A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Europe

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A COMPANION TOEIGHTEENTH-CENTURY

EUROPE

Edited by

Peter H. Wilson

© 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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First published 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

1 2008

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A companion to eighteenth-century Europe / edited by Peter H. Wilson. p. cm. — (Blackwell companions to history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-3947-2 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Europe—History—1648–1789. 2. Europe—History—1789–1815. 3. Europe—Civilization—18th century. I. Wilson, Peter H.

D286.C57 2008 940.2′53—dc22 2007049382

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Contents

List of Illustrations viii

Notes on Contributors xi

Acknowledgments xv

Maps xvi

Introduction 1Peter H. Wilson

PART I PEOPLE, PRODUCTION, AND CONSUMPTION 9

1 Eighteenth-Century History and the European Environment 11Dennis Wheeler

2 Gender 27Deborah Simonton

3 Rural Economy and Society 47Markus Cerman

4 Manufacturing, Markets, and Consumption 66Beverly Lemire

5 Towns and their Inhabitants 82Marc Schalenberg

6 The Eighteenth-Century Nobility: Challenge and Renewal 94Hamish Scott

7 Poverty 109Peter H. Wilson

PART II CULTURES 123

8 The Public Sphere 125Michael Schaich

9 Enlightened Thought, its Critics and Competitors 141Thomas Munck

10 Medicine, Medical Practice, and Public Health 158Mary Lindemann

11 Religion 176Joachim Whaley

12 Popular Culture and Sociability 192Beat Kümin

13 The Arts 208Mark Berry

PART III STATE AND SOCIETY 225

14 Russia 227Lindsey Hughes

15 Poland-Lithuania 244Jerzy Lukowski

16 The Empire, Austria, and Prussia 260Peter H. Wilson

17 The Scandinavian Kingdoms 276Michael Bregnsbo

18 The Dutch Republic 289J. L. Price

19 The Italian States 304Gregory Hanlon

20 Iberia: Spain and Portugal in the Eighteenth Century 322Christopher Storrs

21 France 338Michael Rapport

22 Britain and Hanover 354Torsten Riotte

PART IV INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS 369

23 Diplomacy and the Great Powers 371Andrew C. Thompson

24 Islam and Europe 387Molly Greene

vi contents

25 Europe and the World 402Philippe R. Girard

26 Europe and the Sea 418Jan Glete

PART V POLITICS AND THE STATE 433

27 Dynasticism and the World of the Court 435Clarissa Campbell Orr

28 Absolutism and Royal Government 451Ronald G. Asch

29 War, 1688–1812 464Ciro Paoletti

30 Participatory Politics 479David M. Luebke

31 The French and European Revolutions 495Alan Forrest

Bibliography 512

Index 556

contents vii

Maps

1 Eastern Europe showing the expansion of Russia xvi

2 The Partitions of Poland 1772–95 xvii

3 Central Europe 1745 xviii

4 Europe in 1763 xix

5 Italian states c.1690 xx

6 Italian states c.1790 xxi

7 European empires and colonies in the Americas c.1700 xxii

8 European conquests in Southeast Asia xxiii

Figures

1 The central England temperature annual series, 1659–2005 14

2 Merchant shipping frozen in the ice at Rotherhithe Stairs during the great frost of 1789 15

3 Verwalter und Bauer, a painting from mid-eighteenth-century Austria showing the social distance between stewards and peasants 56

4 “The Bubblers Medley,” a satire on the South Sea Bubble, 1720 72

Illustrations

5 Invalid soldier, etching by Joseph Franz von Goez, 1784 114

6 William Hogarth The Election: Canvassing For Votes, 1755 131

7 François Boucher, Madame de Pompadour, 1756 148

8 Het Hospital, Dutch engraving 166

9 Goya, Riña en la venta nueva, 1777 197

10 Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, 1785 218

11 Karlskirche, Vienna 222

12 Goya, El motin de Esquilache 327

13 The French navy in in their principal Atlantic base at Brest 344

14 The announcement of the Peace of Rastatt, 1714, engraving by Pieter Schenk, 1714 373

15 The fountain of Nevsehirli Damat Ibrahim Pasha, built 1719/20, early nineteenth-century engraving 392

16 Toussaint L’Ouverture 412

17 Margravine Sybilla Augusta of Baden (1675–1733), copper engraving from the Paris publisher Antoine Trouvaine, c.1700 442

18 French arms drill c.1755 469

illustrations ix

Ronald G. Asch is Professor of Early Modern History at Freiburg University, having previously held positions at the German Historical Institute, London, and Münster and Osnabrück universities. His books include Der Hof Karls I. Politik, Provinz und Patronage 1625–1640 (1993), Nobilities in Transition: Courtiers and Rebels in Britain and Europe, c. 1550–1700 (2003), and Jakob I (1567–1625). König von England und Schottland (2005).

Mark Berry is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (2004–7) and Fellow in History at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He has written widely on intellectual and cultural history from the late seventeenth century to the present day, with a special interest in the interaction between music, history, politics, and philosophy. His work on Wagner has been awarded the Prince Consort Prize and Seeley Medal. Treacherous Bonds and Laughing Fire: Politics and Religion in Wagner’s Ring is published by Ashgate.

Michael Bregnsbo is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Southern Denmark at Odense. His research interests include early modern Danish and European history, especially state building, political history, church history, and the history of historical ideas, on which he has published several books and articles.

Notes on Contributors

Clarissa Campbell Orr is Senior Lecturer in History at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge Campus. She has edited and contributed to Queenship in Britain 1660–1837: Royal Patronage, Dynastic Politics and Court (2002), and Queenship in Europe 1650–1815 (2004), and written other arti-cles on court studies, gender, and enlight-enment in the eighteenth century, including the chapter “Dynastic Perspectives” in T. Riotte and B. Simms (eds.), The Hanoverian Dimension to British History (2007).

Markus Cerman is Associate Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Vienna. He has published on European economic and social history from the late Middle Ages until the twen-tieth century including, together with J. Ehmer, T. Hareven, and R. Wall, Family History Revisited (2001), together with H. Zeitlhofer, Soziale Strukturen in Böhmen (2002), and, together with R. Luft, Untertanen, Herrschaft und Staat in Böhmen und im Alten Reich (2005).

Alan Forrest is Professor of History at the University of York, where he currently co-directs the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies. His recent publications include Napoleon’s Men: The Soldiers of the Revolution and Empire (2002), Paris, the Provinces and the French Revolution (2004), and together with J. P. Bertaud and A.

xii contributors

Jourdan, Napoléon, le monde et les Anglais (2004).

Philippe Girard is Assistant Professor of World History at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. His works include Clinton in Haiti: The 1994 U.S. Invasion of Haiti (2004) and Paradise Lost: Haiti’s Tumultuous Journey from Pearl of the Caribbean to Third World Hot Spot (2005). He is currently working on a history of the Haitian revolution.

Jan Glete is Professor of History at Stockholm University, Sweden. He has published several studies of Swedish economic history. His more recent books include Navies and Nations: Warships, Navies and State Building in Europe and America, 1500–1860 (1993), Warfare at Sea, 1500–1650: Maritime Confl icts and the Transformation of Europe (2000), and War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500–1660 (2002).

Molly Greene is Professor of History at Princeton University with a joint appoint-ment in the Program in Hellenic Studies. Her interests include Ottoman history and the history of the Mediterranean basin, with a particular interest in the Hellenic world. Her publications include A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean (2000) and, as editor, Minorities in the Ottoman Empire (2005).

Gregory Hanlon is University Research Professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His books include L’Univers des gens de bien: Culture et comportements des élites urbaines en Aquitaine au XVIIe siècle (1989), Confessions and Community in Seventeenth-Century France: Catholic and Protestant Co-existence in Aquitaine (1993), The Twilight of a Military Tradition: Italian Aristocrats and European Confl icts 1560–1800 (1998), Early Modern Italy 1550–1800 (2000), and Human Nature in Rural Tuscany: An Early Modern History (2007).

Lindsey Hughes was Professor of Russian History and Director for Russia Studies at the School of Slavonic and East European

Studies, University College London, until her death in 2007. Her major publications include Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (1998) and Peter the Great: A Biography (2002). She also edited the Slavonic and East European Review.

Beat Kümin is Associate Professor in Early Modern European History at the University of Warwick. His research interests focus on social centers in local communities. Publications include The Shaping of a Community: The Rise and Reformation of the English Parish 1400–1560 (1996), the co-edited collection The World of the Tavern: Public Houses in Early Modern Europe (2002), and Drinking Matters: Public Houses and Social Exchange in Early Modern Central Europe (2007).

Beverly Lemire is a Professor and Henry Marshall Tory Chair at the University of Alberta, Canada. Co-editor of the journal Textile History since 2002, her publications include Fashion’s Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain 1660–1800 (1991), Dress, Culture and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory (1997), and The Business of Everyday Life: Gender, Practice and Social Politics in England 1600–1900 (2005). She also co-edited the interdisciplinary collection Women and Credit: Researching the Past, Refi guring the Future (2002).

Mary Lindemann is Professor of History at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida. She is the author of four books: Patriots and Paupers: Hamburg, 1712–1830 (1990), Health and Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany (1996), Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (1999), and Liaisons dangereuses: Sex, Law, and Diplomacy in the Age of Frederick the Great (2006). She is currently writing a volume on political culture in three early modern cities: Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg.

David M. Luebke is Associate Professor of History at the University of Oregon. He is author of His Majesty’s Rebels: Communities, Factions and Rural Revolt in the Black Forest (1997) and many articles on seven-teenth-century political culture, including

“‘Naïve Monarchism’ and Marian Veneration in Early Modern Germany” (Past & Present, 1997) and “How to Become a Loyalist: Petitions, Self-Fashioning, and the Repression of Unrest” (Central European History, 2005).

Jerzy (George) Lukowski is Reader in Polish History at the University of Birmingham and is currently serving as Head of Department of Modern History. From 2003 to 2005 he was the benefi ciary of a Research Readership from the British Academy. His books include Liberty’s Folly: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century (1991), The Partitions of Poland: 1772, 1793, 1795 (1999), The Eighteenth-Century European Nobility (2003), and, with W. H. Zawadzki, A Concise History of Poland (2nd edn., 2006).

Thomas Munck is Reader in History at the University of Glasgow. His books include The Peasantry and the Early Absolute Monarchy in Denmark, 1660–1708 (1979), Seventeenth-Century Europe 1598–1700 (2nd edn., 2005), Computing for Historians: An Introductory Guide (1993), and The Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History 1721–1794 (2000).

Ciro Paoletti is a librarian, a former infantry offi cer of the Italian army, and Director of the Association for Military and Historical Studies. His books on eighteenth-century warfare include Tra i Borboni e gli Asburgo: le armate terrestri e navali italiane nelle guerre del primo Settecento (1701–1732) (with V. Ilari and G. Boeri, 1996), La corona di Lombardia, guerra ed eserciti nell’Italia del medio Settecento: 1733–1763 (with V. Ilari and G. Boeri, 1997), Gli Italiani in armi: cinque secoli di storia mili-tare nazionale 1495–2000 (2001), and Il principe Eugenio di Savoia (2002).

J. L. Price is Reader in History at the University of Hull. His publications include Culture and Society in the Dutch Republic during the Seventeenth Century (1974), Holland and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century (1994), The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century (1998), and Dutch Society 1588–1713 (2000).

Michael Rapport is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Stirling and author of Nationality and Citizenship in Revolutionary France: the Treatment of Foreigners, 1789–1799 (2000) and Nineteenth Century Europe, 1789–1914 (2005). He is currently working on a history of the 1848 revolutions in Europe.

Torsten Riotte is a research fellow at the German Historical Institute, London. His Ph.D. thesis has been published in German translation as Hannover in der britischen Politik (1792–1815) (2005). He has co-edited, with Brendan Simms, The Hanoverian Dimension in British History, 1714–1837 (2007) and is currently working on a study of George III and the Old Reich. His latest project is a study of the Hanoverian royal family and their experiences during the Austrian exile after 1866.

Michael Schaich is a research fellow at the German Historical Institute, London. He is the author of Staat und Öffentlichkeit im Kurfürstentum Bayern in der Sprätaufklärung (2001), co-editor, with Jörg Neuheiser, of Political Rituals in Great Britain, 1700–2000 (2006), and has edited Monarchy and Religion: The Transformation of Royal Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe (2007).

Marc Schalenberg is Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich, having worked previously at Humboldt University, Berlin. His publications include Humboldt auf Reisen? Die Rezeption des “deutschen Universitätsmodells” in den französischen und britischen Reformdiskursen, 1810–1870 (2002), and a co-edited collection, . . . immer im Forschen bleiben (2004). He is currently working on a comparative history of German residence towns in the eigh-teenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Hamish Scott is Professor of International History at the University of St Andrews. A Fellow of the British Academy, he is the author of The Rise of the Great Powers 1648–1815 (with D. McKay, 1983), British Foreign Policy in the Age of the American Revolution (1990), The Emergence of the Eastern Powers 1756–1775 (2001), and The Birth of a Great Power System 1740–1815 (2006).

contributors xiii

xiv contributors

His edited books include Enlightened Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Eighteenth-Century Europe (1990), The European Nobilities in the Seven-teenth and Eighteenth Centuries (2nd edn., 2 vols., 2007).

Deborah Simonton is Associate Professor of British History at the University of Southern Denmark having worked previously at the University of Aberdeen. She is the author of, among other books, The Routledge History of Women in Modern Europe (2006), editor of A History of European Women’s Work, 1700 to the Present (1998), and has co-edited Women and Higher Education, Past Present and Future (1996), Gendering Scottish History, an International Approach (1999), and Gender in Scottish History (2006). She is currently writing Women in European Culture and Society for Routledge.

Christopher Storrs is Reader in Early Modern European History at the University of Dundee. His books include War, Diplomacy and the Rise of Savoy, 1690–1720 (1999) and The Resilience of the Spanish Monarchy 1665–1700 (2006).

Andrew C. Thompson is a College Lecturer and Offi cial Fellow in History at Queens’ College, Cambridge. He is the author of Britain, Hanover and the Protestant Interest, 1688–1756 (2006) and is currently working on a biography of George II.

Joachim Whaley is a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College and Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg 1529–1819 (1985; new edn. 2002) and of numerous articles on eighteenth-century German cul-tural and intellectual history.

Dennis Wheeler is Reader in Geography at the University of Sunderland. His principal research area is historical climatology, in which he uses naval and other documents from the past three centuries to reconstruct the climate of the time. He has also studied the infl uence of weather on naval battles in the age of sail and has published over a hundred papers. His books include Regional Climates of the British Isles (1997) and Statistical Techniques in Geographical Analysis (2004).

Peter H. Wilson is G. F. Grant Professor of History at the University of Hull, having worked previously at Sunderland and Newcastle universities. His books include War, State and Society in Württemberg, 1677–1793 (1995), German Armies: War and German Politics 1648–1806 (1998), The Holy Roman Empire 1495–1806 (1999), Absolutism in Central Europe (2000), and From Reich to Revolution: German History 1558–1806 (2004).

Any attempt to cover an entire century of European history inevitably involves a high degree of selection and compression. The present volume is very much a team effort, but its basic conception and structure are my own, and responsibility for whatever limitations they have imposed on the themes covered rests with me alone. I would like to thank all the contributors for the exemplary professionalism with which they delivered their texts within a tight schedule. Hamish Scott wrote his chapter during the tenure of a Major Research Fellowship, and wishes to record his thanks to the Leverhulme Trust. Finally, we are all indebted to Tessa Harvey, Gillian Kane, and their colleagues at Blackwell for their advice and support.

P.H.W.

Acknowledgments

Map 1 Eastern Europe showing the expansion of Russia

St. Petersburg

Mohilev

Moscow

Warsaw

Smolensk

Vienna

Neustadt

Buda

Belgrade

Bar

Kiev

Kuchuk-Kainardji

Constantinople

COURLAND

P O L A N D

GALICIA

MO

LDAV

IA

BULGARIASERBIA

BOSNIA

MOREA

HA

BS

BU

RG

MO

NA

RC

HY

OT

TO

MA

NE M

P I R E

R

U

S

SI

A

TRAN-SYLVANIA

Glatz

B l a c k S e a

Sevastopol

KhersonOchakov

Sea of Azov

BESSA

RA

BIA KHANATE OF THE CRIMEA

R. P

ruth

R. Dniester

R. DneiperR. Bug

R. DonetsR. Don

S W E D E N

Ba

l t

ic

Se

a

GR

EE

CE

Zips(1770)

(1772)

BUKOVINA(1775)

400 km

200 miles

EASTPRUSSIADanzig

Neisse

Schweidnitz

Bender

Azov

WALLACHIALITTLEWALLACHIA

Old Orsova

Boundary of the Ottomanempire before 1768

The Habsburg monarchy’sgains during the 1770s

Boundary of Polandbefore 1768

The Habsburg monarchyin the 1760s

Russian gains

Prussian gains

Russian frontier in 1768

Territorial gains

in 1774

in 1783

in 1792

in 1812

Map 2 The Partitions of Poland 1772–95

200 miles

300 km

N

1772 1793 1795

To Prussia

To Russia

To Austria

Dvina R.

Libau

Memel

Riga

VilnaDanzig

Königsburg

Posen

KrakowLemberg

Vienna

Buda Pest

Odessa

Smolensk

S W E D E N

COURLAND

L I T H U A N I A

EASTPRUSSIA

G A L I C I A

H U N G A R Y

WH

I TE

RU

SS

I A

RU

SS

IA

B a l t i c S e a

Black Sea

Kiev

Volga R

.

Dnieper R.

Dniester R.Danube R.

Pruth R.

Nieman R.

Vistula R.

Oder R.

Minsk

PRUSSIA

Warsaw Pripet R.

Zhitomir

Bug R.

A U S T R I A

O T T O M A NE M P I R E

Map 3 Central Europe 1745

200 km

CO

LOG

NE

ENGLAND

Strasbourg

LORRAINEW

URTTEMBERG

PALATINATE

BAVARIA

Regensburg

Augsburg

Munich

GALICIA

SCHLESWIG

DENMARK

Bremen

HANOVER

SWEDISHPOMERANIA

Danzig

Hanover

SAXONDUCHIES

TRIER

Dortmund

NETHERLANDS

Imperial city

Imperial frontier in 1648

Imperial frontier after 1783

Habsburg territory

Brandenburg-Prussia

Hanover

Saxony

Bavaria

Ecclesiastical electorates(Mainz, Cologne, Tr ier)

BrunswickCleves

Berlin

Frankfurt

Vienna

Aachen

Bern

Venice

Prague

DUTCH

HOLSTEIN

BRANDENBURG

AUSTRIAN

BREMEN-VERDEN

EASTFRISIA1744 Pr.

FRANCE

BOHEMIA

AUSTRIANLANDS

SALZBURG

BAR

SWISSCANTONS

SILESIA1742 Pr.

SAVOYMILAN

PARMA

VENICE

PAPALSTATES

SAXONY

N o r t h S e a

B a l t i c S e a

A d r i a t i cS e aM

OD

ENA

OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Military border

Belgrade

MORAV IA

HUNGARY

POLAND

EASTPRUSSIA

R. Warthe

R. Vistula

R. Memel

R. Netze

POMERANIA

WESTPRUSSIA1772 Pr.

MAIN

Z

Neuchâtel

FRANCHECOMTÉ

REPUBLIC

Map 4 Europe in 1763

Boundary of theHoly Roman Empire

Habsburg dominions

Kingdom of PrussiaStockholm

London

Paris

Avignon

Lisbon

Madrid

Algiers

Tunis

Moscow

Rome

Naples

Palermo

Venice

Copenhagen

Edinburgh

WarsawAmsterdam

Ireland

Wal

es

England

Scotland

Estonia

Livonia

PolishLivoniaD. of

Courland

Lithuania

Volhynia

Little Poland

Podolia

BavariaYedisan

Bosnia

Herze-govina

Monte-negro

Bulgaria

Ukraine

Crimea

Anatolia

Levadia

Morea

Sicily

Dob

rudj

a

Albania

Corsica

Finland

Ingria

Karel

ia

KINGDOM OFGREAT BRITAINAND IRELAND

KINGDOM

OF

DENMARK

AND

NORWAY

KINGDOMOF

FRANCE

KINGDOMOF THE

TWO SICILIES

SAVOY

PAPALSTATES

KINGDOMOF

SARDINIA

REP. OFGENOA

GR. D. OFTUSCANY

VEN

ETIANREPUBLIC

FEZ ANDMOROCCO

ALGERIA TUNIS

UNITEDNETHERLANDS

NorthSea

Mediterranean Sea

Black Sea

Baltic

Sea

600 km

400 miles

KINGDOM OF SWEDEN

R U S S I A NE M P I R E

K. OF PRUSSIA

Brussels

Hanover

Saxony

Great Poland

BRANDENBURG-

PRUSSIA

Silesia

Bessarabia

Wallachia

Moldavia

Buda Pest

Vienna

Styria

Bohemia MoraviaHOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

SWITZERLAND

Serbia

Rumelia

KINGDOMOF POLAND

ConstantinopleOT T O M A N E M P I R E

KINGDOMOF SPAINK

.OF

PORT

UG

AL

MO

DENA

KINGDOM

HUNGARYOF

Map 5 Italian states c.1690

12 3

45

6

7

89

10

11

12

13

Key

1. Duchy of Savoy2. Duchy of Milan (Habsburgs)3. Republic of Venice4. Mantua5. Parma6. Modena7. Republic of Genoa8. Grand Duchy of Tuscany9. Papal States

10. Corsica (to Genoa)11. Kingdom of Sardinia (to Spain)12. Kingdom of Naples (to Spain)13. Kingdom of Sicily (to Spain)

Map 6 Italian states c.1790

12 3

45

6

7

8

9

10

11

Key

1. Piedmont-Savoy2. Milan (Habsburgs)3. Republic of Venice4. Parma (Bourbons of Spain)5. Modena6. Republic of Genoa7. Tuscany (Habsburgs)8. Papal States9. Corsica (Bourbons of France)

10. Sardinia (to Savoy)11. Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

(Bourbons of Spain)

Map 7 European empires and colonies in the Americas c.1700

Boston

New YorkJamestown

Port RoyalSt. Augustine

Zacatecas

Mexico City(Tenochtitlan)

Acapulco

Panama City

LimaCuzco

Concepción Buenos Aires

Potosi

MEXICO

PERU

GUIANA

CUBA

Jamaica

Saint-Domingue (Haiti)Santo Domingo

Puerto Rico

St EustatiusGuadeloupe

MartiniqueBarbados

Veracruz

VENEZUELA

AR

GEN

TIN

A

LOUISIANAQuebec

NORTHAMERICA

QUEBEC

Dutch possessions

English possessions

French possessions

Portuguese possessions

Spanish possessions

BRAZIL

Map 8 European conquests in Southeast Asia

Hormuz

Bombay

Goa

Calicut

Colombo

Madras

Pondicherry

Macau

Nagasaki

Manila

Ternate

Malaka(Port. to 1641,Dutch after 1641)

Batavia

Moçambique

Cape Town

CHINA

JAPAN

INDIA

INDONESIA

AUSTRALIA

Calcutta

PHILIPPINES

AMBOINAEAST

AFRICA

ANGOLA

ERIA

NIGER

GABON ZAIRE

AFRICA

Amsterdam

London

Bao Jorgeda Mina

SENEGAL

GUINEA

IVORY COAST

NIG

MALI

Main sourceof slaves

Dutch trading posts and colonies

Spanish trading posts and colonies

English trading posts

French trading posts

Portuguese trading posts

Madrid

WESTAFRICA

Introduction

Peter H. Wilson

For most modern geographers, Europe is no longer a continent, but the western tip of Afroeurasia, the world’s largest land mass. There is some doubt whether historians should also still treat Europe as a distinct fi eld. The current interest in world history questions older national and regional subdivisions as artifi cial constructs deriving largely from the nineteenth century, while so-called “micro-historians” encourage us to examine each community in detail and to explore individual experience. Yet eigh-teenth-century Europeans saw themselves as living in a distinct continent. Though infl uenced by physical geography, their concept of Europe was primarily cultural: a means to distinguish between themselves and other peoples. Like all such cultural constructs, defi nition depended on identifying boundaries often associated with the perceived character of communities rather than the physical locations they occupied. This was most problematic to the east where there was no agreed physical frontier, but even to the west, bordered by the oceans, many questioned whether the inhabit-ants of the British Isles or Iceland were fully fl edged Europeans (Wolff, 1994).

Europeans were not unifi ed by a single religion, despite the lingering legacy of the medieval ideal of Christendom. The eleventh-century schism between Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy left an indelible mark on the European con-sciousness, with many of the inhabitants in the Catholic west, north, and south no longer regarding the followers of the Orthodox faith to the east as part of a common civilization. Politics reinforced this division, as Russia, the primary Orthodox state, expanded eastwards into Siberia and central Asia from the sixteenth century, and only resumed a more western political orientation around 1700. The majority of the remaining Orthodox believers lived in the Balkans where they fell under the rule of the Islamic Ottoman empire between the late fi fteenth and early sixteenth centuries. With possessions across North Africa and the Middle East, the Ottoman empire was a true world power that, until 1699, refused to entertain the possibility of permanent peace with any other civilization and was only gradually integrated into a common diplomatic order with European states during the eighteenth century. Yet Greece, that came to be regarded by the late eighteenth century as the cradle of European civilization, lay fi rmly under Ottoman rule from 1460 to 1829, apart from a brief

period of Venetian control from 1699 to 1715. Meanwhile, the sixteenth-century Reformation shattered Catholic unity and produce a variety of competing strands of Protestantism. After a century and a half of strife, Protestants and Catholics largely abandoned attempts to align religious conformity with political authority by the later seventeenth century. As a result, most states contained either a Catholic or Protestant offi cial majority, with dissenting minorities of varying size, faith, and legal status. Throughout, Jewish communities persisted, particularly in central and east-central Europe.

While they rarely matched religious boundaries precisely, political frontiers none-theless became more distinct across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These divisions were articulated in the language of sovereign states that gained acceptance during the seventeenth century, though it remained disputed whether such states should interact as equals, regardless of size, wealth, and form of government, or whether they should remain in some kind of hierarchical order. Seventeenth-century wars had largely resolved disputes over which states were fully sovereign, and how their governments were to be organized internally and what authority they should exercise over their own peoples. However, the eighteenth century still saw struggles over the size of individual states, with competing claims to certain provinces and even entire states leading to numerous “wars of succession,” since rulers’ legitimacy gener-ally rested on dynastic inheritance. Such confl icts were also related to the continuing struggle over international status, with the century opening with the defeat, in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), of French pretensions to occupy pole position in a hierarchical order. Subsequent confl icts saw the gradual integration of struggles for regional pre-eminence, for example over the control of the Baltic, into an overarching conception of a single system containing several major and more numerous minor powers. Prior to the re-emergence of French power after 1789, confl icts no longer centered on the pretension of one state to occupy a commanding position, but rather disputes over the relative “balance of power” between the com-ponents of this single system.

To these religious and political divisions can be added further differences in lan-guage, custom, social organization, and economic activity, separating not only sov-ereign states and communities of believers, but individual provinces, communities, and groups within these. The practicalities of distance in an age still reliant on horse and wind power for propulsion simply reinforced these distinctions. Nonetheless, it is clear that there existed a common sense of belonging, even if Europe’s extent and the character of its inhabitants remained matters of dispute. The French philosopher Voltaire spoke of Europe as “a kind of republic divided into several states.” Some conceived of this as a formal political order, such as the Abbé de St Pierre, who urged European sovereigns to agree a common court to arbitrate their differences as a means of guaranteeing perpetual peace. For most, however, Europe was a complex set of broadly common aspirations and beliefs, shared at least by intellectuals, those with formal education, and many of those wielding political, economic, and social power. These ideas instilled confi dence, born of the conviction that Europeans pos-sessed a unique capacity to overcome intractable problems, as well as a superior culture, inherited from ancient Greece and Rome that together were regarded as the well of human civilization. Such ideas did not go unchallenged during the eighteenth century as Europeans discovered more about the world beyond their shores.

2 peter h. wilson

introduction 3

Nonetheless, it is possible to detect a shift from faith that the Christian God would assist all who believed in him, to a conviction that Europeans already possessed innate qualities for success. This shift was related to the move away from the pessimism characterizing the previous hundred years, the “iron century” of hardship and con-fl ict, and towards a more optimistic “age of reason.” Structural changes clearly assisted this. There was a modest improvement in long-term weather conditions after a particularly unfavorable decade around 1690. European demography progressed from simple recovery from earlier seventeenth-century losses to steadily accelerating growth around 1730. Whereas Europe’s population had grown by a modest 20 percent in the sixteenth century, and again in the seventeenth, it doubled between 1750 and 1850 and continued to increase rapidly thereafter. Crop yields that had remained largely static since the later Middle Ages, also experienced dramatic improve-ment, while other activities witnessed rising productivity. Many remained desperately poor, but the overall capacity to produce a surplus beyond immediate needs increased. Luxuries were no longer the preserve of a narrow governing elite, but became avail-able to the growing and increasingly self-conscious and assertive “middle classes.”

Confi dence grew with awareness of gradually improving conditions, while the sense of achievement simply reinforced feelings of superiority over non-European peoples. Alongside this, however, was a growing sense, among some Europeans at least, that they were members of a common humanity to which they bore some responsibility for their actions. Self-confi dence and a sense of destiny were paradoxi-cally reinforced by the Britain’s reluctant acceptance of the independence of its North American colonies in 1783: the fi rst signifi cant defeat of European imperialism in world history. While the Americans broke with Britain, they nonetheless established a state and society closely modeled on an idealized version of European civilization that appeared to confi rm that European values and institutions would eventually encompass the entire globe.

If there are good reasons for us to treat Europe as a distinct fi eld for historical research, how confi dent can we be in using the eighteenth century to demarcate our time frame? The division of history into discrete centuries fl ows naturally from our familiarity with chronological time and makes sense pedagogically by allowing us to subdivide the long human story into more manageable segments. We like our stories to have a beginning, middle, and end, as well as a plot and sense of direction. Do the dates 1700 and 1800 make sense in these terms? Historians writing before the present, self-consciously “postmodern” age were already well aware of these ques-tions. Their studies offer the alternatives of a “short” eighteenth century, running from 1713 to the 1780s (Anderson, 1987; Black, 1999; Woloch, 1982), or a “long” one that, for British historians generally begins with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and ends in the defeat of Napoleonic France in 1815. Those with a more “continen-tal” perspective tend to stretch to dates back to 1648 and forward to 1789 or even 1815 (Treasure, 1985; Winks and Kaiser, 2004). This longer period is variously labeled the “age of absolutism” or the “old regime,” as defi ned primarily according to the prevailing political philosophy and practice of strong monarchy, justifying its authority on claims to guarantee order and social stability after a period of upheaval and religious confl ict over the previous century and a half.

The disagreement over dates not only refl ects the differing signifi cance attached to particular events, but also divergence over historical approach. Both the “long”

and “short” eighteenth centuries were initially defi ned according to criteria developed by historians writing in the nineteenth century; in many ways the formative period of modern historical scholarship. Such writers gave preference to high politics, espe-cially the wars and diplomacy that marked the “rise” or “decline” of Europe’s great nation-states. They also emphasized intellectual trends, especially those associated with the language of liberal constitutionalism, personal liberty, and capitalist econom-ics. While these factors no longer feature so prominently today, other historiographi-cal developments question the appropriateness of using the eighteenth century as a distinct phase in Europe’s past. The division of modern history into “early” and later stages tends either to subsume the eighteenth century within a longer early modern period beginning around 1450 (Cameron, 2001; Dewald, 2003; Wiesener-Hanks, 2006), or split it between these two modern epochs. The former option generally retains the French Revolution of 1789 as its end marker, but the latter pushes the start of later modernity back to around 1750. For example, the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (until recently “Revolutionary Europe”), an infl uential US-based academic network, works within the rough parameters of 1750 to 1850 and interprets this as a period of fundamental transition. The same period has been identifi ed by the German historian Reinhart Koselleck as the “saddle” (Sattelzeit) between moder-nity and pre-modernity (Brunner, Conze, and Koselleck, 1972–97: vol. 1, pp. xiv–xv). Such ideas have been hugely infl uential, not least because they chime with the interpretations advanced by social and cultural theorists working in the 1970s to 1990s. Many of these theorists are inherently hostile to the claims advanced by earlier writers for the “modernity” of the eighteenth century. This dispute over the meaning of modernity and the validity of the values ascribed to it has largely replaced the division marked by political ideology that colored much of twentieth-century histo-riography. These twenty-fi rst-century differences, like those of the past, exist beyond the self-serving agendas of some participants because there are genuine problems of interpretation.

There are many good reasons for taking the 1750s as a more signifi cant dividing point than either the 1700s or 1800s. Older scholarship already identifi ed the mid-eighteenth century as marking a shift from a state primarily concerned with restor-ing order and promoting stability after earlier upheavals, to one that had greater confi dence in its ability to reshape society along more effi cient and productive lines. Traditionally, this has been labeled a move from the “classical absolutism” epito-mized by Louis XIV in France (r. 1643–1715), to the “enlightened absolutism” exemplifi ed by monarchs like Catherine II of Russia (r. 1762–96). Internationally, the mid-eighteenth century saw the emergence of Prussia as a fi fth “great power” alongside Austria, France, Russia, and Britain, establishing a pattern that remained basically unchanged until the end of World War I. The 1750s witnessed a lasting shift in the global balance of European power as Britain triumphed over France in North America and India. Though Britain’s position in the former was diminished by American independence in 1783, its gains in India continued throughout the later eighteenth century and sustained imperial predominance into the twentieth century. Rising agricultural productivity, particularly in Britain and the Netherlands, assisted the changes customarily labeled the Industrial Revolution that started to become more apparent in some areas around 1750. Social change likewise showed signs of accelerating, fuelled by demographic growth. The rapidity as well as the

4 peter h. wilson

introduction 5

scale of these changes became manifest in more marked social differentiation, clearer divisions of labor, and the emergence of new occupations. Culturally, the mid-eighteenth century is perhaps less important for truly new ideas than for the wider dissemination of more secular ways of thinking, as well as the engagement of broader sections of the population in more freely ranging debates on human society. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the publication of the Encyclopédie, a 28-volume compendium of new knowledge edited by Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert between 1751 and 1772, to which over 150 people contributed. A further seven volumes were later added to what became a major best-selling pub-lishing venture.

These debates over the signifi cance of particular trends, and how best to study them, inform the contributions to this volume that is nonetheless based on a chronological division roughly from 1700 to 1800. While not suggesting that either year marks a dramatic turning point, there are valid reasons to frame the eighteenth century as a distinct period in Europe’s history. Many developments certainly began much earlier, while others continued far beyond 1800, as the subsequent chapters make clear. However, when the perspective is widened beyond Europe to examine Europeans’ impact on the world, the eighteenth century emerges more distinctly. Again, individual chapters will explore this in greater depth, but some important aspects can be noted here. Britain and Russia emerged around 1700 as countries with political, social, and economic systems of global importance. Both had been rather peripheral powers till that point, but were confi rmed as major world powers by 1800. Perhaps more fundamentally, the eighteenth century saw the culmination of long-term trends that were to shape world history for the next 200 years and beyond. Europe now achieved a unique global position as a concentration of technological (especially maritime), economic, and military power, supported by sophisticated state infrastructures with the ability to project their infl uence well beyond their own frontiers. Individual elements of this unique mix were not unknown elsewhere, nor had Europeans achieved this combination unaided or without borrowing ideas and practices from other peoples. The different strands had their roots far in the past, while their development accelerated from the fi f-teenth century, but it was only in the eighteenth that they fully came together and made a more signifi cant impact outside Europe. In doing so, they also trans-formed Europe, providing the basis for European global predominance (at least economic and military).

This fusion produced a set of institutions, best defi ned broadly as cultural practices and assumptions, both formal and informal. In short, they were a way of doing things, coordinating activities, setting priorities, and allocating resources. Individual elements were not unique, but their combination was distinctly European. Seen in a broader time frame, these institutions provide perhaps a better defi nition of modernity than either the French or Industrial revolutions that have traditionally served as markers. More importantly, these institutions, such as state structures and forms of education, were present across Europe and not merely in those countries engaged in overseas trade or conquest.

Some explanation of the structure and approach of the volume is required before proceeding further. Recent scholarship gives particular emphasis to certain approaches that have added greatly to our understanding of the eighteenth century.

One is the interest in the connections between Europe and other parts of the world that urges greater sensitivity towards the non-European elements in European history. Another has been the emergence of new forms of cultural history that move beyond the largely quantitative methods used before to study society and economy by utilizing previously under-used sources that shed light on individual experience and perception through an examination of aspects like “discourse,” gender, identity, and non-elite cultural practices. Such approaches nonetheless need to be balanced with other perspectives, including those whose accepted status as “traditional” should not blind us to their continued utility. There is a danger that current fashions impose their own boundaries on the past – however unintended – thereby unduly diminishing the signifi cance attached to other topics. One example is the current paradigm of the “Atlantic World” that preferences Europe’s transat-lantic links (especially with North America) over connections to other parts of the globe. This is undoubtedly related to the predominance of English-language work in published history, and the relatively generous research resources of British and US academic institutions compared to those elsewhere. The emphasis on shared cultural connections also unwittingly threatens to revive the older Cold War Atlantic paradigm that trumpeted common western European-American democratic values (Palmer, 1959).

Similarly, the new cultural history has concentrated so far primarily on develop-ments associated with information exchange through the “public sphere,” and the emergence of leisure and consumerism. Such topics were largely overlooked previ-ously, but provide valuable insight into the lives of women as well as men, children as well as adults. They have also left rich seams of written and visual sources, and represent trends that not only spread geographically and socially after 1700, but helped to distinguish the eighteenth century from those that preceded it. These topics appeal to us also because they appear closer, and thus more accessible, to our own experience. However, with the exception of consumerism, only a fraction of those living in eighteenth-century Europe were affected directly by them. The new cultural history reinforces the tendency inherent in the Atlantic approach to reduce European history to that of the continent’s north-western corner and to concentrate on the “swelling” urban middle classes engaged in commerce.

There is a need to look beyond the Atlantic seaboard and at the majority of Europeans for whom life was often very different. It is also important in this present age of closer political integration and means of rapid communication to remember that eighteenth-century Europe was divided into many different states and hundreds of thousands of communities varying considerably in size and internal stratifi cation. This is a substantial volume, but even here it is impossible to do justice to the myriad of local distinctions. A measure of this can nevertheless be conveyed by presenting essays on individual countries and regions. This should not be misconstrued as a return to more distinctly nationalist perspectives, but as a refl ection of Europe’s fragmented character at a time when the local and particular loomed large in everyday experience. Concepts of “nation” and “nationalism” can be found in eighteenth-century discourse, but their grip on the popular imagination lay in the future, nor were they synonymous with later nineteenth-century defi nitions. As the contributions to this volume make clear, most European states were still “composite” or dynastic ones, patchworks of different regions bound together by complex webs of political,

6 peter h. wilson