320 Chapter 17they then made the best profit that they could after
paying the rent. Such long-term contracts protected
peasant families from eviction after a single bad harvest,
and many aristocrats discovered the advantages of
short-term contracts, which were typical in Spain.
Other tenant farmers managed the rented lands but did
not labor in the fields themselves, or they became
wealthy by trading in grain or other commodities.
The other 80 percent to 90 percent of landless peas-
ants were not as fortunate as the tenant farmers. The
most secure group were usually sharecroppers, often
called métayers.They produced most of the grain mar-
keted in France by farming the estates of great landown-
ers under contracts negotiated as free peasants. The
sharecropping contract (see document 17.1) typically
provided leased land in return for a large share of its
yield. Sharecropping contracts provided these peasant
families with the means of survival, but little more. Be-
low the sharecroppers was a lower class of agricultural
laborers. Some worked for wages, others, called cotters
in many countries, worked for the use of a cottage.
Some found only seasonal employment (working to har-
vest grapes in the autumn, for example), in some cases
living as migrant laborers, traveling with the changing
harvests. Thus, the peasantry included a range of condi-
tions that saw some peasants employed as laborers (or
even domestic servants) by other peasants.
The Urban Population of the Old Regime
Urban Europe in the eighteenth century ranged from
rural market towns of 2,000 people to great administra-Illustration 17.3
The Home of a Successful Peasant
Family.Eighteenth-century peasant
homes often had only one room, which
was used for all purposes, including
housing animals. This Breton family
from a village near Morbihan possessed
considerable wealth in its horses, cattle,
and pigs. Note the limited furnishings
and the absence of windows.
Table shows all European cities with a population of
100,000 or more in 1700
City Population
Constantinople 700,000
London 575,000
Paris 500,000
Naples 300,000
Amsterdam 200,000
Lisbon 180,000
Madrid 140,000
Venice 138,000
Rome 135,000
Moscow 130,000
Milan 125,000
Vienna 114,000
Palermo 100,000TABLE 17.4The Great Cities of Europe in 1700tive and commercial capital cities of 500,000. Impor-
tant regional towns—such as Heidelberg, Helsinki, and
Liverpool—often had populations below ten thousand.
A population of 100,000 constituted a great city, and
only a few capital cities reached that level in the early
eighteenth century (see table 17.4 and map 17.1).
Berlin had fifty-five thousand people in 1700. St. Pe-