they were generally more extensive in the west than in the east. The
gradual spread of the industrial and agricultural revolutions was ac-
companied by an equally gradual abandonment of the vestiges of the
feudal system, a decline which benefited the landowners and the
bourgeoisie more than the peasants. ³

The peasants, who were usually unable to support themselves on the
land left to them, ⁴ turned to home industries -- primarily weaving and
spinning -- and when these were taken over by machines in the 1830s
and 1840s, these peasants joined the ranks of the discontented landless
and urban masses who played such an important role in the initial
stages of the mid-century revolutions.

The gains of the bourgeoisie were primarily economic, occasionally
social, and rarely political. That the bourgeoisie in central Europe did
not gain political power despite their economic achievements (in con-
trast to the English pattern) led subsequently to the major constitu-
tional and political conflicts in Germany in the second half of the
nineteenth century.

The privileges and powers of the nobility remained intact. Land,
especially in the east, was still the major source of wealth, and al-
though the influence of the French Revolution had curtailed some
noble privileges, the nobility retained its social position. The Stein-
Hardenberg reforms of 1807-8 had only been an abortive beginning
toward a more equitable social order. ⁵

In the Altmark, home of the Bismarcks for over five centuries, con-
ditions were no different from those in the north and east of Prussia.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Bismarcks acquired
Schoenhausen, an estate surrounded by sand and pine forests on the
floodplain of the Elbe near Tangermuende and Stendal. It was here
that Otto von Bismarck was born. His ancestors came from the nobility
and the upper bourgeoisie. On his father's side, the family could be
traced back to the thirteenth century, a part of the Brandenburg nobil-
ity whose members fought in the Thirty Years War, in French and
Swedish armies, all over Europe. They stayed close to the land, served
as sheriffs and judges, led frugal and sober lives, and seldom had
higher aims. Though loyal to their sovereign, they were an indepen-
dent lot. Frederick Wilhelm I once noted that the Bismarcks, the
Schulenburgs, the Knesebecks, and the Alvenslebens were particu-

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