Transcript ch 18 power point

Life in the Era of
Expansion
CHAPTER 18
I. Marriage and the Family

A. Late Marriage and Nuclear Families

1. Nuclear Families—The three-generation extended family was a rarity in western and central Europe. Young married
couples established their households and lived apart from their parents.

2. Delayed Marriage—In western Europe, the age of first marriage for both men and women was between 25 and 27, while
10 to 20 percent of men and women never married at all. Couples normally did not marry until they could start an
independent household and support themselves and future children. In some regions, laws required the local lord or
landowner to grant permission to marry, but they were reluctant to do so, fearing an increase in paupers, abandoned
children, and more money for welfare.

3. Impact of Delayed Marriage—It gave Europe an economic advantage, since a man and woman who married late had
already accumulated social and economic capital and there would be greater equality between them.

B. Work Away from Home

1. Apprenticeships—A boy would enter an apprenticeship around age fifteen and finish in his late teens or early twenties.
Boys would move from rural regions to cities or towns. Poor families could not afford apprenticeships so their sons would work
many different jobs that required little skill.

2. Work for Girls—Adolescent girls had limited opportunities (midwives, seamstresses, linen drapers), but during the eighteenth
century skilled female labor was more in demand and expanded their opportunities, allowing them to work in guilds.

3. Domestic Servants—Service in another family’s household was the most common job for girls (cleaning, shopping,
cooking, child-care), but they often fell prey to physical, verbal, and sexual abuse. Many lost their jobs and turned to
prostitution or thievery.
C. Premarital Sex and Community
Controls
1. Birth Control—Birth control was primitive and unreliable (condoms
from sheep intestines for the wealthy and prostitutes, coitus interruptus
for the rest).
 2. Illegitimacy—Until 1750, an illegitimate child was rare. Some French
parishes in the seventeenth century had less than 1 percent of babies
born out of wedlock.
 3. Community Controls—Traditionally, the community pressured couples
to marry when children were on the way, since the stigma of
illegitimacy was so great. Community controls were a pattern of
cooperation and common action in a traditional village that sought to
uphold the economic, social, and moral stability of the closely knit
community.
 4. Charivari—Even after marriage, a couple’s life was not immune to
village involvement. The community publicly shamed spouse-beaters or
adulterers through degrading public rituals called charivari. This was
used to police personal behavior and maintain moral standards.

D. New Patterns of Marriage and
Illegitimacy

1. Fewer Arranged Marriages—More young persons chose their own
partners since they increasingly worked for their own wages in the
countryside or migrated to the cities, thereby diminishing social
controls.

2. Illegitimacy Explosion—In Europe between 1750 and 1850, there
was a sharp increase in out-of-wedlock births caused by low wages
and the breakdown of community controls. This was concentrated
in England, France, Germany, and Scandinavia. In Frankfurt,
Germany, illegitimacy rates rose from about 2 percent in the early
1700s to 25 percent in 1850.

3. Reasons—Reasons for this rise in illegitimacy were a loosening of
social controls, greater opportunities to yield to the attraction of the
opposite sex, and fewer men followed through on their promise to
marry, in part because of the increased cost of raising children.
E. Sex on the Margins of Society

1. Prostitution—Prostitution flourished in the eighteenth century as an
outlet for married and single men. Most prostitutes were working women
who turned to the sex trade when facing unemployment. Venereal
disease was a threat, as was imprisonment or banishment if caught by
the police.
 2. Homosexuality—Homosexuality was punishable by law under pain of
death, but the laws were enforced unevenly and they did not apply to
nobles and royals (King James I had many male lovers). Homosexual
subcultures began to emerge in Paris, Amsterdam, and London.
Lesbianism attracted less anxiety and condemnations than male
homosexuality.
 3. Diminishing Tolerance—Traditional tolerance for sexual activities
outside of heterosexual marriage faded in the early modern period.
Enlightenment critics attacked court immorality and preached virtue
and morality for middle-class men.

II. Children and Education

A. Child Care and Nursing

1. High Mortality—Many infants died because of infectious diseases or dehydration brought on by
diarrhea, and many mothers died in childbirth from blood loss, shock, and subsequent infections.

2. Breast-Feeding—Women in the lower classes breast-fed their infants for two years or more,
thereby delaying ovulation and further pregnancies and reducing the mortality rates for their own
children. Aristocratic and upper-middle-class women paid lactating women to provide their milk
or fed their babies cow or goat milk as they considered breast-feeding undignified.

3. Wet-Nursing—A widespread and flourishing business in the eighteenth century in which women
were paid to breast-feed other women’s babies. Upper-class women hired live-in wet nurses to
suckle their children, and women in the countryside hired rural wet nurses. This practice was
accompanied by high mortality rates (in parts of northern France, more than 35 percent of babies
died before their first birthdays).

4. Criticism of Wet-Nursing—Enlightenment thinkers claimed wet-nursing was robbing Europeans of
their full potential and believed the population was declining. This did little to stem the popularity
of wet nurses.
B. Foundlings and Infanticide

1. Abortions—Abortion was illegal, dangerous, and rare.

2. Infanticide—Some women in the countryside delivered secretly
and smothered their newborns if they had no way to provide for the
child. However, infanticide was punishable by death.

3. Foundling Homes—Foundling homes (orphanages) began in
Europe in the sixteenth century. By the end of the eighteenth
century, more than 100,000 abandoned children were being
admitted annually to these institutions. Many were given by married
couples too poor to feed another child. Between 50 and 90 percent
of the babies admitted died because of disease, malnutrition, and
neglect.
II. Children and Education

C. Attitudes Toward Children

1. Emotional Distance—Some scholars claim that the absence of emotional
attachment to children was the result of high mortality rates. But it is also clear
that many families cherished their children and suffered greatly when they died.

2. Severe Discipline—Discipline was severe and the general consensus was that
children were born with a sinful will that must be overcome by parents. The
phrase “Spare the rod and spoil the child” was coined in the mid-seventeenth
century.

3. Enlightenment Attitudes—Differing attitudes in the Enlightenment called for
greater tenderness and imaginative teaching methods (comfortable clothing,
celebrating the innocence of the child rather than the sinful nature). Rousseau’s
work, Emile, or On Education (1762), advocated exercise and practical craft
skills in boys’ education and teaching domestic responsibilities to girls.
D. The Spread of Elementary
Schools

1. Religious Schools—These were run by Jesuits in Catholic areas, by
Presbyterians in Scotland (who believed that the path to salvation
lay in the careful study of Scripture), and by the Church of England
(which established “charity schools” to help poor children).

2. State Education—Prussia and other Protestant German states
established universal education, inspired by the idea that every
believer should be able to read the Bible and that the population
should be capable of serving the state. In 1717, Prussia made
elementary school attendance compulsory for both boys and girls.
Some Catholic states, including Habsburg Austria, followed suit. (In
1774, Maria Theresa imposed a five hours a day, five days a week
education edict for all children aged six to twelve.)
III. Popular Culture and
Consumerism

A. Popular Literature

1. Rise in Literacy—Between 1600 and 1800, the growth in literacy rates was
remarkable. The majority of this increase took place in the eighteenth century
and women lagged behind men.

2. Reading Materials—The Bible (the favorite in Protestant countries), chapbooks
(pamphlets printed on cheap paper that featured Bible stories, prayers,
devotions, and the lives of the saints), fairy tales, medieval romances, crime,
adventure stories, and practical literature (crafts, repairs, almanacs).

3. Enlightenment Literature—The majority of ordinary people did not read these
works, but they were exposed to Enlightenment ideas through cheap literature,
servants, markets, and cafes. The popularity of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense
(1776), which speaks of the evils of government, is proof of the common
people’s reception of Enlightenment ideas
III. Popular Culture and
Consumerism

B. Leisure and Recreation

1. Oral Cultures—Despite the spread of literacy, the culture of the village
remained oral. Families gathered around the fireplace in dark winter months to
tell stories. Women gathered in cottages to spin, sew, and chat, while men met
in taverns.

2. Towns and Cities—Urban fairs, profit-oriented spectator sports like horse races,
boxing matches, bullfights, and blood sports like bull-baiting and cockfighting
became popular in towns and cities in the eighteenth century.

3. Carnival—Carnivals took place in Catholic countries a few days before Lent.
They included a combination of plays, processions, and raucous spectacles that
turned the established order upside down and gave people an opportunity to
release pent-up frustrations.

4. Criticism—Elites in the second half of the eighteenth century who had
previously shared in these religious festivals, carnivals, drinking, and blood sports
began to see them as superstitious, sinful, disorderly, and vulgar.
III. Popular Culture and
Consumerism

C. New Foods and Appetites

1. Traditional Peasant Diets—Bread, wine, beer, vegetables (cabbage, carrots, wild greens), fruit
(during the summer), milk (primarily for cheese and butter), and very limited amounts of meat
(laws reserved the right to hunt and eat game to the nobles and large landowners). The peasants
believed in the just price, the idea that prices should be fair, should protect consumers and
producers, and should be imposed by government decree if necessary. When prices rose above
this level, they often rioted.

2. Diet of the Wealthy—The wealthy ate an abundance of meat and fish dishes with piquant
sauces, sweets, cheeses, and copious amounts of wine.

3. Changes in Food Consumption—Over the course of the eighteenth century, new foods
appeared (corn, squash, tomatoes, potatoes) as well as goods from European colonies (tea,
sugar, coffee, chocolate, tobacco), which were avidly consumed even by working people. Most
of these consumables were produced in the colonies, except tea, which came from China.

4. Reasons—The popularity of colonial products came from the common peoples’ desire to
emulate the rich. Tea and coffee became necessary stimulants for the working people, linking
them to global trade networks they did not understand and could not control.

D. Toward a Consumer Society

1. Consumer Revolution—The wide-ranging growth in consumption and new attitudes toward consumer
goods that emerged in the cities of northwestern Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century.
People now derived their self-identity from their consuming practices as much as from their working lives
and place in the production process. This was brought on, in part, by new marketing and advertising
techniques.

2. Clothing—There was a tremendous rise in the consumption of clothing because of colonial economies
and the shrewd marketing of fashionable outfits to lower-class persons. The spread of fashion to all classes
challenged the traditional European social order and made it difficult to distinguish between noble and
commoner.

3. Gender Distinctions—The spread of fashion was primarily a female phenomenon. By the end of the
eighteenth century, men renounced brilliant colors and voluptuous fabrics and donned early versions of
the plain dark suit.

4. New Attitudes Toward Space—Although the amount of space in houses did not increase, families
began to attribute specific functions to specific rooms and improve the quality and quantity of their
household items such as stoves, glass, and cutlery.

5. Hygiene—Personal and public hygiene also improved. Before the mid-eighteenth century, people
believed hot water was harmful to the body so they bathed very little and masked any odors with
perfumes and fresh linen. By the mid-eighteenth century, these views were changing and frequent
bathing became more common. City officials also took measures to clean the streets of trash, human
soil, and animal carcasses.
IV. Religious Authority and Beliefs

A. Church Hierarchy

1. Parish Church—The parish church was the center of religious devotion and community cohesion since it was woven into the fabric of
everyday life (baptisms, funerals, marriages, special events).

2. Increased State Control—In Protestant areas, princes and monarchs headed the official church, selected personnel, and imposed
detailed rules. In Catholic areas, monarchs took control of ecclesiastical appointments and approved the reading of papal
proclamations.

3. Abolition of the Orders—In France, the Gallican church was established as the national Catholic church. King Louis XV expelled the
Jesuits from France in 1763 and confiscated their property. France and Spain pressured the pope to dissolve the Jesuits completely,
which he did in 1773. Enlightened reformers and common people challenged the authority of the Catholic and Protestant churches.
Joseph II abolished contemplative orders, allowing only those engaged in teaching, nursing, or practical work. He also issued edicts of
religious tolerance.

B. Protestant Revival

1. Need for Renewal—Spiritual needs were growing as official Protestant churches settled into a smug complacency, in part, because of
the growth of state power and bureaucracy in local parishes.

2. Pietism—Pietism was a Protestant revival that began in Germany and Scandinavia in the early eighteenth century, called for a warm,
emotional religion that everyone could experience, reasserted the priesthood of all believers (to reduce the gulf between the clergy and
laity), called for educational reforms, and urged reborn Christians from all classes to lead good, moral lives.

3. Methodism—Methodists were members of a Protestant revival in England launched by John Wesley (1703–1791) who were so named
because they were so methodical in their devotion. Wesley was troubled by the failure of the Church of England to respond to the
spiritual needs of people and was concerned about the popularity of deism and Enlightenment skepticism. After an experience of
spiritual renewal, Wesley preached more than 40,000 sermons between 1750 and 1790, rejecting Calvin’s doctrine of predestination and
arguing that anyone who sought salvation might be saved.

C. Catholic Piety

1. The Church and Community Life—There was enthusiastic participation in Catholic religious festivals and
processions. As a result of the church’s greater role in the community, Catholics throughout Europe
generally participated more actively in worship than Protestants. They also joined confraternities in large
numbers, whereas the Reformation ended festivities in Protestant areas.

2. Jansenism—Jansenism was the Catholic version of the Pietist revivals in Protestantism. It was a Catholic
sect begun by Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), the bishop of Ypres in the Spanish Netherlands, who called
for a return to the austere early Christianity of Saint Augustine. Jansen believed in the doctrine of
predestination and emphasized the weight of original sin. Jansenism took hold among many members of
France’s urban elite (judicial nobles and some parish priests), but it was outlawed as heresy by the pope.

D. Marginal Beliefs and Practices

1. Popular Piety—Many peasants retained beliefs and practices that were often of pagan origin (a live
bull was buried to ward off an epidemic of hoof and mouth disease).

2. “Purifying” Popular Spirituality—Both religious and secular authorities lashed out against such
“superstition.” Priests vehemently denounced pagan practices, and authorities pursued purification
vigorously (Joseph II in Austria). This showed a growing tension between educated elites and the
common people but also led to the end of witchcraft trials.
V. Medical Practice

A. Faith Healing and General Practice

1. Faith Healers—Faith healing remained popular in the eighteenth century. It was believed that disease
was caused by evil spirits that had to be exorcised.

2. Lotions and Potions—Apothecaries sold herbs, drugs, and medicines for every “temperament and
disorder.” Some of them worked, such as laxatives for the rich and their constipated bowels. Medicine
became part of the new consumer culture.

3. Physicians—Physicians were generally men who served an apprenticeship, performed some hospital
work, and took several university courses. They generally came from prosperous families, but while willing
to experiment with new methods, they remained indebted to time-honored methods like purging and
bloodletting.

B. Hospitals and Surgery

1. Anatomy—Surgeons began to study anatomy seriously in the eighteenth century. They learned that
cauterizing a wound with fire could reduced the likelihood of death, and surgeons were able to practice
this on many soldiers.

2. Anesthesia—Amputations were performed on battlefields without painkillers as using anesthesia on
patients was too dangerous. Mortality rates were high due to unsanitary conditions and the possibility of
infection.

C. Midwifery

1. Duties—Midwives assisted in labor, delivered babies, and treated female problems (irregular menstrual cycles, lactation
problems, infertility, venereal disease).

2. Competition—Male surgeons began to enter this traditionally female world in the eighteenth century and attack midwives
as ignorant and dangerous to gain a monopoly over this lucrative business. They convinced growing numbers of elite
women of the superiority of their services. Midwives, however, successfully defended much of their practice and generally
lost no more babies than male doctors.

3. Nursing—Nursing remained the domain of women. Although they were excluded from formal medical learning and
training, women performed the bulk of medical care. The nursing profession did not emerge until the nineteenth century.

D. The Conquest of Smallpox

1. The Great Killer—Smallpox replaced bubonic plague as the most terrible of the infectious diseases. Nearly 60 million
Europeans died of smallpox in the eighteenth century.

2. Inoculation—English aristocrat Mary Wortley promoted the practice of inoculation in England. It was still a risky practice in
which nearly 1/50 died. Inoculation consisted of injecting the person with pus from a smallpox victim.

3. Edward Jenner (1749–1823)—Edward Jenner, a country doctor, noticed that dairy maids who contracted cowpox did not
get smallpox. He vaccinated people with matter taken from milkmaids with cowpox, helping to eradicate the disease in
Europe.
William Hogarth

10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter,
printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist who
has been credited with pioneering western sequential art.

His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of
pictures called "modern moral subjects". Knowledge of his work is so
pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often
referred to as "Hogarthian".[1]

Discuss this satirical view of the church depicting a Methodist
meeting in London by William Hogarth (1697–1764).

1. Describe some of the characters in this scene.

2. How was the artist trying to portray members of the church in this
image?

3. What does this say about people’s view of religion in this era?

1. The preacher is giving a fiery sermon about the dangers of evil.
Some people aren’t paying attention to the sermon, while others
show great enthusiasm. The man reading the Bible on the pulpit
looks confused, while two cherubs sit on either side of him. The
woman in the foreground is giving birth to rabbits, an allusion to
Mary Tofts, a servant who was able to convince doctors that she
had given birth to animals.

2. He may have been trying to portray them as a group of lunatics
who blindly followed a charlatan, or as a mindless, gullible mob
unable to determine the truth for themselves

3.
Many people viewed religion as superstition.
Experiments during the Scientific Revolution and the
Enlightenment uncovered the workings behind many
natural phenomena and pushed religious
interpretations to the background in favor of a more
rational explanation.