AP European History

## Learning Outcomes

- Understand why 18th-century European cities grew through migration more than through natural increase
- Identify the main rural push factors and urban pull factors behind migration
- Explain how urban growth changed work, family life, and social structure
- Distinguish between proto-industrialization and later industrial urbanization
- Recall key examples such as London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Naples
- Analyse the benefits and costs of city growth using AP European History causation and comparison

## AP European History Syllabus

For the AP European History, you are expected to understand how 18th-century cities attracted migrants and changed social and economic life, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that Europe remained mostly rural, even while cities became more important
- Identify **urbanization**, **rural-to-urban migration**, and **natural increase** as key demographic concepts
- Explain why many cities grew through migration rather than births exceeding deaths
- Understand how **enclosure**, population pressure, and rural underemployment pushed people out of the countryside
- Identify urban pull factors such as trade, manufacturing, construction, transport, government work, and domestic service
- Explain how urban growth weakened older institutions such as guilds and increased wage-dependent labor
- Compare opportunities in city life with problems such as overcrowding, disease, poverty, and crime
- Use specific examples such as London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Naples in historical argument

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. Why did many 18th-century European cities depend on migrants to keep growing?
2. What is the difference between urban growth by migration and urban growth by natural increase?
3. How did enclosure in Britain help drive urban migration?
4. Name two kinds of work that attracted migrants into cities.
5. How did city growth weaken guilds and change labor patterns?

## Introduction

In AP European History Unit 4, this topic sits in the wider period of **c. 1648 to 1815** and connects strongly to the themes of **poverty and prosperity** and **individual and society**. The key idea is not simply that cities became larger. It is that cities changed because they pulled in a steady flow of newcomers, and those newcomers reshaped work, housing, social relations, and daily life.

A common mistake is to explain urban growth only as a result of industrialization. That is too late and too narrow. In the 18th century, many cities were already expanding before full factory industrialization took hold. Commercial growth, agricultural change, population pressure, and new forms of labor all helped draw people into urban spaces.

> **Key Term: urbanization**
> The growth of towns and cities and the increasing concentration of population in urban areas.

### Why cities grew: push factors from the countryside and pull factors from towns

Cities attracted migrants because they offered chances that many villages could not. At the same time, the countryside was pushing many people out. AP exam answers score best when they explain both sides of that chain.

On the rural side, Europe’s population was rising in the 18th century. That meant more people competing for land, food, and work. In many families, not every child could inherit enough land to survive on. In Britain especially, **enclosure** made this pressure sharper by consolidating common land into private holdings. Larger farms often became more efficient, but some smaller farmers and laborers lost access to land they had relied on for grazing animals or supporting household survival.

> **Key Term: enclosure**
> The process, especially strong in Britain, by which common or open lands were consolidated into private holdings.

This did not mean every peasant was instantly forced into a city. That would be too simple. But enclosure, limited inheritance, and underemployment made migration more attractive or more necessary, especially for younger people with weak claims on family property.

On the urban side, towns and cities offered work in trade, transport, construction, household service, artisanal production, and government administration. Capitals and ports were especially attractive because they concentrated money, officials, consumers, and goods in one place. London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Naples all drew migrants because they were major political or commercial centres.

London is the clearest example of this magnetic pull. By **1800**, it had reached around **1 million** people, making it Europe’s largest city. Paris also grew steadily, from roughly **500,000** early in the century to over **600,000 by 1789**. These figures matter because they show that urban growth was not a minor side effect. It was one of the major demographic shifts of the century.

> **Key Term: rural-to-urban migration**
> The movement of people from the countryside into towns and cities.

Migration was often selective. Young adults moved more than the elderly. Many women migrated too, especially into **domestic service**, one of the largest categories of urban employment. This matters because city growth was not just a story of male wage labor. Women formed a major part of the urban workforce, though often in low-paid and insecure jobs.

> **Test Tip:** In an SAQ or LEQ, do not say only “people moved to cities for jobs.” Add at least one push factor and one pull factor, such as enclosure plus domestic service or land shortage plus construction work.

### Why migration mattered more than natural increase

One of the most tested distinctions in this topic is the difference between city growth by migration and city growth by natural increase. Many students assume that if a city grew, births must have exceeded deaths. In 18th-century Europe, that was often false.

> **Key Term: natural increase**
> Population growth caused when births exceed deaths.

Large preindustrial cities were often unhealthy places. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, contaminated water, and recurring disease pushed death rates high. Infant mortality was especially severe among the poor. In many cities, deaths equaled or exceeded births. Historians sometimes describe such cities as demographic sinks because they could not fully replace their own populations.

> **Key Term: urban mortality**
> The relatively high death rate in cities, often caused by crowding, disease, poor sanitation, and unsafe water.

This is why migration was so important. Newcomers from the countryside kept cities alive and growing despite the harsh conditions. London is the classic case. It expanded dramatically during the 18th century, yet for much of the period it relied on constant in-migration because its death rates were so high. Paris also depended heavily on migrants from surrounding regions and farther across France. Amsterdam, though less dramatically expanding by the later 18th century, still depended on immigration to sustain its role as a commercial centre.

This pattern tells you something larger about 18th-century Europe. Overall population was growing, partly because of fewer plague outbreaks, better food supply, and some medical improvement such as inoculation against smallpox. But that broader European growth did not mean cities themselves were healthy. Europe could grow through natural increase overall while individual cities still needed migrants to survive.

That distinction is exactly the kind of reasoning AP examiners reward. It shows you can separate continental demographic trends from local urban realities.

Cities also had lower fertility in some cases because of unstable households, delayed marriage, or the large numbers of servants, apprentices, and temporary migrants who were not yet raising families. So cities had two demographic pressures at once: high death rates and often constrained birth rates. That is why migration-fed growth is the safest summary.

> **Test Tip:** If a question asks how cities grew, use the phrase “many cities grew more through in-migration than through natural increase because urban mortality remained high.” That wording is accurate and earns analysis.

### How cities changed work, society, and daily life

Urban growth changed much more than population totals. It altered the way Europeans worked, consumed, interacted, and understood social rank.

Cities offered a wider range of occupations than villages. In rural areas, most people were tied in some way to agriculture. In towns, work could be more specialized: baking, brewing, transport, retail, bookkeeping, construction, artisan work, domestic service, and administration. This specialization made urban economies more dynamic. It also made them more dependent on wages and markets.

> **Key Term: guilds**
> Associations of artisans or merchants that regulated training, entry into trades, quality, and prices.

Guilds had long dominated many urban trades. They controlled access to skilled work through apprenticeships and mastery. But in the 18th century, their grip was being challenged. Expanding markets and larger-scale production made guild rules seem restrictive. Some production shifted outside guild control through **proto-industrialization**, where merchants organized manufacturing over a broader area and linked rural households to urban markets.

> **Key Term: proto-industrialization**
> The expansion of manufacturing before full factory industrialization, often through merchants organizing production for wider markets.

The **putting-out system** was central here. Merchants supplied raw materials to workers, often in rural households or small towns, and later collected the finished goods for sale. This weakened guild monopolies because production no longer had to stay inside the old regulated workshop structure.

> **Key Term: putting-out system**
> A system in which merchants provided raw materials to workers, who produced goods at home and returned finished products for sale.

This mattered for urban life in two ways. First, it tied towns and countryside together more tightly in one market system. Second, it increased the number of wage earners and reduced the chance that every apprentice would become an independent master. Many journeymen and workers instead remained dependent on wages. That was a social change as well as an economic one.

Cities also became more socially mixed. Nobles, merchants, artisans, servants, laborers, widows, beggars, and migrants all lived closer together than in the countryside, though not equally. Wealth and poverty stood side by side. Port cities and capitals developed visible consumer cultures, with imported goods, shops, coffeehouses, theatres, and print culture. These urban settings helped spread news and Enlightenment ideas faster than villages could.

But city growth had a darker side. Overcrowded housing, insecure work, begging, prostitution, and petty crime grew with the population. Urban authorities tried limited responses through policing, hospitals, or poor relief, but modern public health systems did not yet exist. The result was a city that could offer opportunity and danger at the same time.

Gender also shaped urban experience. For many women, especially unmarried migrants, domestic service offered food, shelter, and a wage. Yet it was low-status work, often under tight employer control. Women also labored in textile work, laundry, street selling, and casual service jobs. This shows that city life opened options beyond village life, but those options were often narrow and unequal.

### How to use this topic in AP arguments

This subtopic works well in **causation**, **continuity and change over time**, and **comparison** essays.

For causation, build a chain: agricultural improvement and population growth increased rural pressure; enclosure and underemployment pushed some people off the land; cities pulled them in with work; migration expanded urban labor markets and changed social structure. That chain moves from countryside to city and from demography to economy.

For continuity and change, note both sides. Europe remained predominantly rural throughout most of the 18th century: that is continuity. But cities became more economically important, more specialized, and more socially diverse: that is change. Strong essays usually show both.

For comparison, Britain is the best case for stronger enclosure and faster urban change, but do not claim all of Europe followed the British path at the same speed. Paris and Amsterdam are good examples of major urban centres, but they were not identical to London. London was especially large and especially dependent on migration. Amsterdam was highly commercial and international but less dramatically expanding by the later century. Naples was also a major city, but its pattern was shaped by its role as a large southern capital.

A final distinction matters a lot: do not treat 18th-century urbanization as if it were already the full industrial city of the mid-19th century. Factory growth would later intensify urban problems, but the 18th-century city was already being reshaped by migration, commerce, administration, and proto-industrial labor.

> **Test Tip:** In a DBQ or LEQ, a strong thesis might say: “Although Europe remained mainly rural in the 18th century, expanding cities such as London and Paris grew increasingly important because migration from the countryside supplied labor for trade, service, and production, even as high urban mortality kept many cities dependent on newcomers.”

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- 18th-century urbanization was driven heavily by migration into towns and cities
- Europe remained mostly rural, even while cities became more important
- Rural push factors included population pressure, limited inheritance, enclosure, and underemployment
- Urban pull factors included work in trade, transport, construction, domestic service, manufacturing, and government
- Many cities grew more through migration than through natural increase
- High urban mortality came from overcrowding, poor sanitation, contaminated water, and disease
- London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Naples were important examples of major urban centres
- Enclosure was especially significant in Britain and should not be overgeneralized to all of Europe
- Guilds were challenged by expanding markets and proto-industrialization
- The putting-out system linked rural workers to urban markets and weakened older guild control
- Urban life increased specialization, wage dependence, and social diversity
- City growth brought both opportunity and serious problems such as poverty, overcrowding, and insecurity

## Key Terms and Concepts

- urbanization
- enclosure
- rural-to-urban migration
- natural increase
- urban mortality
- guilds
- proto-industrialization
- putting-out system


18th-Century Society and Demographics - Cities attracted migrants and transformed life