Abstract
A major distinctive feature of western historical development in the later medieval and early modern periods was the growth and consolidation of towns not merely as conglomerations of people but as communities with a life and structure of their own. The German saying ‘Stadtluft macht frei’, was a shorthand for the fact that in most of Europe towns of any size had acquired a corporate autonomy which freed them from the seigneurial control exerted over the surrounding countryside and often also gave them a large degree of independence in town government, administration, the law and taxation. The town wall (where there was one) thus not only protected the community, and enclosed the market or manufacturing which had constituted the original function of the town, but also represented administrative and jurisdictional boundaries of enormous practical significance. Although much of the community framework had emerged in the medieval period and institutional change in the early modern period was slow or virtually non-existent, the external strains of the seventeenth century could not help affecting the life and structure of even the most secure towns. Demographic factors, as we have seen, introduced an enormous element of uncertainty, whilst economic fluctuations had an obvious impact on urban food supplies, demand and secondary employment throughout the period.
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Notes
For a discussion of contemporary usage of ‘bourgeoisie’, and its modern meanings in terms of capital, enterprise and function or mental attitudes, see J. Corcia, ‘Bourg, bourgeois, bourgeois de Paris from the 11th to the 18th century’, JMH, 50 (1978), 207–33;
cf. R. Mousnier, ‘Recherches sur les structures sociales parisiennes en 1634, 1635, 1636’, RH, 250 (1973), 35–58.
D. R. Ringrose, ‘The impact of a new capital city: Madrid, Toledo and New Castile 1560–1660’, JEcH, 33 (1973), 761–91, and his Madrid and the Spanish Economy 1560–1850 (Berkeley, 1983);
M. Weisser, ‘The decline of Castile revisited: the case of Toledo’, JEEH, 2 (1973), 614–40;
L. Martz, Poverty and Welfare in Habsburg Spain: the Example of Toledo (Cambridge, 1983).
J. de Vries, The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 148–59, and his European Urbanisation 1500–1800 (London, 1984), which also considers definition problems in detail; see also his ‘Patterns of urbanisation in pre-industrial Europe 1500–1800’, in Patterns of European Urbanisation since 1500, ed. H. Schmal (London, 1981), pp. 77–109.
M. Walker, German Home Towns 1648–1871 (Ithaca, 1971), pp. 27–31;
P. Clark and P. Slack, English Towns in Transition 1500–1700 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 17–45 and passim.
P. Goubert, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis (Paris, 1960), pp. 256–64.
C. R. Friedrichs, Urban Society in an Age of War: Nördlingen 1580–1720 (Princeton, 1979), pp. 73–143, 258–87.
The term ‘patriciate’, in the sense used by Walker, German Home Towns, pp. 59ff, by P. Burke, ‘Patrician culture: Venice and Amsterdam in the 17th century’, TRHS, 23 (1973), 135,
and by A.F. Cowan, The Urban Patriciate: Lübeck and Venice 1580–1700 (Cologne, 1986), refers to a fairly small and exclusive group of families with a dominant political lifestyle protected through privileges based on their power.
It is noteworthy how frequently an imperial commission intervened in urban disputes, and imperial institutions were evidently still of significance: see O. Brunner, Neue Wege der Verfassungs- und Sozialgeschichte (Göttingen, 1968), pp. 294–321;
H. Mauersberger, Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte zentraleuropäischer Städte (Göttingen, 1960), pp. 113ff;
G. Soliday, A Community in Conflict: Frankfurt Society in the 17th and early 18th Centuries (Hanover, New Hampshire, 1974);
M. Reissmann, Die hamburgische Kaufmannschaft (Hamburg, 1975);
H. Ruckleben, Die Niederwerfung der hamburgische Ratsgewalt (Hamburg, 1970);
J. Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg 1529–1819 (Cambridge, 1985), ch. 1; J. Asch, Rat und Bürgerschaft in Lübeck (Lübeck, 1961). Given the complexity of political connections and of delegated authority in the Empire, it is not surprising that urban conflicts often resulted in the involvement of several princes and other authorities, often with different aims despite nominal allegiance to imperial instructions:
see notably C. R. Friedrichs, ‘German town revolts and the 17th-century crisis’, Renaissance & Modern Studies, 26 (1982), 27–51, and his ‘Urban conflicts and the imperial constitution in 17th-century Germany’, JMH, 58 (1986), suppl. S98–123.
R. Mackenney, Tradesmen and Traders (London, 1987), pp. 223–32.
Conflict was also generally avoided in Amsterdam except in context of political crises: see C. R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire (London, 1965), pp. 32–40.
B. Leperii, ‘Une creation urbaine: Versailles de 1661 a 1722’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 25 (1978), 604–18.
A Clark and A Slack, English Towns, ch. 5; L. Stone, ‘The residential development of the west of London in the 17th century’, in After the Reformation, ed. B.C. Malament (London, 1980), pp. 167–212.
H. Sauvai, Histoire et recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris (Paris, 1724), vol. 1, p. 511,
cited in L. Bernard, The emerging city: Paris in the age of Louis XIV (Durham, North Carolina, 1970), p. 161. On the wider subject of ‘police’, it must be noted that the Parisian force, like its imitations elsewhere in Europe (for example in Denmark after 1682) was not at this stage an organisation aimed primarily at crime. Its functions were much wider, ranging over all aspects of orderly community existence, including the protection of commerce, guilds and the market, together with the preservation of social deference and the sense of hierarchy.
R. T. Rapp, Industry and Economic Decline in 17th-century Venice (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), pp. 25–9. Women and children were also used to evade guild regulations: Boxer, Dutch Seaborne Empire, pp. 54f. R. Mackenney, Tradesmen, pp. 122–4 and passim, has recently argued for a new look at guilds and their positive role in early modern life.
The notion of a subculture, and of some kind of organisational confraternities amongst, for example, rural bandits and urban criminal elements, was a common assumption amongst the better-off at the time. It is not, however, easily substantiated in fact: see H. Kamen, The Iron Century (London, 1971), pp. 400–3;
P. Burke, ‘Perceiving a counter-culture’, in The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 63–75;
see also M. E. Perry, Crime and Society in Early Modern Seville (Hanover, New Hampshire, 1980), pp. 106–11
and passim; J. A. Sharpe, Crime in Seventeenth Century England: a Counter Study (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 179–81;
A. L. Beier, Masterless Men: the Vagrancy Problem in England 1560–1640 (London, 1985), pp. 123–45.
K. Wrightson and D. Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling 1529–1700 (London, 1979), pp. 39–42;
cf. T. Wales, ‘Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle’, in Land, Kinship and Life-cycle, ed. R. M. Smith (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 353–7;
Vauban, Dȸme royale, ed. G. Michel (Paris, n.d.), pp. 76–8, 81–3. Estimating wages in the early modern period is very difficult, because of complexities of subcontracting, differences between nominal and real wages once deductions for debts and other obligations to the employer were made, and because other forms of payment (in kind) were common: see M. Berg, P. Hudson and M. Sonenscher (eds), Manufacture in Town and Country (Cambridge, 1983), ch. 6.
The nature of early modern rioting has been extensively studied, especially by British and French scholars. For England, see notably J. Walter and K. Wrightson, ‘Dearth and the social order in early modern England’, PP, 71 (1976), 22–42;
J. Walter, ‘Grain riots and popular attitudes to the law’, in An Ungovernable People, ed. J. Brewer and J. Styles (London, 1980), pp. 47–84;
A.J. Fletcher and J. Stevenson (eds), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 1–40;
the short survey by B. Sharp, ‘Popular protest in 17th century England’, in Popular Culture, ed. B. Reay (London, 1985), pp. 271–303;
and the important analyses by E. P. Thompson, notably his ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the 18th century’, PP, 50 (1971), 76–136. See also ch. 12.
J.M. Beattie, ‘The pattern of crime in England 1660–1800’, PP, 62 (1974), 47–95, and the same author’s Crime and the Courts in England 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1986), chs 5 and 8;
J. S. Cockburn, ‘The nature and incidence of crime in England 1559–1625’, in Crime in England 1550–1800, ed. J.S. Cockburn (London, 1977), pp. 49–71.
Punishments for theft were often mitigated in practice by deliberate ‘miscarriage’ of justice, and the harshest sentences were relatively rare: C. Herrup, ‘Law and morality in 17th-century England’, PP, 106 (1985), pp. 102–23, and her The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in 17th Century England (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 155–8, 166–82.
Sharpe, Crime in 17th Century England, pp. 91–114; H. Kamen, Spain in the later Seventeenth Century (London, 1980), pp. 168ff;
on outlaws and rebels, see also J. Casey, The Kingdom of Valencia in the Seventeenth century (Cambridge, 1979), ch. 9.
P.A. Slack, ‘Vagrants and vagrancy in England 1598–1664’, EcHR, 27 (1974), 360–79;
D. Souden, ‘Migrants and the population structure of later 17th-century provincial towns’, in The Transformation of English Provincial Towns 1600–1800, ed. P. Clark (London, 1984), pp. 133–68; Beier, Masterless Men, pp. 14–28.
A useful synopsis of French attitudes, including those of Vauban, Fénelon, Boisguilbert and others at the end of the century, is found in J.-P. Gutton, La société et les pauvres: l’exemple de la generalité de Lyon, 1534–1789 (Lyon, 1971), pp. 303–26, 343–9, 419–28;
cf. W.J. Pugh, ‘Social welfare and the Edict of Nantes: Lyon and Nimes’, FHS, 8 (1973), 349–76, for examples of interdenominational rivalry over poor relief.
W.K. Jordan, Philanthropy in England 1480–1660 (London, 1959), passim; and the discussion of his conclusions by Fiengold in History of Education, 8 (1979), 257–73,
by Birtie and Lane in EcHR, 29 (1976), 203–10, and the resulting debate in EcHR, 31 (1978), 105–28.
P. Slack, Poverty and Polity in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988), pp. 170f., estimates that poor rates in England and Wales by the end of the century yielded at least £400,000 a year, or three times the amount collected via charity.
Francis Brewster’s comment, in his Essays on Trade and Navigation (London, 1695), p. 58,
is cited from S. Macfarlane, ‘Social policy and the poor in the later seventeenth century’, in London 1500–1700, ed. Beier and Finlay (London, 1986), p. 253.
See citations by C. R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire (London, 1965), 55–8.
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© 1990 Thomas Munck
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Munck, T. (1990). The structure of society: urban life. In: Seventeenth Century Europe. History of Europe. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20626-1_6
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