AP Euro Unit 3 (3) - Agricultural Revolution

famine foods

food people forced to eat during periods of famine

ex. chestnuts, dandelions/grass, bark, and sometimes people resorted to cannibalism

The spread of the Agricultural Revolution (Where did it start and go from there?)

Began in the Low Countries (Netherlands/Dutch Republic)

• dense population, so needed efficient agriculture

• well-developed markets bc of overseas trading

  • allows farmers to specialize - switch to commercial agriculture

England then follows, and it eventually spreads to the rest of Europe.

Open-field system

a farming system where land is divided into strips and worked by different farmers, allowing for communal grazing and crop rotation

field rotation

a system of alternating fallow and used portions of a field to maintain soil fertility - only used 1/2-2/3 of the land each season

Enclosure system

a farming system that includes the privatization and fencing off of previously communal farmland, often resulting in the displacement of peasant farmers and increased agricultural efficiency.

crop rotation

a practice of rotating different crops in the same area across seasons to improve soil health - uses all of the land at once

proletarianization

the change from small peasant farmers to landless wage earners (proletarians)

a result of the enclosure system, where peasants couldn’t afford to pay for their lands to be fenced and were forced to sell them

Cottage Industry/Putting-out system/Protoindustrialization

when rural wage earners used hand tools to produce goods @ home for urban capitalists

merchants loaned raw materials to workers who processed them and then returned the finished products to the merchant

industrious revolution

a period of change in the early modern economy where households increased their labor and productivity, leading to greater economic independence and wealth - more women and children were working

creoles

full-blood Europeans born in the New World

debt peonage

system developed in Spanish mines of keeping workers in perpetual debt by the continual advancement of food and shelter