The Old Regime: What Was It Like?

Hereditary Rule (Monarchical)

 Aristocratic: hereditary and landowning elites

• BLENHEIM PALACE (England)
• The Country House

Christian: Established Churches

• Parish Church link
• The Protestant Reformation: 1517-
• Jews: the outsiders within Christian Europe
• Muslims: the other outsiders--Ottoman Empire

Agricultural

Economic Exploitation

• Who Does the Work that Creates Wealth?
• Who Gets the Money?

Landowners...but how?

Land Tenure--complicated

PEASANTRY (Western Europe)

Peter Bruegel the Elder: paintings of peasantry link link link

• Land Tenure--no free sale
• Feudal Obligations/Dues
• Transfer of Wealth to Landowners
• Farmers--rent

Landless Labor: forms of dependency

• Wage Labor
• 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

Marriage

Military Service

Jews in Towns

Corporal Punishment as Labor (and Family) Discipline

Slavery: mostly extinct in Europe

EUROPEAN EXPANSION

• Christendom
• Jews
• Islam
• Sailing Beyond Islam: Around Africa.

Atlantic Slavery

• Commodities
• Gold
• Humans as Trade Commodities in Africa
• Sugar Plantations in Atlantic Islands and West Indies
• Enormous wealth from sugar

THE INVASION OF THE AMERICAS

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

The Slave Trade

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

 Creation of Wealth

 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 sell their land and movef?

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?