten im 18. und 19.
 182 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Jahrhundert, ed. D. Puls, Frankfurt 1979, pp. 105-142; S. Chassagne, La manufacture

de toiles imprimees de Tournemine-les-Angers (1152-1820). Etude d'une enlrepnse et
d'une Industrie au XVIIle siede, Paris 1971; idem, Oberkampf. Un entrepreneur
capitaliste au siede des lumieres, Paris 1980; now above all S. D. Chapman and S.
Chassagne, European Textile Printers in the Eighteenth Century: A Study of Peel and
Oberkampf, London 1981.
On the beginning of the industrialization process in England see P. Mantoux, The
Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century. An Outline of the Beginnings of the
Modern Factory System in England, London 1961 (transl. from the French, 1906, 1928;
still the best work in many respects, with an eye trained by Marxism and an extensive
bibliographical appendix); D. S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus. Technological
Change and Industrial Dex>elopment in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present,
Cambridge 1969, esp. chapter 2 (the most important recent work); see also T. S. Ashton,
The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830, Oxford 1969; Ph. Deane, The First Industrial
Revolution, Cambridge 21979; P. Mathias, The Fust Industrial Nation. An Economic
History of Britain, 1700-1914, London 1969; idem, The Transformation of England.
Essays in the Economic and Social History of England in the Eighteenth Century,
London 1979; other important studies: F. Crouzet, 'Angleterre et France au XVIIIe
siede. Essai d’analyse comparee de deux croissances economiques'.in: AnnESC 21,
1966. pp. 254-291 (Engl, transl. in: The Causes of the Industrial Revolution in
England, ed. R. M. Hartwell, London 1967, pp. 139-174); M. Levy-Leboyer, ‘Les
processus d'tndustrialisation: le cas de l’Angleterre et de la France’, in: Revue
Historique 239, 1968, pp. 281-298; see also this author’s contribution in: Kriedte,
Medick, Schlumbohm, Industrialization (see above Introduction), pp. 136-145. On the
leading sectors of the industrialization process: S. D. Chapman, The Cotton Industry
in the Industrial Revolution, London 1972; M. M. Edwards, The Growth of the British
Cotton Trade, 1780-1815, Manchester 1967; Th. S. Ashton, Iron and Steel in the
Industrial Revolution, Manchester 41968 (1924); Ch. K. Hyde, Technological Change
and the British Iron Industry, 1700-1870, Princeton 1977.
On the home market/foreign market question: Hobsbawm, Industry (see above
section on General Histories), pp. 42-54; D. C. Eversley, The Home Market and
Economic Growth in England, 1750-1780’. in: Land, Labour and Population. Essays
presented to J. D. Chambers, London 1967, pp. 206-259, as well as P. Bairoch,
Commerce international et genese de la revolution industrielle anglaise’, in: AnnESC
28, 1973, pp. 540-571; on the development of the English home market town now above
all J. Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects. The Development of a Consumer Society
m Early Modern England, Oxford 1978; on the connection between import of Indian
cotton, textile printingand industrialization see P. Leuillot,‘L’influencedu commerce
oriental sur leconomie occidentale’, in: Societes et compagmes (see above 9 3) DD
611-629. - HP

3.4 General: Abel, Fluctuations (see above section on General Histories)- Vilar Or
(see above 1.3), pp. 313ff.
Ground-rent and wages: Labrousse, Esquisse (see above Introduction), vol. 2 pp
369-618; idem, in: Histone economique et sociale de la France, vol 2 pp 473-497- E
W. Gilboy, Wages in Eighteenth Century England, Cambridge, Mass’, 1934 as well as
The Standard of Living in Britain in the Industrial Revolution, ed. A. J. Taylor,
London 1975 (esp. the first two contributions); Henning, Dienste (see above 3.2) do
166-168, D. Saalfeld, Lebensstandard in Deutschland. Einkommensverhältnisse
städtischer Populationen in der Übergangsperiode zum Industriezeitalter’, in:
 Bibliography 183

Wirtschaftliche und soziale Strukturen im säkularen Wandel. Festschrift für W. Abel

zum 70. Geburtstag, vol. 2, Hannover 1974, pp. 417-443.
On the continued growth of the lower classes see above 1.4; on individual towns see
esp. M. Garden, Lyon et les Lyonnais au Xl'Ulesiecle, Paris 1970, abridged pb. edition:
Paris 1975; J. -C. Perrot, Genese d'une viIle moderne. Caen au XVIlIesiecle, Paris 1975;
D. Roche, l.e peuple de Paris. Essai sur la culture populaire au XVIlIe siecle, Paris
1981; more particularly on the problem of poverty see J. Kaplow, The Names of Kings.
The Parisian Labouring Poor in the Eighteenth Century, New York 1972, and above
all O. H. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750-1789, Oxford 1974.
On the world of the small manufacturers: Schone, Kultur and Lebensweise (see
above 3.3); Braun, Industrialisierung und Volksleben (see above 3.3); H. Medick, in:
Kriedte, Medick, Schlumbohm, Industrialization (see above Introduction), pp. 64-73;
A. Griessinger, Das symbolische Kapital der Ehre. Streikbewegungen und Kollektives
Bewusstsein deutscher Handwerksgesellen im 18. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt 1981. On the
problem of work-discipline and time: E. P. Thompson, ‘Time, Work-discipline, and
Industrial Capitalism' in: PP 38, 1967, pp. 56-97.
On the “moral economy of the crowd” and its forms of expression: E. P. Thompson,
‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, in: PP50, 1971,
pp. 76-136; see also L. A. Tilly, The Food Riot as a Form of Political Conflict in
France’, in: Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2, 1971/72, pp. 23-57. Riots in the
artisanal sector: E. J. Hobsbawm, ‘The Machine Breakers’, in: PP 1952, pp. 57-70; see
also W. J. Shelton, English Hunger and Industrial Disorders. A Study of Social
Conflict during the First Decade of George Ill’s Reign, London 1973.
On the bourgeoisie of the Ancien Regime: important general observations by R.
Robin, La socitte franfaise en 1789: Semur-en-Auxois, Paris 1970, pp. 15-54; see also
M. Vovelle and D. Roche, 'Bourgeois, rentiers, proprie'taires. Elements pour la
definition dune categorie sociale ä la fin du XVIlIe siecle’, in: Actes du 84e congres
national des societes savantes. Section d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, Paris
1960, pp. 419-452 (a comparison of Paris with le Marais and Chartres); A. Daumardand
F. Furet, Structures et relations sociales ä Pans au milieu du XVIlIe siecle, Paris 1961;
emphasizing the dynamic aspect more strongly: M. Vovelle, ‘L’Eliteetlemensongedes
mots’, in: AnnESC 29, 1974, pp. 49-72; on England apart from the literature listed in
sub-section 2.4 above, see H. Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society,
1780-1880, London 1969, esp. chapter 2; on Central Europe see, e.g. F. G. Dreyfus,
Societes el mentahles a Mayence dans la seconde moitie du XVIlIe siecle, Paris 1968;
general analysis; R. Braun, ‘Zur Einwirkung sozio-kultureller Ilmweltbedingungen
auf das Unternehmerpotential und das Unternehmerverhalten’, in: Wirtschafts- und
sozialgeschichtliche Probleme der frühen Industrialisierung, ed. W. Fischer, Berlin
1968, pp. 247-284.

Conclusion

On the physical product in England and France, see J. Marczewski, Introduction a

l’histone quantitative, Geneva 1965, pp. 86-109; on Central Europe see F. -W.
Henning, ‘Die Wirtschaftsstruktur mitteleuropäischer Gebiete an der Wende zum 19.
Jahrhundert unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des gewerblichen Bereichs’, in:
Beiträge zu Wirtschaftswachstum (see above 1.4), pp. 101-167. For the following see
also this author’s contribution in: Kriedte, Medick, Schlumbohm, Industrialization
(see above Introduction), pp. 135ff. as well as the notes for the introduction; on the role
 184 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

of the non-European world, see P. O'Brien, European Economic Development: The

Contribution of the Periphery ’, in: EcHR 2nd Ser., 35, 1982, pp. 1 — 18; on the
significance of the French Revolution, see Moore, Social Origins (s. 1.2), pp. 70ff.; E.
Labrousse, 'The Evolution of the French Peasant Society from the Eighteenth Century
to the Present', in: French Society and Culture since the Old Regime, ed. E. M. Acomb
and M. L. Brown, New York 1966, pp. 44-66, and V. Hunecke, Antikapitalistische
Strömungen in der Französischen Revolution. Neuere Kontroversen der Forschung',
in: CG 4, 1978, pp. 291-323; on the crisis during the first half of the 19th century, see
Abel, Fluctuations (see above section on General Histories); idem, Massenarmut (see
above Introduction), pp. 302-396; this author, in: Kriedte, Medick, Schlumbohm,
Industrialization (see above Introduction).
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1. Tables

Table 1: The Fontana Economic History of Europe, ed. C. E. Cipolla, vol. 2, London
1974, p. 33; ibid. vol. 3, 1973, p. 29; C. McEvedy and R. Jones, Atlas of World
Population History, Harmondsworth 1978, pp. 41-114; An Introduction to the Sources
of European Economic History, 1500-1800, vol. 1: Western Europe, ed. Ch. Wilson and
G. Parker, London 1977; European Demography and Economic Growth, ed. W. R.
Lee, London 1979, as well as the literature for individual countries.
Table 2: E. A. Wrigley, in: Daedalus 97, 2. 1968. pp. 559, 570, 574; D. Levine, Family
Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism, New York 1977, pp. 123, 125; L. Henry,
Anciennes families genevoises, Paris 1956, pp. 55, 153, 156; T. H. Hollingsworth, The
Demography of the English Peerage, London 1964, pp. 11, 56L, 66.
Table 3: B. H. Slichervan Bath, in: Acta Historiae Neerlandica 2, 1967, p. 95, here taken
from the revised edition in: The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 5, ed. E.
E. Rich and C. H. Wilson, Cambridge 1977, p. 81.
Table 4: W. G. Hoskins, Provincial England, London 1963, pp. 162f.
Table 5: J. Jacquart, La crise rurale en lle-de-France, 1550-1670, Paris 1974, p. 106.
Table 6: A. Wyczanski, Studia nad folwarkiem szlacheckim w Polsce w latach
1500-1655, Warsaw 1976, pp. 84, 104, 108, 109, 113; M. Kamler, Folwark szlacheckiw
Wielkopolsce w latach 1580-1655, Warsaw 1976, pp. 14f., 21, 162.
Table 7: H. van der Wee, The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the European
Economy, vol. 1, Louvain 1963, p. 523.
Table 8: J. D. Gould, in: EcFIR 2nd Ser., 24, 1971, p. 251 (at£6shl34d.pershortcloth).
Table 9: Tabelleroverskibsfart ogvaretransportgennem firesund, H97-1660,ed. N. E.
Bang, vol. 2A, Copenhagen 1922, pp. 139-197; N. Steensgaard, The Asian Trade
Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, Chicago 1974, pp. 155, 168; E. J. Hamilton,
American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501-1650, Cambridge, Mass.,
1934, p. 42; M. Morineau, in: Histoire e'conomique et sociale du monde, ed. P. Leon,
vol. 2, Paris 1978, p. 83; N. W. Posthumus, Inquiry into the History of Prices in
Holland, vol. 2. Leiden 1964. pp. 768, 774, and H. H. Mauruschat, Gewürze. Zucker
und Salz im vorindustriellen Europa, PhD. thesis (Economics) Gottingen 1975,
appendix ibid.. Table 3 and 6.
Table 10: R. Ehrenberg, Das Zeitalter der Fugger, vol. 1. Jena 31922, pp. 146, 148, 394.
Table 11: E. Kerridge, in: EcHR 2nd Ser., 6, 1953/54, p. 28.
Table 12: K. Blaschke, Bevölkerungsgeschichte von Sachsen bis zur industriellen
Revolution, Weimar 1967, pp. 190f.
Table 13: M. Spufford, Contrasting Communities, Cambridge 1974, pp. 167f.
Table 14: L. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641 .London 1965, pp. 762,764.
Table 15: G. E. Mingay, The Gentry, London 1976, p. 59 (following J. P. Cooperand

E. M. L. Thompson).

185
 186 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Table 16: See Table 1.

Table 17: Levine, Family Formation (see Table 2), pp. 113, 97, 61; H. Charbonneau,
Tourouvre-au-Perche aux XVIIe et XVllIe siecles, Paris 1970, p. 73; M. Lachiver, La
population de Meulan du XVIle au XIXe siede, Paris 1969, p. 139; A. E. Imhof, in:
Historische Demographie als Sozialgeschichte. Giessen und Umgebung vom 17. zum
19. Jahrhundert, vol. 1, Darmstadt 1975, p. 315; Henry, Families (see Table 2), p. 55;
Hollingsworth, Demography (see Table 2), p. 11.
Table 18: J. D. Chambers, The Vale of Trent, Cambridge 1957, p. 20.
Table 19: H. K. Roessingk, Inlandse tabak, Wageningen 1976, p. 340.
Table 20: A. Wyczanski, Studia nad gospodark/f starostwa korczynskiego, 1500-1660,
Warsaw 1964, pp. 217, 221.
Table 21: N. W. Posthumus, De geschiedenisvan de leidsche lakenindustrie, vols. 2-3,
s-Gravenhage 1939, pp. 9301., 941, 1098.
Table 22: Ph D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade, Madison 1969, p. 268; the figures for
1761/1810 corrected according to S. Drescher, Econocide, Pittsburgh 1977, p. 28. and R.
Anstey, in: EcHR 2nd Ser., 30, 1977. p. 267.
Table 23: K. G. Davies, The Royal African Company, London 1957, pp. 350-363; the
imports evaluated according to Davies, ibid., pp. 180f. (2.1), 364 (2.2; more detailed
now D. Galenson, in: EcHR 2nd Ser., 32, 1979, pp. 241-249) and wholesale prices in
Amsterdam (2.3).
Table 24: K. Glamann, Dutch Asiatic Trade, 1620-1740, Copenhagen 1958, pp. I3f.
Table 25: K. N. Chaudhurt, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India
Company, 1660-1760, Cambridge 1978, pp. 507-549.
Table 26: R. Davis, in. EcHR 2nd Set., 7. 1954/55, pp. 1641*.
Table 27: E. Boody Schumpeter, English Overseas Trade Statistics, 1697 to 1808,
Oxford 1960, pp. 15-18.
Table 28: M. Mormeau, in: Histoire economique et sociale et sociale de la France, ed. F.
Braudel and E. Labrousse, vols. 1, 2, Paris 1977, pp. 979f.
Table 29: A. Nowak, Pocz^tki kryzysu sibwytworczych na wsi wielkopolskiej w koncu
XVI i pienvszej pokowie XVII wieku, Warsaw 1975, p. 218.
Table 30: G. King, Two Tracts, ed. G. E. Barnett, Cambridge, Mass. 1936 d 31
Table 31: See Table 1.
Table 32: Levine, Family Formation (see Table 2), pp. 74, 92
Table 33: G. E. Mingay, in: EcHR 2nd Ser., 14, 1961/62, p. 481
Table 34: H. Harnisch, Die Herrschaft Boitzenburg, Weimar 1968, pp. 168f.

mnv'6 35‘ K°Val?Cnk0’ Russkoe krest’yanstvo v pervoir polovine XIX v„ Moskow

1967, pp. 62f.
Table 36: D. Richardson, in: Liverpool, the African Slave Trade, and Abolition ed R
Anstey and P. E. H. Hair, n.d. 1976, p. 78.
Table 37: L. Dermigny, La Chine et VOccident, vol. 2, Paris 1964 p 691
Table 38: R. Davis, in: EcHR 2nd Ser., 15, 1962/63. pp. 300-303.
Table 39: R. Davis, op. cit., p. 292.

Table 40: P. Leon, in: C.onjoncture e'conomique, structures sociales. Hommage d E

Labrousse, Pans 1974, pp. 423-426.

,4!: Jp”rrnn’ ^ kurmam^hen Ämter des mittleren und oberen

m. p 65S 1961 <,s)'pp- '*20l: H- «o*“"*- »**«"

Table 42: Ch. Engrand, in: Revue du Nord 61, 1979 pp 62-68
Table 43: E. Barkhausen, Die Tuchindustrie in Montjoie, ihr Aufstieg und
Niedergang, Aachen 1925, p. 71. g 1
 Bibliography 187

Table 44: R. Heck, Studia nad pobozeniem ekonomicznym lundnosci wiejskiej na

Sltjsku iv XVI w., Wroclaw 1959, p. 58: B. Kaczmarski, in: Atlas historyczny Polski.
Slpsk w koncu XVIII uneku, ed. J. Janczakand T. Ladogörski, vols. 1, 2, Wroclaw 1976,
p. 59.
Table 45: A. Daumardand F. Furet, Structures et relations socialesa Paris au milieu du
XVIIIe siecle, Paris 1961, pp. 181.

2. Graphs

Fig. 1 : W. Abel, Agricultural Fluctuations in Europe from the Thirteenth to the

Twentieth Centuries, London 1980, pp. 360f.
Fig. 2: M. Lachiver, Histoire de Meulan et de sa region par les textes, Meulan 1965, p.
186; J. Dupäquier et ab, Mercuriales du Pays de France et du Vexin Franqais
(1640-1792), Paris 1968, pp. 123-132.
Fig. 3: A. Lottin, Chavatte, ouvrier lillois, un contemporain de Louis XIV, Paris 1979,
pp. 108, 121.
Fig. 4: Tabeller (see Table 9), vol. 2A, Copenhagen 1922, pp. 3-541; M. Bogucka,
Handel zagraniczny Gdanska w pierwszejpobowie XVII wieku, Wroclaw 1970, p. 38, n.
32; Cz. Biernat, Statystyka obrotu towaroivego Gdanska w latach, 1651-1815, Warsaw
1962, pp. 286f.; J. Pelc, Ceny w Gdansku w XVI i XVII wieku, Lvov 1937, p. 117.
Fig. 5: H. Wiese, in: idem and J. Bolts, Rinderhandel und Rinderhaltung in nord¬
westeuropäischen Küstengebieten vom 15. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart 1966, pp.
61 f.
Fig. 6: E. M. Carus-Wilson and O. Coleman, England’s Export Trade, 1275-1547,
Oxford 1963, pp. 112-119; J. D. Gould, The Great Debasement, Oxford 1970, pp. 120,
136; F. J. Fisher, in: EcHR 10. 1940, p. 96 and ibid., 2nd Ser., 3, 1950/51, p. 153; B. E.
Supple, Commercial Crisis and Change in England, 1600-1642, Cambridge 1959, pp.
28, 258. The statistical basis for the period after 1606 is poor.
Fig. 7: E. Westermann, Das Eislebener Garkupfer und seine Bedeutung für den
europäischen Kupfermarkt, 1460-1560, Köln 1971, pp. 255, 302, 319f.; J. Vlachovic, in:
Schwerpunkte der Kupferproduktion und des Kupferhandels in Europa, 1500-1650,
ed. H. Kellenbenz, Köln 1977, pp. 171, 408f.; see also R. Hildebrandt, in: ibid., p. 193.
The decline of production in Schwaz was partly compensated for by the output in
Röhrer Bühel and Radmer-on-Hasel. Whereas in 1501/10 ca. 95% of the copper
produced in the Alpine region originated in Schwaz, it was only about 30%in 1611/20.
Fig. 8: H. and P. Chaunu, Seville et l’Atlantique (1504-1650), vol. 6, 1, Paris 1956, p. 337
(the tonnage unweighted following M. Morineau s criticism).
Fig. 9: P. Bowden, in: The Agrarian History of England and Wales, e d. J. Thirsk, vol. 4,
Cambridge 1967, p. 862.
Fig. 10: Hamilton, American Treasure (see Table 9), p. 34 (up to 1580); M. Morineau
(see Table 9), p. 83 (from 1581); idem, in: Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine
25, 1978, p. 43 (for Brazil from 1701; maxima).
Fig. 11: E. H. Phelps Brown and Sh. V. Hopkins, in\ Economica NS 23, 1956, pp. 312f.
and ibid., 26, 1959, pp. 35f.
Fig. 12: B. Veyrassat-Herren, in: Les fluctuations du produit de la dime, ed. J. Goy and
E. Le Roy Ladune, Paris 1972, pp. 99-101; A. Silben, in: ibid., pp. 151f.; J. Goy and A. -
L. Head-König, in: ibid., pp. 266-271.
Fig. 13: Tabeller (see Table 9), vol. 2A, Copenhagen 1922; Tabeller over skibsfart og
varetransport gennem tfresund, 1661-1783, oggennem Storebaelt, 1701-1748, ed. N. E.
Bang and K. Korst, vols. 2, 1-2, 2, 2, Copenhagen 1939-1953; F. Snapper,
188 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Oorlogsinvloeden op de overzeese handel van Holland 1551-1719, Amsterdam 1959,

pp. 312-315; Abel, Fluctuations (see Fig. 1), pp. 306f.
Fig. 14: Posthumus, Geschiedenis (see Table 21), vol. 2-3, pp. 129, 930F; P. Deyon and
A. Lot tin, in: Revue du Nord 49, 1967, pp. 30-33; D. Sella, in .Ann ESC 12, 1957, pp. 30f.
Fig. 15: Curtin, Slave Trade (see Table 22), pp. 116, 119, 216, 234; Drescher, Econocide
(see Table 22), pp. 27f., 31; Anstey (see Table 22), p. 267.
Fig. 16: N. Steensgaard, in: Scandinavian EcHR 18, 1970, p. 9.
Fig. 17: P. Jeannin, in: Revue Historique 231, 1964, p. 333 with note 2, p. 332.
Fig. 18: Levine, Family Formation (see Table 2), p. 63.
Fig. 19: British Sessional Papers. House of Commons 1836, vol. 8, 2, p. 501; B. R.
Mitchell in collaboration with Ph. Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics,
Cambridge 1962, pp. 486-488.
Fig. 20: Boody Schumpeter, Trade Statistics (see Table 27), pp. 17f.; Morineau, (see
Fig. 10). p. 43.
Fig. 21: Dermigny, Chine (see Table 37), vol. 2, pp. 521-524.
Fig. 22: Mitchell and Deane, Abstract (see Fig. 19), pp. 279-281.
Fig. 23: A. Kunze, in: Oberlausitzer Forschungen, ed. M. Reuther, Leipzig 1961, p. 187.
Fig. 24: Schlesische Provinzialbldtter 31, 1800, pp. 9-12.
Fig. 25: P. Caspard, La Fabrique-Neuve de Cortaillod, 1752-1854, Paris 1979, pp. 186f.,
195.
Fig. 26: Mitchell and Deane, Abstract (see Fig. 19). pp. 177F, 294.
Fig. 27: F. -K. Riemann, Ackerbau und Viehhaltung im vorindustriellen Deutschland,
Kitzingen 1953, pp. 171, 175.
Fig. 28: E. W. Gilboy, in: The Review of Economic Statistics 18, 1936, p. 140.
 Index
Aachen, 39, 135, 139 Chayanov, A.V., 2, 137
Abel, W„ 26, 52 Child, J„ 89
Agricultural crisis, 11, 52ff., 65ff.. 94 Chippenham, 55f.
Agricultural prices, 4f., 27, 65, 92, 109, Classes, see social structure
137, 161 Coleman, D.C., 34
Agricultural revolution, 105ff. Colonialism, 13, 43ff., 79, 89, 95, 123ff.,
Amiens, 12, 74 145
Amsterdam, 41, 45, 53, 77f., 86ff., 127ff. Columbus, Chr., 42
Antwerp, 27, 32, 35. 41. 44, 46, 53, 89 Colyton, 20, 63f., 103
Aristocracy, 56ff., 99f., 154 Compagnie des Indes, 85
Arkwright, R., 142f., 152 Consbruch, 12
Asien io, 81 Cort, H„ 143
Aubin, H., 39 Cortaillod, 140f.
Augsburg, 32, 35, 38, 51, 58, 74, 147 Crompton, 143

Balibar, E., 2 Danzig, 27ff., 53, 57, 67

Banking, 46ff., 87ff., 128ff. Darby, A., 143
Bank of England, 90, 129 Deane, Ph, 71
Bank of San Carlos (Madrid), 129 Defoe, D., 87. 154
Bank of Scotland, 129 Demographic change, 3f., 6ff., 19f., 53ff.,
Bath, Slicher van, 26 61 ff.. 73, 91, 101ff., 136, 146ff.
Bloch, M., 23 Dobb, M., 91, 138
Bodin, Jean, 18
Bohemia, 62, 70 East India Company, Dutch: 83f., 85ff.,
Bois, G., 15, 53 121E; English: 45, 83ff., 121 ff.
Bourdieu, P., 151 Ehrenberg, R., 47
Bourgeoisie, 154f. Enclosure, 22ff., 98, 106f., Ill
Brandenburg (Mark), 28, 61, 69, 105, 112 Engels, F., 27
Braudel, F„ 46, 48, 59 Estado da India, 44, 79
Braun, R., 151
Bridgwater, Duke of, 115 Factory system, 140ff., 152, 161
Feudal lords, 2ff„ 10, 12, 19, 24, 26, 51,59,
Caisse d’Escompte, 129 69, 97f., 110, 114, 146, 157
Calw, 34, 36 Feudal mode of production, Iff., 8, 15f.,
Cambr£sis, 53 74f., 159, 161
Capitalist world-system, 1, 42ff., 7lf., 82, Feudal obligations, 2, 16f., 92, 146; see
117f„ 121 ff, also serfdom
Casa da India, 84 Flanders, 35f., 66, 132
Chambers, J.D., 19 Florence, 40, 72
Charles V, 25, 47 Forster, G., 135
Chaunu, P., 19 Frankfurt, 8, 129, 149, 155

189
190 Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists

Frederick II (the Great), 115 Leon, P., 129

Fronde, 74, 94 Le Roy Ladurie, E., 7, 55, 92, 111
Fugger, 32f„ 38, 47, 59 Levant Company, 45
Liege, 39, 66, 135
Gascon, R., 60 Lille, 32, 34, 72, 74, 135
Geneva, 19, 20, 129 Live-stock farming, 14, 22, 24L, 30, 68, 96
Genoa, 45ff„ 72, 88 London, 35, 45f„ 77f„ 86f., 90, 128ff.
Genovesi, A., 9 Louis XIV, 74
Gentry, 56, 99f. Lyons, 46, 57f., 152
Giro- und Lehnbanco (Berlin), 129
Godelier, M.. 142 Malestroit, de, 18
Grain exports, 27ff., 40f., 53, 67, 114 Malthus, Th., 19, 53, 63, 92
Greer, L. de, 88 Mansfeld, 37ff.
Guest, R., 142 Marriage, 19f., 63f., 103f.
Guicciardini, F., 25 Manufaktur (manufacture), 116f., 139ff.,
Guilds, 9, 12, 14 15 Iff.
Marx, K„ 40, 52, 90, 131
Hamburg, 45, 53, 127, 149, 155 Masovia, 62, 98
Hammond, J.L., 111 Merchant capitalism, 1, 9f., 13, 47f., 7If.,
Hargreaves, J., 142 85ff„ 95, 118, 123ff., 131, 138, 142, 148,
Hill, Ghr., 89 153f., 159
Hobsbawm, E.J., 13, 75, 95f„ 142, 145, 153 Merrington, D., 10
Hoffmann, W., 13 Mesta, 25, 66
Hondschoote, 34, 74 Metdan, 5, 63
Hudson Bay Gompany, 85, 89 Mevius, D., 69
Hüpeden, CLP., 136 Mining, 7, 32, 36ff„ 43, 77f., 96, 115, 119,
Hurepoix, 24, 92 132
Modzelewski, K., 7
Industrial capitalism, 90, 115ff., 130f., Moore, B., 160
144, 154, 161 Moravia, 70
Industrial revolution, 16, 96, 142ff., 158, More, Th., 22
160 Morineau, M., 127
Inflation, 48ft., 94, 145f.
Iron production, 36, 78, 132, 14If. Navigation Acts, 89
Neusohl, 37f.
John, A.H., 130 Newcomen, Th., 144
Nuremberg, 32, 35, 39, 74
Kaufsystem, 36, 78, 116, 138 Nutritional standards, 52, 94, 146ff.
King, G., 77, 99f.
Kisch, H„ 35 Open fields, 22, 68
Koppelwirtschaft, 26, 108f., 113 Orelli, S. von, 151
Kula, W„ 16, 57
Pares, R., 80
Labrousse, E., 11, 106, 147 Paris, 8, 155
Land development, 21, 105f. Peasant uprisings, 98
Landlords, see feudal lords Philip II, 47
Languedoc, 24, 55, 62, 66, 92 Pinto, I. de, 130
l.aw, J., 129 Po Valley, 21
Leicestershire, 23f., 57E, 104 Population, see demographic change
Leiden. 34, 72. 76, 90, 131 Postlethwayt, M., 118
 Index 191

Price revolution, 18, 23f., 48ff. Täufers, 37

Proto-industrialisation, 13, 70ff., 90, 95, Terra Ferma, 20, 25
98, 104f f., 117, 133ff., 142f„ 154, 160f. Textile manufacture, 12, 14, 23, 32ff., 72f.,
Purchasing system, see Kaufsystem 76f., 90f„ 95, 13Iff., 139, 144f., 151f.;
Putter-out, see Verleger exports, 33ff., 84ff., 122, 144
Thompson, E.P., 153
Quesnay, F., 10 Thornton, Th., 52
Thünen Circles, 26, 31, 108f.
Tilly, Ch. and R., 64
Rattenberg, 37 Topolski, J., 30
Ravensberg, 12 Trade, Asian: 44f„ 78, 83f., 121ff.; Baltic:
Reconquista, 43 27ff., 45, 7Of., 78; Mediterranean: 32f.,
Re-exports, 86ff., 12ff., 144 71, 95; Trans-Atlantic: 42, 71, 73, 79f.,
Re-feudalization, 69, 75 82, 118ff.
Rent, 6, 24, 581.. 92, 111 Treaty of Methuen, 117
Röhrer Bühel, 37
Romano, R., 25, 61 Up-and-down husbandry, 22, 26
Royal African Company, 82. 85, 89, 148ff. Urban craftsman, 8ff., 32, 39, 58, 74, 76,
Rural industry, 12ff., 58, 64f., 96, 110, 90ff„ 159
133ff„ 151 ff.
Russell, J.C., 18 Verleger, 36, 95, 135ff„ 142, 148, 153, 156
Russia Company, 45 Vienna, 30, 52
Vilar, P„ 5, 42f.
Savery, Th., 144 Village community, 2, 19, 75, 114
Saxony, 30, 54f„ 57. 61, 103, 128, 132f., Vorwerk, 17, 27f., 30f., 70, 75,93f„ 98, 104,
149, 152 11 Iff., 146, 159
Scheibler, J.H. & Sons, 139f.
Schroetter, F.L. von, 112 Wages, 51 f., 94f., 97, 146f.
Schwaz, 37, 39 Wage labour, 28, 39, 54, 58, 94, 110, 112,
Self-exploitation, 2, 137 151 f., 158
Senckenberg, J.C., 155 Wallerstein, I., 121, 160
Serfdom, 2, 27f., 58f„ 68f„ 112f. Wars, 20, 31; 58 (Peasants’ War of 1525);
Shipping, 40, 67, 78, 86f„ 117f., 120f„ 127 63, 89 (Anglo-Dutch); 94, 117 (Spanish
Silesia, 13 War of Succession); 117 Austrian War
Slavery, 17, 80ff„ 118f„ 145 of Succession); 117 (Seven Years’ War);
Small-holders, 54ff., 74f., 100, 11 Of., 149ff. 126 (American War of Independence)
Social structure, 55ff., 69, 99f., 154ff., 160 Watt, J., 144
Sombart, W., 139 Wee, H. van der, 44, 88
Spooner, F., 48 Weber, M., 9, 46, 158
St. Malo, 13 Wilkinson, J., 143
Starvation, 4f., 20, 53f., 102f., 148ff. Wilson, Ch., 128
State and taxation, 6, 15f., 58f., 73, 92f., Wisselbank, 88, 129
97ff.. 115f156. 160 Wolf, J., 103
Steensgard, N., 85 Wyczanski, A., 28
Stone, L., 59
Stratification, see social structure Zimmern Chronicle, 21
Zöllner, F., 138
Szlachta, 29, 57
 M/tf. 11 %E DUE

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0 1164 0000476

HC 240 .K7313 1983

Kriedte, Peter
[Spatfeudalism
nus und Handelskap-
ital. English]
Peasants, landlords and merchant
capitalists : Europe and the World
OC/Or> /'■'vr-v-ir t i nr\A

901797
 cfeasants; aitd\kiv/mit Capitalists.
(Lumpe amwWmfLcornny, 1500-1800
L By PETER KR1EDTE c

44... an invaluable survey. Being absolutely CONTENTS: The Age of the Price Revolution —
up-to-date in its use of published research, The Growth of the Population — The Expansion of
it has a great advantage over comparable Agriculture — Crafts, Commerce and Finance —
The Price Revolution and Socio-Economic Change
works...” — Dr Joan Thirsk, Oxford —
— The Crisis of the 17th Century — Stagnation and
the Demographic Crisis — Agriculture: Crisis and
Concise and comprehensive analysis of the European Resurgence — Proto-Industrialisation and Merchant
economy and of the evolution of Europe’s social struc¬ Capitalism — The Crisis of the 17th Century in its
tures in the early modem period. The author has been Socio-Economic Context — The Upswing of the 18th
prominently involved in the debate on ‘proto¬ Century — Population: From Crisis to Renewed
industrialisation’. In this book he relates the Growth — Agriculture: Expansion or Revolution? —
emergence of rural manufacturing to the expansion On the Road to Industrial Capitalism — Population
of European commerce overseas. He looks at the Growth, Economic Growth and Society — Annotated
interconnections between population change, Bibliography, Tables and Graphs
movements in demand and supply of both agricultural
produce and manufactured goods and changing
labour relations in the countryside as well as in the Peter Kriedte was bom in 1940, and studied at the
urban centres. These key aspects of the internal University of Gottingen where he received a Ph.D.
development of Europe are skilfully linked with the in History, Economics and German Literature. A
opening-up of the colonial world, especially in the fellow of the Max Planck Institute for History' at
Americas, as suppliers of raw materials and as Gottingen, his publications include Die Herrschaft
markets for finished goods from Europe. The great der Bischöfe von Wloclawek in Pommerellen von
value of this study lies in the fact that it is genuinely den Anfängen bis zum Jahre 1409 (1974) and Indus¬
comparative and includes material not only on trialization before Industrialization. Rural Industry
England, Holland, France, Spain and Italy, but also in the Genesis of Capitalism (1981).
on Central and Eastern Europe.

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PUBLISHERS
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