10.3. Economic development of Europe in the XVIII century.

The development of industry. The peculiarity of the economic development of Europe in the XVIII century was that the fastest growth of industry was observed at its two poles - in the extreme West, in the early bourgeois states, and also in France with its already developed bourgeois way of life, and on the other hand - in the extreme East , in Russia, where despite the domination of the feudal system, the accelerated development of the fortress manufactory was noted.

For the first half of the XVIII century. England strengthened its position in the most industrialized European countries. France managed to maintain and even slightly increase the proportion of its industry compared with other European countries. On the contrary, bourgeois Holland has lost its former significance. In general, the slow pace of development was maintained in Central Europe, with the exception of Prussia, Saxony, the Lower Rhine regions and the Czech Republic. In South-Eastern Europe, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, as well as in Poland, the individual features of the rise were hardly distinguishable against the general background of economic stagnation.

At the beginning of the XVIII century. Manufacturing in Europe entered the last stage of its development immediately preceding the industrial revolution. This provision applies primarily to England, Holland and France. The most industrialized country in Europe was England.

The victory of England in the economic competition with Holland was the victory of British industrial capitalism over Dutch commercial capitalism, capitalist domestic industry over the urban manufactory of its rival. The village's scattered manufactory in England using cheap labor was more competitive. Holland lagged behind England and in metallurgy due to insufficient development of the fuel and energy base. In England, the process of concentration and specialization of manufactories reached particular development in the middle of the 18th century; not one European country could compete with it in the diversity of branches of industrial production. In the middle of the XVIII century. The English wool industry, according to contemporaries, was “divided into different parts or branches entrenched in certain places, where all production comes down entirely or mainly to these industries: thin cloths are made in Somersetshire, coarse ones in Yorkshire, double widths in Exeter, silk in Sudbury, crepe in Norwich, wool blend in Kendal, blankets in Whitney, etc. ” ¹ .

In France in the first half of the XVIII century. more than 100 types of various silk fabrics were woven. Light industry overtook heavy production. During the XVIII century. everywhere there was a process of formation of the manufactory proletariat. In different countries, this process was at different stages. The transformation of the peasant into the workers' village manufactory represented an important step in the development of the entire European continent.

In France, government subsidies contributed to the proliferation of the wool industry in rural areas in the south of the country, which offset the beginning decline of such old centers as Reims, Lille, Amiens. French fabrics successfully competed with the British in the colonial market.

The increased specialization process was accompanied by the creation of a combination of various manufactories. In these combined manufactures, the production of means of production turned out to be associated with the manufactory for which this product was the raw material.

Light industry was far ahead in terms of heavy production. So, in France at the end of the XVIII century. According to some estimates, the annual output of the textile industry in monetary terms was 1,906 million livres, metallurgy - 88 million livres, mineral fuel production - 10 million livres. The growth rate of the industry was small. For France, for example, they averaged one and a half percent. Extensive growth factors completely prevailed over intensive ones.

Industrial revolution - the transition from the manufactures with manual labor to factories and plants based on the use of machines. This is a worldwide phenomenon, but it took place in different countries at different times. England was his homeland.

The beginning of the industrial revolution in England

The beginning of the industrial revolution in England. The maturity of the manufactory itself did not yet cause an industrial revolution. The maturation of conditions for the start of an industrial revolution was determined not by the predominant form of manufacture, but by the nature of its internal and external environment, i.e. whether the manufactory was a part of the capitalist economy or only a part of the capitalist structure within the framework of a feudal country. At a certain stage of development within the bourgeois country, it became tangible - the narrowness of the technical basis of manufacture, and in a feudal country the narrowness of the domestic market, various restrictions of capitalist entrepreneurship due to the preservation of feudal relations. In the middle of the XVIII century. nationally, in England alone, manufacture reached a level of maturity, at which its technical basis came into conflict with its very created production possibilities and the demands of the internal and external markets. Thus, only in England did the economic and socio-political prerequisites for the beginning of the industrial revolution appear.

The basis of the coup in the textile industry in the 1780s. there were J. Kay's shuttle plane (1704-1764), J. Hargreaves spinning machine (? -1778), S. Crompton's mule-machine (1753-1827), R. Arkwright's water machine (1732-1792). The introduction of machines into production meant a huge leap forward: no perfect manual labor could compete with machine. Naturally, the rapid development of the cotton industry immediately revealed the lag of other industries. To overcome it here, it was necessary to immediately enter the car. Technical thought prompted many solutions, and, gradually improving, the machines penetrated into all the most important industries - coal mining, iron production, etc. In 1784, the Englishman James Watt (1736-1819), a scientist and designer, invented the first universal engine - a steam engine, setting in motion various working mechanisms. This invention paved the way for further acceleration and improvement of machine production. In the same year, the English metallurgist G. Kort (1740-1800) developed a method for rolling shaped iron, improved the puddling process. In England, instead of wood fuel began to use coal.

The development of transport. The progressive division of labor, the concentration of production tools and workers, and the specialization of the regions required a radical improvement in the means of transport. At the beginning of the XVIII century. England lagged behind in this respect not only from France, but also from Italy. For the first half of the XVIII century. the length of newly laid or fundamentally improved roads in England amounted to 1600 miles. In 1673, traveling in a postal carriage from London to Exeter took from 8 to 12 days, and in 1760 - from 4 to 6 days. Shipping costs have steadily declined. By 1760, England had navigable rivers and canals, the length of which was 1,460 miles. The construction of roads and canals was successfully carried out in other countries. By the middle of the XVIII century. the construction of main roads connecting Paris with the borders of France was completed. A trip from Paris to Lyon in 1660 took 10 days, in 1770 only 5 days.

Trade. XVIII century was the century of trade. In the first two thirds of the XVIII century. more quickly compared with the manufactory, which, moreover, was originally focused on the domestic market, foreign trade developed. The concentration of capital in trade, as a rule, overtook its concentration in industry. Europeans trade with Asian countries was reduced to a passive balance. For a long time, it was dominated by oriental handicrafts, tobacco, spices, tea, and coffee. In trade with America, converts into slavery were often the main entry point for Africans.

In the XVIII century. England succeeded in transforming its possessions in America into a vast, rapidly expanding market for its manufactory goods. British goods penetrated the markets of Portugal and its possessions. The main European transit point in overseas trade was London. With London shared the role of overseas trade centers Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Hamburg and Lisbon.

A serious trading rival of England in the XVIII century. France remained, which is more than twice the size of England in terms of population. The most profitable branches of foreign trade were firmly seized by merchants and shipowners of several large port cities, primarily Bordeaux and Nantes. For example, in 1717, Bordeaux’s trade amounted to 13 million livres, and in 1789 - 250 million livres, the annual growth rate was 4.4 percent, while the growth rate in French industry was from 1.5 to 1, 19 percent.

The main type of struggle between competing countries is trade wars, which were fought not only in the interests of trade, but in many cases contributed to its development and were financed by trade income.

Agriculture

Agriculture In the XVIII century. Europe was still largely an agrarian continent. The development of agriculture, increasing its efficiency, as before, was a necessary condition for the existence and normal functioning of society.

Even in the most industrially developed countries, the majority of the population was employed in agriculture. In England at the beginning of the XVIII century. - 75 percent of the population was employed in agriculture, in France - 80-85 percent, in Finland - 81 percent. The type of agrarian development in different regions of Europe was not the same. The reason for the very significant regional peculiarities in the development of the agrarian life of Western Europe during the period of manufactory production was primarily the difference in the ways of the evolution of land ownership forms. In the classical form, the transition to a new type of estate characteristic of capitalist production was made only in England, where a threefold division of the rural society was observed: the hired worker — the capitalist tenant — landlord. The basis of this process is the expropriation of the peasantry, parliamentary fencing of the end of the XVIII century.

The English version of the capitalist agrarian evolution was replicated in French Flanders and Northeast Normandy.

However, in most parts of Europe in the XVIII century. small-scale peasant land tenure dominated, with its characteristic formation of capitalist elements from inter-peasant relations as a result of the socio-economic differentiation of agricultural producers. The differences were to a greater or lesser degree of economic independence of such farms. Thus, the most stable market relations of small-scale peasant farming were typical of Flanders and the Northern Netherlands. In Southern France, Southern Italy, Northern Spain, North-West Germany, and some other areas, the peasants had less economic autonomy and mobility.

Different regions of Europe differed significantly in the type of historically established agricultural specialization. The main countries for the production of grain were Poland, Prussia, Russia, Northern France, the Netherlands. The centers of winemaking were France, Spain, Italy.

Livestock, trade in livestock, wool and dairy products were especially characteristic of the Netherlands, Sweden and England.

For most countries of Western Europe, the eighteenth century was a century of qualitatively new phenomena in agriculture. The Norfolk six-field crop rotation system was especially famous: the field was divided into 19–20 plots, six plots were used, combined in a known sequence with almost no steam. Combined sowing reduced the risk of an insufficiently high yield in cold springs.

In the XVIII century. buckwheat, maize, potatoes and flax were introduced into the practice of continental and island Europe. During this period, certain progress was also achieved in the invention and introduction of new agricultural equipment (a light Brabant plow, a Flemish harrow, a sickle replaced with a scythe). Other technical innovations were applied.

As a result of the technical revolution as one of the manifestations of the agrarian revolution, manual labor in agricultural production was largely replaced by machine labor. But here, too, cars were first introduced in England, then in France and in Germany.

Capitalist restructuring in the agrarian sphere of Europe in the eighteenth century. it was not straightforward; in many countries feudal methods of farming were maintained.

A feature of countries such as Italy and France, was the existence of part-cropping - short-term peasant rent with a predominance of in-kind payments, although in general for Europe in the 18th century. there were characteristic changes in the lease structure: an increase in the role of capitalist rent, a much greater involvement of hired labor; increase in the rate of operation of small tenants due to both the direct growth of rental payments and changes in their structure and form.

Shifts in social structure

Shifts in social structure. Economic changes have caused significant changes in the social structure of European society. The bourgeoisie was heterogeneous in all European countries, but the degree of this heterogeneity was different. Privileged tops consisted of merchants-shareholders, financiers, tax collectors. The specific weight and political influence of this stratum were different in different countries. In the early bourgeois states, representatives of this stratum were actually in power, even if the highest posts in the state apparatus were occupied by representatives of the aristocracy of the nobility. So it was in England and in France. The positions of this stratum were weak in economically less developed states of Central and Northern Europe.

Manufacturingists have become a new stratum in the bourgeoisie, the development of manufactory has led to an increase in the number of the manufacturing proletariat.

The general economic upturn led to demographic growth. The population of Europe has increased from about 118 million people. in 1700 to 140 million in 1750 and to 187 million in 1800. The population of England grew most rapidly, over the century it doubled from 6 to 11 million. In France, the population increased from 16 million in 1715. to 26 million in 1789.

Last quarter of the XVIII century. on a worldwide historical scale, it became the time of the collapse of feudalism, the beginning of the era of bourgeois revolutions.

* * *

In the social and political life of Europe in the eighteenth century. the Enlightenment, the entry of absolutism into a descending phase and the strengthening of parliamentarism became defining phenomena and events.

The great French bourgeois revolution was a clear evidence of the emerging social crisis, the main cause of which was widespread dissatisfaction of all segments of the population with the dominant feudal absolutist system and its incompatibility with the tasks of the country's economic, social and political development.

In the development of productive forces from European countries, England was in the lead, which was ahead of other countries not only in terms of the social revolution, but also in the industrial one — the 18th century. was the beginning of the industrial revolution, and England - his birthplace.

Questions for self-test

1. 1. What, in your opinion, is the historical conditionality of the Enlightenment? Describe the national characteristics of the Enlightenment by country.

2. 2. What are the reasons for the Great French Revolution? What are the main stages in it?

3. 3. Describe the most significant transformations carried out by the Great French Revolution, its results and historical significance.

4. 4. Expand the essence of the industrial revolution, explain why England became his homeland, how the beginning of the industrial revolution took place in this country.

5. 5. Compare the socio-economic and political development of the leading countries of Western Europe in the XVIII century. Explain its reasons.

6. 6. What new phenomena were observed in agriculture of European countries in the XVIII century?