The depressed economic conditions of the seventeenth century began to improve in the early eighteenth century. Rapid population growth, expansion in banking and trade, an agricultural revolution (at least in Britain), the stirrings of industrialization, and an increase in worldwide trade and consumption characterized the economic patterns of the eighteenth century.
Europe’s population began to grow around 1750 and experienced a slow but steady rise, with some regional variations.
It has been estimated that the total European population rose from around 120 million in 1700 to 140 million by 1750, and then grew to 190 million by 1790; thus, the growth rate in the second half of the century was double that of the first half. Individual states also experienced rapid growth between 1700 and 1790: Russia’s population went from 14 million to 28 million (much of it due to territorial expansion); France’s, from 20 to 26 or 27 million; Spain’s, from 6 to 10 million; Brandenburg-Prussia’s, from 1.5 to 5.5 million (over half of this came from territorial acquisition); and Britain’s, from 5 or 6 to 9 million. These increases occurred during the same time that several million Europeans were going abroad as colonists.
Perhaps the most important cause of population growth was a decline in the death rate, thanks, no doubt, to more plentiful food and better transportation of food supplies, which led to improved diets and some relief from devastating famines. The introduction of new crops from the Americas, such as corn and potatoes, played an important role in creating a more bountiful and nutritious food supply (see “Was There an Agricultural Revolution?” later in this chapter). Some historians have estimated that at the beginning of the eighteenth century, farmers were producing about 20 to 30 percent more food than they needed to sustain themselves; by 1750, the surplus reached 50 percent.
But a more plentiful food supply was not the only factor contributing to population growth. Also of great significance was the end of the bubonic plague: the last great outbreak in western Europe occurred in 1720 in southern France. In England, a decline in the number of women who remained unmarried during their childbearing years may also have played an important role in population growth. It has been estimated that this number fell from 15 to 7 percent between 1700 and 1800.
Nevertheless, death was still a ubiquitous feature of everyday life. Diseases such as typhus, smallpox, influenza, and dysentery were rampant, especially since hygienic conditions remained poor – little bathing, dirty clothes, and no systematic elimination of human wastes. Despite the improved transportation, famine and hunger could still be devastating.
The family, rather than the individual, was still at the heart of Europe’s social organization. For the most part, people still thought of the family in traditional terms, as a patriarchal institution with the husband dominating his wife and children. The upper classes in particular were still concerned for the family as a “house,” an association whose collective interests were more important than those of its individual members. In all social classes, parents, especially the fathers, still generally selected marriage partners for their children, based on the interests of the family (see the box on p. 548). One French noble responded to his son’s inquiry about his upcoming marriage: “Mind your own business.”
CHILD CARE At the beginning of the eighteenth century, traditional attitudes also prevailed in the care of children. Generally, lower-class women breast-fed their own children because that provided the best nourishment. Moreover, since there were strong taboos in various parts of Europe against sexual intercourse while breastfeeding, mothers might also avoid another immediate pregnancy; if the infant died, they could then have another child. Lower-class women, however, also served as wet nurses for children of the aristocratic and upper middle classes. Mothers from these higher social strata considered breastfeeding undignified and hired wet nurses instead. Even the wives of artisans in the cities, for economic reasons, sent their babies to wet nurses in the countryside if they could, making the practice widespread in the eighteenth century.In the second half of the eighteenth century, traditional attitudes began to alter, especially in western Europe. The impact of Enlightenment thought, such as Rousseau’s Émile, and the increasing survival of more infants led to new attitudes toward children. Childhood came to be viewed more and more as a distinct phase in human development. One result was a shift to dressing children in comfortable clothes appropriate to their age rather than in clothes modeled after adult styles. Shops for children’s clothes appeared for the first time. The practice of primogeniture, in which the eldest son received all or the largest share of the parents’ estate and thus was treated as the favorite, also came under attack. All children, it was argued, deserved their parents’ attention. Appeals for women to breast-feed their children rather than use wet nurses soon followed. In England, games and toys specifically for children now appeared. The jigsaw puzzle was invented in the 1760s, and books, such as Little Pretty Pocket-Book (1744), aimed to please as well as teach children. These changes, however, were largely limited to the upper classes of western European society and did not extend to the peasants. For most Europeans, children were still a source of considerable anxiety. They represented a health risk to the mothers who bore them and more mouths to feed if they survived. In times of economic crisis, children proved such a burden to some families that they resorted to infanticide or abandoned their children at foundling homes.
Despite being punishable by death, infanticide remained a solution to the problem of too many children. So many children were being “accidentally” suffocated while in their parents’ bed that in Austria in 1784 a law was enacted that forbade parents to place children under five years old in bed with them. More common than infanticide was simply leaving unwanted children at foundling homes or hospitals, which became a favorite charity of the rich in eighteenth-century Europe. The largest of its kind, located in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was founded by members of the nobility. By the end of the century, it was taking in 5,000 new babies a year and caring for 25,000 children at one time.
But severe problems arose as the system became overburdened. One historian has estimated that in the 1770s, one-third of all babies born in Paris were taken to foundling institutions by parents or desperate unmarried mothers, creating serious overcrowding. Foundling institutions often proved fatal for infants. Mortality rates ranged from 50 percent to as high as 90 percent (in a sense making foundling homes a legalized form of infanticide). Children who survived were usually sent to miserable jobs. The suffering of poor children was one of the blackest pages of eighteenth-century European history.
MARRIAGE AND BIRTHRATES In most of Europe, newly married couples established their own households independent of their parents. This nuclear family, which had its beginning in the Middle Ages, had become a common pattern, especially in northwestern Europe. In order to save enough to establish their own households, both men and women (outside the aristocracy) married quite late; the average age for men in northwestern Europe was between twenty-seven and twenty-eight; for women, between twenty-five and twenty-seven.Late marriages imposed limits on the birthrate; in fact, they might be viewed as a natural form of birth control. But was this limitation offset by the babies born illegitimately? From the low illegitimacy rate of 1 percent in some places in France and 5 percent in some English parishes, it would appear that it was not, at least in the first half of the eighteenth century. After 1750, however, illegitimacy appears to have increased. Studies in Germany, for example, show that rates of illegitimacy increased from 2 percent in 1700 to 5 percent in 1760 and to 10 percent in 1800, followed by an even more dramatic increase in the early nineteenth century.
For married couples, the first child usually appeared within one year of marriage, and additional children came at intervals of two or three years, producing an average of five births per family. It would appear, then, that the birthrate had the potential of causing a significant increase in population. This possibility was restricted, however, because 40 to 60 percent of European women of childbearing age (between fifteen and forty-four) were not married at any given time. Moreover, by the end of the eighteenth century, especially among the upper classes in France and Britain, birth control techniques were being used to limit the number of children. Figures for the French aristocracy indicate that the average number of children declined from six in the period between 1650 and 1700 to three between 1700 and 1750 and to two between 1750 and 1780. These figures are even more significant when one considers that aristocrats married at younger ages than the rest of the population. Coitus interruptus remained the most commonly used form of birth control.
Among the working classes, whether peasants or urban workers, the contributions of women and children to the “family economy” were often crucial. In urban areas, both male and female children either helped in the handicraft manufacturing done in the home or were sent out to work as household servants. In rural areas, children worked on the land or helped in the activities of cottage industry. Married women grew vegetables in small plots, tended livestock, and sold eggs, vegetables, and milk. Wives of propertyless agricultural workers labored in the fields or as textile workers, spinning or knitting. In the cities, wives of artisans helped their husbands at their crafts or worked as seamstresses. The wives of unskilled workers labored as laundresses and cleaners for the rich or as peddlers of food or used clothing to the lower classes. But the family economy was often precarious. Bad harvests in the countryside or a downturn in employment in the cities often reduced people to utter poverty and a life of begging.