MENU: 2.6. Nobles. Gods. Heroes
TOWARD 1500, EXPORERS' DISCOVERIES LEAD TO NEW SOURCES OF INCOME AND SO TO A BOOM THAT UNDERMINES THE SOCIAL SYSTEM
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Discoveries in 1502 /zoom |
The earliest known map of the Age of Discovery
In agricultural societies power comes from the control of land (in France) or the people who work it (in Russia or Africa) and hereditary landowners or masters dominate. The long-term threat to them comes people engaged in money-oriented professions, whose interests differ because their revenues have another source. That explains why in economically primitive societies people they are of a religion different from the rest of the population, which makes them separate and so vulnerable and easy to control: Jews in early medieval Europe and Muslims in animist Africa are examples.
The expanding economy brings entrepreneurs whose new activities yield much more capital. The old controls are obsolete: for example, Jews are replaced by Christians, who cannot be contained in the same way. The more dynamic entrepreneurs defy the barriers to growth, which leads to such civil wars as the France's 16th-century "Wars of Religion." Those conflicts also bring rulers who are strong enough to impose barriers on the widened search for profit (in that case the exceptionally powerful Bourbons). The cycle begins again.
If that explanation strikes you as strange consider that most historians concentrate on political narratives, not on the role of underlying economies and their changes. This blook's sequel, History from fresh perspectives says more.
In early 16th-century France hereditary landowners — the "nobles" — are in control, but do not participate in the suddenly expanding economy. They are a warrior caste, war for its own sake being a way in which potential disruptive profits, particularly harvests, are destroyed rather than reinvested (this too is explained in the sequel just mentioned). Should they engage in commerce they would lose the innumerable privileges which that status brings: The next page mentions the most important. As well, their upbringing and values are irrelevant to commerce or opposed to it (please click and scroll down). Finally, the expanding economy brings an inflation that diminishes the value of feudal dues* that are fixed by custom and cannot be raised. Since those dues comprise nobles' main income, most lack the capital that starting a business needs.
* Payments in cash, produce or labor that peasants paid the lords.
So the upper strata of society is made up, on the one hand, of a caste so associated with fighting that its members proudly wear armor for their portraits (for more examples, please click here, here and here) and who cannot adjust to a business-based economy...
Portrait of a Knight in Armor, end 16th century / zoom
The baton indicates command and the curtain underscores grandeur.
And on another level of increasingly dynamic entrepreneurs.
The inevitable clash is the underlying reason for the French Revolution (more here). Of course other factors affect that transformation, but they how it takes place, not that a social is overthrown and replaced by one that is entirely different.
The metamorphosis takes three centuries to happen. One reason: The extremely powerful monarchy slows the new interests' growth. Another: nobles' power permeates all aspects of society.
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These pages show how it worked
and traces it left.
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