to show this in some countries before 1500. As agriculture became more and more a matter of business, traditional rural society had to change. Forms were usually preserved. Although feudal lordship still existed in France in the 1780s, it was by then less a social reality than an economic device.Europe was divided roughly along the Elbe. To the west lay countries evolving slowly by 1800 towards more open social forms. To the east lay authoritarian governments presiding over agrarian societies where a minority of landholders enjoyed great powers over a largely tied peasantry. In this area towns did not often prosper as they had done for centuries in the West. They tended to be overtaxed islands in a rural sea, unable to attract from the countryside the labor they needed because of the extent of serfdom. Over great tracts of Poland and Russia even a money economy barely existed. Much of later European history was implicit in this difference between east and west.In the time span between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century states that were once powerful fell in rank, namely Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the Ottoman Empire. This led to the rise of the new great powers such as Austria-Hungary, England, France, Prussia, and Russia. Factors to their rise were their geography, financial system, military strategy, and a new form of bureaucracy.Laws ensured the peoples security , whereas religion did not interfere. Furthermore a new form of government was introduced, where there was more than just an exclusive group at power. With these changes a new system of modern bureaucracy began to rise. With that a major contradiction seemed to come up. How could capitalism, promoting free enterprise, and bureaucracy, which was a complex system of regulations and restrictions, coexist? However, taking a closer look at todays capitalistic societies one can clearly detect an advantage of that constellation. In Germany for example the capitalisti...
