Topic 4.7 Notes – Changing Social Hierarchies from 1450 to 1750

How Social Hierarchies Changed from 1450 to 1750

Societies still ranked people by class, gender, religion, ethnicity, legal status, and birth. The major change was that expanding states organized these categories more deliberately.

• Governments tied social categories to real consequences. Your religion or ancestry could affect your taxes, access to office, legal privileges, labor duties, and political rights.
• Continuity matters here. Patriarchy stayed strong, elites still dominated, and most people still worked as peasants, serfs, or enslaved laborers.
• The pattern AP loves is continuity and change at the same time.
  • States accommodated some groups because they were useful.
  • States restricted other groups to show dominance and prevent rebellion.
  • Conquest often created new ruling elites.
  • Monarchs usually reshaped old elites instead of wiping them out.

How Empires Managed Religious and Ethnic Diversity

Large empires ruled people who looked different, worshipped differently, and spoke different languages. That forced rulers to decide who to include, who to control, and how.

Ottoman Empire

The Ottomans ruled Muslims, Christians, and Jews. They used diversity to strengthen the empire, and the map below helps you see how wide that rule stretched across southeastern Europe, Anatolia, the Middle East, and North Africa.

• The millet system let Christians and Jews run some of their own communal affairs, like worship, schools, and family law, under Ottoman rule.
• This was not equality. Non-Muslims were protected but subordinate, and many paid the jizya, a tax on non-Muslims.
• Diversity helped the empire because minority communities contributed to trade, diplomacy, tax collection, and skilled labor.
• The devshirme took Christian boys from the Balkans, converted them to Islam, and trained them for state service as Janissaries or administrators. That gave the sultan loyal servants not tied to local nobles.

Ottoman Empire at its height

A classic comparison shows two different state strategies. Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496-1497 expelled or forced conversion of Jews, but the Ottomans accepted many Sephardic Jews because their skills and trade networks were valuable.

Mughal Empire

The Mughals were Muslim rulers over a mostly Hindu population, so accommodation helped them survive.

• Akbar recruited Hindu Rajputs, used marriage alliances, included them in the mansabdar system, and ended the jizya. This widened support for Mughal rule.
• Aurangzeb later reimposed the jizya in 1679 and stressed Islamic rule more strongly.

This is a great reminder that one empire could shift from accommodation to greater restriction over time.

Qing China

The Qing were Manchus ruling a huge Han Chinese majority after 1644.

• They kept the Confucian bureaucracy and civil service exams, which helped them look legitimate and keep order.
• They still protected Manchu privilege through the Eight Banners and limits on Han-Manchu integration.
• The queue order forced Han men to wear a Manchu hairstyle as a sign of submission.

Accommodation did not mean equality. Suppression did not mean complete exclusion.

New Elites and New Social Categories

Conquest and commerce created new people at the top.

Qing conquest created a new ruling elite

The Manchus became the political and military elite, but they still relied on Han officials. That is conquest creating a new hierarchy without destroying old institutions.

Spanish colonial Americas and the casta system

In Spanish America, ancestry became a major way to rank people.

• Indigenous peoples often owed tribute and labor.
• Africans and their descendants were often enslaved, though some free Black communities existed.
• Casta paintings showed elite attempts to classify mixed populations into an orderly hierarchy.

Spanish colonial casta painting

This casta painting turns those social categories into a visual hierarchy, which is exactly the point. Colonial elites tried to sort a mixed society into ranked groups.

British North America

British colonies did not use a formal casta system, but racial hierarchy hardened through hereditary chattel slavery.

• White indentured servitude was temporary.
• African slavery became permanent and inheritable.

Economic change also raised merchants, financiers, plantation owners, mine owners, and colonial officials. In Spanish America, creoles became powerful local elites even when shut out of the top imperial offices.

Old Elites and Stronger States

As monarchs got stronger, old elites often kept wealth but lost independence.

• Ottoman timar holders had land-revenue grants tied to military service. As firearms, Janissaries, and tax farming grew, their influence weakened.
• Russian boyars were hereditary nobles. Ivan IV attacked boyar opposition, and Peter the Great’s Table of Ranks tied elite status more closely to state service. Nobles still kept power over serfs.
• In France, nobles resisted in the Fronde, but Louis XIV used Versailles and royal ceremonies to keep them dependent on court favor.
• England is the big exception. After the Glorious Revolution, elites limited royal power instead of losing influence to the monarch.

Louis XIV presiding over his council