Key Terms: Understanding 18th Century Society and Economics

Posted on Mar 11, 2025 in Geography

Key Terms: Unit 1

• Import-Export: Buying goods from another country, the opposite of exporting (selling goods).
• Limited Suffrage: The right to vote restricted by race, sex, belief, sexual orientation, and especially wealth or social status.
• Manufacture: The process of producing goods in large quantities using machinery in large buildings, with economic support from the State.
• Mercantilism: An economic system designed to maximize a country’s exports and its accumulation of gold and silver. It is the opposite of Physiocracy.
• National Sovereignty: The doctrine that sovereignty belongs to and derives from the nation, an abstract entity normally linked to a physical territory and its past and future citizens. It is an ideological concept derived from liberal political theory, tracing back to John Locke in late 17th century England and Montesquieu in 18th century France.
• Old Demographic Cycle: A demographic cycle characterized by high mortality and birth rates, low life expectancy, and periodic demographic crises.
• Parliament: The legislative assembly of England, comprising the House of Lords and the House of Commons.
• Physiocracy: An economic theory developed by a group of 18th-century French economists that considered agriculture to be the most important economic activity of a country and the most important source of wealth.
• Protectionist: Describes measures designed to protect a country’s industries from foreign competition, usually by taxing or limiting imports. The goal is to encourage citizens to buy goods produced inside the country.
• Right of Ban: Initially the military power of a feudal lord over his land, this power was later expanded to include the right to collect all taxes on the peasant population working in the lord’s feud.
• Social Inequality: Differences between people’s rights and status within a society, especially during the Ancient Regime.
• Stratified Society: A type of social organization, originating with feudalism, in which individuals belong to an estate that defines their activities and rights. Key groups include: the aristocratic elite who held inherited legal privileges; the church, intimately related to the State and the aristocracy; and the rural peasantry subjected to high taxes and feudal labor requirements for the land lord.
• Subsistence Crisis: An extreme situation where the basic means of livelihood are endangered. In France, the rapid population expansion from 23 million in 1715 to 28 million in 1789 led to subsistence crises. These crises are caused by economic factors (generally high food prices), which in turn may be caused by either natural or man-made factors. This threatens the food supplies and survival prospects of large numbers of people (considered famine if extremely severe and resulting in large numbers of lives lost). A subsistence crisis is considered genuine if visible in demographic data.
• The Bill of Rights: Originating in England, the Bill of Rights was enacted by Parliament in 1689 (following the Glorious Revolution), asserting the supremacy of Parliament over the monarch and listing fundamental rights and liberties. It limited royal power by forbidding the collection of taxes without Parliament’s consent.
• Universal Suffrage: The extension of the right to vote to all adult citizens. Where Universal Suffrage exists, the right to vote is not restricted by race, sex, belief, sexual orientation, wealth, or social status.