The Old Regime: What Was It Like?

Hereditary Rule (Monarchical)

• Stability
• Subject to Rule of Law (more or less

 Aristocratic

• BLENHEIM PALACE (England)
• The Country House

Christian: Established Churches

• Parish Church link
• The Protestant Reformation: 1517-
• Fragmentation of Christendom
• Jews: the outsiders

 Agricultural

Economic Exploitation

• Who Does the Work?
• Who Gets the Money?

Answer: Landowners...but how?

• Rent (tenants)
• Feudal Dues

 PEASANTRY (Western Europe)

Peter Bruegal the Elder: paintings of peasantry link link link

• Land Tenure
  •  
• Feudal Obligations
• Transfer to Landowners

Landless Labor: forms of dependency

• Wage Labor link link
  • Long Contracts
  • Apprenticeship
  • Household Labor (patriarchy)
• Indentured Servitude, i.e. sell yourself to an employer for a seven year Period

 SERFDOM

• East of the Elbe link

Large Estates

• Eastern Europe
• Poland
• Russia

Serfs Tied to Land

Corporal Punishment as Labor (and Family) Discipline

Slavery: mostly extinct in Europe

EUROPEAN EXPANSION

• Christendom
• Jews
• Islam
• Beyond Islam?

Atlantic Slavery

• Commodities
• Gold
• Humans as Trade Commodities in Africa
• Sugar Plantations in Atlantic Islands and West Indies

THE INVASION OF THE AMERICAS

• Conquest of Native Americans
  • War
  • Confiscation of Land
  • Disease
• Myth of (mostly) Empty Continents "Discovered" by Europeans

The Slave Trade

•  Humans as Property
• Cruelty
• Abolition of Family, Marriage Rights
• Racial Justifications
  • Religious: The Curse of Ham
  • Historical: Hierarchies of "Civilizations"
  • Scientific Classification (species)

 Conflict with Christian Universalism (all humans descendents of Adam and Eve)

Review Questions

Where did elites get their wealth in the eighteenth century?

How was wealth transferred to its owners?

Why couldn't most people quit their jobs?

What forms did their dependency take?

How were peasants different from serfs and slaves?

How did the European maritime powers get involved in the slave trade?

What sets slavery apart from other forms of dependent labor?

How was the enslavement of Africans justified?