Anne Salmond: Two Worlds - Chapter 2

Seventeenth-century Europeans lived in a landscape inhabited by humans for about 350,000 years, extensively reshaped over time.

Most Europeans lived in scattered homesteads, hamlets, or small, walled towns, with cultivation and pasture or in the fields outside

Europe was experiencing climate change, with colder conditions leading to crop failures, widespread famines, and dietary stress.

Contagious diseases like smallpox, influenza, typhoid, and bubonic plague were frequent, along with typhus spread by lice during warfare.

Seventeenth-century Europe experienced high child mortality rates and rampant industrial diseases, exacerbated by poor working conditions.

The average lifespan was short, around 23 years in Paris and slightly longer for ruling families, with disease and poor nutrition being factors.

Population densities were high (40-50 people per square km), driving trade, migration, and capitalist exchange, along with the use of overseas goods.

Europe's economy was primarily based on local production and exchange, with agricultural laborers producing for subsistence, rent, tithes, and local markets.

Most European peasants faced economic hardship: inability to afford their produce leading to reliance on common lands and difficult conditions.

Punishments for crimes ranged from hanging, burning, and amputation to enslavement.

Society was divided between the poor and a small, wealthy elite. Aristocrats monopolized power, displaying wealth through mansions, food etc.

Monarchs headed states, disbursed patronage, and engaged in frequent battles over territory, family, and religious quarrels.

Villages were often deserted and in decay due to constant fighting.

Popular rebellions and uprisings were common responses to war, taxes, epidemics, and famine, showing dissent against absolutist power.

People saw the world through Christianity, ancient philosophy, and popular beliefs in the supernatural, conceiving the universe as a hierarchy.

Almanacs, the Bible, small booklets recorded daily positions of the stars, weather forecasts, tide tables and astrological predictions, providing the people with information

Common notions of the beginning of the world were based on genesis.

Folk medicine involved herbal remedies influenced by astrology, while belief in ghosts, fairies along with witches persisted.

A new scientific understanding began to erode the power of old supernatural beliefs, which slowly declined as knowledge spread.

Universities were dominated by conservatives and mostly the intellectual advances of the time were in scientific academies and with scholars.

Invention of the telescope, new explorations caused people to challenge current knowledge

Internal European trading faced many difficulties due to independent jurisdictions. Passageways included rivers and roads.

Overseas expansion in European counties was largely caused in European countries