AP European History

SOCIAL HISTORY STUDY GUIDE

LATE MIDDLE AGES

16th and 17th CENTURIES

18th CENTURY

19TH CENTURY

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY:

  • Nuclear family
  • Divorce nonexistent
  • Marriages arranged for economic reasons.
  • Prostitution in urban areas
  • Ave. age for men: mid-late 20s
  • Avg. age for women: less than 20 years old.
  • Church encouraged cult of paternal care.
  • Many couples did not observe church regulations on marriage.
  • Manners shaped men to please women.
  • Relative sexual equality

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY:

  • Nuclear family
  • Divorce available in certain cases
  • More prostitution
  • Marriages still based on economics but increasingly more romantic.
  • Average age for marriage: 27 for men; 25 for women.
  • Increased infanticide.
  • Low rate of illegitimate births.
  • Dramatic population growth until 1650; growth slows until 1750.

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY:

  • Nuclear family
  • Growth of Cottage Industry.
  • Marriages based more on romance.
  • Average age for marriage: late 20s or later; takes longer for couple to be ready economically for marriage.
  • Many women don’t marry; "spinsters"
  • Illegitimate birth explosion:1750-1850
  • Increase in infanticide.
  • Foundling hospitals created
  • Young people increasingly worked away from home in the city.
  • "Spare the rod, spoil the child."
  • Rise of humanitarianism (influenced by Enlightenment.

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY:

  • Ideal of romantic love now most important reason
  • Fewer children per family; more love towards children
  • Middle class more apt to consider economic reasons
  • Many men married late
  • Women closely monitored
  • Sexual double standard
  • Rate of illegitimacy declined after 1850 in working classes
  • Prostitution sought by middle & upper middle class men
  • Freud: early childhood vital
  • Lower class kids less dependent on parents financially than middle class kids

STATUS OF WOMEN:

  • Status of upper-class women better than in next two centuries.

STATUS OF WOMEN:

  • Status of upper-class women declines in Renaissance.
  • Most women not affected by Renaissance.
  • Educated women allowed involvement but subservient to men.
  • Sexual double standard
  • Woman was to make herself pleasing to the man (Castaglione)
  • Rape not considered serious crime.
  • Protestant Reformation: women’s occupation is in the home.
  • Catholic orders for women grew.

STATUS OF WOMEN:

  • Protestant women still expected to manage the home.
  • Upper-class Catholic women had self-development options in religious orders.

STATUS OF WOMEN:

  • After 1850, increasingly separate spheres: men worked in factories; women stayed at home.
  • By late-19th century, women worked outside the home only in poor families
  • Middle class women began working to organize and expand their rights

EDUCATION:

EDUCATION:

  • Mostly for upper-classes

EDUCATION:

  • Protestantism spurred increased education for boys and girls.
  • Humanitarianism of Enlightenment led to improved education

EDUCATION:

  • Increase among middle class

RELIGION:

  • Dominated by Catholic Church
  • Reform movements: Wyclif and Hus.
  • Some persecution of witches

RELIGION:

  • Protestant Reformation
  • Catholic Counter Reformation
  • Religious wars
  • "New Monarchs" and Absolute Monarchs take control of national churches.
  • Major persecution of alleged witches.

RELIGION:

  • Protestant "Pietism" in Germany.
  • Rise of Methodism
  • Catholic piety remains.
  • Decrease in witch hunts

RELIGION:

  • Rerum Novarum
  • Syllabus of Errors
  • Kulturkampf
  • Increased emphasis on morality among middle class
  • Decline among urban working classes.

NUTRITION AND HEALTH

  • Poor harvests created malnutrition.
  • Black Plague resulted in loss of 1/3 of population.

NUTRITION and HEALTH:

  • Poor life expectancy (about 25 years)
  • Price Revolution = less food consumption due to higher prices (until about 1650).
  • Bread is staple food for poor classes.
  • Upper-classes eat large quantities of meat.
  • Smallpox and famines still ravaged parts of Europe.

NUTRITION and HEALTH

  • Improved diet: more vegetables (esp. potato).
  • Increased life expectancy from 25 years to 35 years.
  • Major advances in control of plague and disease (esp. Small Pox—Edward Jenner)
  • William Harvey: Circulation of Blood
  • Development of public health
  • Hospital reform
  • Reform for mental health institutions

NUTRITION and HEALTH

  • Public Health Movement: Bentham & Chadwick
  • Bacterial Revolution: Pasteur-"germ theory"
  • Antiseptic (Lister)
  • Increased life expetancy
  • Significant decline in infant mortality after 1890
  • Poor living conditions in cities

SOCIAL STRUCTURE:

  • Feudalism dominated most of Europe.

SOCIAL STRUCTURE:

  • Population growth began in 16th century until about 1650.
  • Cities grew faster than rural areas.
  • Two major hierarchies existed:

Countryside: landlords, peasants,

landless laborers

Urban: merchants, artisans,

laborers

Clergy, lawyers, teachers, & civil

servants fit awkwardly in both

hierarchies.

  • Advancement up the hierarchy possible through education.
  • Enclosure movement
  • Putting out system
  • Serfdom in eastern Europe

SOCIAL STRUCTURE:

  • Cottage Industry in rural areas.
  • Growth of cities.
  • Serfdom in eastern Europe.

SOCIAL STRUCTURE:

  • Increased standard of living for average person; higher wages
  • Society more diverse and less unified

Middle Class

  • Upper Middle Class:

Banking; industry; large-scale

commerce

  • Diversified middle class groups

Moderately successful industrialists, merchants, professionals (doctors, lawyers)

  • Lower Middle Class:

Shopkeepers, small traders

Lower Class: (80% of population)

  • Highly skilled: Foremen; highly skilled handicraft trades
  • Semi skilled: Craftspeople
  • Low skilled: day laborers; domestic servants

SLAVERY:

  • Few Africans lived in Europe.

SLAVERY:

  • African slavery introduced.
  • Dramatic increase in slave trade in New World.

SLAVERY

  • Still exists in Portuguese, Spanish and British empires.

SLAVERY:

  • Ends in Latin America as Spanish and Portuguese leaders are overthrown and Latin American countries become independent.
  • Britain ends slavery in 1833
  • France ends slavery in 1848
  • Remains in U.S. until 1865