Lifespans of the European Elite, 800–1800: Marked increases around 1400 and again around 1650

Lifespans of the European Elite, 800–1800. Neil Cummins. The Journal of Economic History, Volume 77, Issue 2, June 2017, pp. 406-439. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050717000468

Abstract: I analyze the adult age at death of 115,650 European nobles from 800 to 1800. Longevity began increasing long before 1800 and the Industrial Revolution, with marked increases around 1400 and again around 1650. Declines in violent deaths from battle contributed to some of this increase, but the majority must reflect other changes in individual behavior. There are historic spatial contours to European elite mortality; Northwest Europe achieved greater adult lifespans than the rest of Europe even by 1000 AD.

DISCUSSION

This study has characterized adult noble lifespans from 800 to 1800. The consistent and large association uncovered between sex and plague mortality for nobles runs counter to the indiscriminate reputation of the Black Death and counter to recent paleodemographic analysis on skeletons from fourteenth century London (DeWitte Reference Dewitte2009).Footnote ³⁰ If plague killed more women than men, a simple supply-side effect increasing female agency in the marriage market could explain the origin of the European Marriage Pattern (Hajnal Reference Hajnal, Eversley and Glass1965; De Moor and Van Zanden Reference David, S. Ryan and Andrea2010; Voigtländer and Voth Reference Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim2013). Of course this is a premature speculation, the patterns reported here would have to be convincingly established for the population at large.

The sharp decline in the proportion of male nobles dying from battle, from over 600 years of a steady 30 percent, to less than 5 percent in the sixteenth century, predates the arrival of the Industrial Revolution by two centuries. The long-run decline in violence is cited as one of the principal correlates of the emergence of the modern World with the “civilizing process” needing the transformation of warrior nobles into gentleman courtiers (Elias Reference Elias1982).Footnote ³¹

One can perhaps ask why did battlefield violence decline among European nobility. Nobility certainly did not lose its taste for military life. The Wars of Religion following 1500 were aristocratic feuds at least as much as earlier wars.Footnote ³² However, the decline in battlefield death amongst nobles corresponds to the emergence of modern warfare; artillery, standing armies, and the replacement of privilege with merit.Footnote ³³ The power of hereditary warrior status declined in battle as modern and larger standing armies, led by increasingly wealthy princes, focused upon artillery and infantry (Keen Reference Keen1984, pp. 1, 238–53). The decline of cavalry meant that nobility became officers, inherently a more administrative role than before (Keen Reference Keen1984, p. 240). In war, nobility still led, but from the safety of the rear guard, not the front lines.Footnote ³⁴

I estimate the time-trend of adult noble lifespan over the millennium between 800 and 1800. The findings on the timing of the modern rise in age at death agree almost exactly with de la Croix and Licandro (Reference De and Omar2012) (the birth cohort of 1640–1649). The nobility are, in general, forerunners of Europe's mortality transition as David, Johansson, and Pozzi (Reference David, S. Ryan and Andrea2010, figs. 3(a) and 3(b), p. 28) argue too.Footnote ³⁵ This may provide a clue for those who seek to explain why mortality declined. There could be an important role for individual behavior and a demonstration effect (e.g., hygiene and other behavioral traits) as this rise predates modern medicine or any public health measures. It also predates the Industrial Revolution.Footnote ³⁶ Whilst modern evidence suggests that life expectancy does not matter for economic growth (Acemoglu and Johnson Reference Acemoglu and Simon2007), the case has not been proven for the preindustrial era.

Unlike de la Croix and Licandro (Reference De and Omar2012), this study argues that lifespan was not a stationary trend before 1650. There are significant oscillations, most importantly the sharp Europe-wide rise in noble lifespan after 1400. The rise is stronger over the 1400–1600 interval in Ireland, Scotland, and in particular, England and Wales (Figures 11 and 12). This pattern has remained hidden. Only long and deep time series of at least a millennium in length could uncover it. For England, this result can be directly compared with existing estimates of adult mortality. The dramatic rise from the fourteenth to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries revealed in Figure 12(a) is in broad accordance with Russell's estimates of life expectancy at age 25 (e25) for tenants-in-chief of the crown from the Inquisitions Post Mortem (Smith Reference Poos, Jim, Richard and Hicks2012, Figure 10, p. 79). However, recent re-estimates of e25 for these same data (Poos, Oeppen, and Smith Reference Poos, Jim, Richard and Hicks2012) suggest a much higher level and a flat trend, at about 30 years, during the fourteenth century. Monastic evidence from communities in Durham, Canterbury, and Westminster points to a decline in e25 from 1450 to 1500 (Poos, Oeppen, and Smith Reference Poos, Jim, Richard and Hicks2012, Figure 8.2, p. 162). This is not the pattern I find. Figure 12(a) reports the opposite trend for the English elite: a sharply rising trend in predicted average age at death, for those dying over 20, from 1450–1500. The evidence I have assembled and analyzed in this article strongly suggests a strong improvement in lifespan in the fifteenth century for the English elite.

No conclusions can be drawn as to why adult noble lifespan increased so much after 1400. No known medical innovations in Europe before 1500 could be responsible.Footnote ³⁷ Nutrition, in terms of calories consumed, also cannot explain this rise. These elites could be expected to have always filled their bellies. For this reason, those who argue that the “modern rise of population” was a result of nutrition, the equality of aristocratic and peasant lifespans in the past has presented a paradox (see Fogel (Reference Fogel, Engerman and Gallman1986, pp. 480–84) and McKeown (Reference McKeown1976, pp. 139–42)). Robert Fogel attributed this “peerage paradox” to the vast quantities of alcohol the English elite consumed (Reference Fogel, Engerman and Gallman1986, p. 483). Perhaps diet changed in other ways. The late fourteenth century did witness an increase in the proportion of manuscripts on health.Footnote ³⁸ Works such as the Tacuinum Sanitatis, incorporating Arabic and Ancient knowledge, recommended moderation in food and alcohol, adequate rest, and exercise and, similar to modern medicine, emphasized the importance of vegetables and fruit to human health (Janick, Daunay, and Paris Reference Janick, Marie and Harry2010). Of course, the actual effect of these manuscripts is speculation at this point.

The rise in elite adult age at death for those born after 1400 could also be the result of a Darwinian selection effect from the half century of recurring plague that returned in 1347. Plague killed those susceptible to plague but would also have purged the population of other frailties that may have been correlated with plague susceptibility.Footnote ³⁹ However, most people, even during the plague era, died from other causes.Footnote ⁴⁰ The real long-term demographic effect of the Black Death could have been through its effect on the disease climate. Noble lifespan in Figure 8 corresponds closely to the trend in real wages in England (Clark Reference Clark2005, fig. 4, p. 1311)Footnote ⁴¹ and to recent estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (Broadberry et al. Reference Broadberry, Bruce and Alexander2015, p. 206). Improved nutrition amongst the general population, from higher real incomes via Malthusian dynamics, could have led to a reduction in the incidence of other infectious diseases among plague survivors and their offspring.Footnote ⁴² Nutritional status did little to diminish plague lethality (see Fogel Reference Fogel, Engerman and Gallman1986, table 9.11, p. 481) but together with a “purging” effect, the Black Death could have led to an improved climate against infectious disease, especially in cities.

The cause of the 1400 rise in adult noble lifespan is unknown. Presently only speculations can be made. Future empirical work, perhaps linking estate account books (to reconstruct diet) to specific time and location (rural/urban) effects and genealogies of the kind analyzed here, will have great potential to answer this mystery.

This article documents a geographic pattern to European elite lifespans. The mortality gradient runs South-North and East-West, and has existed since before the Black Death. The long existence of such a geographic “effect,” and the factors which are causing it, may have implications for recent work which stresses the “little divergence” between the Northwest Europe and the Southeast (Voigtländer and Voth Reference Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim2013; Broadberry Reference Broadberry2013; de Pleijt and van Zanden Reference Acemoglu and Simon2013). The Black Death is not the first turning point. There was something about the Northwest Europe long before 1346 that led to nobles living longer lives.