Europe's Hierarchical Social Classes

In Early Modern times, Europe’s hierarchical social classes occupied very different economic statuses. Over time, with the effects of peasant revolts, the Age of Exploration, and the Price Revolution, the difference in economic positions between these classes became vastly more profound as the gap widened due to the peasants’ deterioration and the middle and upper class’s growth and success.
Agriculture governed the economy of Europe’s peasants, making the peasantry a self-sufficient people. In villages and very small towns (rural areas), the predominant employment of peasants was agrarian. The excess (most of Europe’s citizens were peasants) and labor of peasants all over Europe supported upper classes like the nobility, the clergy, and the

This meant that one’s gain was not only his or her benefit, but another’s loss, because only a certain amount of money circulated in the economy. Work hours were more uniform, sounded by a town-wide bell. Town life was orderly and regulated. Guilds played an important role in regulating domestic commerce by ensuring quality (by the enforcement of high standards) and requiring specific types and amounts of training. Although sometimes townspeople’s work was tiring and all-consuming, it was exceedingly more rewarding than that of peasant farmers. In small towns, food-related trade (eg: food preparation) was the core of commerce. Peasants would sell and exchange their finests produce for manufactured goods. In larger towns, money was exchanged for materials and tangibles. Leading merchants supervised baking, brewing, and the production of cloth. On a smaller scale, women were the forerunners of trade, sale, and buying; they dominated the nursing, midwifery, and prostitution industries. Most towns distributed a specialty item unique to themselves to attract business. The economy of this middle-and-higher-class group was and would continue to

Starting in around 1540, Iberian explorers, in the current Age of Exploration, were bringing back large amounts of gold from the New World. Another inflow of specie occurred when Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire enslaved Indians and ordered them to send all of the silver that was melted down from a mountain in Potosi, Bolivia, to Spain. A more domestic cause that led to the oversupply of precious metals was Germany and Hungary’s increase in silver production (due to the discovery of new mines), which happened to surge at the worst of times, only adding to the inflation crisis. These internal and external explorations led to an excess of circulated specie and, therefore, the debasement of European currency and severe