The relentless revolution: a history of capitalism by Joyce Appleby, Joyce Oldham Appleby Page B
Authors: Joyce Appleby, Joyce Oldham Appleby
Tags: General, History, Economics, Business & Economics, Historiography, Capitalism - History, Economic History, Capitalism, Free Enterprise
Ads: Link
inventory of goods that knitted European countries together in an intensifying round of material exchanges. From the Baltic countries came grain and lumber, from the Dutch came dried herring and the goods their merchants collected around the world, from the Iberian Peninsula olive oil, wine, and fine merino wool, from Italy wine and fruit, from France luxury fabrics and wine, from England wool, metal tools, and foodstuffs. Within the web of international commerce, those countries with access to the Atlantic enjoyed a distinct advantage.
The rich ate vast amounts of meat, fish, and fowl while the poor had to content themselves with a monotonous fare of bread. In northern England and Scotland not even wheat was available; the poor ate oats while everywhere members of the upper class enjoyed a great variety of dishes. A surviving household account gives us a record of what a nobleman served on the feast of Epiphany. His 450 guests ate 678 loaves of bread, 36 rounds of beef, 12 mutton, 2 calves, 4 pigs, 6 suckling pigs, 1 lamb, numerous chickens and rabbits, as well as oysters, lingcod, sturgeon, flounder, large eels, plaice, salmon, swans, geese, capons, peacocks, herons, mallards, woodcocks, larks, quails, eggs, butter, and milk along with wine and 259 flagons of ale. 3 If we compare it with the monotonous diet that some 80 percent of the society ate, we see the difference in material comfort that status conferred. In this world of scarcity there were some who enjoyed abundance.
Agrarian practices, dignified through centuries of experience, organized by shared habits, backed by authority, knitted together communities through routines, shared tasks, rituals, and celebrations. An idealization of the rural way of life has even persisted through three centuries of modernity. Many Europeans still farmed together in common fields in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The least efficient farmer set the pace; community plots maintained strict schedules for planting and reaping. After harvesting, the villagers had to agree on a time for letting their animals graze on the remains of the crops left standing in the fields. While most villages also contained freehold farmers and prosperous tenants, their lives were also deeply entwined with those of their neighbors. The stability of this way of living had built a mighty wall of hostility to change. Even where families farmed separately, there were many restrictions on the use and disposition of land as well as complications in titles and the right to sell or bequeath one’s land. 4
Population Growth and Agriculture
The rhythms of birth and death set the tempo for the expansion and contraction of population. In good times, people had more children—or more children survived. Over time the bulging demand from the new generation pushed up the price of food, which in turn encouraged some farmers to reach out and cultivate plots of marginal fertility. The higher prices that came from greater demand made it possible to extract a living from land that normally was too poor to trouble with, but as a strategy to sustain a larger population this one was doomed. Eventually the yield declined, and the enlarged population was even more vulnerable to famine. Europe and other parts of the world regularly went into these demographic cycles of growth and decline. Diseases killed people as well, often working in tandem with the debilitating effects of hunger. And then there were the casualties of war, made worse by armies battening off the countryside. The Thirty Years’ War, which lasted from 1618 to 1648, led to a 35 percent drop in population in Germany, bringing to an abrupt end the population growth of the previous century.
A few simple economic truths reigned supreme. Abundant food lowered prices; food shortages forced prices up. Population growth increased demand, and demand raised prices. With population decline both the price of grain and the acres in cultivation went down. Because
The rich ate vast amounts of meat, fish, and fowl while the poor had to content themselves with a monotonous fare of bread. In northern England and Scotland not even wheat was available; the poor ate oats while everywhere members of the upper class enjoyed a great variety of dishes. A surviving household account gives us a record of what a nobleman served on the feast of Epiphany. His 450 guests ate 678 loaves of bread, 36 rounds of beef, 12 mutton, 2 calves, 4 pigs, 6 suckling pigs, 1 lamb, numerous chickens and rabbits, as well as oysters, lingcod, sturgeon, flounder, large eels, plaice, salmon, swans, geese, capons, peacocks, herons, mallards, woodcocks, larks, quails, eggs, butter, and milk along with wine and 259 flagons of ale. 3 If we compare it with the monotonous diet that some 80 percent of the society ate, we see the difference in material comfort that status conferred. In this world of scarcity there were some who enjoyed abundance.
Agrarian practices, dignified through centuries of experience, organized by shared habits, backed by authority, knitted together communities through routines, shared tasks, rituals, and celebrations. An idealization of the rural way of life has even persisted through three centuries of modernity. Many Europeans still farmed together in common fields in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The least efficient farmer set the pace; community plots maintained strict schedules for planting and reaping. After harvesting, the villagers had to agree on a time for letting their animals graze on the remains of the crops left standing in the fields. While most villages also contained freehold farmers and prosperous tenants, their lives were also deeply entwined with those of their neighbors. The stability of this way of living had built a mighty wall of hostility to change. Even where families farmed separately, there were many restrictions on the use and disposition of land as well as complications in titles and the right to sell or bequeath one’s land. 4
Population Growth and Agriculture
The rhythms of birth and death set the tempo for the expansion and contraction of population. In good times, people had more children—or more children survived. Over time the bulging demand from the new generation pushed up the price of food, which in turn encouraged some farmers to reach out and cultivate plots of marginal fertility. The higher prices that came from greater demand made it possible to extract a living from land that normally was too poor to trouble with, but as a strategy to sustain a larger population this one was doomed. Eventually the yield declined, and the enlarged population was even more vulnerable to famine. Europe and other parts of the world regularly went into these demographic cycles of growth and decline. Diseases killed people as well, often working in tandem with the debilitating effects of hunger. And then there were the casualties of war, made worse by armies battening off the countryside. The Thirty Years’ War, which lasted from 1618 to 1648, led to a 35 percent drop in population in Germany, bringing to an abrupt end the population growth of the previous century.
A few simple economic truths reigned supreme. Abundant food lowered prices; food shortages forced prices up. Population growth increased demand, and demand raised prices. With population decline both the price of grain and the acres in cultivation went down. Because
Similar Books
