SEAdvanced Placement European History

Dear Readers,

Fortunately, I am not too traumatized from witnessing a woman allow her five-year old child to feed from her breast, so I am still able to do the blog. Someone ship that lady a HooterHider!

Do you think there's really a baby under there?

Children & Education-

What were the attitudes towards children at this time?- It seems that the young child was often of minor concern to its parents & to society int he 18th century. Doctors & clergymen urged parents not to become too emotionally involved with their children, who were so unlikely to survive. It was a vicious cycle: children were neglected because they were very likely to die & they were likely to die because they were neglected. Rousseau called for greater love & tenderness towards children, part of the general growth of humanitarianism.

What about schools & popular literature?- The religious struggles unleashed by the Protestant & Catholic Reformations served as the catalyst in promoting popular literacy. Both Protestant & Catholic reformers pushed reading as a means of instilling their teachings more effectively. Prussia led the way in the development of universal education. Prussia made attendance to elementary school compulsory. The Church of England & the dissenting congregations established “charity schools” to instruct the children of the poor. The major philosophical works of the Enlightenment had little impact on peasants & workers, who could neither afford nor understand those favorites of the book-hungry educated public. The staple of popular literature was short pamphlets known as chapbooks, many dealing wth religious subjects. Entertaining, often humorous stories formed a second element of popular literature. Is this where we get Cinderella, Goldilocks & the 3 Bears, etc.?- yes, escapism was common in the literature of the time. In general, however, the reading of the common people had few similarities with that of educated elites. Popular literature was simple & practical.

Pictured: poor people's wallets.

Food & Medical Practice-

"Food...let's talk about it."- diets & nutrition: Just price was a belief that prices should be “fair,” protecting both consumers & producers & imposed by government decrees. In the 18th century, this traditional, moral view of prices & the economy clashed repeatedly with the emerging free market philosophy of unregulated supply & demand. Bread was quite literally the staff of life. The diet of the rich was traditionally different from that of the poor. There were also regional dietary differences. The poor of England & the Netherlands probably ate best of all. the impact of diet on health: The basic bread & vegetables diet of the poor in normal times was adequate. People of moderate means were best off from a nutritional standpoint. More varied diets associated with new methods of farming were confirmed largely to the Low Countries & England, but a new food, like the potato, came to the aid of the poor everywhere. There was also a general growth of market gardening. Another sign of nutritional decline was the growing consumption of sugar.

Everyone eating in the 18th century.

What was up with medicine? Did they have DayQuil (my fave)?- medical practitioners: There was a great rise in research & experimentation at this time. Care of the sick in the 18th century was the domain of several competing groups: fait healers, apothecaries/pharmacists, physicians, surgeons, & midwives. A demonic view of disease was strongest in the countryside, so faith healing was particularly popular, effective in the treatment of mental disorders such as hysteria & depression. Regular purging of the bowels (aka pooping) was considered essential for good health & treatment of illness. Only bloodletting was more effective in speeding patients to their grave - bloodletting was still considered a medical cure-all. The simplest wound treated by a surgeon could fester & lead to death, however. Following the invention of the forceps, which helped in exceptionally difficult births, surgeon-physicians used their monopoly over this & other instruments to seek lucrative new business, attempting to undermine faith in midwives. Despite this, women remained dominant in the birthing trade.

Surgeons to midwives.

hospitals & medical experiments: Hospitals were terrible places throughout most of the 18th century. Diderot’s article in the Encyclopedia on the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, the “richest & most terrifying of all French hospitals,” vividly describes the conditions. Mental hospitals, too, were incredibly savage institutions. The customary treatment for mental illness was bleeding & cold water, administered more to maintain discipline than to effect a cure. William Tuke founded the first humane sanatorium in England. The 18th century’s greatest medical triumph was the conquest of smallpox with the introduction to inoculation. By the later years of the century, smallpox inoculation was playing some part in the decline of the death rate & the general increase in European population. Edward Jenner received monetary prizes from the British government for his great discovery regarding cowpox, a huge advance in the medical world.

Bye bye smallpox!

Religion & Popular Culture-

Are the priests being bad again?- the institutional church: As in the Middle Ages, the local parish church remained the basic religious unit all across Europe. The local church had important administrative tasks. Priests & parsons were truly the bookkeepers of agrarian Europe. As the Reformation gathered force, with peasant upheaval & doctrinal competition, German princes & monarchs in northern Europe put themselves at the head of official churched in their territories & then proceeded to regulate their “territorial churches” strictly. The Reformation, initially so radical in its rejection of Rome & its stress on individual religious experience, eventually resulted in a bureaucratization of the church & local religious life in Protestant Europe. Some Catholic monarchs began to impose striking reforms. These reforms had a very “Protestant” aspect, increasing state control over the Catholic Church, making it less subject to papal influence. A more striking indication of state power & papal weakness was the fate of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. The Jesuits eventually elicited a broad coalition of enemies & bitter controversy led Louis XV to order the Jesuits out of France & confiscate their property. France & Spain then pressured Rome to dissolve the Jesuits completely. In 1773, a reluctant pope caved in, although the order was revived after the French Revolution. Some Catholic rulers also believed that the clergy in monasteries & convents should make a more practical contribution to social & religious life. protestant revival: In their attempt to recapture the vital core of Christian religion, the Protestant reformers had rigorously suppressed medieval practices. Such revolutionary changes had often troubled ordinary churchgoers. The Protestant revival began in Germany, known as Pietism, calling for a warm, emotional religion that everyone could experience. Enthusiasm - in prayer, in worship, in preaching, in life itself - was they key concept. Pietism reasserted the earlier radical stress on the priesthood of all believers, thereby reducing the large gulf between the official clergy & the Lutheran laity. Pietists believed in the practical power of Christian rebirth in everyday affairs. Reborn Christians were expected to lead good, moral lives & come from all social classes. Pietism had a major impact on John Wesley, who served as the catalyst for the popular religious revival in England. Wesley organized a Holy Club for students at Oxford, soon known contemptuously as Methodists, extremely methodical in their devotion. Wesley preached in open fields, winning over many & forming a new denomination. catholic piety: The tremendous popular strength of religion in Catholic countries reflected religion’s integral role in community life & popular culture. Inspired initially by the fervor of the Catholic Counter-Reformation & then to some extent by the critical rationalism of the Enlightenment, parish priests & Catholic hierarchies sought increasingly to “purify” popular religious practice. Many Catholic priests & hierarchies preferred a compromise between theological purity & the people’s piety, perhaps realizing that the lien between divine truth & mere superstition is not easily drawn.

Let's discuss leisure & recreation, something us AP Euro girls know nothing about.- The combination of religious celebration & popular recreation seen in festivals & processions was most strikingly displayed at Carnival, a time of reveling & excess in Catholic & Mediterranean Europe. The 18th century saw a sharp increase win the commercialization of leisure-time activities - a trend that continues to this day. Blood sports, such as bullbaiting & cockfighting, remained popular with the masses. With superstition, sin, disorder, & vulgarity, there was an attack on popular culture, intensified as an educated public embraced the critical world-view of the Enlightenment. This shift in cultural attitudes drove a wedge between the common people & the educated public.