The 'ancien regime' (old regime) could refer to the long pre-modern period of European history between the fall of the Roman Empire in the west and the overturn of autocratic governments in Europe (i.e. in the period between the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917). In fact, the term tends to refer to a period confined principally to the absolute monarchies of Western Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and perhaps extended to the nineteenth century in eastern Europe and Russia.
Economically, the Old Regime was characterized by food shortages, a low level of iron production, comparatively primitive financial institutions while at the same time having competitve overseas empires in some cases. People during this period of time saw themselves as members of corporate bodies that possessed rights only as a group.
In short, the Old Regime might be regarded as the "Traditional Society" which formed the basis of theories of economic development in the last half of the twentieth century. These economies were only marginally more advanced than their counterparts elsewhere. For example, Ming Dynasty China or Mughal Dynasty India were substantially superior in regard to military might, economic organization and many technological achievements during the seventeenth century and even much of the eighteenth century in most of Europe.
The old regime was NOT a static society for at least the following reasons.
Pressure towards modernization originated from the growing bureaucracies. They gradually forced a centralization of administration that led to the formation of modern nation states. The monarchies gradually transformed the feudal aristocratic regime that was highly decentralized and operated on the basis of heredity into a central civil service not based on heredity and therefore somewhat more governed by principles of merit.
The key features of the old regime were the maintenance of tradition and the role of hierarchy and privilege. Most people in society tended from time to time to assert their ancient corporate rights against the expanding power of the royal bureaucracies. These rights referred to access to particular lands, courts and grievance procedures.
The old regime everywhere depended upon the corporate nature of society. Each state was considered to be a collection of numerous smaller societies or communities. These communities could be considered to be a village, a municipality, a guild, a church, a university, etc. The privilege associated with the community could be the right farm a particular piece of land, pursue a particular trade or craft or, in the case of a church, tax the population for one-tenth of their production (a tithe).
This is just the opposite of today's society in which individuals have certain rights as persons. There were certain estates or classes of people that had ancient rights. These estates could be represented in parlements (in the case of France) as bodies. In France, the estates were the aristocracy, church, and the peasants & merchants.
These people either inherited their titles and bureaucratic positions or obtained them from the king. In Great Britain, the aristocracy consisted of about 400 families (altogether less than 5,000 people). They formed a majority of parliament and dominated the county level government and law courts. The English aristocrats also controlled their counties socially and politically.
In France, there were two classes of nobility. Those who chose to live at Versailles and support the king became immensely rich. The ones who stayed at home were often only a little better than well-off peasants. All French aristocrats enjoyed exemption from both money taxes and labor requirements (the 'corvee'). Those who stayed back in the provinces and maintained local support were much less favored by the king and hence were poorer. Altogether, there were about 400,000 French nobles or 80 times the number in England. The burden of supporting them was significant. About half of the national budget of the government in France under Louis XIV was spent on Versailles.
In Eastern Europe, thousands of nobles were exempt from taxation. They had broad judicial power over the peasantry including, sometimes, the power of life and death. The nobility tended to dominate the officer corps of the armies although most of the soldiers were commoners. Peter the Great created a new service nobility that gradually replaced the older feudal aristocracy rooted on their estates. In 1785, Catherine the Great granted an explicit charter of rights in return for voluntary state service from the nobility. Throughout the eighteenth century, the power of the aristocracy grew at the expense of the monarchy in Russia.
Generally, the power of the landlords (leading to local despotism) was greater as one traveled from west to east in Europe. However, the peasants everywhere paid the bulk of the taxes and provided the bulk of the labor for the economy and for the armies. From time to time, the peasants rebelled against this mistreatment but the rebellions were always put down by force and often with great cruelty. The tide began to turn, however, with the success of the French revolution in 1789. In fact, the French Revolution provided an example that spread eastward over a period of about 125 years until the Russian Revolution of 1917. Only Great Britain escaped this pattern partly because of the English revolution in the 1600's leading to the dominance of parliament at Westminster and partly due to the gradually deepening of British democracy throughout this period. In short, the English preferred to accommodate change gradually rather than remain rigid up to the breaking point.
The basis for production both on the farm and in the towns was the family. It worked as a unit and shared whatever income the family earned collectively. In the west during the old regime, it became increasingly common for teenagers to be sent to a craftsman or merchant in nearby towns as an apprentice where they lived and worked for many years. This practice led to great mobility in society as well as a postponement of marriage often into the early twenties. Later marriages, in turn, resulted in lower birth rates. Finally, this pattern of sending younger children off to work in the town gradually resulted in urbanization at higher levels.
In Eastern Europe and Russia, in contrast, teenage children stayed with their families on the farms. Indeed, the households often consisted of three or even four generations of members of the family. This practice resulted in a more conservative and static society that, at the same time, was more rural in nature.
Everywhere in Europe, a lot depended on the continued good health and survival of the male head of household. Were he to sicken or die prematurely, the family could and often was in very serious trouble. In many place, women could not hold land or practice a trade within the local rules of village or guild. The result, without remarriage, was often disastrous.
Illegitimate children of teenage girls who were servants (apprentices) in other people's households was quite common. These children, even when raised in the house, had no inheritance rights at all and were often driven out by legitimate children of the head of household. This led to many vagabonds on the roads who did casual work for poor pay or engaged in petty criminality. The number who were executed for stealing food or clothing was appalling.
For most of this period, food production barely kept up with the growth of population (which was, however, accelerating). Most governments were very concerned with the production of grain that supported the population. Most people lived from hand to mouth and hunger was common. Bread prices gradually grew and this price inflation put pressure on the poor. But, it benefited the landowners and the wealthier peasants who had grain to sell. The result was a gradual increase in the level of income inequality at the local level that created social unrest. Another result was that rising grain prices provided an incentive to increase productivity.
Many new kinds of crops and new methods of cultivation were introduced in Western Europe. One of more important innovation was 'enclosure'. Traditionally, farmers inherited many isolated strips of land separated by the strips of land owned by other farmers. Also, most farmers followed a cultivation practice called "fallowing". This practice was inherited from the times of the Roman Empire and consisted of leaving one field in two or one field in three uncultivated for a year and then rotating the year of no cultivation to the other fields. The purpose was to allow nature to restore the fertility of the soil while it rested. The result of these practices was that a lot of land was not cultivated and farmers spent a lot of time walking between strips of land during times in the growing season when time was short. Finally, there was an ancient practice whereby there were village commons that was land owned by the village as a whole and used to graze animals owned by anyone in the village. The practice favored those peasants with very little land and therefore a great need for pasture.
Enclosure meant to fence in the common land and use it for private purposes (it was often bought at cute rate prices from the villages by unscrupulous and powerful landlords). It also meant consolidation of field strips into consolidated blocks. Also, instead of crop fallowing, farmers adopted new types of crop rotation and fertilization. The net result of enclosure and improved farming practices on the larger and better managed farms was to force many small holders off of the land and into the cities. This, plus the importation of grain from the New World, led to an increase in the food supply, population and labor supply available for manufacturing.
The modernization of agriculture, the rise of the bureaucratic state and the increase in oceanic commercial all provided the economic basis for the Industrial Revolution. It was the industrial revolution that permitted the Europeans to dominate the world from the 18th century until recently.
Great Britain was the home of the industrial during the 18th century because it occurred there first and then spread both east and west across the globe for the next two centuries until the 1950's. After that, the industrial revolution has been diffusing southward until today.
Basically, the revolution consisted of a series of mechanical, chemical and electrical innovations permitting an ever growing variety, quantity and quality of manufactured products. The revolution began in Great Britain with new textile machinery and new methods of iron manufacture. Industrialization, in turn, leads to vast increases in agricultural productivity, a nearly complete transfer of the population to urban areas and a substantial increase in military power and international influence.
Before industrialization, most cities were either capital cities (of countries or provinces) or they were ports. Pre-industrial urbanization accelerated in the period 1500-1800 with 156 cities with populations over 10,000 in 1500 and 363 by 1800. In 1800, more than 17 of those cities had more than 100,000 inhabitants (only 4 in 1500). The growth of port cities in particular reflected the growth in trans-Oceanic trade most of which was trans-Atlantic in this period.
Underlying this urbanization was a general rise in population throughout Europe supported by a steady rise in agricultural productivity. Especially in Britain, the eighteenth century also witnessed a gradual beginning of the industrial revolution.
There were three classes of urban inhabitants. These were the upper classes who consisted of a small group of nobles, large merchants, bankers, financiers, clergy and government officials. Basically, they were a self-appointed and perpetuated elite. This period also was characterized by the existence of a substantial middle class. The middle class had less wealth than the upper classes but more than the artisans. The artisans were the working people of the city. Most worked in shops with fewer than a half-dozen other artisans. They did the same sort of work that factory workers were to do during the industrial age but they did most of the work by hand. Most artisans were members of guilds. It was the guilds that organized and regulated work in the pre-industrial cities of Europe between 1500 and 1800.
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