By the end of the 18th century, it was evident that a high proportion of Europeans were better fed, healthier, longer lived, and more secure and comfortable in their material well-being than at any previous time in human history. |
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Society, c. 1648-c. 1815
The legacies of the 16th-century population explosion, which roughly doubled the European population, were social disruptions and demographic disasters that persisted into the 18th century. Volatile weather in the 17th century harmed agricultural production. In some localities, recurring food shortages caused undernourishment that combined with disease to produce periodic spikes in mortality. By the 17th century, the European marriage pattern, which limited family size, became the most important check on population levels, although some couples also adopted birth control practices to limit family size.
By the middle of the 18th century, better weather, improvements in transportation, new crops and agricultural practices, less epidemic disease, and advances in medicine and hygiene allowed much of Europe to escape from the cycle of famines that had caused repeated demographic disaster. By the end of the 18th century, reductions in child mortality and increases in life expectancy constituted the demographic underpinnings of new attitudes toward children and families. Particularly in western Europe, the demographic revolution, along with the rise in prosperity, produced advances in material well-being that did not stop with the economic: greater prosperity was associated with increasing literacy, education, and rich cultural lives (the growth of publishing and libraries, the founding of schools, and the establishment of orchestras, theaters, and museums).
By the end of the 18th century, it was evident that a high proportion of Europeans were better fed, healthier, longer lived, and more secure and comfortable in their material well-being than at any previous time in human history. This relative prosperity was balanced by increasing numbers of the poor throughout Europe, who strained charitable resources and alarmed government officials and local communities.
Source: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-european-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf
By the middle of the 18th century, better weather, improvements in transportation, new crops and agricultural practices, less epidemic disease, and advances in medicine and hygiene allowed much of Europe to escape from the cycle of famines that had caused repeated demographic disaster. By the end of the 18th century, reductions in child mortality and increases in life expectancy constituted the demographic underpinnings of new attitudes toward children and families. Particularly in western Europe, the demographic revolution, along with the rise in prosperity, produced advances in material well-being that did not stop with the economic: greater prosperity was associated with increasing literacy, education, and rich cultural lives (the growth of publishing and libraries, the founding of schools, and the establishment of orchestras, theaters, and museums).
By the end of the 18th century, it was evident that a high proportion of Europeans were better fed, healthier, longer lived, and more secure and comfortable in their material well-being than at any previous time in human history. This relative prosperity was balanced by increasing numbers of the poor throughout Europe, who strained charitable resources and alarmed government officials and local communities.
Source: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-european-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf
Population Growth
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In the satire A Modest Proposal (1729), Jonathan Swift suggests that the poverty-stricken in overpopulated Ireland sell their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies.
"I have been assured ... that a young healthy child well nursed is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ..." |
Consumer Revolution
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The widespread construction of Palladian estates was a symbol of England's growing prosperity during the 1600s and 1700s.
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18th-Century Social Structure
Emperess Maria Theresa of Austria gave birth to 16 children.
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18th-Century Crime and Punishment
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The Frauds of London - the Gaming Table, the Fortune Teller, the Pick Pocket, the Sailor and Jew
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18th–Century Urban Life
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Gin Lane (1751) by William Hogarth depicts the squalor and despair of a community raised on gin showing shocking scenes of infanticide, starvation, madness, decay and suicide. The mother in the foreground, addled by gin and driven to prostitution (as evidenced by the syphilitic sores on her legs) lets her baby slip from her arms and plunge to its death. This was not such an exaggeration: in 1734, Judith Dufour reclaimed her two-year-old child from the workhouse where it had been given a new set of clothes; she then strangled it and left the infant's body in a ditch so that she could sell the clothes to buy gin.
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