Nathan Hale H.S. West Allis, WI

17c European Agrarianism

Feudal Common Field System

The “Little Ice Age”: Medieval “Warm Period” In the 17c, Europe relied on a very inefficient agricultural system to feed its population.

Yield Ratio for Grain Crops ( )

Grain Supplies in 16 c Europe

Small Town “Farmer’s Markets”

The Village School (17 c )

Country People Playing a Ball Game

A Lace Maker

The “Putting-Out” System

Supplemental Income  Cottage Industries: “Putting-Out” System

Advantages of the Putting-Out System 1.Peasants could supplement their agricultural incomes.  Take advantage of winter months when farming was impossible. 2.Merchants could avoid the higher wages and often demanding regulations of urban labor.  Easier to reduce the number of workers when the economy was bad. 3.Merchants could acquire capital, which would later play a part in funding industrialization itself.  Peasants acquired future skills. 4.Young people could start separate households earlier, thus contributing to population growth.

Disadvantage of the Putting-Out System?? When demand rose [which it did in the 18c] this system proved inefficient.  Merchant-capitalists found it difficult to induce peasant-workers to increase their output. This dilemma eventually led to the factory system  All the workers were concentrated in one place under the supervision of a manager.  Water or steam power could easily be applied there.

Population Density: 18c Europe

Population Takeoff in Europe

18c Population Growth Rate

European Urbanization

Industry & Population: 18c Europe

European Urbanization:

Emancipation of the Peasantry to 1812

“Enclosed” Fields

 Robert Bakewell

“Gin Lane” William Hogarth 1751

"Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases: and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders. If by these and similar means the annual mortality were increased... we might probably every one of us marry at the age of puberty and yet few be absolutely starved." -- Thomas Malthus

“Apprentices at Their Looms” William Hogarth, 1687

British Raw Materials

Spinning Jenny by Hargreaves (above) and Spinning Mule by Crompton (below) Sir Richard Arkwright, inventor of the water frame

A Woosted Mill in Bedworth, England, 1800

18c British Port

The Growth of England’s Foreign Trade in the 18c