Wealth in pre-industrial European society was concentrated in the hands of the few, while poverty was common. In Florence, Italy, in 1427, 10% of the population—merchants, landowners, nobility— controlled 68% of wealth. This is not much different from the United States today where, in 2007, the top 10% of the population control 71% of the wealth. And in England in 1700, one contemporary estimated that of a total population of 5.3 million people, nearly 25% were living in poverty. In San Jose, CA, recent official data shows that, as of 2009, 11.5% of residents lived in poverty. And 20% of children grow up in poverty in the state of California.
Pre-Industrial Society
Modern World History
by Vern Cleary
Cleary Web
http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/ModernWorldHistoryTextbook/IndustrialRevolution/PreIndus.html
What was Pre-Industrial Society Like?
How much did the Industrial Revolution change society? Did the Industrial Revolution improve life for most people? The only way to investigate these questions is to compare and contrast industrial with pre-industrial society. To do so, we’ll start with pre-industrial life and use it as a baseline standard to contrast to the industrial era after 1750. In doing so, we will also discover a number of ways that the roots of industry run deep into the pre-industrial era.
For starters, the pace of change in preindustrial society was extremely slow. In contrast, over the past few decades, people have witnessed and grown accustomed to high tech inventions—such as personal computers, mobile phones, and the Internet—that have transformed out lives. We might then assume that other eras in history experienced a similarly rapid pace in technological progress. And yet, for almost all of human history, quite the opposite is true. One scholar even observed that an average Roman from the 1st century A.D. would find much in common with the technology and daily life of English people in the 17th century (Cipolla 277).
Daily life in pre-industrial times changed very little for Europeans. Almost all people lived and worked in the country. From 1300 to 1750, for the average peasant, people’s work and social life mixed, as families lived on small plots of land, growing crops mostly for home consumption. Children learned to milk cows, churn butter, and tend to farm animals. Generation after generation, rural families relied on tools that had changed little over the centuries, such as wooden plows dependent on beasts of burden to pull them. For centuries, the English diet consisted mostly of dark rye bread and porridge, with very little meat. As a rule, Europeans ate few fruits or vegetables, believing they could cause disease, depression, and flatulence (5). Most people were illiterate and rarely bathed. Their idea of healthcare was that physical suffering from an illness was God’s divine way of purifying the soul. Ignorant of microbiology and the germ theory, medieval and early modern physicians relied more on astrology and bloodletting than science. This traditional agrarian lifestyle and outlook held true for generations.
plagueAnother clear trend in pre-industrial society saw the population not growing very much from generation to generation. Poverty, war, plague, and poor hygiene resulted in high death rates, especially among young people. Even in the 1600s, approximately 25% of newborn children died before their first birthday and another 25% died before their tenth. Death was so common amongst the young that one French noble remarked, “I lost two or three children as nurslings not without regret but without great grief” (Cipolla 127). Epidemics of influenza, typhoid fever, typhus, dysentery, and plague were frighteningly common. In the extreme, the infamous Black Death killed 25 million Europeans from 1348 to 1351 out of a total population of 80 million (131). This means that in just 3 years, almost 1/3 of the population of Europe died.
Pre-industrial population did not increase substantially in Europe for hundreds of years. For example, the area of Europe now known as Germany had an estimated population of 12 million in the year 1300. Over the course of 400 years, the population only increased to 15 million, a 20% increase over four centuries (4). To put that in perspective, the U.S. population in the 100 years between 1900 and 2000 increased from 76 million to 281 million, a 400% increased in just a century. (“Demographic Trends”).
Wealth in pre-industrial European society was concentrated in the hands of the few, while poverty was common. In Florence, Italy, in 1427, 10% of the population—merchants, landowners, nobility— controlled 68% of wealth. (Cipolla 9). This is not much different from the United States today where, in 2007, the top 10% of the population control 71% of the wealth (“15 Mind Blowing Facts”). And in England in 1700, one contemporary estimated that of a total population of 5.3 million people, nearly 25% were living in poverty (Cipolla 13). In San Jose, CA, recent official data shows that, as of 2009, 11.5% of residents lived in poverty. And 20% of children grow up in poverty in the state of California (“San Jose Poverty Rate”).
Most people in preindustrial England lived on a subsistence level with little or no savings. If they were cursed with a stroke of bad luck that caused economic hardship, they could not rely on social safety nets to save them from resorting to begging. Most peasants struggled simply to meet the basic needs of their families. In England between the 15th and 18th centuries, 70 to 80% of household income went to buying food. By contrast, in the United States in 2010, most people spent about 25% of their income on food (Cipolla 23). And so, for the person living in pre-industrial times, buying even one piece of clothing was a complete luxury. And yet, society typically depended on peasants for food and taxes (a percentage of personal income paid to the nobles or the government). Though they controlled a majority of the wealth in Europe in the form of land, the clergy and the nobility were usually not taxed, putting a further burden on peasants and craftsmen.