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1. Concept and researchThe term consumer society was introduced into economic and social history in the 1980s and later found its way into cultural history too. Rapidly increasing production and consumption in 18th-century Britain were interpreted as symptomatic of the emergence of a consumer society in the United Kingdom [10]; similar arguments were made in respect of Austria in the 18th and 19th centuries [13]. The scholarly debate has since moved on in two directions. One current identifies the beginnings of the consumer society in Renaissance Italy an…

1. General surveyIn the early modern period, resistance to government (Sovereign power) should be understood as a corrective to the exercise of familial, economic, ecclesiastical, and political authority. In a way, it was a substitute for later correctives like the control of government by Parliament and the control of institutions, churches, and enterprises by their own internal organs, some of which came into being through democratic processes, while others functioned as authorities. There were …

1. History of terminology and scholarship Early modern society did not call itself feudal or a feudal society but a society of estates (Estates, society of). It was labeled a feudal society in the French Revolution (1789), a term that also served to characterize the break with the society of the  ancien régime [6]. Feudal society represented the polemical and ideological antithesis of the revolution that produced bourgeois society, which was to supersede feudal society (see fig. 1). In historiography the term  feudal society was given a prominent place by the French histori…

1. Definition and purpose“The members’ sole purpose was to have a rational discussion of interesting things, especially in the sciences, in order to enlighten their minds by reciprocal, friendly exchange of ideas. [...] All the members were genuine friends of humankind” [2. 96]. This contemporary description of the Berlin Mittwochgesellschaft (“Wednesday Society”; 1783–1798) [5], which was also called the “Private Society of Friends of Erudition” or “Society of Friends of the Enlightenment” [1] itself sounds philanthropic. In fact the Mittwochgesellschaft and similar m…

1. General character of early modern society 1.1. ModelsEarly modern European society was fundamentally shaped by two successive models of hegemony: estatist society (Estates, society of) and bourgeois society. They prevailed throughout Europe, even though in actuality there were innumerable variants. Remnants of estatist society survive to this day, for example, in the form of professional associations. Generally speaking, however, estatist society was replaced after 1750 by bourgeois society – gradual…

1. History of the term and researchThe social concept of the “masses” became famous in connection with the  levée en masse in the French Revolution (1789): on Aug 23, 1793, the National Convention voted to call up all unmarried or widowed men between the ages of 18 and 25 for military service. With other recruitment measures, by mid-1794 some 800,000 men had been drafted for military service in this way.The gigantic army as a mass became one of the symbols derived from the French Revolution used in the 19th and 20th centuries for the impact of “the masses in h…

1. Definition The term social conflict does not occur as such in early modern sources; it is an academic interpretation of certain historical events. Borrowing from the sociology of conflict [6], which is the source of the term, one scholar has proposed defining social conflict as “a general characterization of manifest divergences of interests between different social groups” [15. 298]. Concretely, social groups can denote very different constellations. In a society of estates (Estates, society of), these are the three primary estates – the clergy, the…

1. Introduction A universally valid definition of identity is as elusive for the early modern period as for the late. The concept derives from two distinct traditions of research. Anglophone social psychology characterizes identity as a characteristic of the modern individual [6], whereas German ethnology prefers the term Identität in clear rejection of the older and ideologically explosive term  Volksgeist (“folk spirit”) [2]. The concept of identity is disputed among historians [14]. From an actor-centered perspective in particular, doubts are articulated ov…

1. Society 1.1. Structural conditionsThe public sphere and society (Society [community]) are closely and reciprocally related. Without the public sphere, there is no society; without society, no public sphere. Since early modern society (Early modern period) was fundamentally segmented, so was the public sphere. This segmentation was the result of linguistic, geographical, class, and gender boundaries (Estates of the realm; Inequality; Gender). These boundaries should not be thought of as “red lines…

1. French Revolution and bourgeois society “What is the third estate? Everything. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. What does it ask? To become something in the political order” [2].  The catchy words of Abbé Sieyès in his political pamphlet  Qu’est-ce que le tiers-état? (1789; “What Is the Third Estate?”) can be understood as the founding manifesto of bourgeois society and the revolutionary elimination of the estates (Estates, society of). Much more that the earlier so-called bourgeois revolutions (Netherlands 16th c…

1. DefinitionThe term  Social Question was coined in the political discussion of the 1830s (Vormärz); the German Soziale Frage antedated the French  question sociale. It denoted a new perception of mass poverty and impoverished or potentially impoverished social groups whose existence and living conditions now appeared to threaten the social cohesion of society (Society [community]) and its political and moral order [2. 17]. The term is thus related to the “social and political consequences of gradual transformation of estatist, absolutist society, sha…

1. DefinitionAs used by the sources as well as by historians, the term revolt covers a broad, loosely defined spectrum of resistance to various forms and types of exercise of power. The boundaries between revolt and protest, unrest (Civil unrest), food riots, famine and food riots, uprisings, or even revolution and war (Peasants’ War) were fluid.In the early modern period, we find side by side a variety of terms for insubordinate behavior of subjects (Latin  subiecti, French  sujets, English  subjects, German  Untertanen) to an authority: German  Aufruhr, Empörung, Spenn,…

1. Literature 1.1. Concept and definition The literary genre of the utopia (early modern neologism from the Greek ou-tópos, “not-place”) has its origins in the Neo-Latin Utopia  by the English Humanist Thomas More, which was first published in 1516. As the prototype of the literary utopia, this work not only gave the genre its name, but also informed the texts that came in its wake, defining the genre in retrospect. That definition might be expressed as follows: fictional presentations – through travel or other fra…

1. England, France, Germany In the early modern era, food riots were closely connected to actual food shortages (Famine and food riots), but were also partly driven by rumor and reactions to it. Fundamentally, rioting was mostly over bread, but there were also general food riots over price rises or shortages of various grocery items (Food). To a certain extent, these riots were a part of everyday life in the early modern era, although there were significant differences between individual regions suc…

1. Metaphors of social unityMetaphors were used in the early modern period to portray the unity of society or to clarify (supposed) characteristics of specific estates of the realm or social groups. The unity of society and the political commonwealth was generally evoked in reference to metaphors and allegories of the body (see below, 2.). Recourse could be made here not only to writings of Greco-Roman antiquity – especially Aristotle, Plato, Livy (2, 32), Paul (e.g. Cor), and Galen – but also to a range of medieval political works, including the  Policraticus of John of Salisbu…

1. Class and statusEarly modern society was intrinsically characterized by inequality. In social contexts and everyday life, inequalities arise almost inevitably, even when discrimination of all kind is prohibited and the principles of equality and non-discrimination are established as legal norms, as in the European Union today. In the early modern period, inequality did not arise just through social, economic, and religious interaction; it was an integral component of the social order and the law.In brief, inequality was based on the assumption of inherent diffe…

1. ConceptThe term court society was definitively coined (as “ Höfische Gesellschaft”) by Norbert Elias. His book  Die Höfische Gesellschaft (1933/1969 [6]) exerted a seminal influence on the study of early modern society. He defined court society as follows: “At a certain stage in the development of European societies, individuals are bound together in the form of courts, and thereby given a specific stamp” (“Individuen werden auf einer bestimmten Entwicklungsstufe europäischer Gesellschaften in der Form von Höfen zusamme…