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September 14, 2008 at 9:16 pm |
Euro Students Here is the Chapter 14 Renaissance Europe Summary
Widening Intellectual Horizons
During the fifteenth century, a brilliant rebirth of the arts and learning expanded the intellectual horizons of Europeans as new voices celebrating secular human achievement and ability were added to the voices glorifying God. The Renaissance thrived on a newfound human perspective on life, the intensified study of Greek and Latin writing, and revolutionary techniques in bookmaking.
The Humanist Renewal, p. 507
Europeans’ rediscovery of Greek and Roman writers gave rise to humanism, the study of the liberal arts or the humanities. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks sent Greek scholars to Italy for refuge and gave extra impetus to the revival of interest in the Greek classics. Humanist scholars focused on classical history and literature in their eagerness to emulate the glories of the ancient world. They rejected the emphasis on logic and the abstract language of the scholastics, preferring instead the eloquence and style of the great Roman authors. Most humanists did not think that studying ancient texts conflicted with their religious beliefs. Rather, in “returning to the sources,” scholars sought to harmonize Christian faith and ancient learning. The study of the humanities raised expectations regarding what it meant to be an educated person and influenced school curricula up to the middle of the nineteenth century and even beyond.
The Advent of Printing, pp. 509-510
In the 1440s, Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400-1470), a German goldsmith, invented printing with movable type, which allowed printers to produce books and pamphlets on a scale and at a cost never before possible. A durable metal mold for each letter of the alphabet was used to cast multiple copies of a small block (a type) having the letter on its face. The type for the text of a page was set in a frame, then inked and pressed against a sheet of paper. Paper, which was much cheaper than parchment, had been introduced to Europe just before Gutenberg’s invention. Movable type took bookmaking out of the hands of human copyists, allowing entire manuscripts to be printed with only a small amount of human labor. After the 1440s, printing spread rapidly from Germany to other European countries. The advent of printing was so important that it brought about a communications revolution.
Revolution in the Arts
The Renaissance was one of the most brilliant creative periods in the European arts. New techniques in painting, architecture, and music fostered original styles and new subjects. Artists’ individual talents and genius were recognized; artists developed a more naturalistic style; and perspective brought a mathematical and scientific basis to the visual arts, architecture, and music.
From Artisan to Artist, pp. 511-512
During the fifteenth century, artists acquired a more prominent social status, as individual talent was recognized by society. Artists began to use a more naturalistic style, especially in representing the human body, and they used mathematics to depict images with realistic perspective. The concept of artistic “genius,” sometimes fashioned by the artists themselves, convinced society of the unique and priceless nature of their works. However, the artists’ imaginations were often tempered by their wealthy patrons, who did not always allow artists to work unrestricted. Renaissance artists worked under three possible arrangements: long-term service in princely courts, commissioned piecework, or production for the market. As the heads of workshops, where they trained apprentices and negotiated their own contracts, artists had a great degree of autonomy. Famous artists developed followings, and many gained greater contractual control over their work, so that specific directions from wealthy consumers became less common. A market system for the visual arts also began to emerge during the Renaissance; artists produced works without prior arrangement for sale—a development that became a major force in artistic creativity
The Human Figure, pp. 512-514
In their works, Renaissance artists began to depict ever more expressively human movements and emotions. In paintings like The Expulsion from Paradise, Masaccio (1401-1428) shows Adam and Eve grieving in shame and despair. Many masterpieces represented feminine beauty, as in the classical pagan figures of Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445-1510), while many others, like the works of Raphael (1483-1520), depicted the Virgin Mary. Renaissance artists also painted images of their contemporaries, including a growing number of highly detailed and realistic portraits of the middle class, illustrating a new, elevated view of human existence. Painters from the Low Countries, such as Jan van Eyck (1390?-1441), distinguished themselves in portraiture, achieving a sense of detail and reality unsurpassed until the advent of photography. The ideal of a universal man found expression in the writing of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), whose work On the Dignity of Man placed man at the center of the universe as the “molder and maker of himself” and as the measure of all things; the work stressed human responsibility in shaping society and a religious trust in God’s divine plan. For the first time since classical antiquity, sculptors again cast the human figure in bronze in life-size or larger freestanding statues. One idealized depiction of the human body was Michelangelo Buonarroti’s (1475-1564) eighteen-foot marble statue, David, posing free of fabric and armor.
Order through Perspective, pp. 514-516
Renaissance art was distinguished from earlier artistic trends by being more concerned with reality than symbolism. Renaissance artists used visual perspective-an illusory three-dimensional effect on a two-dimensional surface-to create realistic images as the eye would perceive them; to be described as an “imitator of nature” was the highest praise for a Renaissance artist. Implicit in the use of perspective to represent space was a new Renaissance worldview in which humans asserted themselves over nature by controlling space itself. Artists like Lorenzo Ghiberti (c. 1378-1455), Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), and Piero della Francesca (1420-1492) employed perspective in their work to create a sense of depth and space. Architects also exemplified the Renaissance ideal of uniting creativity with scientific knowledge. Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) proved a master of engineering. The buildings of Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) reveal a strong classical influence; in his theoretical work On Architecture (1415), he argued the merits of large-scale urban planning and favored designs reminiscent of classical Rome. Pope Sixtus IV (r. 1471-1484) applied Alberti’s architectural ideas to Rome, transforming the medieval city into one that recalled the grandeur of its ancient origins.
New Musical Harmonies, pp. 516-517
While Italy set the standard for Renaissance art and architecture, trends in northern Europe influenced musical styles. The leader of the polyphonic style of music was Guillaume Dufay (1400-1474) from the Low Countries. Dufay composed music with mathematical precision, traveling to all the cultural centers of the Renaissance, where nobles sponsored compositions and maintained corps of musicians at their courts. The new style of music was very popular among social elites. Renaissance polyphony consisted of three main genres: the canon (central texts) of the Catholic Mass; the motet, which used both sacred and secular texts; and the secular chanson, which often incorporated the tunes of folk dances. Composers frequently adapted folk melodies for sacred music, expressing religious sentiment through voices rather than instruments. The tambourine and lute, as well as small ensembles of wind and string instruments, became fashionable in the courts of Europe. Keyboard instruments, such as the harpsichord, which could play several sounds and melodies at once, were also in use by the fifteenth century.
The Intersection of Private and Public Lives
Beginning in the fourteenth century, the state attempted to shape private life through its institutions and laws. This process was most evident in Florence, where considerations of state power intruded into intimate personal concerns, such as sexuality, marriage, and childbirth.
Renaissance Social Hierarchy, pp. 517-518
In 1427 in Florence, the center of Renaissance culture, the government compiled a comprehensive tax record of city households. Completed in 1430, this census provided important details about social relations and demographics. Florentines recognized class divisions, referring to the “little people” (workers, artisans, and small merchants; about 60 percent of the population) and the “fat people” (wealthier merchants and other professionals; about 30 percent of the population). At the bottom of the hierarchy were slaves and servants, largely women from the surrounding countryside employed in domestic service. At the top, a tiny one percent of patricians, bankers, and wool merchants controlled a quarter of the city’s wealth. Based on the survey, men seem to have outnumbered women, an unusual statistic that can be explained by female infanticide and the underreporting of women. Most Florentines lived in households of six or more, although the family unit itself-whether nuclear or extended-varied depending on wealth. In rich patrician families and those of landowning peasants in the countryside, extended families and higher numbers of children were the norm. Poorer households could not afford additional mouths to feed.
Family Alliances, pp. 519-520
In a society where class clearly defined marriage patterns among the social elite, money, political status, and family standing all determined marriage alliances. The male head of the household typically orchestrated Italian Renaissance marriages, although widows working with male relatives could also play a role. Upper-class Florentine families traced their descent and determined inheritance through the male line. Daughters could claim inheritance only through a dowry. Fathers opened accounts for their daughters in the Dowry Fund, a public fund that provided handsome dowries to support a marriage market that ensured the social coherence of the ruling classes. Female subordination in marriage was often the result of young girls marrying significantly older men. This age disparity also left many women widowed in their twenties and thirties. Often pressed by their own families to remarry to make a new alliance, widows faced losing their children to their first husband’s family if they did. Older widows, under less pressure to remarry, could hope to gain a greater degree of autonomy. By contrast, in northern Europe marriage partners were much closer in age and women enjoyed a more secure position. Women played a more active role in the northern economy, had more control over their dowries, and could represent themselves before the law-rights that appalled many Italian men who traveled to the north.
The Regulation of Sexuality, pp. 520-521
Class also manifested itself in child care. Middle- and upper-class families hired wet nurses to breast-feed their infants. Poor families sometimes could not afford to raise their children and abandoned them to strangers or public charity. In 1445, Florence opened the Ospedale degli Innocenti, a foundling hospital, to deal with children abandoned by poor families and unwed mothers, who were often servants impregnated by their masters. Over two-thirds of abandoned children were female, a further indication of gender inequity. Most upper-class men acknowledged and supported their illegitimate children as a sign of virility, and illegitimate children of noble lineage often rose to social and political prominence. Unwed mothers, however, were stigmatized and virtually lost their chances of marriage. The Florentine state’s low tolerance for homosexuality led to the establishment of government brothels to “eliminate a worse evil by a lesser one.” The Florentine state worked to uncover acts of sodomy, fining homosexuals and putting pederasts to death. European magistrates took the rape of women less seriously and the social class of the rapist and victim determined the punishments; noblemen who raped lower-class or slave women received light sentences or none at all.
The Renaissance State and the Art of Politics
During the Renaissance the state was seen as a work of art, a human creation to be shaped, conquered, and administered by princes according to the principles of power politics. Florentine political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) laid out these principles in his work The Prince. During this time many states developed stronger and institutionally more complex central governments that paved the way for the nation-state in later centuries.
Republics and Principalities in Italy, pp. 522-524
Niccolò Machiavelli discussed politics without the slightest reference to ethical or moral goals. Although he believed states rested on republican virtue, his keen observations of Italian politics convinced him that power was necessary in founding a state. Italian states can be divided into two categories: republics such as Florence and Venice, which allowed a civic elite to govern, and principalities such as Milan and Naples, which were ruled by a single dynasty. In Rome, the popes’ increased involvement in politics was meant to restore papal authority after the Great Schism. The popes’ curbed local power, expanded papal government, increased taxation, enlarged the papal army and navy, and extended papal diplomacy.
Renaissance Diplomacy, pp. 524-525
Many features characteristic of today’s diplomacy were pioneered during the fifteenth century. Ceremonies, elegance, and eloquence formalized the new complex role of the diplomat, who was expected to keep a continuous stream of foreign political news flowing to the home government and not just conduct temporary missions as in the past. Milan led the way in the development of diplomacy: Francesco Sforza used his diplomatic corps to extend his political patronage, sending to his diplomats coded messages on individuals and events. As the center of Christendom, Rome became the diplomatic hub of Europe, with over two hundred diplomats stationed there by the 1490s. The papacy sent out far fewer diplomats than it received, establishing permanent nuncios (envoys) in every European state only at the end of the fifteenth century. The most outstanding achievement of Italy’s diplomacy came when a general peace treaty settled decades of warfare engendered by Milanese expansion and civil war. The Treaty of Lodi (1454) established a delicate balance of power among the major Italian states that lasted until the more powerful northern European countries invaded in 1494.
Monarchies and Empires, pp. 525-531
With the exception of rulers in central Europe, political leaders expanded their empires and centralized their powers. In England, intermittent dynastic wars between the houses of Lancaster and York, later called the Wars of the Roses, continued until the coronation of Henry VII in 1485. In Spain, the marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon ended decades of war between the two kingdoms. They ruled jointly over their territories, and their union represented the first step toward the creation of a unified Spain. Isabella and Ferdinand limited the privileges of the nobility and relied on the Hermandad, or civic militia, to enforce local justice and on lawyers to staff the royal council. Their reign ushered in an age when militant Catholicism became an instrument of state authority and shaped the Spanish national consciousness, in which the practice of Catholicism was seen as a sign of loyalty to the monarchy. After fourteen years of war, the last Muslim state in Spain, Granada, finally fell in 1492. Meanwhile, France had won the Hundred Years’ War but was overshadowed by the brilliant Burgundian court and its territorial holdings. Under Louis XI (r. 1461-1483), France seized large tracts of Burgundian territory after the death of Charles the Bold and inherited most of southern France after the Anjou dynasty died out. Louis strengthened royal power at home by promoting industry and commerce, imposing permanent salt and land taxes, and maintaining the standing army established by Charles VII. By contrast, in Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland the nobility maintained their right to elect kings, frustrating any attempts at state building. Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1451-1481) proclaimed a holy war and laid siege to Constantinople in 1453, taking the city after fifty-three days. North of the Black Sea and east of Poland-Lithuania, the princes of Muscovy began to assert their independence after the collapse of Mongol rule. Ivan III (r. 1462-1505) was the first Muscovite prince to claim the imperial title of tsar. The tsar enforced the Russian Orthodox faith and legitimized his rule by proclaiming Moscow the “Third Rome.” The tsars divided the populace into land-holding elite in service to the tsar and a vast majority of taxpaying subjects, creating a state more in the despotic political tradition of the Ottoman Empire than of western Europe.
On the Threshold of World History: Widening Geographic Horizons
The fifteenth century ushered in the first era of world history, as European colonial expansion began to break down cultural frontiers. Before this period, Europe had remained at the periphery of world history, but European exploitation, conquest, and racism defined this era of transition from the medieval to the modern world.
The Divided Mediterranean, pp. 532-533
During the second half of the fifteenth century, the Mediterranean Sea began to lose its preeminence in trade to the Atlantic Ocean. Mediterranean states used the galley, a flat-bottomed vessel propelled by oars, dependent on human rowers, and incapable of open-ocean voyages. Although divided into Muslim and Christian zones, the Mediterranean still carried significant trade. Sugarcane from western Asia reached the western Mediterranean. Then, from the Balearic Islands off Spain, the crop traveled to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, where the Spanish enslaved the natives to work sugar plantations. In this way, slavery was exported from the western Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and then on to the Americas. Different ethnic groups also crossed the Mediterranean. Muslims who had fled from Granada to North Africa continued to raid the Spanish coast. When Castile expelled the Jews, some of them settled in North Africa, more in Italy, and many in the Ottoman Empire. Marked by these competing interests and religions, the divided Mediterranean prompted many Europeans to look for new opportunities across the unexplored oceans.
Portuguese Explorations, pp. 533-536
In 1433, Portugal began systematic exploration of the western coast of Africa. Using technologies such as the lateen sail, new types of ships, and better charts and instruments, and financed by the Portuguese monarchy, the explorers were motivated by a crusading zeal against Muslims and medieval adventure stories like those of the Marco Polo. The Portuguese hoped to bypass the Ottoman Turks’ overland routes and reach the spice-producing lands of South and Southeast Asia. In 1455, Pope Nicholas V (r. 1447-1455) granted King John II of Portugal and his successors a monopoly on trade with inhabitants of newly “discovered” regions. In 1499, Vasco da Gama led a Portuguese fleet around the southern tip of Africa and reached Calicut, India, the center of the spice trade. By 1517, a chain of Portuguese forts dotted the Indian Ocean, reaching from Mozambique to Malacca (modern Malaysia). After the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Portugal’s interests clashed with those of Spain. Mediated by Pope Alexander VI, the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divided the Atlantic world between the two monarchies 370 leagues west of the Cape Verdes Islands, reserving the west African coast and the route to India for Portugal, and the oceans and lands to the west for Spain. Unintentionally, this agreement also allowed Portugal to claim Brazil in 1500.
The Voyages of Columbus, pp. 536-539
Born of Genoese parents, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) gained valuable experience serving in Portuguese voyages down the west African coast and then settled in Spain. Inspired by The Travels of Marco Polo, Columbus proposed to sail west to Asia’s gold and spices. Columbus found patrons in Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. In August 1492, with three ships and about ninety men, Columbus set sail with a contract to assert Castilian sovereignty over any new land and peoples and to share any profits with the crown. Reaching what is today the Bahamas, Columbus explored the Caribbean islands, encountered the peaceful Arawaks, and exchanged gifts of beads and glass for gold. Trusting natives notwithstanding, the Europeans’ agenda was to find gold, subjugate the natives, and propagate Christianity. Columbus’s second voyage in 1493 found no gold mines or spices and switched to kidnapping slaves, who were exported to Spain. The Spanish monarchs, eager for riches, sent officials and priests to the Americas (named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci). Columbus’s career illustrated the changing balance between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. When the Ottomans drove Genoese merchants out of the eastern Mediterranean, the Genoese turned to the Iberian peninsula and the Atlantic.
A New Era in Slavery, p. 539
Although slavery had existed since antiquity, the European voyages of discovery expanded the economic scale of slave labor and attached race and color to slavery. During the Renaissance, nearly all slaves arrived in the Mediterranean ports of Barcelona, Marseille, Venice, and Genoa. Some were captured in war or piracy, others (black Africans) were sold by African and Bedouin traders to Christian buyers. In western Asia, impoverished families sold children into slavery, and many in the Balkans became slaves following the devastation of the Ottoman invasions. Slaves served as domestic servants in leading Mediterranean cities, as galley slaves in naval fleets, and as agricultural laborers. In the Ottoman army, slaves even formed an important elite contingent. After the Portuguese voyages, Africans increasingly filled the ranks of slaves. When traders exploited warfare in West Africa, the Portuguese trade in “pieces” (as slaves were called) drew criticism at home from some conscientious clergy. However, slavery’s critics could not deny the enormous profits brought in by the slave trade. Most slaves worked in the sugar plantations in the Portuguese Atlantic islands and in Brazil. Some worked as domestic servants in Portugal, where Africans constituted 3 percent of the population in the sixteenth century. An institution of exploitation, slavery would truly begin to flourish in the Americas.
Europeans in the New World, pp. 539-541
In 1500, the native peoples of the Americas were divided into many different societies, with the Aztec and Inca civilizations of the Mexican and Peruvian highlands being the most organized. Spanish explorers Hernán Cortés (c. 1485-1547) and Francisco Pizarro (c. 1475-1541) organized gold-seeking expeditions from a base in the Caribbean. With the assistance of native peoples who had been subjugated by the Aztecs, Cortés captured the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in 1519, adding Mexico (then called New Spain) to the Spanish empire of King Charles V. In the south, Pizarro exploited civil war between Incan kings to seize the Andean highlands. Spain’s American empire extended from Mexico to Chile. The Spaniards also subdued the Mayas on the Yucatan peninsula and discovered silver mines in what is today Bolivia. Not to be outdone, other Europeans joined in the scramble for gold and riches. The French began to search for a “northwest passage” to China. By 1504, French fishermen had appeared in Newfoundland, and French explorers were mapping the inland waterways of North America. Because of harsh winters and native hostilities, however, permanent European settlements in Canada and the present-day United States would not succeed until the seventeenth century.
September 28, 2008 at 11:18 pm |
Chapter 16 Outlines AP Euro
A Century of Crisis
Religious Conflicts and State Power, 1560-1618
The Peace of Augsburg of 1555 legally recognized Lutheranism, but did not offer the same recognition to Calvinists. Calvinism expanded rapidly after 1560 and threatened the religious balance of power in much of Europe, which inevitably had political consequences.
French Wars of Religion, 1562-1598, pp. 582-585
Following the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 Calvinism began to make inroads into France, where noble converts provided military protection for the newly established Huguenot church. The situation became volatile after King Henry II was accidentally killed in a jousting match in 1559, leaving his throne to his fifteen-year-old son Francis. Francis died soon after and ten-year-old Charles IX became king with his Florentine mother Catherine dé Medici as regent. In 1562, a series of wars began in which two factions-the Catholics, led by the Guise family; and the Protestants, led by the Bourbon family-struggled for control and influence over the French throne tenuously held by the Catholic Valois. Catherine sought to play the Guise and Bourbon families against each other, but tensions continued, reaching a head in August 1572 when tens of thousands of Huguenots were massacred in Paris and in the provinces in a wave of violence known as the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. This led Huguenots to justify resistance by claiming that the Valois had violated a contract between ruler and ruled-an argument based on constitutionalism. The wars did not end until Henry of Navarre, head of the Bourbon faction, became king of France in 1589. To put an end to the fighting, Henry IV, as he was now known, converted to Catholicism and issued the Edict of Nantes, which allowed the Huguenots to worship freely in specified towns and maintain their own troops, fortresses, and courts. Henry IV reestablished monarchical authority by creating a new bureaucracy staffed by members of a new social elite, the “nobility of the robe,” meant to act as a counterweight to the ancient nobility. Henry IV was assassinated in 1610.
Challenges to Spanish Power, pp. 586-589
At the time of his accession, Philip II of Spain (r. 1556-1598) controlled the western Habsburg lands in Spain and the Netherlands as well as the Spanish colonies in the Americas, making him the most powerful ruler in Europe. He made it his mission in life to restore Catholic unity to Europe and drive back the Muslims. In 1571, Philip defeated the Ottoman Turks in the battle of Lepanto, which gave him control of the Mediterranean. He also expelled the Moriscos, converts to Catholicism who practiced Islam in secret and rebelled when they lost hope of Turkish assistance. When Calvinists in the Netherlands attacked Catholic churches in 1566, Philip sent an army that sacked Antwerp in 1576, an atrocity known as the Spanish Fury. The Spanish Fury so shocked the largely Catholic southern provinces that they joined forces with the largely Protestant northern provinces to expel the Spanish. Whereas the southern provinces eventually returned to Spain, the northern provinces became the Dutch Republic, a federation controlled by the wealthiest families of each province. The economy of the Dutch Republic-based on shipping, commerce, and manufacturing-prospered, and Amsterdam became the main European money market for two centuries. The Dutch Republic tolerated religious diversity and became a haven for persecuted peoples, such as Jews who had been expelled from Spain and who helped to make the republic a leading intellectual and scientific center in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Elizabeth I’s Defense of English Protestantism, pp. 589-590
When Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) succeeded her Catholic sister Mary as queen of England, she brought Protestantism back to England but refused to bow to Calvinist Puritans who wanted all traces of Catholicism removed from the ritual and governance of the Church of England. Puritans gained influence in English society and tried to have theaters and Sunday fairs closed down. In addition to internal tensions, Elizabeth faced foreign intrigues. In 1588, she beheaded her Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, who was next in line for the English throne by offering Philip II of Spain her right to the Scottish throne. Frustrated for political and religious reasons, Philip sent his armada into the English Channel to fight the English navy and ferry an army of invasion from the Netherlands to England. When the Spanish Armada was virtually wiped out, Spain suffered a severe psychological blow. Triumphant, Elizabeth I consolidated her control as queen and left her successor, James I (r. 1603-1625), king of Scotland and England, a kingdom of expanding international importance.
The Clash of Faiths and Empires in Eastern Europe, pp. 590-591
The Battle of Lepanto was a setback for the Ottoman Turks but only a temporary one. Two years later-in 1573-they seized the island of Cyprus from the Venetians. The Ottoman Empire controlled the Balkans, where they allowed Orthodox Christians and Jews to practice their religions rather than forcing them to convert to Islam. Both Christians and Jews therefore had no reason to rebel. Orthodox Christians were also officially protected in Russian lands by the Muscovite tsars. Ivan IV (r. 1533-1584), named “the Terrible” for his ruthlessness, cruelty, and unpredictable fits of rage, brought the entire Volga valley under his control, expanded eastward into Siberia, and attempted to seize lands in the west to gain access to the Baltic Sea. Ivan’s drive west was blocked by Sweden and Poland-Lithuania. Poland-Lithuania maintained peace between the Catholic majority and Protestant nobles because its monarch had limited powers and was required to practice religious toleration. During the chaotic Time of Troubles that followed Ivan’s death, the king of Poland-Lithuania tried to seize the Russian throne for his son, but was defeated in 1613. A Russian nobleman, Michael Romanov (r. 1613-1645) established a new dynasty that resumed state building.
The Thirty Years’ War and the Balance of Power, 1618-1648
Although the eastern European states managed to avoid civil wars over religion, the rest of Europe was drawn into the final and most deadly wars of religion known today as the Thirty Years’ War. Beginning in 1618 with conflicts between Catholics and Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire, it spread throughout most of Europe. By its end in 1648, the balance of power had shifted away from the Habsburgs toward France, England, and the Dutch Republic.
Origins and Course of the War, pp. 592-593
The fighting that devastated central Europe had its origins in a combination of political weakness, ethnic competition, and religious conflict. In 1617, Catholic Habsburg heir Archduke Ferdinand became king of Bohemia and curtailed Protestants’ freedom. The Czechs, the region’s largest ethnic group, began and anti-Habsburg, anti-Catholic resistance. When the unpopular king was elected Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand II (r. 1619-1637), the resistance deposed him and chose a new king. Imperial armies defeated the Czechs at the Battle of White Mountain. Ferdinand bought the services of Albrecht von Wallenstein (a Protestant Czech) to raise a mercenary army that plundered much of Protestant Germany with the emperor’s approval. In response to Wallenstein, King Christian IV of Denmark (r. 1596-1648) invaded northern Germany to protect Protestants and to extend his own influence. Wallenstein defeated Christian IV, giving Ferdinand II reign over Denmark and the Protestants there. Ferdinand II issued the Edict of Restitution in 1629, which outlawed Calvinism in the empire and reclaimed Catholic church property confiscated by Lutherans. King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden entered the war to protect Protestant interests (and Sweden’s trade in northern Europe). Catholic France subsidized Sweden, glad to help any enemy of the Habsburgs. Gustavus Adolphus triumphed and occupied the Catholic parts of southern Germany until his death in 1632. In 1635, France entered the conflict openly by declaring war on Spain. Religion took a backseat as Catholic France and Catholic Spain fought for dominance of Europe. By the early 1640s, exhaustion and internal conflicts brought all sides to the negotiating table.
The Effects of Constant Fighting, pp. 593-595
Ordinary people suffered horrors during the Thirty Years’ War, as army after army plundered and destroyed cities and countryside alike. Peasant revolts and plague outbreaks added to the chaos. When warring governments neglected to pay their armies, soldiers then turned on the local population, looting, pillaging, raping, torturing, and murdering large numbers of civilians. War became increasingly expensive as rulers sought to build larger armies equipped with canons and warships. These huge expenses seriously strained state resources. The difficult economic conditions many people faced made it easier for rulers to recruit their own subjects into these armies, although mercenary armies still predominated.
The Peace of Westphalia, 1648, pp. 595-597
The Peace of Westphalia was the first time that all warring parties had been present during settlement negotiations and all agreed to a common treaty. This model is still used today. France and Sweden gained the most from this treaty. France acquired parts of Alsace and replaced Spain as the most powerful country in continental Europe, whereas Sweden acquired several northern territories from the Holy Roman Empire. The Habsburgs lost the most. The Dutch obtained their independence from Spain, and each German ruler gained the right to choose his state’s religion and more autonomy from the Holy Roman Emperor. Within the Holy Roman Empire, Lutheranism would henceforth dominate in the north, Calvinism in the area of the Rhine River, and Catholicism in the south. The Thirty Years’ War changed the political landscape of Europe forever. From this time onward, wars would be fought over political and economic problems not religious ones. States enlarged bureaucracies to raise the taxes necessary to support larger armies and lavish courts. As bureaucracies grew, monarchs started to rely on university-educated officials to manage them and advise on affairs of state. All ranks of society bitterly resented escalating demands for taxes. To mitigate the growth of the state, monarchs cultivated an image of power, requiring courtiers to follow precise rituals in splendid settings designed to showcase the vigor and prestige of the monarchy.
Economic Crisis and Realignment
The Thirty Years’ War deepened a preexisting economic crisis. Massive imports of gold and silver had led to rising prices, but this leveled off in the early 1600s. In most of Europe, population growth slowed and agricultural yields declined just as states were trying to extract more revenues to pay for their expanding armies. The economic crisis and war were followed by famine, disease, and revolts.
From Growth to Recession, pp. 598-599
In the second half of the sixteenth century, population growth coincided with an influx of precious metals from the Americas into western Europe, resulting in dramatic inflation; in the early seventeenth century, however, a recession spread slowly across Europe. Both foreign trade and the population of Europe declined, in part because of the Thirty Years’ War. The import of precious metals declined after 1625, largely because the native Americans who worked in Spanish colonial mines died off. Textile production declined as well due to a shrinking labor force and a decrease in demand. Grain prices fell as the population dropped, and many farmers used their land for pasture or vineyards. With the exception of the Dutch Republic, and to a lesser extent, England, western Europe entered a period of economic decline. Vulnerable populations succumbed to epidemic diseases and to famines caused by bad harvests.
Consequences for Daily Life, pp. 599-603
Food shortages were devastating, especially since most of the population depended on grain for survival. From 1594 to 1597, famine caused people across Europe to revolt in protest. England instituted the Poor Law of 1597, which required each community to support its poor. Many people ended up as vagabonds and bandits. Malnutrition made Europe’s population less resistant to diseases such as typhus, and influenza, or, most feared of all, plague. The economic crisis heightened the contrast between rich and poor. Depending on where they lived in the seventeenth century, the peasantry either became better off due to increased landholdings and selling on the market, or continued to experience incredibly hard times losing land and working for others at low wages. Women were especially vulnerable to bad economic cycles because many job opportunities were restricted to men, and some who found jobs as servants were not allowed to leave them. Uncertain economic times led many to postpone marriage and have fewer children, especially the poor. Couples in all ranks of society began marrying later and limiting family size in the seventeenth century.
The Economic Balance of Power, pp. 603-605
The crisis of the seventeenth century led to a shift in the balance of power in Europe. The long-standing superiority of the Mediterranean economies of Italy and Spain came to an end. The northwestern countries of England, the Dutch Republic, and France became the new economic leaders. However, the difference between north and south in western Europe was soon overshadowed by the difference between east and west, as nobles east of the Elbe River increased their hold over the peasantry at the same time that peasants in western Europe were gaining greater autonomy. Eastern European economies depended exclusively on increased agricultural production, whereas those of Western Europe also expanded their trade with the new world. In Muscovy, peasants were forced into serfdom by the Code of Laws in 1649. Because of Spain and Portugal’s hold on South America, the English, French, and Dutch turned to North America and the Caribbean. The English encouraged settlement in their colonies and attempted to convert to Christianity those native peoples whom they had not previously driven out through violent tactics. Religious groups on the margins of English society, such as the Pilgrims and Puritans, established new communities in North America. Because Huguenots were not permitted to emigrate, the French settlements in Canada were limited. Both England and France also gained control of territory in the Caribbean, where they cultivated tobacco and sugarcane.
A Clash of Worldviews
The countries that moved ahead during this period-England, the Dutch Republic, and to an extent France-all became receptive to new secular worldviews. In the long-term process known as secularization, religion became a matter of private conscience rather than public policy, and people sought nonreligious explanations for political authority and natural phenomena.
The Arts in an Age of Religious Conflict, pp. 606-608
Traditional beliefs were increasingly challenged during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The plays of William Shakespeare reflected the anxieties of the period, and in particular debates concerning the nature of power and the crisis of authority. Plays such as Hamlet (1601), King Lear (1605), and Macbeth (1606) particularly dramatize the uncertainty and chaos that result when authority is misappropriated or misused. These plays also link family relationships to questions about the legitimacy of government, just as they were for Elizabeth I herself. In painting, mannerism, noted for tricky use of perspective and bizarre effects often conveyed religious intensity. The most famous mannerist painter is El Greco. The baroque style (noted for its almost theatrical use of curves, exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, and release from restraint) broke with the Renaissance focus on perspective and harmony. The baroque was used to glorify the Catholic religion and the power of monarchy in the Habsburgs’ Catholic territories. One of the best-known baroque painters was Peter Paul Rubens. Painters in Protestant countries rejected the baroque in favor of greater realism, sometimes painting biblical scenes but more often painting subjects from everyday life. Opera, a new musical form that grew up parallel to the baroque style of the visual arts, combined music, drama, dance, and scenery in a grand sensuous display. It was often designed to be performed for aristocratic and royal audiences.
The Natural Law of Politics, pp. 608-610
The conflicts over religion led some to develop a new set of principles upon which the authority of the state could be based. French essayist Michel de Montaigne revived the ancient doctrine of skepticism and argued that total certainty, in religion or in any other matter, was never attainable. This implied that religions were not worth fighting over. The French lawyer Jean Bodin promoted order as the most important quality for a state, and argued that only a strong monarch could ensure order. These ideas helped lay the foundation for absolutism, the idea that the monarch should be the sole and uncontested source of power. Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius argued that natural law, not religious authority, should govern politics. Natural law was designed to defend natural rights, which included the right to life, body, freedom, and honor, and Grotius said that it was the duty of government to uphold these rights. Grotius argued that torture, widespread during this time, infringed natural rights. All of these thinkers helped develop a more secular political theory in which authority was no longer based on religion.
The Origins of the Scientific Revolution, pp. 610-615
By the early seventeenth century, a new scientific method based on systematic experiments and rational deduction was established. Previously, astronomy was based on Aristotle and Ptolemy, who had argued that the perfect planets revolved in perfect crystal spheres around the corrupted Earth. Nicolaus Copernicus began this revolution in astronomy by arguing that the Earth and other planets revolved around the sun. Tycho Brahe rejected this heliocentrist model, but his discovery of a new star in 1572 challenged the Aristotelian notion that the heavens were perfect and unchanging. Brahe’s assistant Johannes Kepler continued Brahe’s observations of planetary movement and was converted to the Copernican view. He provided mathematical proof for a heliocentric model and discovered that planetary motion was eliptic not circular. Galileo Galilei provided further evidence for heliocentrism and, using a telescope of his own design, discovered four moons around Jupiter, the phases of Venus, sunspots, and hills on the moon, all of which proved that the heavens were no more perfect than the Earth. Better understanding of anatomy and pharmacology advanced medicine: the human body, like the universe, was now to be understood by experiment and rational deduction. Sir Francis Bacon championed inductive reasoning through observation and experimental research, and René Descartes promoted and deductive reasoning from self-evident principles. Scientific research and economic growth would come to be centered in the northern Protestant countries, where it was less constrained by church control.
Magic and Witchcraft, pp. 615-617
Despite the new emphasis on clear reasoning, observation, and independence from past authority, science had not yet become separate from magic. Many of the great scientists of the day also practiced alchemy and astrology. At a time when most people believed in astrology, magical healing, prophesy, and ghosts, it is not surprising that many people also believed in witchcraft, including magistrates such as Jean Bodin. Belief in witches was not new, but the official persecution of witches was. In a time of economic crisis, plague, constant warfare, and religious differences, witchcraft trials provided an outlet for social anxiety that was legitimated by state power. Witch trials peaked in Catholic and Protestant Europe between 1560 and 1640, ironically during the same time as the breakthroughs of the new science. Women accounted for an estimated 80 percent of accused witches. Targets were usually those who lived on the margins of society and were believed to harbor vengeful sentiments against those who were better off. Witchcraft trials declined when scientific thinking raised doubts about the quality of evidence being used in court and when the educated classes began to see witchcraft as nothing more than peasant superstition.
October 1, 2008 at 6:10 am |
THIS ISN’T THE RETURN OF HISTORY
The Georgia attack will go down not as the dawn of a new era of Russian power but as a major strategic blunder.
By Fareed Zakaria
Many in Washington have described Russia’s attack on Georgia as a turning point in international affairs. Pundits thunder that we are returning to an age of great-power conflicts. Globalization and integration have been exposed as shams. Russia is playing this new Great Game with ruthless brilliance and we—the United States and Europe—are foundering. As events unfold, however, almost all of this instant analysis will prove sensationalist, misguided and incorrect. It’s certainly true that today’s world is characterized by the emergence of new powers like China, Russia and India (a phenomenon I have termed “the rise of the rest”). This is not a contradiction of globalization but a consequence of it. Economic growth is producing new centers of influence. And that’s leading to greater national pride, confidence and assertiveness. But there are also powerful new countervailing forces—yes, of globalization and integration—that are working to mitigate nationalism and unilateralism.
The attack on Georgia will go down not as the dawn of a new era of Russian power but as a major strategic blunder. Look at what has happened. Russia has scared its neighboring states witless, driving them firmly into the arms of the West. For almost two years, Poland had been dragging its feet on the American proposal to deploy missile interceptors in that country as part of a continent wide shield (a few months ago public support for the shield varied between 15 and 25 percent). Within days of the Russian attack, Warsaw agreed to the deployment. Ukraine had long been divided on whether to have closer ties to the West. A few years ago, 60 percent of the country wanted some kind of federation with Russia instead. Now the Kiev government has unhesitatingly asked for a path to NATO membership.
Vladimir Putin has done more for transatlantic unity than a President Barack Obama ever could. The United States and Europe are now in greater strategic agreement than at any point in the last two decades. Even the autocracies in the Caucasus have reacted negatively to the attack, refusing to endorse Russia’s actions and legitimize the new facts on the ground. China has refused its support. And what did Russia get for all this? Seventy thousand South Ossetians.
Several diplomats and commentators have compared the attack on Georgia to the Soviet Union’s invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. I think a more telling historical parallel might prove to be the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Then, as now, a Kremlin elite drunk on high oil prices foolishly overreached and triggered a countervailing reaction in the region and across the world.
The truth is, we’re not in the 19th century, where the Russian intervention would have been standard operating procedure for a great power. In fact, only 50 years ago Britain and France clung to their colonies—in Algeria, Vietnam, Kenya, Cyprus—with much greater determination and violence than has Moscow. By contrast, this is the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union that Russia has sent troops into a neighboring country (a country that it had ruled since 1801). Its actions are deplorable but the reaction to them —worldwide—is a sign of how much the rules have changed. President George W. Bush seemed to understand this when he spoke of Russia’s behavior as being unacceptable “in the 21st century.”
Diplomats are now searching for ways to make Moscow pay some price for its actions, to weaken its standing in international bodies, suspend some agreements, break some joint enterprises. These are all worth looking into but it’s also worth noting that we only have this leverage with the Russians because we have spent the last two decades building up ties with them. In fact, the real challenge we face in dealing with Moscow is that we have too few such ties and, as a result, too little leverage.
The problem is not that Russia has been integrated into a world order that has failed to deter it, but rather that the country remains largely unintegrated—and thus feels it has little to lose by breaking the rules. Some of Moscow’s isolation may have been caused by Western foreign policy—certainly that is the Russian perception—but more has to do with oil. As the price of oil and other natural resources has risen over the past decade, Russia has become more dysfunctional, corrupt, dictatorial and assertive. And oil wealth everywhere—from Venezuela to Iran to Russia—breeds independence from and indifference to international norms, markets and rules.
The single best strategy for bringing Russia in line with the civilized world would be to dramatically lower oil prices, which would force the country to integrate or stagnate. Pending that, we should shore up Georgia and assist countries like Poland and Ukraine. At the same time we should stay engaged with the Russians so that we continue to work on issues of common concern—like nuclear proliferation—but also to develop leverage with them. A strategy that further isolates Moscow would only reduce the levers that we have to affect its behavior.
Imagine if we had kicked Russia out of the G8 and broken most ties with Moscow—as the Republican nominee, John McCain, and many neoconservatives have long wanted to do. Then, when the Russians attacked Georgia, we would have had only two options—appeasement or war.
November 3, 2008 at 1:12 am |
Chapter 17 Outline
Louis XIV: Model of Absolutism
Louis XIV of France personified the absolutist ruler who in theory shared power with no one. Yet the absoluteness of his power should not be exaggerated. Like all rulers of his time, he depended on the cooperation of many others such as local officials, the clergy, the nobility, the peasantry, and artisans. All of these played a role in making Louis’ absolutism work, either by paying taxes, joining the armies, enforcing his will, or not causing trouble.
The Fronde, 1648–1653, pp. 623–624
Louis XIV came to the throne in 1643 at the age of five. His mother, Anne of Austria, and her advisor, Cardinal Mazarin, ruled in Louis’s name. To raise money for the Thirty Years’ War, Mazarin sold new offices, raised taxes, and forced creditors to lend money to the government. In 1648, a coalition of his opponents demanded that the parlements (high courts) have the right to approve new taxes. When Mazarin refused and arrested the leaders of these parlements, a series of revolts broke out that at one time or another involved nearly every social group. These revolts are known as the Fronde. No one actually wanted to overthrow the king. Nobles wanted to reacquire the power and local influence they had lost after the religious wars ended in 1598, whereas the middle and lower classes opposed the government’s taxation policies. Throughout France there was fighting among armies raised by diverse social and political groups. At one point, Louis and his mother were forced to flee Paris. The monarchy survived the rebellions, but they had a lasting influence on the young king.
Court Culture as an Element of Absolutism, pp. 624–626
In 1661, Mazarin died and Louis decided to conduct the government himself without appointing a first minister. Louis’s first priority was controlling the nobility, which still possessed local armies and a great deal of local power and autonomy. Using a double-edged policy of bestowing honors and offices and threatening disfavor or punishment, Louis brought the nobility under control. He required their attendance at his court, which became the only route to power and influence. Life at court required careful attention, and the tiniest lapse in etiquette could lead to ruin. In this way, Louis made himself the center of French power and culture. Louis also used the arts to glorify his image, having himself represented as Apollo, the Sun King, a Roman emperor, and a great military leader. Artists, writers, and composers were employed and protected by the government to produce works that celebrated the monarchy. Louis also used massive public works projects and, in particular, the enlargement of the Palace of Versailles, to manifest and increase his prestige.
Enforcing Religious Orthodoxy, pp. 626–627
Louis believed that the defense of orthodox Catholicism was one of his most important tasks as king. Louis justified his actions by referring to the doctrine of divine right, which argued that kings were ordained by God to rule and had a duty to instruct their subjects in religion much like a father would his family. Louis first took action against the Jansenists, who, although Catholic, resembled the Protestants in their emphasis on God’s grace, original sin, and in their austere religious practices that were similar to the English Puritans. Because Jansenists considered individual conscience to be more important than obeying church authority, Louis enforced decrees against Jansenists and closed their churches starting around 1660. In 1685, Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes, thereby depriving Huguenots of their rights. Louis wished to convert the Huguenots to Catholicism, but many instead immigrated to Protestant countries, whose citizens were shocked by the French king’s actions.
Extending State Authority at Home and Abroad, pp. 627–630
Louis expanded the royal bureaucracy to consolidate his authority and run his kingdom more efficiently. Louis used his officials, who often held their positions directly from the king rather than owning their offices, to collect taxes, gather information regarding his subjects, and subordinate local interests to royal will. His most important minister was Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who helped Louis follow a mercantilist policy, meaning that the government intervened wherever possible to increase national wealth. By calling for government participation in the economy, by establishing trading companies or regulating standards of production, mercantilism resulted in an expanded bureaucracy. Also desiring to establish French dominance in Europe, Louis increased the size of the army and, between 1667 and 1713, was continually at war with other European powers. Even though Louis ultimately lost nearly all the territory he had won, France’s many military victories conferred glory upon the French monarchy. Absolutism and war fed each other, as Louis’ bureaucracy found new ways to raise money to support the army, and military success justified further expansion of state power. At the same time, however, these wars also eroded the state’s resources and hindered administrative and legal reforms such as eliminating the buying of offices and lowering taxes.
Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe
Rulers in central and eastern Europe viewed Louis XIV as a model of absolutist state building, but they did not directly emulate him because they were constrained by conditions peculiar to their regions. Much of the region was a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups that had been ravaged by the Thirty Years’ War.
Brandenburg-Prussia and Sweden: Militaristic Absolutism, pp. 631–632
Frederick William of Hohenzollern, the Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia, welded the scattered lands that composed his territory into an absolutist state. Pressed by the expense of fighting the Thirty Years’ War and then reconstructing after it, Frederick William struck a deal with his nobles that ensured him a dependable income. In exchange for allowing him to collect taxes, he granted the Junkers (nobles) complete control over their enserfed peasants and exempted the Junkers themselves from taxation. Avoiding the display of wealth and luxury of the French court, he used this revenue to create an efficient bureaucracy and enlarge the Prussian army to almost four times its original size. His army mirrored the rigid domination of the nobility over the peasantry—nobles were officers, peasants troops—in a militaristic society in which the army always had priority. He was so successful that, in 1701, his son Frederick I persuaded the Holy Roman Emperor to grant him the title “king in Prussia.” Sweden, the most powerful country of northern Europe after the Thirty Years’ War, also developed a form of absolutism in which the aristocratic estates gave the monarch power over war in exchange for a share of the spoils and offices in the bureaucracy. While Prussia would become an increasingly important power, the expense of constant war risked weakening Sweden’s absolutist government.
An Uneasy Balance: Austrian Habsburgs and Ottoman Turks, pp. 632–634
To unite territories of different ethnicities, religions, and languages, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I (r. 1658–1705) developed an absolutist government that chipped away at local powers, expanded the bureaucracy, and replaced the mercenaries hired to fight in the Thirty Years’ War with a well-disciplined, permanent standing army. To the west, Leopold fought Louis XIV; to the east he fought Ottoman Turks. The Turks made it as far as Vienna in 1683, but with the help of the Polish cavalry Leopold repelled the siege. In the Treaty of Karlowitz the Turks surrendered Hungary to Leopold in 1699. To tighten his control in Hungary, Leopold revived the parliamentary diet, which was dominated by pro-Habsburg Hungarian aristocrats who buttressed the dynasty until its fall in 1918. Like Louis XIV of France, Leopold also engaged in public building projects to root out any remaining Turkish influence and assert Austrian superiority with the flamboyant Austrian baroque style. In Bohemia, Leopold replaced the Bohemian aristocracy, who had revolted against Austrian authority in 1618, with a new multi-ethnic aristocracy that was loyal to the emperor because it was dependent upon him for its position. The Ottoman Turks also consolidated state power but used different techniques. They settled large numbers of Turkish families in the Balkans. Rather than suppressing peasant armies, the Ottoman state hired them as mercenaries. To avoid a revolt by the elites, Ottoman leaders played them off against each other.
Russia: Foundations of Bureaucratic Absolutism, pp. 634–635
In 1648, Tsar Alexei (r. 1645–1676) set off a rebellion by attempting to change the administrative structure of the state. He responded to the rebellion by convoking the Assembly of the Land, which consisted of noble delegates from the provinces, and issuing a law code that assigned all subjects to a hereditary class. Slaves and free peasants were merged into a serf class, while nobles had to give absolute loyalty to the tsar and were required to serve in the military. In 1667, Stenka Razin led a rebellion that promised freedom from serfdom. Razin was captured four years later, and thousands of his followers met grisly deaths, but his memory lived on in folk songs and legends. To extend his power and emulate his western rivals, Alexei increased the size of his army to more than six times its original size, and imposed control over state policy and the Russian Orthodox church. This meant the obliteration of the Old Believers, who often chose martyrdom rather than adopt Russian Orthodox practices. The Assembly of the Land never met again after 1653, whereas the state bureaucracy continued to expand and intervene more and more in daily life.
Poland-Lithuania Overwhelmed, pp. 635–636
Poland-Lithuania did not merely reject the absolutist model. Through decades of war the monarchy had become weakened while its nobles became virtually autonomous warlords. In 1648, bands of runaway peasants and poor nobles in Ukraine formed bands and revolted against the king in a two-decades-long uprising known as the Deluge. In 1654, they offered Ukraine to the Russian tsar, provoking a Russo-Polish war that ended with the tsar annexing eastern Ukraine and Kiev in 1667. Neighboring powers also took advantage of Poland-Lithuania’s weakness and sent armies to seize territory. The fighting destroyed many towns and a third of the Polish population. Amidst the chaos, the country abandoned its policy of religious toleration of Jews and Protestants. Tens of thousands of Jews were slaughtered, and Protestants turned to Sweden for assistance. Poland-Lithuania elected Jan Sobieski to be king (r. 1674–1696); he attempted to rebuild the monarchy on the absolutist model, but was unsuccessful. The nobles put a stranglehold on monarchical authority. They dominated the parliament (or Sjem) and every member of the Sjem wielded an absolute veto power that deadlocked parliamentary government.
Constitutionalism in England
Although the English monarchy enjoyed many advantages over their continental rivals—they had stayed out of the expensive Thirty Years’ War and ruled a relatively small and homogenous population—they failed to install absolutist policies. Two revolutions overturned two kings, confirmed the constitutional powers of an elected parliament, and laid the foundation for the idea that the government must guarantee certain rights under the law.
England Turned Upside Down, 1642–1660, pp. 637–643
When Parliament wanted Charles I (r. 1625–1649) to agree to the Petition of Right (a promise not to levy taxes without Parliament’s consent), he closed Parliament for eleven years. He irritated Puritans by favoring church rituals similar to Catholic rites and when, with Charles’s support, Archbishop Laud tried to impose the Anglican liturgy on Presbyterian Scots, the Scots invaded the north of England in 1640. This invasion forced Charles to summon Parliament to levy new taxes. Moderate elements within Parliament voted to undo some of the king’s less-popular measures. Charles attempted to arrest them and, when opposition arose, left London to raise an army. The civil war began in 1642 and ended in 1646 when Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army defeated the royalists. Parliament then split into moderate Presbyterians and radical Independents. The Presbyterians made up the majority, but the Independents controlled the army and used it to purge the Presbyterians from Parliament. The remaining members, the Rump Parliament, then beheaded Charles, abolished the monarchy, and formed a republic led by Oliver Cromwell, who tolerated no opposition. He reconquered Scotland and brutally subdued Ireland, waged war on the Dutch, and enacted the first Navigation Act to protect English commerce. But Cromwell alienated supporters with taxes higher than the monarchy’s and with his harsh tactics against dissent. In 1653, Cromwell abolished the Parliament, naming himself Lord Protector. In 1660, two years after Cromwell’s death, a newly elected Parliament called Charles II to the throne.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688, pp. 643–644
Although most English welcomed the monarchy back in 1660, many soon came to fear that Charles II wished to establish absolutism on the French model. In 1670, Charles secretly agreed to convert to Catholicism in exchange for money from Louis XIV to fight the Dutch. Although Charles never pronounced himself a Catholic, he did ease restrictions on Catholics and Protestant dissenters, thereby coming into conflict with a Parliament intent on supporting the Church of England. In 1673, Parliament passed the Test Act, which required government officials to pledge allegiance to the Church of England. In 1678, Parliament tried to deny the throne to any Roman Catholic because they did not want the king’s brother and heir James, a convert to Catholicism, to inherit the throne. Charles did not allow this law to pass, splitting Parliament into two factions: Tories, who supported a strong, hereditary monarchy and the Anglican church; and Whigs, who supported a strong Parliament and toleration for non-Anglicans. In 1685, James II became king and pursued absolutist and pro-Catholic policies. When his wife gave birth to a son that ensured a Catholic heir to the throne, Parliament offered the throne to James’s older Protestant daughter Mary and her husband, the Dutch stadholder William, prince of Orange. In a “glorious revolution,” James fled to France, and William and Mary granted a bill of rights that confirmed Parliament’s rights in government. The propertied classes that controlled Parliament now focused on consolidating their power and preventing any future popular turmoil.
Constitutionalism in the Dutch Republic and the Overseas Colonies
When William and Mary came to the throne in England in 1689 the Dutch and English set aside rivalries that had brought them to war against each other on several previous occasions. Together they led a coalition that blocked Louis XIV’s efforts to dominate continental Europe and the two were successful exceptions to absolutism in Europe. Many Dutch and English colonies developed constitutional governments, while simultaneously enslaving black Africans as a new labor force.
The Dutch Republic, pp. 645–648
By 1648, when it gained formal independence from Spain, the Dutch Republic was a decentralized state. Rich merchants called regents controlled local affairs and represented their province at the Estates General, which controlled foreign policy and appointed a stadholder, who was responsible for defense and represented the state at ceremonial functions. The Dutch Republic encouraged trade by importing products from all over the world and became Europe’s finance capital. Dutch citizens became the most prosperous and best-educated middle class in Europe and supported the visual arts. Their relative wealth decreased the need for women to work outside the home and the Dutch made the family household the source of society’s morality. The high levels of urbanization and literacy created a large readership and Dutch tolerance led to a freedom of publishing unknown elsewhere in Europe. By the late seventeenth century, the cost of repeated wars with England at sea and France on land contributed to a relative decline, and French influence became more prominent in Dutch intellectual and artistic life.
Freedom and Slavery in the New World, pp. 648–649
After the Spanish and Portuguese demonstrated that using black Africans as slave labor in their colonies was profitable, the French and English purchased and brought African slaves to their Caribbean colonies. The highest church and government officials in Catholic and Protestant countries condoned the slave trade. The Dutch West India Company transported 36,000 Africans annually by 1700. The English instituted a slave code in Barbados in 1661 that stripped Africans of their legal rights and made slavery an inherited status. In 1685, Louis XIV similarly regulated Africans through a “black code.” At the same time, English settlers in North America had representative legislatures that gave colonial elites control over local matters. Plentiful land made it possible for ordinary immigrants to become landowners and elites. Native Americans lost their lives and their homeland as they succumbed to disease and European force. Not recognizing private ownership of land, they frequently skirmished with settlers who claimed land rights.
The Search for Order in Elite and Popular Culture
With the early successes of constitutionalism in places like England, the Dutch Republic, and the colonies of North America came new debates about authority, freedom, and order. Most Europeans feared disorder above all else, especially after the chaos of the Thirty Years’ War, the Fronde in France, and the English Civil War. European elites developed new codes of behavior to distinguish themselves, and sought to teach order and discipline to their social inferiors.
Social Contract Theory: Hobbes and Locke, pp. 650–651
Thomas Hobbes, an English royalist, believed that human beings were essentially self-centered and focused on survival. He also believed that only a strong authority (either a king or a parliament) that could assure stability would lead people to follow the laws. To obtain this strong authority, people had to give up some personal liberty. He outlined these thoughts in Leviathan (1651) and made his case by appealing to science instead of religion. Royalists opposed Hobbes because his ideas emphasized a social contract—instead of divine right—between ruler and ruled, whereas Parlimentarians objected to his emphasis on absolute authority. John Locke also believed in a contract between ruler and ruled, but Locke had a more optimistic view of human nature. He believed that human beings were essentially good and peaceful and that the purpose of government was to protect life, liberty, and property. If government failed in this task, or overstepped its bounds, the people had a right to resist. He articulated his anti-authoritarian position in Two Treatises of Government (1690). These views were central to American revolutionaries and abolitionists. In Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Locke stated that each human was born with a mind that was a tabula rasa (blank slate). All knowledge came from sensory experience, not from anything innate, and education shaped personality by channeling sensory experience. These views indicated that “all men are created equal.”
Newton and the Consolidation of the Scientific Revolution, pp. 651–653
New breakthroughs in science lent support to Locke’s optimistic view of human potential. Building upon the earlier work of scientists, Sir Isaac Newton finally synthesized astronomy and physics with his law of universal gravitation. Far from seeing religion and science in conflict, Newton hoped that his discovery of universal laws would help demonstrate the existence of God and an orderly and rational creation. Absolutist rulers viewed science as a means for enhancing their prestige and supported scientific research through the patronage of scientific social organizations and government stipends for scientists. Some rulers supported scientific activity as another form of mercantilist intervention to enhance state wealth. Scientific research was encouraged in constitutional states as well, although not through direct governmental support. Science gained a broader audience among upper-class men and women, but women were rarely active in scientific research because they were excluded from most universities.
Freedom and Order in the Arts, pp. 653–656
Artists, writers, and architects explored the place of individuals within the universe. John Milton wrote about the benefits and dangers of individual liberty for human beings. The two dominant artistic styles of the era—baroque and classical—approached the individual differently. The baroque was favored by the Catholic church and patronized by Habsburg rulers because the emotional response it evoked proved to be especially suitable for inspiring awe in public displays of faith and of the power of the monarch and the Catholic church. The Habsburgs’ enemy, Louis XIV rejected the baroque in favor of the classical, which reflected the ideals of antiquity, order, and harmony and was exemplified by the paintings of Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain. Classicism placed the important individual firmly at the intersection of straight lines. Dutch painters who worked for a public, middle-class market tended to paint ordinary objects and people in a style neither baroque nor classical. Masters like Rembrandt and Vermeer created scenes in which ordinary individuals and activities looked precious and beautiful. Women artists like Merian and Ruysch excelled in documenting the natural world in vibrant still lifes and botanical paintings.
Women and Manners, pp. 656–658
Nobles developed individual self-discipline in the court, where they distinguished themselves from other groups in society through their dress, behavior, and activities. Noblemen, like noblewomen, learned the art of pleasing to gain favor with the king. The plays of Molière reassured aristocrats that this part of their identity was inimitable, yet they also implied that the middle class could learn manners, too. Treatises on etiquette were published. Elite women gained access to intellectual life through the salon, an informal gathering presided over by a socially eminent woman in her home. Salons encouraged conversations about love, philosophy, and literature, providing authors with an audience for their ideas. Some women also wrote; they were especially successful with a new literary genre, the novel. Aphra Behn, one of the first professional women writers, was a novelist and wrote the best-seller Oroonoko. As women became more important in taste, literature, and manners, they stirred the fear and resentment of many clergy, scientists, scholars, and playwrights, who warned of the dangers of their influence over men and ridiculed their literary and social ambitions.
Reforming Popular Culture, pp. 658–661
New developments in science, the arts, literature, and manners did not touch the majority of Europe’s population: illiterate peasants. Protestant and Catholic churches extended their campaigns begun in the sixteenth centuries to root out “pagan” practices, reaching much of rural Europe in the seventeenth century. Royal officials worked with clergy to impose orthodox religious practices and to suppress activities they deemed incompatible with Christian doctrine and standards of behavior, such as maypoles, animal sacrifices, and praying to the moon. In both Protestant and Catholic countries, the campaign against superstition helped to extend state power. At the same time, attitudes toward the poor changed: previously, poverty had been a Christian virtue and support of the poor a key part of Christian charity. Now the poor were seen as dangerous, lazy, and immoral. Local governments and organizations tried to reform the poor and to separate them from society by advocating discipline and putting them in hospitals built on government order.
December 2, 2008 at 10:00 pm |
Ellen Dubois
CCOT Essay – Classical India
The civilization of classical India reigned from 321 BCE to 550 CE with a continuing social caste and religion of Hinduism. There was also a change in religion to Buddhism and population increases helped by the Silk Road and Indian Ocean trade.
The social caste in classical India was first brought by the Aryans around 2000 BCE. The caste starts with the Brahmins on top, followed by the warriors and aristocrats, then the merchants and peasants, with the serfs on the bottom. The social caste duties were set out in the Baghavad Gita. You were supposed to follow your dharma, and if you did all this correctly, you would hopefully move up in the next life. This is why the social caste continued throughout the civilizations time. People were willing to go through with their duties and hopefully be rewarded in the next life. The idea of a weak and unskillful woman was set out in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. One story explained how the woman, Sita, remained loyal to her husband, Rama, while exiled. They dealt with this idea with the thought of becoming a man in the next life. The social caste system was in the civilization of classical India throughout the era.
Another continuity in classical India is the religion of Hinduism. Hinduism spread throughout the culture, and surrounding ones, by the use of the Khyber Pass and other major trade routes. Missionaries would travel along these trade routes, spreading the Hindu ideas and the books of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Priests called Brahmins headed the Hindu religion. The Brahmins held the power in the society, which is why Hinduism continued throughout the culture, over time. The Brahmins collected gifts from the people and were exempted from taxation. People believed they would receive gifts from god, like abundant herds, if they gave gifts to the Brahmins, so Hinduism stayed throughout the civilization’s time, for the most part.
A ruler named Ashoka Maurya changed the ideas of religion when he came to power. Ashoka grew up watching his father endure a power struggle with the Brahmins. When he became ruler, he knew the Brahmins had to go, so he fired them. Ashoka brought the idea that everyone could go to heaven. Ashoka brought religious places, called stupa, to the culture, where you could go and meditate. He also used stone pillars to promote the idea of the religion called Buddhism. The idea of Buddhism was very popular during Ashoka’s reign, but that changed when Ashoka died. When Ashoka died, the Brahmins stepped right back into power. During Ashoka’s reign, they stayed close by, on the Indian Ocean, Khyber Pass, etc., waiting for Ashoka to lose power, and for them to gain again. And when the Brahmins gained power again, they pushed the Buddhists out, into the Khyber Pass and Silk Road, sending them into China, for them to spread Buddhism there.
Our final change is the great increase in population. Classical India traded many things, including cotton, pearls, and black pepper. They traded with Persia along the Hindu Kush Mountains, and with Asia and China along the Silk Road. They also traded with other civilizations around the Indian Ocean. In classical India, they began to recognize wind patterns, where in the spring and summer there was a southwest wind, and in the fall and winter, the wind was northeasterly. Because of this new discovery, they were able to increase trade. This brought more people to India, and with the appeal of the caste system, Hinduism, and a good economy, many people stayed there. They were able to trade within the civilization, using coins with the face of Buddha on it, and then export these goods as well. With more goods and an increasing population, the population just increased even more.
Classical India continued the traditions of caste system and Hinduism throughout its reign, but managed to practice Buddhism for a short amount of time as well as increase its population by trading on the Indian Ocean. Classical India continued to keep its longstanding traditions until it fell in 550 BCE.
January 27, 2009 at 2:59 am |