More Chapter Summary

pgs 629-637

The area of Austria-Hungary was extremely agrarian. During the 16th and 17th centuries, there was widespread famine and disaster in the farming regions. Approximately every 8-9 years, the harvests would fail altogether. Many people went starving and were forced to eat famine foods, such as bark and grass, just to survive. The farming techniques of Medieval Times were utilized.
The open-field system, a middle age technique, was probably the most commonly used farming system at this time. Although it definitely helped the peasants cultivate crops in these tough times, the problem of exhausting the soil arose. Villages set aside meadows called common lands where animals could graze and not have to work in the fields. To make matters worse than they already were, the nobles and heads-of-state heavily taxed the poor people of Austria-Hungary. The serfs, especially, were treated cruelly and unfairly because there were no existing laws that defined how long a person could legally work. Therefore, the landlords demanded that their serfs work for extremely long periods of time.
It was nearly impossibly for peasants and serfs to rise up in social class. Technology advancements were desperately needed, because individuals began to realize that too many people were poor and starving. The result was the agricultural revolution. Crop rotations became more advanced and useful. The effect of these rotations was that the soil did not become exhausted as frequently as it had in the past. The practice of enclosure was also invented. In conclusion, the agricultural revolution bettered the lives of countless amounts of farmers living in Austria-Hungary. The age of suffering and hardship turned into a time of relative prosperity for these people.