So Far This Year• 14th century • Plague• Earliest Sparks of the Renaissance• Split between Eastern and Western Europe w• 1st Hundred Years War• Italy is Solidifying its role as trading middle man • Mongols rule in Russia

• 15th Century • Renaissance Begins in Earnest • Northern Renaissance • Henry the Navigator is Exploring the coast of Africa• Constantinople Falls to the Ottoman Turks• Increased interest in Afrian Slaves • Habsburg-Valois Wars• Rise of Renaissance Princes/New Monarchs • Consolidation of Habsburg Empire • Mongols kicked out of Russia

• 16th Century • Age of Exploration• Spanish Golden Century • Transition from Mediterranean to Atlantic Power centers • Reformation/English Reformation • Council of Trent • 1st half of the Wars of Religion• Ottoman Empire reaches its peak… threatens Eastern

Europe • Start of the Scientific Revolution

• 17th Century • 2nd Half of the Wars of Religion (30 Years War) • Witch hunts • Rise of Absolutism in France, Prussia, Russia, Austria • Constitutionalism in England and the Netherlands

(English Civil War, Glorious Revolution) • France becomes culturally dominant • Spain falls• Netherlands has a Golden Age • Continuation of the Scientific Revolution • Early Enlightenment

• 18th Century • Heart of the Enlightenment • 2nd Hundred Years War • Enlightened Absolutism • (2nd )Agricultural Revolution• Population Explosion • Early Industrial Revolution (ignited by Cottage Industry)• Explosion of the Atlantic Economy and Associated Trade

Wars• Capitalism Unseats Mercantilism

2nd Agricultural Revolution • 1st Agricultural Revolution

– Development of farming• replaced hunting and gathering • 10,000 BC

– Animal power– Land can only produce so much (nitrogen exhaustion)

• Slash and burn agricultural or limited population size

• Medieval Improvements– Open Field system

• Strips of farmland – Not easy to turn an ox – Communal

» Insurance against poor yield in one part of the field– ‘The Commons’

– Fallow • Field rotation

• Medieval Limitations – Fallow is Inefficient

• 1/3 of fields aren’t used

– Famine cycle – 1 bushel of seed yields 5-6 bushels of crop

• Modern farmers are closer to 40 bushels of crop

The Open Field System

2nd Agricultural Revolution (cont.)• 2nd Agricultural

Revolution Innovations

• End of the fallow – Field rotation v crop rotation

• Nitrogen replacing crops – Crops up, manure, up, crops

up cycle • Enclosure

– Land taken up by the wealthy and enclosed

• Land is more productive, but…

• End of the common- no more safety net

• Dutch– Scientific because of

dykes – Golden Age

• Wealth and stable population support experimentation with crops

• English– Copy the Dutch– Turnip Townsend

• Agricultural boom population boom– As a result, standard of

living does not rise in general

18th Century Poem

The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common

But leaves the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from off the goose.

The law demands that we atone

When we take things we do not own

But leaves the lords and ladies fine

Who take things that are yours and mine.

17c 17c EuropeanEuropeanAgrarianisAgrarianis

mm

Leaders: The Dutch

The Cost of Enclosure: Fair?

English Farmer Continental Farmer

The Cost of Enclosure: Unfair?

Heh, heh, heh…

Cost of Enclosure: Author’s Assessment

VS

Population Growth • Factors that limit it are

slowly removed – Black death dies out

mysteriously – Better ability to spread

food about because of improved infrastructure

• New world crops

– Slight improvements in health from better sanitation

• Standards of living did NOT increase

18c18cPopulatioPopulatio

nnGrowthGrowth

RateRate

Putting Out System • Ironically, the increase in Agricultural Production actually

increased the numbers of poor peasants. Why? – Growing population but stable amount of land – Profits to be made in farming encouraged the wealthy to buy up

farmland– Thus Underemployed peasants (Proletariat- landless farmers)

• Enterprising merchants in the cities devised the Putting Out System– Take product to the countryside where landless farmers are

desperate for work– Production in the homes – Come back and pick up the product and sell it – Capitalism before that word even existed – Challenge to guild system – Weakens the grip of governments’ mercantilist control over the

economy, which the governments don’t like, but feel they have no choice.

• Why? – What else do you do with mobs of hungry peasants?

• First spark of the Industrial Revolution

Cottage System

3rd CottageMerchant Picks Up Textiles

4th

TownMerchant Sells Textiles Makes Profit

StartSheep Farm

Merchant Buys Wool

2nd

CottageMerchant Drops Off Wool

2nd Hundred Years War• English, Dutch, French, Spanish, and Portuguese fight

over the wealth of the New World and Atlantic Trade • Mercantilism puts them at odds with each other

– Goods from the English colonies can only be traded to England on English ships so that all of the profit stays with England, etc.

– This pisses off other countries and the colonists themselves. Why?

• Perhaps the first world wars – fighting in Europe and the New World– Fighting in Europe is part of general balance of power struggles

• By the 18th century, Portugal, Spanish, and Dutch were fading powers– Dutch had burned themselves out fighting Louis XIV, Spanish in

Wars of Religion, Portuguese had fought Spain and the Netherlands– Two dominant powers were France and Britain

British Dominance of Atlantic Economy

• Britain, especially held that mercantilism should help the people as well as the monarchy

• Roots in the Navigation Acts (interregnum)– Aimed at Dutch (Manhattan) and then French

• England could get involved in wars in the New World but avoid continental part of wars– Gave them an advantage over the French

• English seamen could quickly become navy in times of crisis

• Side Issue: – England England and Scotland England, Scotland,

and Ireland

Battles in Europe and New World

• War of the Spanish Succession – England felt hemmed in

by French and Spanish in the New Word (see map)

– Ended by Peace of Utrecht

– British win asiento and some French land in New World

• War of the Austrian Succession

• Seven Years War

• Queen Anne’s War

• King George’s War • French and Indian War

Name in Europe Name in Colonies

Battles in Europe and New World

• War of the Spanish Succession

• War of the Austrian Succession – Sparked by Frederick the

Great’s seizure of Silesia – Fighting in India and

North America between British and French

– Inconclusive Between British and French

• Seven Years War

• Queen Anne’s War

• King George’s War • French and Indian War

Name in Europe Name in Colonies

Battles in Europe and New World

• War of the Spanish Succession

• War of the Austrian Succession

• Seven Years War– Frederick the Great spared

by Peter III– Key battle between French

and British– (1st) Treaty of Paris – France loses new world

possessions– Spain and Britain get them– India goes to Britain for

good

• Queen Anne’s War

• King George’s War • French and Indian War

Name in Europe Name in Colonies

2nd HYW Isn’t Over Yet

• French and Indian War will help spark American Revolution, which in turn helps spark the French Revolution

• Both of these are, to a large degree, continuations of a fight between England and France over supremacy and control of the Atlantic Economy

Capitalism

• Part of the Enlightenment– Natural law of economics

• A rejection of mercantilism – Argues that the government moves too slowly to

regulate the economy efficiently

• Basic Ideas of Capitalism – Choices can be made more efficiently by actors in the economy

(rather than gov.) • Entrepreneurs and citizens make choices

– These choices will be made correctly due to the natural law of the invisible hand of the market

• supply and demand • Enlightened self-interest

– Free trade brings greater wealth to everyone• Not a zero-sum game

– There are occasional times when the government should interfere with the economy

• Maintain internal and external order • Provide a small number of goods that the market won’t provide naturally

– Example: freeways– All merchants gain from a freeway, but who will invest the capital to pay for

them??? – Example: Fire stations – If you don’t pay for them, won’t society have to work to put out a fire in your

house anyway?

There, there it is again—the invisible hand of the

marketplace giving us the finger.

Animation of Smith’s Invisible Hand

I will start a business making

hamburgers.

I will start a business making

hamburgers.

$10,000 $10,000

YUCK! YUM!

$10,000$10,000

Why me

lord?!

Ha, ha, ha. Skinny #@

%!#!

Where was the invisible hand?