The seventeenth century in Europe was bloody and violent. Some examples: a continental war that went on for thirty years (1618-1648), three British civil wars (1639-1651), naval wars between England and the Netherlands (1652-1674), and military efforts to rein in France’s Louis XIV and the Spanish Hapsburgs.
At the same time, however, economic changes were quietly occurring, laying a foundation for the Industrial Revolution. That’s the little-known subject of this post.
“What happened in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a wholesale shift of industry, including rather sophisticated sectors, from city to countryside,” writes Jan de Vries in his informative book Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600-1750.[1]
This shift from cities to rural areas is not the typical “Industrial Revolution” story, which says that peasants were forced off the farm and into the cities, making them available for burgeoning industrial factories. To some extent that did happen later, but manufacturing in England and other parts of western Europe started in rural areas, not cities. Here’s how, according to de Vries.
Europe experienced an agricultural depression in the 1600s, partly reflecting a stagnating population (after a growth surge in the previous century). Low prices for grain hurt farmers who had become accustomed to selling their surplus production.
In the cities, merchants were getting frustrated. Ever since the Middle Ages, they had chafed under restrictions placed by master craftsmen, who operated in small urban workshops and were organized into guilds. Backed by law, guilds boosted prices by limiting the number of apprentices and controlling quality—guild members even sought out and destroyed goods that didn’t meet their standards (and were being sold cheaply).
Given all the political and religious wars, merchants were being forced to pay higher taxes, and they also perceived a growing international demand for manufactured products, especially cloth. So they went to the country and found workers there so they could increase production. Agricultural communities have “downtime,” especially after harvest and before spring planting. Farm families welcomed the opportunity for a little more pay by spinning and weaving.
Thus, merchants created the “putting out” system, primarily for textiles. The merchants delivered the raw materials (wool or cotton) and often rented out looms; then they picked up and sold the final product. This happened all over Europe; many old urban production centers declined and even disappeared. Exports of Italian textiles largely faded away in the face of competition; silk-producing guilds disappeared in Basel and Zurich, while Alpine silk-weaving areas boomed; linen weaving in Haarlem died out as more weaving was done in the countryside.
Entire industries were born or dramatically changed from the handicraft production of the past—even before major new technologies appeared. Merchants expanded the market for exports, adopting, for example, the “new draperies”; their work enabled some producers to leave agriculture entirely. Rural peasants became increasingly differentiated, some still farming, some capable of highly specialized weaving and finishing cloth. With greater opportunity available, those who depended on industry (rather than inherited land tenures) had less reason to delay marriage ,so they married earlier and had larger families.
To de Vries, these changes created conditions that would make industrial expansion possible. He singles out as most important the “concentration of capital” (the ability of merchants to provide more and more workers with raw materials and looms), “creation of a labor force experienced in industrial production,” and an “increase of aggregate production.“ Combined with vastly growing trade, these conditions “paved the way for factory production.”
It’s part of the Industrial Revolution story that we (or I, at least) should not forget.
[1] Jan de Vries, Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 96.
Thinking about the causes of the labor shortage and population stagnation here. It would seem that a big contributing factor was that the 17th century was also when England’s colonial period went into full swing. Not only did the English have their colonies along the Eastern seaboard of North America and their Caribbean island colonies, but they also had increasing presences in India and South Africa. There were roughly 250,000 white residents in the future US colonies in 1700, and many more in the other colonies. Some of them were not of English ancestry, and many were born here, but there still would have been a considerable emigration from England. There was a high mortality rate among emigrants due to fighting against both the natives and the wilderness, plus the perilous ocean voyage. And the emigrants were not from the entire spectrum of the population, but predominately men of working age, and to a lesser extent, women in their childbearing years.
Furthermore, all the increased international trade in that century meant that a lot of men were also employed as sailors, an occupation that tended to marry less than others. And all that warfare would have also greatly reduced the number of working and marriageable men.
Most likely, a good 200,000 or more people left England in that period, out of a population of 8 million in 1700. Most of them were relatively young men. That would have certainly caused a labor shortage, or exacerbated one that was happening for other reasons. Which would have opened up opportunities for others and encouraged innovation.