AP®︎ European History: Topic 4.4 Flashcards

A harvest failure that caused food shortages, soaring grain prices, malnutrition, disease, and unusually high mortality

Village farming system in which households cultivated scattered strips in shared fields under communal rules and used common lands

A period of colder, more variable European weather that contributed to harvest failures and subsistence crises

The long, uneven transformation that increased agricultural productivity and commercialization through improved rotations, crops, breeding, tools, landholding, and transportation

Planting different crops in sequence, including fodder and soil-restoring crops, to reduce fallow land and maintain fertility

Rotation associated with Charles “Turnip” Townshend that alternated wheat, turnips, barley, and clover to reduce fallow land, restore soil, and provide winter fodder

A Columbian Exchange crop that produced substantial nutrition on small or marginal plots and helped support European population growth

Choosing livestock with desired traits to reproduce, exemplified by Robert Bakewell’s breeding of larger, more commercially valuable sheep and cattle

Jethro Tull’s implement for planting seeds in regular rows at controlled depths, reducing waste and making cultivation more efficient

Consolidation of scattered strips and common lands into private farms, enabling agricultural innovation while weakening customary rights and displacing some rural people

The 18th-century disappearance of plague as a major recurring epidemic across most of Europe, removing a severe check on population

Deliberately introducing material from a smallpox sore to cause a usually milder infection and subsequent immunity

British aristocrat who observed smallpox inoculation in the Ottoman Empire and promoted its adoption in Britain

Northwestern European pattern of relatively late marriage, independent household formation, and a significant minority who never married, limiting fertility

An 18th-century increase in births outside legal marriage associated with delayed or prevented marriages, migration, abandonment, and weakened communal supervision

Movement from the countryside to cities as agricultural change and land pressure displaced workers while urban employment attracted them

Growth in the share of the population living in towns and cities, sustained in the 18th century largely by rural migration

Abstinence, withdrawal, prolonged breastfeeding, and other methods used in some regions to limit births, supplementing late marriage as a restraint on population growth

Growing treatment of childhood as a distinct stage requiring specialized nurture and education as child mortality fell and family resources increased

Prosperous and middling families increasingly devoted specialized rooms, goods, and resources to private family life and household comfort

Urban concentration of poverty and disorder prompted increased policing, registration, institutional confinement, and regulation of beggars, vagrants, prostitutes, and other marginal groups