|
|
Mckay Study Guide, Chapter 19 [Home] [Chapter 19 Supplemental Material]
Define the following key concepts and terms
1. Agrarian economy
As it had been for several centuries, most of the economies European countries at the end of the seventeenth century were agrarian. An agrarian economy is basically an economy based on land, or agriculture. Around 80% of the population of western Europe made their living off of agriculture, and this percentage was significantly higher in eastern Europe. All year long the land was worked on tirelessly, and it seemed to be generous for it supplied and fed the nations of Europe year after year. However, the methods used in agriculture had not changed for centuries, and the land was not being used to its full potential.
2. Famine foods
In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, harvests in most regions of Europe would fail completely every eight or nine years. People substituted what they normally would eat for "famine foods", such as chestnuts, strips of bark, dandelions, and grass to avoid starvation. In Norway, even dung was baked into bread .In other extreme cases people resorted to cannibalism.
3. common lands
Open meadows maintained by villages for hay and natural pasture. These "common" lands were set aside for draft horses and oxen that were needed for the fields and it was also open to the pigs and cows of the village community. After the harvest the people of the village pastured their animals on the wheat or rye stubble, which was sometimes followed by gleaning for grain.
4. Open-field system
The open field system, the greatest accomplishment of medieval agriculture, divided village lands into several large fields in turn separated into long narrow strips. The unenclosed fields allowed whole communities to farm the same area with the same patterns of plowing, sowing, and harvesting in accordance with tradition. However, this system failed because of soil exhaustion; with no fertilizer, fields were left fallow resulting in low food supplies. Crop rotation was adopted but the problem persisted. Open meadows or commons allowed animal grazing and gathering of menial food supplies. Both, the open field system and the commons, however, eventually ended as the scientific revolution promoted the use of enclosures.
5. Enclosure
Enclosure was the idea of fencing-in and gathering of scattered farmlands so farming was more efficient. It was developed by agricultural innovators, and in dong so, they also needed to enclose their shares of the natural pasture. It was opposed by poor peasants because they held only small inadequate land, while the nobles disliked it due to its large investments and risks.
6. Mercantilism
European mercantilism was a system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the power of the state. It aimed at creating a favorable balance of foreign trade in order to increase a country's stock of gold. English mercantilism was distinguishable because it was the unusual idea that government economic regulations could and should serve the private interest individuals and groups as well as the public needs of the state.
7. Cottage Industry
The cottage industry, also referred to as the putting-out system, describes the key features of eighteenth-century rural industry. The two main participants were the merchant capitalist and the rural worker. The merchant loaned raw materials to several cottage workers, who processed the raw materials in their own homes and returned the finished product to the merchant. Sometimes rural workers would buy their own materials and work as independent producers before they sold to the merchant. Sometimes several workers toiled together to perform a complicated process in a workshop. The putting-out system was a kind of capitalism. All the members of the family helped in the work, so everyone could "earn their bread."
8. Putting-Out System
The putting-out system was a relationship between the merchant/capitalist and the rural worker where the capitalist provides the worker with the raw materials and the worker provides the finished good. The merchants pay for the raw materials and the labor. Country production was unregulated; therefore the putting-out system did not adhere to guild standards, which discouraged the development of new methods. This made them capable of producing many different goods.
9. Fallow Fields
Grain crops exhausted the soil and made fallowing necessary. It was done by alternating grains with certain nitrogen-storing crops, which not only rejuvenate the soil better but also increased cultivation.
10. Agricultural Revolution
The Agricultural Revolution was a period of change in which formerly owned-but-not farmed land was taken over, and farming techniques became more efficient. The fallow, or land left alone to replenish soil, was left alone for a shorter period of time. Nitrogen-replenishing crops such as beans and potatoes were used to enrich soil quickly along with different forms of crop rotation, some using a ten-year schedule. All led to a more bountiful harvest, which fed more people and livestock. Well fed animals gave more fodder which in turn provided more fertilizer. As a consequence of the revolution however, there was a need to enclose land in order to properly experiment and use the new techniques, to which many peasants disliked.
11. Crop Rotation
Planting crops was a hassle. Every year, after planting and harvesting the wheat, nitrogen would be depleted from the soil, causing the soil to be ruined and almost making sure that the rest of the crops that were planted would die. In the Middle Ages, the half and half system was developed. One half of a field would be used to plant crops while the other half would lie fallow. The used field would be replenished while the other field was being used. After that, the three crop rotation system was developed. One year, wheat or rye would be planted on the field. The next year, oats or beans would be planted on the field. The land would lie fallow the next year so it would be replenished.
12. Asiento
The asiento was the lucrative West African slave trade. The Peace of Utrecht forced Spain to give Britain control over the asiento and let Britain send one ship of merchandise into the Spanish colonies annually.
13. Mestizos
Mestizos were the offspring of Spanish men and Indian women. They made up a large part of the large middle group in the Spanish colonies; part of the working middle class. But if they were talented enough, they were able to join the Creoles, American-born Spaniards, which would give these mestizos enough wealth and power over time, to help them be considered as white. Because of this, by the end of the colonial era, in addition to the 20 percent of whites, 30 percent of the people were mestizos.
14. Primogeniture
Primogeniture is the practice of passing down land or property to the eldest son. It was assumed that the eldest son was the most able to defend it. However, if there were no living sons, the daughters would split the property. During this time, the feudal system of the Middle Ages was still existent and primogeniture determined the disposition of the property if there was no will left.
15. Creole Elite
People of Spanish blood born in America who had the means to purchase more and more European luxuries and manufactured goods. The Creole Elite arose to handle this flourishing trade, which often relied on smuggled goods from Great Britain. They came to rival the top government officials dispatched from Spain to govern colonies.
16. Marquis de Montcalm
Marquis de Montcalm led the French and Canadian troops in the Seven Years War. But his victories were short lived. The British, led by their new chief minister, William Pitt, diverted men and money from the war in Europe. The British concentrated instead on the struggle for empire, using superior naval power to destroy the French fleet and choke off French commerce around the world. In 1759 a combined British naval and land force laid siege to fortress Quebec. After four long months, they finally defeated Montcalm's army in a dramatic battle that sealed the fate of France in North America.
17. Jethro Hull
Jethro Hull was an important English innovator from the Enlightenment time who was enthusiastic about farming methods.. He tried to develop better farming methods through research. He did so by using horses instead of oxen for plowing, and drilling equipment to sow seed rather than scatter them by hand. This drilling method distributed seeds more efficiently and properly, having the seeds in the proper depth.
18. Charles Townsend
The field of agriculture was improved through innovations brought forth by Charles Townsend. Charles Townsend was a lord from the upper reaches of the English aristocracy. His innovations in crop rotation were inspired by his ambassadorship to Holland. While he was there, he found the many soil replenishing qualities of crops such as turnip and clover. When Townsend retired from politics in 1730 and returned to his agricultural estate, he produced larger crops by draining his land, manuring heavily, and sowing crops in regular rotation without fallowing. His land remained arable throughout the year without exhausting by the growing of clover and turnip.
19. Cornelius Vermuyden
Cornelius Vermuyden was the most famous Dutch engineer who directed one large drainage project in Yorkshire and another in Cambridgeshire. In the Cambridge fens, Vermuyden and his Dutch workers eventually reclaimed forty thousand acres, which were then farmed intensively in the Dutch manner. Although all these efforts were disrupted in the turbulent 1640's by the English Civil war, Vermuyden and his countrymen largely succeeded. Swampy wilderness was converted into thousands of acres of some of the best land in England.
20. Bubonic Plague
A deadly epidemic, which affected Europe in numerous ways. It caused a sharp drop in population and prices after 1350 and also created a labor shortage throughout Europe. Moreover, the era of labor shortages and low food prices after the Black Death resulted in an increased standard of living for peasants and artisans. It brought on many social and economic changes.
21. Asiatic brown rat
The significance of the Asiatic brown rat was that after 1600, it began to drive out and eventually eliminate its black competitors. Therefore the black rats that carried fleas which were principal carriers of the plague bacillus was replaced with the rats of Asiatic origins which carried fleas that carries the plague poorly and which has little taste for human blood.
22. British Navigation Acts
The British Navigation Acts, which began the mercantile system, were established by Oliver Cromwell in 1651 (later to be restored and extended by Charles II in 1660 and 1663), due to the English demand to increase military power and private wealth. The purpose of these acts was to see that European goods imported into England and Scotland were carried on British-owned ships along with British crews, or on the ships of the country that creates the article. Because of these laws, the British merchants and shipowners were able to hold a monopoly on trade with the British colonies. The Navigation acts were also used as economic warfare, the target being the Dutch since they were ahead of the English in shipping and foreign trade. This later affected the Dutch drastically.
23. Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris marked the end of the Seven Years War and the British victory on all colonial fronts was made official with it in1763. France lost its territory on the mainland of North America. Canada and all French territory east of the Mississippi River passed to Britain and France gave Louisiana to Spain as compensation for Spain's loss of Florida to Britain. Because France gave up most of its holdings in India, Britain was able to take control of the Indian subcontinent as well. By 1763, British naval power triumphed decisively and Britain had realized its goal of monopolizing a vast trading and colonial empire for its own benefit.
24. Peace of Utrecht
After being defeated by a great coalition of states after twelve years of fighting, Louis XIV was forced to sign the Peace of Utrecht (1713) to cede Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hudson Bay territory to Great Britain. Spain was compelled to give Britain control of the lucrative West African slave trade-the so-called asiento-and to let Britain send one ship of merchandise into the Spanish colonies annually, through Porto Bello on the Isthmus of Panama.
25. Spinning Jenny
James Hargreaves invented the cotton-spinning jenny around 1765, which produced an explosion in the cotton textile industry. Hargreaves's jenny was simple, inexpensive and hand-operated. In early models, six to twenty-four spindles (each spinning fine, slender thread) were put on a sliding carriage, thus producing much more thread than before. With the invention of the spinning jenny, cotton goods became much cheaper and were bought by all classes, not only just the upper classes. Now even poor people could afford to wear cotton clothing.
26. turnips
Turnips, a new crop in Europe during the 18th century, were one of the root crops that helped revive the land, thus eliminating the need for fallows. This helped increase the land under cultivation by fifty percent. The peasants were barely able to live off the land, for crop outcome was low and the land stingy and capricious. Bad weather also led to constant famine. Because grain crops exhausted the soil and made fallowing necessary, certain nitrogen-storing crops, such as turnips, not only rejuvenated the soil even better than fallowing but also gave more produce.
27. potatoes
In the 18th century, the potato was introduced from South America. Potatoes served as an important alternative source of vitamins A and C for the poor, especially when the grain crops were skimpy or had failed. Potatoes helped lessen the severity of famines.