Place: “Germany”
Time: 18th Century
By: Dan C. Heinemeier
(Continued)The nobility took as their ideal the courts of France and they tried to ape the customs of the French courts. Few of the German nobility could really afford to do this as their principalities were too small to give them the necessary financial means. The result is that many of the nobles became impoverished after a few generations or else they raised the taxes to increase their income. However, in some of the principalities, the tax rate and fee structure had been negotiated between the nobles and their subjects. The nobles were not entirely free to change these.
Some of the rulers recognized that their interests coincided with those of the people. If the people prospered, the rulers did also. If the people did not prosper, the rulers would not prosper. Thus, rose the term "enlightened despotism".
Some of the rulers saw that the people should be freed from the requirements to perform certain services for the nobles. In the place of service, they substituted cash payments. Thus, the workers were left on their own farms to produce crops and goods for sale, from which they would pay their taxes. This was a major agricultural reform in the last half of the 18th Century, which was copied by the areas adjacent to those who had tried it out first. A man would work three times as hard on his own land as he would on the Lord's land.
The more cash-like economy showed a shortage of capital on the farms. Starting in Prussia, a Rural Credit Bank was created to help the farmers finance their production. This idea was slow to catch on in other parts of Germany, though.
The measure of a state's strength was the ability to impose its will. Many smaller German rulers developed standing armies and an increasing elaborate and centralized state administration. These were expensive, and it took increased taxes to pay for them. One way of paying for these armies was to rent the armies out to others. During the American Revolution, this became a favorite tactic to earn a profit. Recruiting often concentrated on the poorer agricultural regions, especially where there was surplus of labor. It was thought to be better to get the unemployed off the roads and alleys in the homeland and have them earning money, which would come back to the rulers. Many states used troops in peacetime to crush minor local rebellions and to keep order like policemen.
On the whole, there was a rigid society and change came slowly. Some of the most conservative individuals were the peasants themselves. Their attitude was, "This is the way my father did it and this is the way that I am going to do it."
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