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Abstract

In the current study, we represent evidence from central European countries that speak Germany for addressing some issues on Industrious Revolutions and the Consumer. Did these Revolutions occur out of the North Atlantic economies with early development? Did the traditional institutions’ “social capital” shape them? How did social constraints on women affect them? It has been found that central European people had an ambition for increasing consumption and market work. However, elites, using the “social capital” of traditional institutions, opposed new consumption and work customs and habits, particularly by migrants, women, migrants, and poor people. Though rarely blocking new customs and practices, they made a delay in these practices or made social limitation for them, increasing their expenses.

Expansion of market consumption has a major impact that is commonly ascribed in European economic growth prior to industrialization. It is thought that the “Consumer Revolution” during 1650-1800 observed lucrative spending by the middle classes and purchase of low-cost comestibles and fashions by the masses. It is argued that in a parallel “Industrious Revolution”, there was an increasing demand for market goods that created motivation for the families, and specifically children and women, for reallocating their time from household production and leisure to works that help income-earning. It is supposed that new norms of market work and market consumption have become self-reinforcing, which turned previously surplus time and ability of the human being into constructive activities and increased the demand for new products. It is believed that the Consumer and Industrious Revolutions provided fuel for the factory industrialization, proto-industrialization, and agricultural revolution, made the underground for the modern economic growth and Industrial Revolution.3 Therefore, the Consumer and Industrious Revolutions theories have significant outcomes both for economic development and economic history. Nevertheless, they also raise important unanswered questions.

Currently, it is supposed that almost all early modern economies in southern and central European regions and parts of Asia have experienced Consumer and Industrious Revolution. However, the factors supporting this (i.e., sources that hint at longer working hours, inventories that indicate an increase of market goods) mostly are obtained from economies of the North Atlantic. This evidence is particularly applied to England and the Netherlands, known as the early modern wonder economies and are extraordinary in some aspects. Only with a complete exploration of the Consumer and Industrious Revolutions for late-developing economies it is possible to completely perceive the critical significance of a move toward market industriousness and market consumption for modern economic development and growth.

It poses another question. Although work and consumption are social actions, the Consumer and Industrious Revolutions theories appeal to just two social institutions: the market and family. It can be rational for England and Netherlands that have mature and bright market economies and nuclear family households. However, early modern economies in Europe mostly contained institutions other than family and market: merchant associations, craft federations, rural communities, manorial systems, religious organizations, urban corporations, political bodies, privileged corporate “orders”, etc. According to political scientists, most of the pre-modern institutions (especially, communities and federations) are regarded as examples of the multifaceted and closely-knit social networks that are social capital generators, including the norms, sanctions, information, and collective action, which are thought to have a crucial impact on economic growth. There is a great variation in social institutions and related social capital in early modern Europe. However, their effect in the Consumer or Industrious Revolutions should be studied.

It results in the third question. It is supposed that females launched early modern “revolutions”, who more and more bought clothing and edibles in the market, with the money they gained from reallocation of their time from non-paid household works to market work.9 This can be consistent with what is known about England and the Netherlands, where have been described by early modern travelers as the countries with surprising freedom of Dutch females. The Duke of Württemberg described his trip to England on 1598 as follows: “the liberty of women here is considerably more than other places. Besides, women here are well aware of how to use this freedom. They use very beautiful dresses. England is the females’ heaven, the servants’ prison, the horses’ hell. Women are greatly liberal are approximately like masters, while the poor horses work hardly.11 However, women in many of early modern European economies had to struggle with different institutional limitations regarding their work and consumption alternatives. These broadly different limitations on females would have effects on the Consumer and Industrious Revolutions?

The open questions are addressed in the present study with a focus on a late-developing Central European economy. Although this economy had market-oriented in most ways, it included significant non-market institutions that were different from institutions of the classical Consumer Revolution economies and had great economic limitations on females. Württemberg in the southwest territory of Germany was different from England and the Low Countries, while it was similar to other regions of Europe, in terms of the lasting influence of its federations, communities, and religious bodies. Occupational guilds were preserved until 1862 in Württemberg, both in traditional artifacts and export-centered proto-industries, merchant trading, and shopkeeping.12 Moreover, Württemberg had strong and effective local communities, which their councils, courts, authorities, and citizens’ gatherings empowered them for regulating and monitoring consumption, work, education, leisure, marriage, economic transactions, and sexuality.13 Local church courts were settled by Württemberg in the 1640s that worked until c. 1890, having the authority of imposing incarceration and fines and religious repentances and regulating consumption, work, sociability, poor relief, cultural customs, and sexuality.

Micro-studies have indicated generation of a rich “social capital” of common information, norms, collective actions, and sanctions by these federations, religious institutions, and communities that have had a significant influence on the economic choices of a considerably market-oriented population.15 Therefore, Württemberg is a suitable instance for exploration of the Consumer and Industrious Revolutions in a later-developing economy infused by the non-market institutions’ social capital.

In case of existence of the influence of social capital on the Consumer and Industrious Revolutions, what is expected to observe? Traditional institutions usually impose social norms concerning labor, especially for females, young people, and the poor laboring people. Thus, we firstly investigate whether social institutions altered the capacity and motivation of people for reallocating their time from household work to market production by regulating wages and work. Secondly, traditional institutions usually impose norms concerning business: who can have business, which products, and how. Thus, the question of whether these institutions, through regulation of commerce, influenced how traders generated new market wares accessible to broader social levels is examined in the second section. Thirdly, traditional institutions tend to enforce social norms regarding the quality and quantity as well as the style of consumption believed to be proper for special social classes – especially females and the lower classes. Hence, in the third section it is investigated whether sumptuary controls influenced the consumption habits of people. In the end, traditional institutions impose norms concerning household authority and gender roles. Thus, in the fourth section it is examined whether non-family social institutions, through intervention in family conflicts, changed the ability of females for increasing market consumption and work.