‘The European World’ BK/PR 10/13

Rural and Urban Society

  1. Definitions

Rural

  • Importance of environmental conditions; differences between arable, pastoral and mixed agriculture / manorial and demesne systems.
  • Peasants are ‘agriculturalists…utilizing mainly family labour, who are engaged in relations with the larger economic system, but only partially integrated into incomplete markets’ (Frank Ellis).

Urban

  • Size? Structure (walled)? Economic activity (manufacture, markets)? Privileges?
  • Cf large town 50,000+ (e.g. Paris, London, Amsterdam, Lisbon...) vs small 2,000+.
  1. Populations

Rural

  • Vast majority of Europeans lived in the country; rural society heavily stratified.
  • Peasantry heavily differentiated; 16thC population growth / price rise boosts. polarization between prosperous yeomen and landless labourers / the poor.

Urban

  • 5-20% in most countries; urbanised areas e.g. northern Italy & Low Countries.
  • Civic elite; bulk = craftsmen. Franchise; social stratification; guilds & masterships. Education/literacy. Position/relative independence of women?
  1. Economies

Rural

  • Limited energy resources, low seed-yield ratios (1:4) and productivity ceiling.
  • Differentiation of economic opportunities: proto-industry (‘putting out system’, esp. for textiles) and early industries like (copper/iron/silver) mines.

Urban

  • Importance of trade; ports; trade routes; Atlantic vs Mediterranean.
  • Also political protection/patronage – admin. centres e.g. Madrid, Berlin, Versailles.
  1. Society and everyday life

Rural

  • Ties of family, kin, custom and religion; informal social controls;rhythms of work and rest/feasting and fasting; cereal-based diets with seasonal, regional and social variations; gradual integration into emerging consumer society.
  • Political agency in local government (village, parish, manor court) and capability for resistance (mostly defending ‘ancient law’, but evidence ofreligious/ideological fervour in Peasants’ Wars(Germany 1524-25, Switzerland 1653).

Urban

  • Immigration; health/plague; hazards; opportunities; economic adversity; poverty.
  • Parish/confraternity; quarter; street; craft group/solidarity vs rivalry.
  • Municipal officials – regulation and control. Elections. Protest. Politicisation.
  1. Town-Country Relations
  • Economic links: economic specialization and gradual market integration; agricultural workers in towns; feudal lords; proto-industrialisation.
  • Cultural ties: political/legal/administrative services; cathedrals and religious houses; theatre, salon, coffee houses.
  • Tensions and conflict: towns as ‘feudal’ lords over dependent territories; diverging economic interests (‘central-places’ vs decentral trading networks); grain supplies; taxation; land purchase & exploitation; conservatism?
  • Ambivalent perceptions: ‘coarse peasant’ vs ‘pastoral idyll’.
  1. Evolutions

Rural

  • Growing market orientation and social polarization: transition to capitalism (enclosures and commercialization of land market, esp. in England).
  • Reassessment of beauty and ‘purity’ of countryside in Enlightenment/Romanticism.

Urban

  • Stagnation & expansion; boulevards & town planning; fire-fighting & sanitation.
  • Economic, political/admin and financial expansion.
  • Transformation of civic culture; relations with crown; politicisation.

Further reading

Rural

Aston, T..; Philpin, C. (eds), The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe (Cambridge, 1985)

Braudel, Fernand, Civilisation and Capitalism: 15th to 18th Century (2 vols, 1981-2)

Dewald, Jonathan, The European Nobility 1400-1800 (Cambridge, 1996)

Ellis, Frank, Peasant Economics: Farm Households Agrarian Development (1988)

Kümin, B. (ed.)., A Cultural History of Food in Early Modern Europe (2012)

Magagna, V., Communities of Grain: Rural Rebellion in Comparative Perspective (1991)

Ogilvie, S.; Cerman, M. (eds), European Proto-Industrialization (Cambridge, 1996)

Scott, Tom (ed.), The Peasantries of Europe: From the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries (1998)

Urban

Cowan, A., Urban Europe, 1500-1700 (1998)

Vries,J. De,European Urbanization, 1500-1800 (1984)

Friedrichs, C.R.,The Early Modern City, 1450-1750 (1995)

“ ,Urban Politics in Early Modern Europe (2000)

Nicholas, D.,Urban Europe, 1100-1700 (2003)

Interactions

Epstein, S. R. (ed.), Town and Country in Europe 1300-1800 (Cambridge, 2001)