The Atlantic System and Its Consequences

1. Unit 5: CHAPTER 18 The Atlantic System and Its Consequences 1700–1750

2. I. The Atlantic System and the World Economy A. Slavery and the Atlantic System • Plantations, Labor, and the Slave Trade • drew more of the world into the economic orbit of the West, and helped to develop a consumer society. • Large-scale plantations of sugar, coffee, and tobacco began displacing small farmers in the 1700s. • Labor for these plantations, initially supplied largely by indentured servants, remained expensive until planters began to make more extensive use of slave labor, allowing them to produce mass quantities of commodities at low prices. • The trade transformed Africa, reducing population, increasing polygamy, and altering local politics.

3. 2. The Life of the Slaves

4. 3. Effects of the Slave Trade on Europe • Slave owners and planters became wealthy and politically influential. • Plantation products altered consumption for many, particularly as sugar became an important part of the European diet. Tobacco was also widely used.

5. 4. The Origins of Modern Racism • Although some criticized slavery on religious grounds, by the 1700s slaveholders increasingly came to see Africans as racially inferior, and many came to believe they deserved slavery. • Despite Christianity’s belief in spiritual equality, churches often defended slavery.

10. I. The Atlantic System and the World Economy B. World Trade and Settlement • The Americas • British North American colonies contained 1.5 million whites in 1750. • Spain and Portugal competed for control of South America, while the French, British, and Spanish competed for control of North America. • Racial attitudes were especially variable, with the Spanish and Portuguese supporting intermarriage with local populations, and over time producing mestizos, who by 1800 accounted for one-quarter of the population of the Spanish colonies. Intermarriage fostered conversion to Christianity in Spanish colonies.

11. 2. Africa and Asia • Settlements in Africa and Asia remained small. Africa remained largely unexplored, and the European presence was restricted in China, where divisions and conflict reduced the effectiveness of missionaries. • In the East Indies, large Dutch coffee plantations were established in Java. Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Danish companies competed for spices, cotton, and silk from India, but France and England were the leading rivals.

12. I. The Atlantic System and the World Economy • C. The Birth of Consumer Society • 1. Population Boom and the Consumer Revolution • European population growth of up to 20 percent between 1700 and 1750, initially in Britain, France, and the Italian states, contributed to increasing demand for goods. • Declining death rates, due to improvement in the climate, better agricultural techniques, and the disappearance of the plague after the 1720s, led to a population explosion that was most noticeable in cities. • By the early eighteenth century, the commercial revolution was underway as imports of tea, chocolate, coffee, calico, and tobacco increased exponentially.

14. 2. The New Consumerism • A new economic dynamic of consumption well beyond subsistence levels became well-established as people gained more disposable income. • Consumption went beyond plantation products and included tables, chairs, sheets, and so on. • Rising demand created more jobs and income and yet more purchasing power in a mutually reinforcing cycle. The consumer revolution spread from cities to countryside.

16. II. New Social and Cultural Patterns A. Agricultural Revolution 1. The Revolution in British Agriculture • The development of new agricultural techniques in Britain increased production 43 percent over the 1700s and constituted an agricultural revolution. • Farmers increased the amount of land under cultivation; consolidated plots into larger, more efficient units; practiced crop rotation and fodder production; and began to selectively breed their better-fed livestock. • Food prices fell, and production increased dramatically. Not all farmers benefited.

17. Larger landowners used the “enclosure movement” (a process of consolidating holdings by buying out small landholders and common land, and then fencing it in) to improve their holdings and increase production. • Villages and small holders suffered, and small landholders were forced to sell. • Tenant farmers leased farms from large landholders, and peasants became paid agricultural laborers.

18. 2. The Spread of the New Agriculture • New farming techniques spread slowly across western Europe, and subsistence agriculture remained dominant. • Outside of the highly urbanized Low Countries, most Europeans remained in the countryside on the margins of the new market economy. • In eastern Europe, efforts by large landowners to increase yields led to worse conditions for peasants, as they were forced off land they had worked for themselves. • Serfdom, marked by compulsory labor services, was widespread among the peasantry and differed little from slavery.

19. II. New Social and Cultural Patterns B. Social Life in the Cities 1. Urban Social Classes • Many landed nobles had residences in the cities, where they lived extravagantly, employed many servants and artisans, and held key positions in political systems. • Middle-class officials, merchants, professionals, and smaller landowners were next on the social ladder. • . Below the middle class were artisans and shopkeepers (mostly organized in professional guilds), followed by journeymen, apprentices, servants, and laborers. • The unemployed poor were at the bottom of the social scale, surviving on charity and occasional work. Many poorer women worked as domestic servants until they married.

20. 2. Signs of Social Distinction • Social status was easily visible in cities. Rich districts were spacious and had gardens and fresher air, while poor districts were crowded and damp, with many homeless. • In some mixed districts, the poor lived in shabby, cramped, top-floor apartments. • Occupations and social classes could be recognized by their dress, as wealthier classes wore brighter clothes and more varied fabrics. • Social status permeated ordinary life.

21. 3. The Growth of a Literate Public • The upper classes were much more likely to be literate, and the urban were more literate than the rural. • Protestant countries were more successful in promoting literacy and education. Why? • Widespread literacy among the lower classes was most common in Switzerland, Scotland, the Scandinavian countries, and the New England colonies. • Urban middle-class literacy led to a rapid increase in books, newspapers, and periodicals, especially in England.

22. II. New Social and Cultural Patterns • C. New Tastes in the Arts • Rococo Painting • Rococo style reflected the tastes of the new public. In painting, it emphasized irregularity and asymmetry, along with movement and curvature. Its themes were smaller and more intimate, often personal portraits or landscape. These paintings often were kept in domestic settings as decoration. At its best, in the work of Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) or Francois Boucher (1703–1770), they contributed to the development of new sensibilities and attracted the middle-class public to art.

24. 2. Music for the Public • Public concerts became frequent in the 1690s in England and some decades later on the continent. City concert halls catered to the wealthy, with music clubs providing entertainment in towns and villages. Opera spread everywhere. • The growth of public support and appreciation for music allowed composers to be slowly liberated from court patronage. George Frederic Handel (1685–1759), a German who worked in Britain composing popular oratorios, was among the first composers to grasp the new direction. • Music became an integral part of middle-class public culture.

25. 3. Novels • Novels, increasingly concerned with individual psychology and social description, proliferated in the eighteenth century and were tied to the expansion of literacy. • Many were available in serial form in periodicals. Women were popular as authors and characters. • Novelists such as Eliza Haywood (1693?–1756) and Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) depicted changing social circumstances and the challenges they presented to men and women.

26. III. Consolidation of the European State System A. A New Power Alignment 1. The End of the War of the Spanish Succession • fighting across Europe, the Caribbean, and North and South America. • It weakened Spain dramatically, thwarted the ambitions of Louis XIV, and allowed Britain to emerge as the leading maritime power. The peace of Utrecht left Louis XIV’s grandson as the king of Spain, but he was forced to renounce any claim to the French throne, thereby preventing the union of the two kingdoms.

27. 2. France after Louis XIV • After Louis XIV’s death in 1715, his five-year-old great-grandson became Louis XV (r. 1715–1774) with the Duke of Orleans, Louis XIV’s nephew, serving as regent. • State finances finally stabilized under the leadership of Cardinal Hercule de Fleury. Fleury balanced the budget and aimed to keep social peace at home. • Colonial trade boomed and peace and the acceptance of limits on territorial expansion ensured a century of French prosperity.

28. III. Consolidation of the European State System B. British Rise and Dutch Decline 1. From England to Great Britain: The Troubled Hanoverian Succession • When William and Mary had no children, the Parliament in England ruled that Mary’s sister, Anne, would succeed them. When Anne died with no heirs, Parliament provided for the Protestant house of Hanover in Germany to succeed her. Catholics were excluded from the succession, and George I of Hanover (r. 1714–1727) became king.

29. Many, especially in Scotland and Ireland, supported the claim of the deposed Catholic king James II and then his son James Edward. Fear of this “Jacobitism” led Scottish Protestant leaders to agree to an Act of Union with England in 1707, which abolished the Scottish Parliament and reaffirmed the Hanoverian succession. • A Scottish Jacobite rebellion was put down in 1715, but Jacobitism lingered into the 1740s. Ireland was 90 percent Catholic, and in 1689, after William III defeated James II’s army there, James fled to France. By 1700, with James out of the country, Irish Catholics faced land confiscations and severe legal restrictions put in place by the Protestant-controlled Irish Parliament. Catholic Ireland was reduced to the status of a colony.

30. 2. Walpole and the Pattern of Parliamentary Government • Parliament in England, confirmed in its primary role of law-making and revenue-raising, was dominated by the Whig party. • With votes restricted to 200,000 propertied men, several hundred landed families controlled politics. Both George I and George II relied heavily on Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745), who strengthened the power of Parliament through his use of patronage and became the first, “prime,” minister responsible for guiding legislation through the House of Commons.

32. III. Consolidation of the European State System B. British Rise and Dutch Decline (cont.) 3. The Dutch Eclipse • Dutch trade and influence declined following William III’s death

33. III. Consolidation of the European State System C. Russia’s Emergence as a European Power • Peter the Great and Westernization • Tsar Peter I (r. 1689–1725), known later as Peter the Great, sought to make Russia a great power by establishing a Western-style absolutist state. • A wave of controversial reforms changed Russian society, including the introduction of the Western calendar, Arabic numerals, newspapers, technical schools, a Russian academy of sciences, Western-style fashions, and many others. Foreigners with skills were encouraged to help build the new capital at St. Petersburg.

34. 2. The Capital at St. Petersburg • St. Petersburg symbolized the new and more open Russian society. Construction of the new capital began in 1703 in territory conquered from Sweden. • St. Petersburg represented a break with the Russian past. Women there were encouraged to dress in European fashion and appear in public. Foreigners headed new technical and vocational schools, and French and German were widely spoken there. • Such changes only affected the very top of Russian society; the mass of the Russian population, especially the serfs, had no contact with these reforms and new ideas.

36. 3. Peter the Great’s Brand of Absolutism • Peter strengthened his army and organized the government bureaucracy along Western lines. • Harsh repression, torture, and a firm response to opposition marked his reign, and his own son was arrested and died mysteriously in prison. Noblemen were arranged in a Table of Ranks and forced to serve the state, and civil advantages depended on loyal service to the tsar. • Peter replaced the office of patriarch in the state with a Holy Synod of laypeople more directly under his control.

38. 4. Changes in the Balance of Power in the East • Russia emerged as a great power during the Great Northern War (1700–1721), eventually defeating Charles XII (r. 1697–1718) and Sweden. • The Prussian king Frederick William (r. 1713–1740) increased Prussian power by doubling the size of his well-trained army. Joining Russia in the Great Northern War, Prussia expanded territorially as well.

40. III. Consolidation of the European State System • D. Continuing Dynastic Struggles • 1. The War of Polish Succession • In 1733, when the king of Poland-Lithuania died, France, Spain, and Sardinia went to war with Austria and Russia to support rival claimants. • Austria continued to fight the Turks in the Balkans, with Russia joining the conflict against the Turks after they took Belgrade in the 1730s. • The Hungarians fought both the Turks and Austria for control of their own territory, eventually forcing Austria to recognize Hungarian institutions and rights in return for Hungarian acceptance of hereditary Austrian rule.

41. 2. The War of Austrian Succession • The War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748) began when the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI died without a male heir. Most European rulers recognized his daughter, Maria Theresa, but the Prussian King Frederick II, with French help, attempted to seize Austrian territory. • Great Britain supported Austria, and fighting soon extended to the French and British overseas colonies, including India, the Caribbean, and North America. Eventually the Austrians were forced to concede territory to Prussia in return for Prussian recognition of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. • The peace recognized Maria Theresa as the heiress to the Austrian lands, and her husband Francis I became Holy Roman Emperor.

43. IV. The Birth of the Enlightenment • A. Popularization of Science and Challenges to Religion • The New Skepticism • As the prestige of science increased, skepticism about religious conformity grew. From the safety of the Dutch Republic, Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), a Huguenot refugee from Louis XIV’s persecutions, issued a series of books and essays that urged religious toleration. His Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697) attacked the irrationality of religion and appeared to many to challenge the authority of faith. • Authorities found religious skepticism unsettling because it threatened to undermine state power. The French government took the lead in suppressing outspoken works, but censorship whetted the public appetite for forbidden books, many of which were smuggled into other countries.

44. 2. The Young Voltaire • Inspired by Bayle, Francoise-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire (1694–1778), became an even more influential early Enlightenment writer. Voltaire’s writings led to arrests, imprisonments, and exile, but also wealth and acclaim. • In the 1730s, his Letters Concerning the English Nation praised British toleration and attacked the intolerant Catholicism and government rigidity of France. • Voltaire popularized Newton’s scientific discoveries with his Elements of the Philosophy of Newton, and became famous as a social critic.

45. IV. The Birth of the Enlightenment • B. Travel Literature and the Challenge to Custom and Tradition • 1. The Lessons of Travel Literature • Travel writing was also used to question the status quo in religion and politics, as writers contrasted their own societies with other cultures. Many thought that the new colonies approximated the “state of nature” and found native peoples to be “noble savages” living in conditions of freedom and equality. China, on the other hand, seemed to demonstrate that civilization and prosperity did not require Western input. Travel writing taught that customs, laws, government, religion, and morals might vary according to place.

46. 2. Montesquieu and the Politics of Travel Writing • The Baron of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters was a particularly political masterpiece of travel writing. Enormously popular, the story of two Persian travelers to Europe critiqued French politics and society indirectly, suggesting that the rule of the French monarchy was despotic. Montesquieu, a former judge, went on to write Spirit of the Laws (1748), in which he argued against giving a monarch absolute power. Both books were on the Catholic Church’s list of forbidden books.

47. IV. The Birth of the Enlightenment • C. Raising the Woman Question • 1. Writers and Feminism • Women writers used the emergent language of liberty and freedom to argue for a change in their status. The systematic presentation of these feminist ideas in Enlightenment discourse represented a fundamental challenge to traditional social organization. Author Mary Astell (1666–1731), in her popular A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694), advocated more education for women. In other writings, Astell also argued for more equality within marriage.

48. 2. Undermining Arguments against Female Rationality • Others were inspired by Astell, but most male writers stuck to the traditional views of women, often basing their arguments on biology and the Aristotelian view of reproduction that held that only male seed carried spirit and individuality. Eighteenth-century science began to undermine this view as scientists and physicians advanced the contrary theory of ovism, which held that women’s eggs were essential in making new humans.