Ancien Régime . The term was first coined and used by French revolutionaries (during the Constituent Assembly in 1790 ) to disparagingly designate the political, social and administrative structures of the country in which they lived, which they considered decadent and unjust. Although the expression was initially limited to French political and legal institutions, today it is used in a broader sense and is applied to other states. During the course of the 19th century they will be replaced by others specific to capitalist class society.
Ancient demography
- Low vegetative growth, conditioned by high birth rates counterbalanced by high mortality rates , especially among children.
- An unstable balance between population and resources. The regulating element of demography was mortality, closely related to the dependence on an agricultural economy .
- Subsistence crises occurred periodically, triggered by a series of poor harvests. Food shortages led to famines, which in turn produced epidemic diseases that spread rapidly among the impoverished population. The aftermath was catastrophic mortality.
There were certain changes in this demographic model; thus, in some areas of Europe ( England , France , and also Holland ), there was an increase in food surpluses and better nutrition, which resulted in a decrease in famines and epidemics and, consequently, in a reduction in mortality.
Another factor that influenced the decline in mortality, although in a less decisive way, was a certain progress in medicine . The result was a demographic growth that, however, did not affect the entire continent equally. The increase in population intensified the demand for food and manufactured goods, and also increased the availability of labor, both in the fields and in industry, determining factors in the development of the agricultural and industrial revolution.
Agrarian-based economy
Three-quarters of the working population was concentrated in the primary sector. Industry was artisanal and still retained guild-based features. Craft workshops employed a small number of workers, with scarce machinery and few sources of energy: human, animal, water or wind . Specialisation was limited, which meant that the work process involved in creating goods was controlled from start to finish by a single person or a small number of workers.
Long-distance trade predominated, an example of which was the so-called “triangular trade”. Internal exchanges were scarce and complicated due to poor communications and the lack of a unified market. Urban development was scarce. The village was the centre of organisation and production.
Few cities had more than 50,000 inhabitants. In the mid-18th century, the demographic cycle underwent significant changes, mainly due to a decrease in mortality. These changes led to an increase in the population, accompanied by a transfer of inhabitants from the countryside to the city, which had an impact on the unprecedented development of urban planning .
The property structure was of a manorial nature, based on large estates whose owners received substantial feudal rents from a large mass of landless peasants.
Estate society
An estate society is one organised into estates. In the Ancien Régime, these were closed groups that were accessed mainly by birth. Although there might be some small possibility of transfer from one group to another (ennoblement by merit, purchase, etc.), what characterised this society was stability and inertia. Unlike capitalist society, which was divided into groups based on their wealth and, therefore, more variable and dynamic, estate society was almost immutable. Each estate corresponded to a stratum or group defined by a common lifestyle and analogous social function. It was impermeable, that is, its members could not change their condition.
Legally, it was unequal. Each of the people who made it up was entitled to privileges or not, depending on whether they belonged to one category or another. The privileges consisted of exemption from obligations (taxes) and the right to exclusive advantages. There was a privileged class that included the nobility and the clergy and another non-privileged class that included the rest of the social strata: bourgeoisie, artisans, peasants and marginal groups.
The privileged class was accessed (except in the case of the clergy) by birth or by special concession from the monarch. From the 17th century onwards, it became increasingly common for bourgeois individuals to achieve ennoblement by purchasing titles from the monarch.
The rigid class society entered into crisis as a result of the changes that took place throughout the 18th century, which led to the strengthening of a bourgeoisie that ruled a large part of the economy. However, not content with their economic opulence, the bourgeoisie also began to demand political rights and social prestige, something that the privileged were not prepared to concede. This discrimination would push the rising bourgeoisie towards revolutionary action, the objective of which would be the destruction of feudal privileges.
At the end of the century, the contradictions of the estate system became increasingly apparent. This was especially the case in France, where a revolution broke out in 1789 , which paved the way for many other processes that developed throughout the 19th century and brought about the end of the feudal system. Capitalist society was built on the ruins of the society of the Ancien Régime.
Nobility
Together with the clergy, they constituted one of the privileged groups in the society of the Ancien Régime. They were a minority, but had great economic and political power.
- She was the owner of large estates.
- She was exempt from paying taxes.
- He received high rents from the peasants.
- He held important political and military positions.
- Legally and juridically, its members held privileges that they inherited by birth.
- It was configured as a heterogeneous group: not all its members enjoyed the same importance and economic position.
Clergy
Along with the nobility, it was part of the privileged class.
- Its members possessed a great wealth of property in the form of luxury goods, churches and palaces, as well as a significant amount of land. They also received significant income in the form of tithes, donations and alms.
- They wielded great ideological power and enjoyed great social prestige. They monopolized education.
- It was a heterogeneous group that included cardinals and other high dignitaries (second sons of the nobility) as well as humble rural priests whose living conditions were sometimes similar to those of their parishioners.
Bourgeoisie
He belonged to the underprivileged class. He was a minority that was gradually gaining economic power and social prestige.
- Its members lived mostly in cities.
- It controlled economic power (together with the nobility and clergy), mainly through commercial and financial activity.
- Although rich and cultured, she did not possess privileges.
- In some cases, they became related to the nobility through the purchase of titles and marriages.
- At the end of the 18th century (in France) and throughout the 19th century, it was the protagonist of a series of revolutions that eliminated the feudal system of the Ancien Régime and gave it political as well as economic power. In this way, it became the dominant class of the new capitalist system.
Artisans
They were in charge of industrial activity and belonged to the group of the underprivileged.
- They formed a relatively small social group.
- They lived mainly in cities.
- Its members were organized into associations called guilds.
- When the modern industrialization process began, which lasted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, they disappeared and joined the ranks of the industrial proletariat.
Peasants
They belonged to the non-privileged class.
- They constituted the majority of the population in an essentially agrarian society.
- They lived in rural areas.
- Their standard of living was on the edge of mere survival and they suffered with particular virulence the recurring subsistence crises typical of a pre-industrial economy.
- They were subject to the landowners who worked them, mainly nobles and clerics, through ties of dependence. Only a minority were landowners. They had to face a multitude of burdens that further reduced their income. An example of these were the tithes they had to pay to the Church.
- From the 18th century and during the 19th century, as a result of the industrialization process, a large part of the peasants emigrated to the cities to work in factories.
Marginal groups
Made up of beggars, outcasts, the sick and the elderly without resources, they constituted the lumpen of society. They survived thanks to crime and charity.
absolutist government
The government of the states of the Ancien Régime was based on absolutist regimes that, for the most part, were ideologically justified under the formula of “monarchy of Divine Right.”
Bossuet , a French cleric and thinker, in his work “Politics according to the Holy Scriptures”, claimed that power was transmitted to the King directly by God . The monarch is therefore not responsible for his acts before his subjects but before divinity. The legitimacy of his power is based on the pillars of a non-earthly right, which separates the exercise of it from any type of commitment emanating from law or tradition. The abbot Bossuet defended the political actions of King Louis XIV of France, the greatest exponent of monarchical absolutism and centralism, known as the “Sun King” or ” Louis the Great “.
Thomas Hobbes , an English political thinker, also defended the power of kings, but disconnected it from its divine origins. In his work “Leviathan” he maintained that the authority of monarchs came from an agreement established between him and his subjects.
However, absolutism encountered certain resistance, mainly from the defenders of feudal privileges inherited from the Middle Ages and reserved for the nobility and the clergy. Throughout the 18th century, monarchs attempted to put an end to the limitation of power by exercising a new form of government, ” Enlightened Despotism “.
Few European states escaped monarchical absolutism as a formula for exercising power. Three stood out: the United Provinces (Holland), the Republic of Venice and England. Absolutism reached its peak between the second half of the 17th century and the end of the 18th century, ending as a consequence of the bourgeois revolutions that took place during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Enlightened Despotism
It was a form of government that attempted to reconcile absolutism with the new ideas of the Enlightenment, attempting to combine the interests of the monarchy with the well-being of those governed. It developed during the second half of the 18th century. The term has its origin in the Italian word “Despot”, meaning a sovereign who governs without being subject to any law. Many European sovereigns developed this form of government to a greater or lesser extent, using their indisputable supremacy as a tool to encourage culture and the improvement of the living conditions of their subjects.
The planning and implementation of these actions fell to a series of ministers and high officials of the state administration, among whom the Marquis of Pombal in Portugal , the Marquis of Ensenada in Spain or Turgot in France stood out. The following despots stood out: In Spain, Charles III; in Austria , Maria Theresa and Joseph II; in Prussia , Frederick II; in Russia , Catherine II.
In France, the cradle of bourgeois revolutions, enlightened despotism did not reach the prominence it had in other European states, since the initiatives of its defenders (the ministers Turgot, Necker, Brienne or Calonne) were met with incomprehension and opposition from the privileged who were negatively affected by the reforms.
The limitations of enlightened despotism were evident: it achieved relative success in the administrative, educational and economic fields. However, it failed in the social field, since its promoters were not in favour of undertaking deep reforms that would endanger the old structures of the Ancien Régime.
This failure paved the way for more radical positions and, ultimately, the attempt to modernise absolutism was frustrated by the bourgeois revolutions.
Illustration
It is the philosophical, literary and scientific movement that developed in Europe and its colonies throughout the 18th century (“of the Enlightenment”). It represented an important cultural modernization and the attempt to transform the outdated structures of the Ancien Régime.
Essential Ideas
Reason is the only means to achieve truth. Together with progress, it is the path to happiness. It serves as a guide against superstition, religious fanaticism and ignorance. The author who most vehemently criticized the intolerance and fanaticism of the religion of his time was Voltaire . This treatment of reason was inspired by the philosophy of Descartes , based on “methodical doubt” (only that which is evident is considered true) and by Newton ‘s general laws of physics .
Progress, which is to be achieved through science in combination with technology, allows humanity to advance in an evolutionary and indefinite manner. Nature is the origin of everything genuine, true and authentic. However, society perverts and corrupts man, who is good in his natural state. The main figure who develops the social aspect of the Enlightenment is Jean Jacques Rousseau.
These ideas will be reflected in different areas of thought: political, social, economic, cultural, etc
Vehicles of diffusion
Although the Enlightenment had an impact exclusively on minority sectors of society, its proponents always tried to spread their ideas from and through different spheres.
Basically they were these:
- Scientific, literary or artistic societies and academies, supported by public authorities.
- The country’s friends’ societies, usually established in the main cities and provincial capitals.
- The Salons. Gatherings or meetings of enlightened people to discuss a wide variety of topics.
- The Encyclopedia: It is a “reasoned dictionary of the sciences, arts and crafts”. That is, an inventory of all the knowledge of the time. Its director was Diderot. It was published between 1751 and 1772 and specialists in various subjects collaborated on it: D’Alembert (mathematician), Voltaire and Rousseau (philosophers), Turgot (economist), Buffon (naturalist), etc. The criteria for its elaboration were strictly scientific, which earned it the opposition of the most reactionary sectors of society and ecclesiastical persecution. It was a notable success in France (where it was first published) and also in the rest of Europe.
Enlightened thought
Background
They can be found in England and Holland during the 17th century. Evidence of this can be found in Newton from a scientific point of view (Modern Physics) and in the English Revolution of 1688 in its political aspects. The latter introduced parliamentarism, which would have such an influence on Voltaire and Montesquieu .
A prominent figure is John Locke who, in his work “Two Treatises on Civil Government”, advocated the separation of powers through the exercise of a parliamentary government that would guarantee individual liberties and replace monarchical absolutism.
Political thought
It was developed in the work of the following authors:
- Montesquieu. He theorized about the division of powers.
- Voltaire. He investigated freedom of thought and advocated a new religion ( deism ) to replace the revealed religions ( Christianity , Judaism , Islam , etc.)
- Rousseau. He emphasized the study of nature and social relations between men.
