Europe After the Black Death

Early Modern Europe and the Demographic Transition

Timeline

Timeline

Prehistory

Timeline

Ancient Civilization

Timeline

Post Classical

Timeline

Modern and Post Modern Era

European Timeline, Post Black Death

• 1456: Gutenberg Bible: Invention of Movable Type

• Discovery of the New World: 1492• Ca 1500: Renaissance• Protestant Reformation: 1517• 1607: Founding of Virginia (Jamestown Colony)• 1620-1630: Founding of Plymouth Colony and

Massachusetts Bay

Timeline

• 17th Century (1600s) The Golden Age of the Dutch Republic

• 1640-1660: English Revolution• 17th - 18th Centuries (1600-1700s) Reign of the

“Louis”: Louis XIV (1661-1715)• 1776: American Revolution• 1789: French Revolution• Late 18th Century: Industrial Revolution in

England

Protestant Reformation: 1517

• Martin Luther (and others) challenge the primacy of the Papacy and Catholic ideas...

• Splits the unity of Western Christendom

• Reorganizes the relationship between individual and God

• Reorganizes the relationship among church, state and family

Discovery and Colonization of the New World (and Trade with Far

East)• Expands the horizons of Europe and expands

European civilization• Brings new products to Europeans (sugar,

coffee, tea, tobacco, corn, spices, china, silk, paper, gunpowder, pasta)

• Fosters the expansion of the trading economy and ‘urban’ society, particularly in the Netherlands and Britain

Expansion of Science, Reading and Knowledge

• Development of printing and book publishing

• Expansion of literacy and hence schooling

• Expansion of science and technology– Astronomy– Navigation

Rise of Democratic Society

• Invention of the idea of the rights of man and challenge to absolutist ideals

• Development of conceptions of liberty, equality, fraternity, freedom of speech, conscience, religion

• Countertrends: The reintroduction of slavery as a labor system

European Social Classes

• Nobility or Aristocracy

• Gentry (propertied, but not necessarily noble)

• Middle Classes, Bourgeois, Burghers (Urban Professionals)

• Tradesmen, artisans, peasants, small holders

• Poor

What is yet to come...

• The Industrial Revolution: first seen in Britain in the late 18th century– steam engine– railroads– new forms of communication, e.g., telegraph,

telephone– factory system of production

Western European Marriage Pattern

• Late marriage (age)

• Neolocal marriage (marriage generates a new household)

• Relatively low completed fertility for the society as a whole

• Long generations

The Demographic Transition and Population Growth

• Families in societies we’ve discussed so far are both residential and economic units

• Population Growth can be understood from the perspective of– families: a function of the birth, death,

marriage and migrations of their members.– nations: a function of fertility and mortality and

migration of individuals

Regulating Resources

• In Europe, the equilibrium between economic resources and population was maintained through the regulation of marriage

• Western European marriage pattern– late age of marriage (23+ for women), low fertility

because of delayed childbearing– neo local residence– long generations– non universal marriage (90% or less of pop)

Demographic Transition

• “Traditional” societies: are characterized by high mortality and high fertility: High death rate and high birth rate per woman.

• In between….the demographic transition, declining mortality, followed by declining fertility, leading to rapid population growth

• “Modern societies” are characterized by low mortality and low fertility

Demographic Transition

Surviving Childhood

Mechanisms….

• In Europe, some people couldn’t marry because there weren’t sufficient resources to support a new household. There was a tendency for younger sons and daughters to be downwardly mobile; poorer people had smaller families, suffered more health problems and died younger.

• In the mid 18th century, mortality fell. Epidemic disease became less lethal, and people began to live longer.

The World of Young People...

• What would happen if young people could find an economic livelihood independent of their parents and family of origin?

• The practice of ‘fostering out’ children, of young people ‘going into service’ to help the family, or to earn enough to marry, was an old one.

• Wage labor and “proto industrialization” grew in the countryside, making it possible for young people to find work outside of the parental home, say from age 15-25.

Continued…

• Initially they worked for a yearly wage, or in a boarding and lodging arrangement, but increasingly earned cash income.

• Employers gradually moved employees and servants out of the house or to the margin of the household, and dispensed with obligations for moral regulation.

Continued….• In Europe, a new social class emerged from

the ranks of both the ‘poor’ and the ‘peasantry’ or agricultural population: namely proletarians, or ‘workers’ who lived by wage labor, and did not own the enterprises they worked in.

• In frontier areas, including colonies like the American colonies, young people came as ‘indentured servants,’ usually owing 4-7 years of work to pay for their passage (1600s and 1700s), and received rights in land to become farmers when they finished. See also this contract.

Impact...

• These new changes in the life chances of young people changed marriage patterns. First, some young people were out of the control of their elders and traditional methods of marriage arrangements. Such marriages were made by the 2 families, involved ‘courtship’ perhaps and transfer of property.

• What made young people obey their elders was the need for financial and economic resources that came with the marriage.

Impact...

• Once those financial and economic resources could be secured by the young people themselves, parents lost control. The result was a drop in the age of marriage, increased premarital sexuality as evidenced by out of wedlock conception, and reduced stigma to such conceptions. A ‘conception’ could be legitimated by a marriage before the child was born. But out of wedlock births also rose.

Impact...• All this led to a population boom in Europe from 1750

to 1900, as the population grew from 163 million to 408 million, even while 50 million emigrants left. Europe, North and South America went from having 23% of the world’s population in 1750 to about 35% in 1900.

• The relationship between wealth and family size reversed. In societies before 1500 the rich had bigger families; post 1850, the less well off had bigger families, because the children could leave home and find work and improve their economic situations.

Conclusion….

• The European marriage system, under appropriate circumstances, contributed both to economic growth, and to population boom.

• Malthus’ prediction did not come true….