CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Introduction

II. People and Space: Population Density, Travel,

and Communication

III. Life Expectancy in the Old Regime

IV. Disease and the Biological Old Regime

A. Public Health before the Germ Theory

B. Medicine and the Biological Old Regime

V. Subsistence Diet and the Biological Old Regime

A. The Columbian Exchange and the European

Diet

B. Famine in the Old Regime

C. Diet, Disease, and Appearance

VI. The Life Cycle: Birth

A. The Life Cycle: Infancy and Childhood

B. The Life Cycle: Marriage and the Family

C. The Life Cycle: Sexuality and Reproduction

D. The Life Cycle: Old Age

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CHAPTER 18

DAILY LIFE IN THE OLD REGIME

F

or most Europeans, the basic conditions of life in

the eighteenth century had changed little since

the agricultural revolution of Neolithic times.

Chapter 18 describes those conditions and

shows in dramatic terms how life at the end of the Old

Regime differed from that of the present day. It begins

by exploring the basic relationships between people

and their environment, including the density of popula-

tion in Europe and the barriers to speedy travel and

communication. The chapter then examines the life of

ordinary people, beginning with its most striking fea-

ture: low life expectancy. The factors that help to ex-

plain that high level of mortality, especially inadequate

diet and the prevalence of epidemic disease, are then

discussed. Finally, the life cycle of those who survived

infancy is considered, including such topics as the dan-

gers of childbirth; the Old Regime’s understanding of

childhood; and its attitudes toward marriage, the fam-

ily, sexuality, and reproduction.

People and Space: Population Density,

Travel, and Communication

The majority of the people who lived in Europe during

the Old Regime never saw a great city or even a town

of twenty-five thousand people. Most stayed within a

few miles of their home village and the neighboring

market town. Studies of birth and death records show

that more than 90 percent of the population of the

eighteenth century died in the same region where they

were born, passing their lives amid relatively few peo-

ple. Powerful countries and great cities of the eigh-

teenth century were small by twentieth-century

standards (see population tables in chapter 17). Great

Britain numbered an estimated 6.4 million people in

1700 (less than the state of Georgia today) and Vienna

held 114,000 (roughly the size of Fullerton, California,

or Tallahassee, Florida). People at the start of the

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