By Old Regime we understand the economic, social and political system that came from the decomposition of medieval feudalism and that remained in force in Europe until the Industrial and liberal Revolution. The origin of the old regime is usually fixed in the Renaissance, a moment in which, despite the survival of the feudal economic system, the development of commercial capitalism and the financing of authoritarian, and later absolute, monarchies, modifying medieval structures.
The French revolutionaries of 1789 first introduced the name Ancien Régime to designate the state of affairs that the French Revolution had put an end to. The basic characteristics of the Old Regime are as follows: the survival of the manorial economic regime in conflict with commercial capitalism and people, a stagnant population, a class-type society, and monarchical absolutism.
Now throughout the 17th century, and especially the 18thnew social groups, new economic needs and an extraordinary ideological movement, the Enlightenment, will end up destroying the Old Regime in Europe.
manor-based economy
The economy of the old regime was basically rural. Between 80 and 90% of the population was engaged in agricultural tasks, and this activity provided 75% of the global production of goods. Related property involved a traditional and undynamic type of agriculture, as a result of the concentration of land in the hands of the nobility or the Church.
Most of the production was dedicated to self-consumption. Therefore, commercial exchanges were scarce and trade was hampered by the inadequacy of transportation systems. But, despite the predominance of agriculture, there were also other craft and industrial activities, from the sixteenth century, were strongly stimulated by the development of overseas trade.
The ownership of land
The land, during the Old Regime, was the most important source of wealth. Only a small part of the land could be considered private property, that is, they could be freely disposed of and put up for sale if deemed appropriate. The others were linked to a noble title, to the Church, or to the Crown. Attached property allowed its owner to profit from it and exercise jurisdiction over it, but he was not free to sell it.
The set of lands in the hands of the lord (noble or ecclesiastical) received the name of territorial lordship. He consisted, first of all, of the manorial reserve, made up of the most productive lands of the lord and the main establishments: furnaces, forges, mills, stables, etc. For the use of these dependencies, the peasants had to pay a canon.
The rest of territory of a manor was divided into parcels called meeks, whose size should always be enough to feed a family. The lord ceded these meeks either to free men who worked the land in usufruct in exchange for paying a census, or to serfs who had to ensure benefits, both products and work.
The manorial rights
We call manorial rights to set of benefits and income received by the lords. These rights came, in the first place, from the economic exploitation and their properties, as we have seen, and there were as many censuses (products or work delivered by the peasants of their land) as the fees for the use of the manorial monopolies (mills, blacksmiths, etc).
But in addition, the lord also enjoyed the lands of allodial owners (free). This territory constitutes what we know as jurisdictional lordship, and gave the lord the right to exercise public powers over the area. Thus, the so-called right of ban granted him the power to issue orders and regulations in his domain; the right to do justice allowed him to judge the men of his territory and even passers-by, and the right of immunity gave social autonomy with respect to royal power. The lord also took economic advantage of the jurisdictional lord through the fines applied according to his judiciary, bridge and road tolls, merchandise movement rights and market permits.
To this fan of feudal tributes still need to add tithewhich consisted of the obligation for the peasants to deliver a tenth of the crops to the Church to ensure the maintenance of the clergy and the cult.
agricultural stagnation
In general, agriculture was a traditional activity, very backward from the technical point of view and with very low productivity. It was essentially subsistence farming. dedicated to polyculture (basically cereal). There was no specialization and trade was scarce (self-consumption). In any case, the existence of some surpluses allowed their sale in the local markets in the periodic fairs. Some more specialized products such as vines or flax were also cultivated, essentially oriented towards the market.
Two types of farms coexisted for the use of the land. On the one hand, the individual or collective in open fields called openfields, in which cereals were cultivated essentially and in which fallow was practiced, that is, where part of the land always remained uncultivated. On the other, there were communal lands, dedicated to forests or pastures, from which the entire peasant community benefited.
Livestock production was also insufficient, since agriculture did not produce the food necessary to increase the herd. The feeding of the animals depended basically on the stubble, on the herbs that grew in the fallow fields and on the scarce communal pastures. Consequently, the production of meat and milk was very low and the human diet was based mainly on the consumption of cereals.
The harvests marked the entire rhythm of the economy, which was periodically hit by the so-called subsistence crises: periods of special shortage or increase in the price of basic products, essentially wheat. These periodic crises generated hunger, malnutrition and increased mortality among the population.
Traditional industrial and manufacturing
A good part of everything that was necessary for daily consumption used to be produced within the family framework. The peasant family was, therefore, the basic production unit and was in charge of both work the land and produce products for domestic consumption. In any case, in the cities there existed, since the Middle Ages, a craft production controlled by guilds (groups of craftsmen who practiced the same profession). Its purpose was, in addition to the mutual assistance of the associates, the control of techniques, quality, volume and prices of production, as well as the number of teachers who could practice the trade.
The progressive increase in the demand for products from the 16th and 17th centuries stimulated merchants and some artisans to look for new production systems to escape the guild control, which made it difficult to increase production and did not allow too wide a profit margin. With this objective in mind, the Domestic System, which consisted of giving home work to peasant families. Thus, a craftsman-merchant distributed the raw material and provided the work tools so that the products were made in the small workshops installed in the peasant’s house. Afterwards, the merchant, who normally paid per elaborated piece, was in charge of marketing the product in the urban or colonial markets.
During the 18th century, another model of industrial production spread: the manufactures. These were subsidized establishments, promoted by the State (in continental Europe), or private initiative (in England), where certain luxury items were made. Products were also manufactured for sale on international markets through colonial trade. Its novelty consisted basically in the fact that manufacturing concentrated a very large number of paid workers under one roof. In this sense, manufactures constitute a precedent for the factory, the mainstay of modern industry.
The insufficiency of transport
In the Old Regime, the communications network was very poor and the very rudimentary means of transport. The roads and highways constituted the communication system par excellence, although it was very expensive to keep them in good condition. Only the royal roads were preserved in good condition. On the other hand, local roads were in poor condition and traffic was sometimes very difficult due to the abundance of potholes, stones, puddles, etc.
The most used vehicles were the car and the stagecoach, moved by draft animals (horses, mules…). The speed was very low, since the fastest and lightest vehicles only reached 15 or 20 km per hour. Consequently, journeys became long and costly: the Paris-Toulousse journey by stagecoach lasted eight days and cost more than 2,000 hours of labor for a day laborer.
The second great means of transport was sea and river navigation. The first essentially used the force of the wind as a traction method, and its load capacity was quite limited (100t). In addition, the movement was slow: it took two months, under favorable conditions, to go from England to the United States. River navigation was the easiest and cheapest means of transport, but it required good hydrographic conditions, which not all countries enjoyed. In this sense, Great Britain had a privileged river network that, with the construction of communication channels between the main rivers, gave rise to an important navigation network.
Internal trade and colonial trade
The scarce surpluses, the low level of specialization and an insufficient transport system resulted in a limited development of domestic trade. The exchanges were carried out at the fairs and the commerce that also existed, since ancient times, the great periodic fairs, where people came from far away to buy and sell.
However, the commercial isolation characteristic of the pre-industrial period was broken by colonial trade. From the 16th century, trade between territories separated by sea became much more frequent than between regions closer by land. New sea routes were opened and colonial trade became a stimulus for European economies. Colonial trade provided raw materials for industries, allowed the sale of manufactured objects and brought great profits to its executors.
Parallel to this commercial expansion, there was a great growth of one of the finances. The need for capital to finance commercial expeditions favored the expansion of credit mechanisms, of trading companies and of…