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PART FIVE The Globe Encompassed, 1500–1750 CHAPTER 16 Transformations in Europe, 1500–1750 CHAPTER 17 The Diversity of American Colonial Societies, 1530–1770 CHAPTER 18 The Atlantic System and Africa, 1550–1800 CHAPTER 19 Southwest Asia and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1750 CHAPTER 20 Northern Eurasia, 1500–1800 T he decades between 1500 and 1750 witnessed a tremendous expansion of commercial, cultural, and biological exchanges around the world. New long-distance sea routes linked Europe with sub-Saharan Africa and the existing maritime networks of the Indian Ocean and East Asia. Spanish and Portuguese voyages ended the isolation of the Americas and created new webs of exchange in the Atlantic and Pacific. Overland expansion of Muslim, Russian, and Chinese empires also increased global interaction. These expanding contacts had major demographic and cultural conse- quences. In the Americas, European diseases devastated the Amerindian pop- ulation, facilitating the establishment of large Spanish, Portuguese, French, and British empires. Europeans introduced enslaved Africans to relieve the labor shortage. Immigrant Africans and Europeans brought new languages, religious practices, music, and forms of personal adornment. In Asia and Africa, by contrast, the most important changes owed more to internal forces than to European actions. The Portuguese seized control of some important trading ports and networks in the Indian Ocean and pio- neered new contacts with China and Japan. In time, the Dutch, French, and English expanded these profitable connections, but in 1750 Europeans were 401 14820_PO5_401-403_r1ek.qxd 4/2/04 8:17 PM Page 401
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PART FIVE

The GlobeEncompassed,1500–1750

CHAPTER 16Transformations in Europe,1500–1750

CHAPTER 17The Diversity of AmericanColonial Societies, 1530–1770

CHAPTER 18The Atlantic System andAfrica, 1550–1800

CHAPTER 19Southwest Asia and the IndianOcean, 1500–1750

CHAPTER 20Northern Eurasia, 1500–1800

The decades between 1500 and 1750 witnessed a tremendous expansionof commercial, cultural, and biological exchanges around the world.

New long-distance sea routes linked Europe with sub-Saharan Africa and theexisting maritime networks of the Indian Ocean and East Asia. Spanish andPortuguese voyages ended the isolation of the Americas and created newwebs of exchange in the Atlantic and Pacific. Overland expansion of Muslim,Russian, and Chinese empires also increased global interaction.

These expanding contacts had major demographic and cultural conse-quences. In the Americas, European diseases devastated the Amerindian pop-ulation, facilitating the establishment of large Spanish, Portuguese, French,and British empires. Europeans introduced enslaved Africans to relieve thelabor shortage. Immigrant Africans and Europeans brought new languages,religious practices, music, and forms of personal adornment.

In Asia and Africa, by contrast, the most important changes owed moreto internal forces than to European actions. The Portuguese seized control ofsome important trading ports and networks in the Indian Ocean and pio-neered new contacts with China and Japan. In time, the Dutch, French, andEnglish expanded these profitable connections, but in 1750 Europeans were

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still primarily a maritime force. Asians andAfricans generally retained control of their landsand participated freely in overseas trade.

The Islamic world saw the dramatic expan-sion of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Eastand the establishment of the Safavid Empire in Iran andthe Mughal Empire in South Asia. In northern Eurasia, Rus-sia and China acquired vast new territories and populations,while a new national government in Japan promoted eco-nomic development and stemmed foreign influence.

Ecological change was rapid in areas of rising populationand economic activity. Forests were cut down to meet the in-creasing need for farmland, timber, and fuel. Population growthin parts of Eurasia placed great strain on the environment. On amore positive note, domesticated animals and crops from the OldWorld transformed agriculture in the Americas, while Amerindianfoods such as the potato became staples of the diet of the Old World.

New goods, new wealth, and new tastes from overseas transformedEurope in this period. Global and regional trade promoted urban growth,but conflict was also rife. States spent heavily on warfare in Europe andabroad. The printing press spread new religious and scientific ideas, and chal-lenges to established values and institutions.

By 1750 the balance of power in the world had begun to shift from the Eastto the West. The Ottoman, Mughal, and Chinese empires had declined in rela-tive strength compared to the much smaller but technologically more sophisti-cated states of northwestern Europe.

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16 Transformationsin Europe,1500–1750

CHAPTER OUTLINECulture and Ideas

Social and Economic Life

Political Innovations

ENVIRONMENT AND TECHNOLOGY: Mapping the World

DIVERSITY AND DOMINANCE: Political Craft and Craftiness

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As he neared the end of his life in 1575, the Frenchscholar and humanist Loys Le Roy˚ reflected on

the times in which he lived. It was, he believed, agolden age for Europe, and he ticked off the names ofmore than 130 scholars and translators, writers andpoets, artists and sculptors, and explorers and philoso-phers whose work over the preceding two centurieshad restored the standards of ancient learning. Laterages would call this scholarly and artistic revival theEuropean Renaissance.

In addition, Le Roy enumerated a series of tech-nological innovations that he believed had also trans-formed his age: printing, the marine compass, andcannonry. He put printing first because its rapidspread across Europe had done so much to commu-nicate the literary and scholarly revival. The marinecompass had made possible the sea voyages that nowconnected Europe directly to Africa and Asia and hadled to the discovery and conquest of the Americas.

Le Roy gave third place to firearms because theyhad transformed warfare. Cannon and more recentlydevised hand-held weapons had swept before themall older military instruments. His enthusiasm for thistransformation was dampened by the demonstratedcapacity of firearms to cause devastation and ruin.Among the other evils of his age Le Roy enumeratedsyphilis and the spread of religious heresies and sects.

Reading Loys Le Roy’s analysis more than fourcenturies later, one is struck not only by the acuity ofhis judgment and the beauty and clarity of his prose,but also by the astonishing geographical and histori-cal range of his understanding. He credits both ancientand modern Greeks and Italians for their cultural con-tributions, the Germans for their role in perfectingprinting and cannonry, and the Spanish for their over-seas voyages. But his frame of reference is not con-fined to Europe. He cites the mathematical skills ofancient Egyptians; the military conquests of Mongols,Turks, and Persians (Iranians); Arabs’ contributions toscience and medicine; and China’s contributions tothe development of printing.

The global framework of Le Roy’s analysis led himto conclude that he was living at a turning point inworld history. For long centuries, he argued, the mili-tary might of the Mongols and Turks had threatenedthe peoples of Europe, and Safavid Iran and MamlukEgypt had surpassed any European land in riches.Now the West was in the ascendancy. Europeans’ mili-tary might equaled that of their Middle Eastern neigh-bors. They were amassing new wealth from Asiantrade and American silver. Most of all, the explosion oflearning and knowledge had given Europe intellectualequality and perhaps superiority. Le Roy noted per-ceptively that while printing presses were in use allacross Europe, the Islamic world has closed itself off tothe benefits of this new technology, refusing to allowpresses to be set up and even forbidding the entry ofArabic works about their lands printed in Europe.

As you read this chapter ask yourself thesequestions:

● How perceptive was Loys Le Roy about his own ageand its place in world history?

● How much did learning, printing, and firearms de-fine early modern Europe? (The marine compasswas considered in Chapter 15.)

● Would someone from a lower social station in Eu-rope share Le Roy’s optimism about their era?

CULTURE AND IDEAS

One place to observe the conflict and continuity ofearly modern Europe is in the world of ideas. Theo-

logical controversies broke the religious unity of theLatin Church and contributed to violent wars. A hugewitch scare showed the power of Christian beliefs aboutthe Devil and traditional folklore about malevolent pow-ers. The influence of classical ideas from Greco-Romanantiquity increased among better-educated people, butsome thinkers challenged the authority of the ancients.Their new models of the motion of the planets encour-aged others to challenge traditional social and politicalsystems, with important implications for the period after1750. Each of these events has its own causes, but thetechnology of the printing press enhanced the impactof all.

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In 1500 the papacy, the centralgovernment of Latin Christian-ity, was simultaneously gain-ing stature and suffering from

corruption and dissent. Larger donations and tax re-ceipts let popes fund ambitious construction projects inRome, their capital city. During the sixteenth centuryRome gained fifty-four new churches and other build-ings, which showcased the artistic Renaissance then un-der way. However, the church’s wealth and power alsoattracted ambitious men, some of whose personal livesbecame the source of scandal.

The jewel of the building projects was the magnifi-cent new Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The unprece-dented size and splendor of this church were intendedto glorify God, display the skill of Renaissance artistsand builders, and enhance the standing of the papacy.Such a project required refined tastes and vast sums ofmoney.

ReligiousReformation

The skillful overseer of the design and financing ofthe new Saint Peter’s was Pope Leo X (r. 1513–1521), amember of the wealthy Medici˚ family of Florence, fa-mous for its patronage of the arts. Pope Leo’s artistictaste was superb and his personal life free from scandal,but he was more a man of action than a spiritual leader.One technique that he used to raise funds for the basilicawas to authorize an indulgence—a forgiveness of thepunishment due for past sins, granted by church author-ities as a reward for a pious act such as making a pilgrim-age, saying a particular prayer, or making a donation to areligious cause.

A young professor of sacred scripture, Martin Luther(1483–1546), objected to the way the new indulgencewas preached. As the result of a powerful religious expe-rience, Luther had forsaken money and marriage for amonastic life of prayer, self-denial, and study. He foundpersonal consolation in his own religious quest in pas-sage in Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans that arguedthat salvation came not from “doing certain things” butfrom religious faith. That passage also led Luther to ob-ject to the way the indulgence preachers appeared toemphasize giving money more than the faith behind theact. He wrote to Pope Leo, asking him to stop this abuse,and challenged the preachers to a debate on the theol-ogy of indulgences.

This theological dispute quickly escalated into a con-test between two strong-minded men. Largely ignoringLuther’s theological objections, Pope Leo regarded hisletter as a challenge to papal power and moved to silencethe German monk. During a debate in 1519, a papal rep-resentative led Luther into open disagreement with somechurch doctrines, for which the papacy condemned him.Blocked in his effort to reform the church from within,Luther burned the papal bull (document) of condemna-tion, rejecting the pope’s authority and beginning themovement known as the Protestant Reformation.

Accusing those whom he called “Romanists” (Ro-man Catholics) of relying on “good works,” Luther in-sisted that the only way to salvation was through faith inJesus Christ. He further declared that Christian beliefmust be based on the word of God in the Bible and onChristian tradition, not on the authority of the pope, asCatholics held. Eventually his conclusions led him toabandon his monastic prayers and penances and tomarry a former nun.

Today Roman Catholics and Lutherans have re-solved many of their theological differences, but in thesixteenth century stubbornness on both sides made rec-onciliation impossible. Moreover, Luther’s use of theprinting press to promote his ideas won him the support

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of powerful Germans, who responded to his nationalistportrayal of the dispute as an effort of an Italian pope tobeautify his city with German funds.

Inspired by Luther’s denunciation of the ostentationand corruption of church leaders, other leaders calledfor a return to authentic Christian practices and beliefs.John Calvin (1509–1564), a well-educated Frenchmanwho turned from the study of law to theology after expe-riencing a religious conversion, became a highly influen-tial Protestant leader. As a young man, Calvin publishedThe Institutes of the Christian Religion, a masterful syn-thesis of Christian teachings, in 1535. Much of the Insti-tutes was traditional medieval theology, but Calvin’steaching differed from that of Roman Catholics andLutherans in two respects. First, while agreeing withLuther’s emphasis on faith over works, Calvin deniedthat even human faith could merit salvation. Salvation,said Calvin, was a gift God gave to those He “predes-tined” for salvation. Second, Calvin went farther thanLuther in curtailing the power of a clerical hierarchy andin simplifying religious rituals. Calvinist congregationselected their own governing committees and in time cre-

ated regional and national synods (councils) to regulatedoctrinal issues. Calvinists also displayed simplicity indress, life, and worship. In an age of ornate garments,they wore simple black clothes, avoided ostentatious liv-ing, and worshiped in churches devoid of statues, mostmusical instruments, stained-glass windows, incense,and vestments.

The Reformers appealed to genuine religious senti-ments, but their successes and failures were also due topolitical circumstances (discussed below) and the socialagendas that motivated people to join them. It was nocoincidence that Lutheranism had its greatest appeal toGerman speakers and linguistically related Scandina-vians. Peasants and urban laborers sometimes defiedtheir masters by adopting a different faith. Protestantswere no more inclined than Roman Catholics to ques-tion male dominance in the church and the family, butmost Protestants rejected the medieval tradition of celi-bate priests and nuns and advocated Christian marriagefor all adults.

Shaken by the intensity of the Protestant Reformers’appeal, the Catholic Church undertook its own reforms.

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C H R O N O L O G YPolitics and Culture Environment and Technology Warfare

1500s Spain’s golden century1519 Protestant Reformation

begins1540s Scientific Revolution begins1545 Catholic Reformation begins

Late 1500s Witch-hunts increase

1600s Holland’s golden century

1700s The Enlightenment begins

Mid-1500s Improved windmillsand increasing land drainage inHolland

1590s Dutch develop flyboats;Little Ice Age begins

1600s Depletion of forestsgrowing

1609 Galileo’s astronomicaltelescope

1682 Canal du Midi completed

1750 English mine nearly 5million tons of coal a year

1755 Lisbon earthquake

1526–1571 Ottoman wars

1546–1555 German Wars ofReligion

1562–1598 French Wars ofReligion

1566–1648 Netherlands Revolt

1618–1648 Thirty Years War1642–1648 English Civil War1652–1678 Anglo-Dutch Wars1667–1697 Wars of Louis XIV1683–1697 Ottoman wars1700–1721 Great Northern War1701–1714 War of the Spanish

Succession

1500

1600

1700

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A council that met at the city of Trent, in northern Italy,in three sessions between 1545 and 1563 painstakinglydistinguished proper Catholic doctrines from Protestant“errors.” The council also reaffirmed the supremacy ofthe pope and called for a number of reforms, includingrequiring each bishop to reside in his diocese and eachdiocese to have a theological seminary to train priests.Also important to this Catholic Reformation were theactivities of a new religious order—the Society of Jesus,or “Jesuits,” that Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), a Span-ish nobleman, founded in 1540. Well-educated Jesuitshelped stem the Protestant tide and win back some ad-herents by their teaching and preaching (see Map 16.1).Other Jesuits became important missionaries overseas(see Chapters 17 and 20).

Given the complexity of the issues and the intensityof the emotions that the Protestant Reformation stirred,it is not surprising that violence often flared up. Bothsides persecuted and sometimes executed those of dif-fering views. Bitter “wars of religion,” fought over a mix-ture of religious and secular issues, continued in parts ofwestern Europe until 1648.

Religious differences amongProtestants and between themand Catholics continued togenerate animosity long afterthe first generation of reform-

ers, but from a global perspective European Christiansstill had much in common both in their theology and inthe local folk customs and pre-Christian beliefs that re-mained powerful everywhere in Europe. The widespreadwitch-hunts that Protestants and Catholics undertookin early modern Europe are a dramatic illustration ofthose common beliefs and cultural heritage.

Prevailing European ideas about the natural worldblended two distinct traditions. One was the folkloreabout magic and forest spirits passed down orally frompre-Christian times. The second was the biblical teach-ings of the Christian and Jewish scriptures, heard by allin church and read by growing numbers in vernaculartranslations. In the minds of most people, Christianteachings about miracles, saints, and devils mixed withfolklore.

Like people in other parts of the world, most earlymodern Europeans believed that natural events couldhave supernatural causes. When crops failed or domes-tic animals died unexpectedly, many people blamed un-seen spirits. People also attributed human triumphs andtragedies to supernatural causes. When an earthquakedestroyed much of Lisbon, Portugal’s capital city, in No-vember 1755, for example, both educated and unedu-cated people saw the event as a punishment sent byGod. A Jesuit charged it “scandalous to pretend that theearthquake was just a natural event.” An English Protes-tant leader agreed, comparing Lisbon’s fate with that ofSodom, the city that God destroyed because of the sin-fulness of its citizens, according to the Hebrew Bible.

The extraordinary fear of the power of witches thatswept across northern Europe in the late sixteenth andseventeenth centuries was powerful testimony to beliefin the spiritual causes of natural events. It is estimatedthat secular and church authorities tried over a hundredthousand people—some three-fourths of them women—for practicing witchcraft. Some were acquitted; somerecanted; but more than half were executed—most inProtestant lands. Torture and badgering questions per-suaded many accused witches to confess to castingspells and to describe in vivid detail their encounterswith the Devil and their attendance at nighttime assem-blies of witches.

The trial records make it clear that both the accusersand the accused believed that it was possible for angryand jealous individuals to use evil magic and the powerof the Devil to cause people and domestic animals tosicken and die or to cause crops to wither in the fields.

TraditionalThinking andWitch-Hunts

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Researchers think that at least some of those accused inearly modern Europe may really have tried to use witch-craft to harm their enemies. However, it was the Refor-mation’s focus on the Devil—the enemy of God—as thesource of evil that made such malevolence so serious acrime and may have helped revive older fears of witch-craft.

Modern historians also argue that many accusationsagainst widows and independent-minded women drewon the widespread belief that women not directly underthe control of fathers or husbands were likely to turn toevil. The fact that such women had important roles intending animals and the sick and in childbirth also madethem suspects if death occurred. In parts of the worldwhere belief in witchcraft is still strong, witch-hunts ariseat times of social stress, and people who are marginal-ized by poverty and by the suspicions of others oftenrelish the celebrity that public confession brings. Self-confessed “witches” may even find release from the guiltthey feel for wishing evil on their neighbors.

No single reason can explain the rise in witchcraftaccusations and fears in early modern Europe, but, forboth the accusers and the accused, there are plausibleconnections between the witch-hunts and rising socialtensions, rural poverty, and environmental strains. Farfrom being a bizarre aberration, witch-hunts reflectedthe larger social climate of early modern Europe.

Among the educated, the writ-ings of Greco-Roman antiquityand the Bible were more trustedguides to the natural world

than was folklore. The Renaissance had recovered manymanuscripts of ancient writers, some of which wereprinted and widely circulated. The greatest authority onphysics was Aristotle, a Greek philosopher who taughtthat everything on earth was reducible to four elements.The surface of the earth was composed of the two heavyelements, earth and water. The atmosphere was madeup of two lighter elements, air and fire, which floatedabove the ground. Higher still were the sun, moon, plan-ets, and stars, which, according to Aristotelian physics,were so light and pure that they floated in crystallinespheres. This division between the ponderous, heavyearth and the airy, celestial bodies accorded perfectlywith the commonsense perception that all heavenlybodies revolved around the earth.

The prevailing conception of the universe was also in-fluenced by the tradition derived from the ancient Greekmathematician Pythagoras, who proved the validity of thefamous theorem that still bears his name: in a right trian-gle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the

The ScientificRevolution

squares of the other two sides (a2 + b2 = c2). Pythagoreansattributed to mystical properties the ability of simplemathematical equations to describe physical objects. Theyattached special significance to the simplest (to them per-fect) geometrical shapes: the circle (a point rotated aroundanother point) and the sphere (a circle rotated on its axis).They believed that celestial objects were perfect spheresorbiting the earth in perfectly circular orbits.

In the sixteenth century, however, the careful obser-vations and mathematical calculations of some daringand imaginative European investigators began to chal-lenge these prevailing conceptions of the physical world.These pioneers of the Scientific Revolution demon-strated that the workings of the universe could be ex-plained by natural causes.

Over the centuries, observers of the nighttime skieshad plotted the movements of the heavenly bodies, andmathematicians had worked to fit these observationsinto the prevailing theories of circular orbits. To make allthe evidence fit, they had come up with eighty differentspheres and some ingenious theories to explain themany seemingly irregular movements. Pondering thesecomplications, a Polish monk and mathematician namedNicholas Copernicus (1473–1543) came up with a math-ematically simpler solution: switching the center of thedifferent orbits from the earth to the sun would reducethe number of spheres that were needed.

Copernicus did not challenge the idea that the sun,moon, and planets were light, perfect spheres or thatthey moved in circular orbits. But his placement of thesun, not the earth, at the center of things began a revolu-tion in understanding about the structure of the heavensand about the central place of humans in the universe.To escape the anticipated controversies, Copernicus de-layed the publication of his heliocentric (sun-centered)theory until the end of his life.

Other astronomers, including the Danish TychoBrahe (1546–1601) and his German assistant JohannesKepler (1571–1630), strengthened and improved on Coper-nicus’s model, showing that planets actually move inelliptical, not circular orbits. The most brilliant of theCopernicans was the Italian Galileo Galilei˚ (1564–1642).In 1609 Galileo built a telescope through which he took acloser look at the heavens. Able to magnify distant ob-jects thirty times beyond the power of the naked eye,Galileo saw that heavenly bodies were not the perfectlysmooth spheres of the Aristotelians. The moon, he re-ported in The Starry Messenger (1610), had mountainsand valleys; the sun had spots; other planets had theirown moons. In other words, the earth was not alone inbeing heavy and changeable.

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At first, the Copernican universe found more criticsthan supporters because it so directly challenged notjust popular ideas but also the intellectual synthesis ofclassical and biblical authorities. How, demanded Aris-totle’s defenders, could the heavy earth move withoutproducing vibrations that would shake the planet apart?Is the Bible wrong, asked the theologians, when the Bookof Joshua says that, by God’s command, “the sun [not theearth] stood still . . . for about a whole day” to give theancient Israelites victory in their conquest of Palestine?If Aristotle’s physics was wrong, worried other tradition-alists, would not the theological synthesis built on otherparts of his philosophy be open to question?

Intellectual and religious leaders encouraged politi-cal authorities to suppress the new ideas. Most Protestantleaders, following the lead of Martin Luther, condemnedthe heliocentric universe as contrary to the Bible.Catholic authorities waited longer to act. After all, bothCopernicus and Galileo were Roman Catholics. Coperni-cus had dedicated his book to the pope, and in 1582another pope, Gregory XIII, had used the latest astro-

nomical findings to issue a new and more accurate cal-endar (still used today). Galileo ingeniously argued thatthe conflict between scripture and science was only ap-parent: the word of God revealed in the Bible was ex-pressed in the imperfect language of ordinary people,but in nature God’s truth was revealed more perfectly ina language that could be learned by careful observationand scientific reasoning.

Unfortunately, Galileo also ridiculed those who wereslow to accept his findings, charging that Copernicanideas were “mocked and hooted at by an infinite multi-tude . . . of fools.” Smarting under Galileo’s stinging sarcasm,some Jesuits and other critics got his ideas condemnedby the Roman Inquisition in 1616, which put The StarryMessenger on the Index of Forbidden Books and prohib-ited Galileo from publishing further on the subject. (In1992 the Catholic Church officially retracted its condem-nation of Galileo.)

Despite official opposition, printed books spreadthe new scientific ideas among scholars across Europe.In England, Robert Boyle (1627–1691) used experimentalmethods and a trial-and-error approach to examine theinner workings of chemistry. Through the Royal Society,chartered in London in 1662 to promote knowledge ofthe natural world, Boyle and others became enthusiasticmissionaries of mechanical science and fierce oppo-nents of the Aristotelians.

Meanwhile, English mathematician Isaac Newton(1642–1727) was carrying Galileo’s demonstration thatthe heavens and earth share a common physics to itslogical conclusion. Newton formulated a set of mathe-matical laws that all physical objects obeyed. It was theforce of gravity—not angels—that governed the ellipticalorbits of heavenly bodies. It was gravitation (and the re-sistance of air) that caused cannonballs to fall back toearth. From 1703 until his death Newton served as presi-dent of the Royal Society, using his prestige to promotethe new science that came to bear his name.

As the condemnation of Galileo demonstrates, in1700 most religious and intellectual leaders viewed thenew science with suspicion or outright hostility becauseof the unwanted challenge it posed to established waysof thought. Yet all the principal pioneers of the ScientificRevolution were convinced that scientific discoveriesand revealed religion were not in conflict. At the peak ofhis fame Newton promoted a series of lectures devotedto proving the validity of Christianity. However, by show-ing that the Aristotelians and biblical writers held ideasabout the natural world that were naive and unfactual,these pioneers opened the door to others who used rea-son to challenge a broader range of unquestioned tradi-tions and superstitions. The world of ideas was foreverchanged.

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The advances in scientificthought inspired a few bravesouls to question the reason-ableness of everything from

agricultural methods to laws, religion, and social hierar-chies. The belief that human reason could discover thelaws that governed social behavior and were just as scien-tific as the laws that governed physics energized a move-ment known as the Enlightenment. Like the ScientificRevolution, this movement was the work of a few “en-lightened” individuals, who often faced bitter oppositionfrom the political, intellectual, and religious establish-ment. Leading Enlightenment thinkers became accus-tomed to having their books burned or banned and spentlong periods in exile to escape being imprisoned.

Influences besides the Scientific Revolution affectedthe Enlightenment. The Reformation had aroused manyto champion one creed or another, but partisan bicker-ing and bloodshed led others to doubt the superiority ofany theological position and to recommend tolerationof all religions. The killing of suspected witches alsoshocked many thoughtful people. The leading Frenchthinker Voltaire (1694–1778) declared: “No opinion isworth burning your neighbor for.”

Accounts of cultures in other parts of the world alsoled some European thinkers to question assumptionsabout the superiority of European political institutions,moral standards, and religious beliefs. Reports of Amer-indian life, though romanticized, led some to concludethat those whom they had called savages were in manyways nobler than European Christians. Matteo Ricci, aJesuit missionary to China whose journals made a strongimpression in Europe, contrasted the lack of territorialambition of the Chinese with the constant warfare in theWest and attributed the difference to the fact that Chinawas wisely ruled by educated men whom he called“Philosophers.”

Although many circumstances shaped “enlightened”thinking, the new scientific methods and discoveriesprovided the clearest model for changing European soci-ety. Voltaire posed the issues in these terms: “it would bevery peculiar that all nature, all the planets, should obeyeternal laws” but a human being, “in contempt of theselaws, could act as he pleased solely according to hiscaprice.” The English poet Alexander Pope (1688–1774)made a similar point in verse: “Nature and Nature’s lawslay hidden in night;/God said, ‘Let Newton be’ and allwas light.”

The Enlightenment was more a frame of mind thana coherent movement. Individuals who embraced itdrew inspiration from different sources and promoteddifferent agendas. By 1750 its proponents were clearerabout what they disliked than about what new institu-

The EarlyEnlightenment

tions should be created. Some “enlightened” thinkersthought society could be made to function with the me-chanical orderliness of planets spinning in their orbits.Nearly all were optimistic that—at least in the long run—human beliefs and institutions could be improved. Thisbelief in progress would help foster political and socialrevolutions after 1750, as Chapter 21 recounts.

Despite the enthusiasm the Enlightenment aroused insome circles, it was decidedly unpopular with many abso-lutist rulers and with most clergymen. Europe in 1750 wasneither enlightened nor scientific. It was a place where po-litical and religious divisions, growing literacy, and theprinting press made possible the survival of the new ideasthat profoundly changed life in future centuries.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC LIFE

From a distance European society seemed quite rigid.At the top of the social pyramid a small number of

noble families had privileged access to high offices in thechurch, government, and military and enjoyed manyspecial privileges, including exemption from taxation. Abig step below them were the classes of merchants andprofessionals, who had acquired wealth but no legalprivileges. At the base of the pyramid were the masses,mostly rural peasants and landless laborers, who wereexploited by everyone above them. The subordination ofwomen to men seemed equally rigid.

This model of European society is certainly notwrong, but even contemporaries knew that it was toosimple. A study of English society in 1688, for example,distinguished twenty-five different social categories andpointed up the shocking inequality among them. It ar-gued that less than half the population contributed to in-creasing the wealth of the kingdom, while the rest—themajority—were too poor and unskilled to make any sub-stantial contribution.

Some social mobility did occur, particularly in themiddle. The principal engine of social change was theeconomy, and the places where social change occurredmost readily were the cities. A secondary means ofchange was education—for those who could get it.

Europe’s growing cities werethe products of a changingeconomy. In 1500 Paris was the

only northern European city with over 100,000 inhabi-tants. By 1700 both Paris and London had populationsover 500,000, and twenty other European cities con-tained over 60,000 people.

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The wealth of the cities came from manufacturingand finance, but especially from trade, both within Eu-rope and overseas. The French called the urban class thatdominated these activities the bourgeoisie˚ (burghers,town dwellers). Members of the bourgeoisie devoted longhours to their businesses and poured much of their prof-its back into them or into new ventures. Even so, they hadenough money to live comfortably in large houses withmany servants. In the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-turies wealthier urban classes could buy exotic luxuriesimported from the far corners of the earth—Caribbeanand Brazilian sugar and rum, Mexican chocolate, Virginiatobacco, North American furs, East Indian cotton textilesand spices, and Chinese tea.

The Netherlands provided many good examples ofbourgeois enterprise in the seventeenth century. Manu-facturers and skilled craftsmen turned out a variety ofgoods in the factories and workshops of many cities andtowns in the province of Holland. The highly successfulDutch textile industry concentrated on the profitableweaving, finishing, and printing of cloth, leaving thespinning to low-paid workers elsewhere. Along with finewoolens and linens the Dutch were successfully makingcheaper textiles for mass markets. Other factories in Hol-land refined West Indian sugar, brewed beer from Balticgrain, cut Virginia tobacco, and made imitations of Chi-nese ceramics (see Environment and Technology: EastAsian Porcelain in Chapter 20). Free from the censorshipimposed by political and religious authorities in neigh-boring countries, Holland’s printers published books inmany languages, including manuals with the latest ad-vances in machinery, metallurgy, agriculture, and othertechnical areas. For a small province barely above sealevel, lacking timber and other natural resources, thiswas a remarkable achievement.

Burgeoning from a fishing village to a metropolis ofsome 200,000 by 1700, Amsterdam was Holland’s largestcity and Europe’s major port. The bourgeoisie there andin other cities had developed huge commercial fleetsthat dominated sea trade in Europe and overseas. Dutchships carried over 80 percent of the trade between Spainand northern Europe, even while Spain and the Nether-lands were at war. By one estimate, the Dutch conductedmore than half of all the oceangoing commercial ship-ping in the world in the seventeenth century (for detailssee Chapters 19 and 20).

Amsterdam also served as Europe’s financial center.Seventeenth-century Dutch banks had such a reputa-tion for security that wealthy individuals and govern-ments from all over western Europe entrusted them withtheir money. The banks in turn invested these funds in

real estate, loaned money to factory owners and govern-ments, and provided capital for big business operationsoverseas.

The expansion of maritime trade led to new designsfor merchant ships. In this, too, the Dutch played adominant role. Using timber imported from northernEurope, shipyards in Dutch ports built their own vastfleets and other ships for export. Especially successfulwas the fluit, or “flyboat,” a large-capacity cargo ship de-veloped in the 1590s. It was inexpensive to build andrequired only a small crew. Another successful typeof merchant ship, the heavily armed “East Indiaman,”helped the Dutch establish their supremacy in the In-dian Ocean. The Dutch also excelled at mapmaking (seeEnvironment and Technology: Mapping the World).

Like merchants in the Islamic world, Europe’s mer-chants relied on family and ethnic networks. In additionto families of local origin, many northern European citiescontained merchant colonies from Venice, Florence,Genoa, and other Italian cities. In Amsterdam and Ham-burg lived Jewish merchants who had fled religious per-secution in Iberia. Other Jewish communities expandedout of eastern Europe into the German states, especiallyafter the Thirty Years War. Armenian merchants from Iranwere moving into the Mediterranean and became impor-tant in Russia in the seventeenth century.

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Mapping the World

In 1602 in China the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci printedan elaborate map of the world. Working from maps pro-

duced in Europe and incorporating the latest knowledge gath-ered by European maritime explorers, Ricci introduced twochanges to make the map more appealing to his Chinese hosts.He labeled it in Chinese characters, and he split his map downthe middle of the Atlantic so that China lay in the center. Thisversion pleased Chinese elite, who considered China the “Mid-dle Kingdom” surrounded by lesser states. A copy of Ricci’smap in six large panels adorned the emperor’s Beijing palace.

The stunningly beautiful maps and globes of sixteenth-century Europe were the most complete, detailed, and usefulrepresentations of the earth that any society had ever pro-duced. The best mapmaker of the century was Gerhard Kre-mer, who is remembered as Mercator (the merchant) becausehis maps were so useful to European ocean traders. By incor-porating the latest discoveries and scientific measurements,

Mercator could depict the outlines of the major continentsin painstaking detail, even if their interiors were still largelyunknown to outsiders.

To represent the spherical globe on a flat map, Mercatordrew the lines of longitude as parallel lines. Because such linesactually meet at the poles, Mercator’s projection greatly exag-gerated the size of every landmass and body of water distantfrom the equator. However, Mercator’s rendering offered avery practical advantage: sailors could plot their course bydrawing a straight line between their point of departure andtheir destination. Because of this useful feature, the Mercatorprojection of the world remained in common use until quiterecently. To some extent, its popularity came from the exag-gerated size this projection gave to Europe. Like the Chinese,Europeans liked to think of themselves as at the center ofthings. Europeans also understood their true geographical po-sition better than people in any other part of the world.

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The bourgeoisie sought mutually beneficial allianceswith European monarchs, who welcomed economicgrowth as a means of increasing state revenues. TheDutch government pioneered chartering joint-stockcompanies, giving the Dutch East and West India Com-panies monopolies over trade to the East and West In-dies. France and England chartered companies of theirown. The companies then sold shares to individuals toraise large sums for overseas enterprises while spreadingthe risks (and profits) among many investors (see Chap-ter 18). Investors could buy and sell shares in specializedfinancial markets called stock exchanges, an Italian in-novation transferred to the cities of northwestern Eu-rope in the sixteenth century. The greatest stock marketin the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was theAmsterdam Exchange, founded in 1530. Large insurancecompanies also emerged in this period, and insuringlong voyages against loss became a standard practiceafter 1700.

Governments also undertook large projects to im-prove water transport. The Dutch built numerous canalsfor transport and to drain the lowlands for agriculture.Other governments also financed canals, which includedelaborate systems of locks to raise barges up over hills.One of the most important was the 150–mile (240–kilometer) Canal du Midi in France, built by the Frenchgovernment between 1661 and 1682 to link the Atlanticand the Mediterranean. By the seventeenth century

rulers sought the talents of successful businessmen asadministrators. Jean Baptiste Colbert˚ (1619–1683), LouisXIV’s able minister of finance, was a notable example.

After 1650 the Dutch faced growing competition fromthe English, who were developing their own close associa-tion of business and government. With government sup-port, the English merchant fleet doubled between 1660and 1700, and foreign trade rose by 50 percent. As a result,state revenue from customs duties tripled. In a series ofwars (1652–1678) the English government used its navalmight to break Dutch dominance in overseas trade and toextend England’s colonial empire.

Some successful members of the bourgeoisie in Eng-land and France chose to use their wealth to raise theirsocial status. By retiring from their businesses and buy-ing country estates, they could become members of thegentry. These landowners affected the lifestyle of the oldaristocracy. The gentry loaned money to impoverishedpeasants and to members of the nobility and in time in-creased their ownership of land. Some families soughtaristocratic husbands for their daughters. The old nobil-ity found such alliances attractive because of the largedowries that the bourgeoisie provided. In France a fam-ily could gain the exemption from taxation by living ingentility for three generations or, more quickly, by pur-chasing a title from the king.

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At the other end of societythings were bad, but they hadbeen worse. Serfdom, whichbound men and women to

land owned by a local lord, had been in deep declinesince the great plague of the mid-fourteenth century.The institution did not return in western Europe as thepopulation recovered, but competition for work exerteda downward pressure on wages. However, the develop-ment of large estates raising grain for the cities led to therise of serfdom in eastern Europe for the first time. Therewas also a decline in slavery, which had briefly expandedin southern Europe around 1500 as the result of the At-lantic slave trade from sub-Saharan Africa. After 1600,however, Europeans shipped nearly all African slaves tothe Americas.

There is much truth in the argument that westernEurope continued to depend on unfree labor but kept itat a distance rather than at home. In any event, legalfreedom did little to make a peasant’s life safer and moresecure. The techniques and efficiency of European agri-culture had improved little since 1300. As a result, badyears brought famine; good ones provided only smallsurpluses. Indeed, the condition of the average person inwestern Europe may have worsened between 1500 and1750 as the result of prolonged warfare, environmentalproblems, and adverse economic conditions. In addi-tion, Europeans felt the adverse effects of a century ofrelatively cool climate that began in the 1590s. Duringthis Little Ice Age average temperatures fell only a fewdegrees, but the effects were startling.

By 1700 high-yielding new crops from the Americaswere helping the rural poor avoid starvation. Once grownonly as hedges against famine, potatoes and maize (corn)became staples for the rural poor in the eighteenth cen-tury. Potatoes sustained life in northeastern and CentralEurope and in Ireland, while poor peasants in Italy sub-sisted on maize. The irony is that all of these lands weremajor exporters of wheat, but most of those who plantedand harvested it could not afford to eat it.

Instead, the grain was put on carts, barges, and shipsand carried to the cities of Western Europe. Other fleetsbrought wine from southern to northern Europe. Pari-sians downed 100,000 barrels of wine a year at the end ofthe seventeenth century. Some of the grain was made intobeer, which the poor drank because it was cheaper thanwine. In 1750 Parisian breweries brewed 23 million quarts(22 million liters) of beer for local consumption.

Other rural men made a living as miners, lumber-jacks, and charcoal makers. The expanding iron industryin England provided work for all three, but the high con-sumption of wood fuel for this and other purposescaused serious deforestation. One early-seventeenth-

Peasants andLaborers

century observer lamented: “within man’s memory, itwas held impossible to have any want of wood in Eng-land. But . . . at present, through the great consuming ofwood . . . and the neglect of planting of woods, there is agreat scarcity of wood throughout the whole kingdom.”1

The managers of the hundreds of ironworks in Englandtried to meet the shortages by importing timber andcharcoal from more heavily forested Scandinavian coun-tries and Russia. Eventually, the high price of wood andcharcoal encouraged smelters to use coal as an alterna-tive fuel. England’s coal mining increased twelvefoldfrom 210,000 tons in 1550 to 2,500,000 tons in 1700.From 1709 coke—coal refined to remove impurities—gradually replaced charcoal in the smelting of iron.These new demands drove English coal production tonearly 5 million tons a year by 1750.

France was much more forested than England, butincreasing deforestation there prompted Colbert to pre-dict that “France will perish for lack of wood.” By the lateeighteenth century deforestation had become an issueeven in Sweden and Russia, where iron production hadbecome a major industry. New laws in France and Eng-land designed to protect the forests were largely inspiredby fears of shortages for naval vessels, whose keels re-quired high-quality timbers of exceptional size and par-ticular curvature. Although wood consumption remainedhigh, rising prices encouraged some individuals to planttrees for future harvest.

Everywhere in Europe the rural poor felt the deple-tion of the forests most strongly. For centuries they haddepended on woodlands for abundant supplies of wildnuts and berries, free firewood and building materials,and wild game. Modest improvements in food produc-tion in some places were overwhelmed by populationgrowth. Rural women had long supplemented house-hold incomes by spinning yarn. From the mid-1600s ris-ing wages in towns led textile manufacturers to farmmore and more textile weaving out to rural areas withhigh underemployment. This provided men and womenwith enough to survive on, but the piecework paid verylittle for long hours of tedious labor.

Throughout this period, many rural poor migratedto the towns and cities in hopes of better jobs, but onlysome were successful. Even in the prosperous Dutchtowns, half of the population lived in acute poverty. Au-thorities estimated that those permanent city residentswho were too poor to tax, the “deserving poor,” made up10 to 20 percent of population. That calculation did notinclude the large numbers of “unworthy poor”—recentmigrants from impoverished rural areas, peddlers travel-ing from place to place, and beggars (many with horribledeformities and sores) who tried to survive on charity.Many young women were forced into prostitution to

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survive. There were also many criminals, usually organ-ized in gangs, ranging from youthful pickpockets tohighway robbers.

The pervasive poverty of rural and urban Europeshocked those who were not hardened to it. In about1580 the mayor of the French city of Bordeaux˚ asked agroup of visiting Amerindian chiefs what impressedthem most about European cities. The chiefs are said tohave expressed astonishment at the disparity betweenthe fat, well-fed people and the poor, half-starved menand women in rags. Why, the visitors wondered, did thepoor not grab the rich by the throat or set fire to theirhomes?2

In fact, misery provoked many rebellions in earlymodern Europe. For example, in 1525 peasant rebels inthe Alps attacked both nobles and clergy as representa-tives of the privileged and landowning classes. They hadno love for merchants either, whom they denounced forlending at interest and charging high prices. Rebellionsmultiplied as rural conditions worsened. In southwest-ern France alone some 450 uprisings occurred between1590 and 1715, many of them set off by food shortagesand tax increases. The exemption of the wealthy fromtaxation was a frequent source of complaint. A rebellionin southern France in 1670 began when a mob oftownswomen attacked the tax collector. It quickly spreadto the country, where peasant leaders cried, “Death tothe people’s oppressors!” Authorities dealt severely withsuch revolts and executed or maimed their leaders.

Women’s status and work wereclosely tied to their husbands’and families’. In lands that al-lowed it, a woman in a royal

family might inherit a throne (see Table 16.1, page 423for examples)—in the absence of a male heir. These rareexceptions do not negate the rule that women every-where ranked below men, but one should also not forgetthat her class and wealth defined a woman’s position inlife more than her sex. The wife or daughter of a richman, for example, had a much better life than any poorman. In special cases, a single woman might be secureand respected, as in the case of women from good fami-lies who might head convents of nuns in Catholic coun-tries. But unmarried women and widows were less welloff than their married sisters. A good marriage was thusof great importance.

In contrast to the arranged marriages that prevailedin much of the rest of the world, young men and womenin early modern Europe most often chose their own

Women and the Family

spouses. Ironically, privileged families were more in-clined to control marriage plans than poor ones. Royaland noble families carefully plotted the suitability oftheir children’s marriages in furthering the family’s sta-tus. Bourgeois parents were less likely to force their chil-dren into arranged marriages, but the fact that nearly allfound spouses within their social class strongly suggeststhat the bourgeoisie promoted marriages that furtheredtheir business alliances.

Europeans also married later than people in otherlands. The sons and daughters of craftworkers and thepoor had to delay marriage until they could afford to liveon their own. Young men had to serve long apprentice-ships to learn trades. Young women also had to work—helping their parents, as domestic servants, or in someother capacity—to save money for the dowry they wereexpected to bring into the marriage. A dowry was themoney and household goods—the amount varied by so-cial class—that enabled a young couple to begin mar-riage independent of their parents. The typical groom inwestern and central Europe could not hope to marry be-fore his late twenties, and his bride would be a few yearsyounger—in contrast to the rest of the world, wherepeople usually married in their teens. Marriage alsocame late in bourgeois families, in part to allow youngmen to complete their education.

Besides enabling young people to be independent oftheir parents, the late age of marriage in early modernEurope also held down the birthrate and thus limitedfamily size. Even so, about one-tenth of the births in acity were to unmarried women, often servants, who gen-erally left their infants on the doorsteps of churches,convents, or rich families. Despite efforts to raise suchabandoned children, many perished. Delayed marriagealso had links to the existence of public brothels, whereyoung men could satisfy their lusts in cheap and imper-sonal encounters with unfortunate young women, oftennewly arrived from impoverished rural villages. Never-theless, rape was a common occurrence, usually perpe-trated by gangs of young men who attacked youngwomen rumored to be free with their favors. Some histo-rians believe that such gang rapes reflected poor youngmen’s jealousy at older men’s easier access to women.

Bourgeois parents were very concerned that theirchildren have the education and training necessary forsuccess. They promoted the establishment of municipalschools to provide a solid education, including Latinand perhaps Greek, for their sons, who were then sentabroad to learn modern languages or to a university toearn a law degree. Legal training was useful for conduct-ing business and was a prerequisite for obtaining gov-ernment judgeships and treasury positions. Daughterswere less likely to be groomed for business careers, but

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wives often helped their husbands as bookkeepers andsometimes inherited businesses.

The fact that most schools barred female students,as did most guild and professions, explains why womenwere not prominent in the cultural Renaissance, theReformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlight-enment. Yet from a global perspective, women in earlymodern Europe were more prominent in the creation ofculture than were women in most other parts of theworld. Recent research has brought to light the existenceof a number of successful women who were painters,musicians, and writers. Indeed, the spread of learning,the stress on religious reading, and the growth of busi-ness likely meant that Europe led the world in female lit-eracy. In a period when most men were illiterate, thenumber of literate women was small, and only women inwealthier families might have a good education. Fromthe late 1600s some wealthy French women ran intellec-tual gatherings in their homes. Many more were promi-nent letter writers. Galileo’s daughter, Maria CelesteGalilei, carried on a detailed correspondence with herfather from the confinement of her convent, whose wallsshe had taken a religious vow never to leave.

POLITICAL INNOVATIONS

The monarchs of early modern Europe occupied theapex of the social order, were arbitrators of the intel-

lectual and religious conflicts of their day, and had im-portant influences on the economic life of their realms.For these reasons an overview of political life incorpo-rates all the events previously described in this chapter.In addition, monarchs’ political agendas introducednew elements of conflict and change.

The effort to create a European empire failed, butmonarchs succeeded in achieving a higher degree of po-litical centralization within their separate kingdoms. Thefrequent civil and international conflicts of this erasometimes promoted cooperation, but they often en-couraged innovation. Leadership and success passedfrom Spain to the Netherlands and then to England andFrance. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the key po-litical technology was cannonry.

Political diversity characterizedEurope. City-states and princi-palities abounded, either in-dependently or bound into

loose federations, of which the Holy Roman Empire ofthe German heartland was the most notable example.

StateDevelopment

In western Europe the strong monarchies that hademerged were acquiring national identities. Dreamsof a European empire comparable to those of Asiaremained strong, although efforts to form one werefrustrated.

Dynastic ambitions and historical circumstancescombined to favor and then block the creation of a pow-erful empire in the early sixteenth century. In 1519electors of the Holy Roman Empire chose Charles V(r. 1519–1556) to be the new emperor. Like his predeces-sors for three generations, Charles belonged to the pow-erful Habsburg˚ family of Austria, but he had recentlyinherited the Spanish thrones of Castile and Aragon.With the vast resources of all these offices behind him(see Map 16.2), Charles hoped to centralize his imperialpower and lead a Christian coalition to halt the advanceinto southeastern Europe of the Ottoman Empire, whoseMuslim rulers already controlled most of the Middle Eastand North Africa.

Charles and his Christian allies eventually haltedthe Ottomans at the gates of Vienna in 1529, althoughOttoman attacks continued on and off until 1697. ButCharles’s efforts to forge his several possessions into Eu-rope’s strongest state failed. King Francis I of France,who had lost to Charles in the election for Holy RomanEmperor, openly supported the Muslim Turks to weakenhis rival. In addition, the princes of the Holy Roman Em-pire’s many member states were able to use Luther’s reli-gious Reformation to frustrate Charles’s efforts to reducetheir autonomy. Swayed partly by Luther’s appeals toGerman nationalism, many German princes opposedCharles’s defense of Catholic doctrine in the imperialDiet (assembly).

After decades of bitter squabbles turned to openwarfare in 1546 (the German Wars of Religion), Charles Vfinally gave up his efforts at unification, abdicated con-trol of his various possessions to different heirs, and re-tired to a monastery. By the Peace of Augsburg (1555), herecognized the princes’ right to choose whether Catholi-cism or Lutheranism would prevail in their particularstates, and he allowed them to keep the church landsthey had seized before 1552. The triumph of religious di-versity had derailed Charles’s plan for centralizing au-thority in central Europe and put off German politicalunification for three centuries.

Meanwhile, the rulers of Spain, France, and Englandwere building a more successful program of politicalunification based on political centralization and reli-gious unity. The most successful rulers reduced the au-tonomy of the church and the nobility in their states,while making them part of a unified national structure

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with the monarch at its head (see Diversity and Domi-nance: Political Craft and Craftiness). The cooption ofthe church in the sixteenth century was stormy, but theoutcome was clear. Bringing the nobles and other pow-erful interests into a centralized political system tooklonger and led to more diverse outcomes.

The rulers of Spain and Francesuccessfully defended the Cath-olic tradition against Protestant

challenges. Following the pattern used by his predeces-sors to suppress Jewish and Muslim practices, KingPhilip II of Spain used an ecclesiastical court, the

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P olitical power was becoming more highly concentratedin early modern Europe, but absolute dominance was

more a goal than a reality. Whether subject to constitutionalchecks or not, rulers were very concerned with creating andmaintaining good relations with their more powerful sub-jects. Their efforts to manipulate public opinion and percep-tions have much in common with the efforts of modernpoliticians to manage their “image.”

A diplomat and civil servant in the rich and powerful Ital-ian city-state of Florence, Niccolò Machiavelli, is best knownfor his book The Prince (1532). This influential essay on theproper exercise of political power has been interpreted ascynical by some and as supremely practical and realistic byothers. Because Machiavelli did not have a high opinion ofthe intelligence and character of most people, he urgedrulers to achieve obedience by fear and deception. But healso suggested that genuine mercy, honesty, and piety maybe superior to feigned virtue.

OF CRUELTY AND CLEMENCY, AND WHETHER IT IS BETTER TO BE LOVED THAN FEARED. . . It will naturally be answered that it would be desirable tobe both the one and the other; but, as it is difficult to beboth at the same time, it is much safer to be feared than tobe loved, when you have to choose between the two. For itmay be said of men in general that they are ungrateful andfickle, dissemblers, avoiders of danger, and greedy of gain. Solong as you shower benefits on them, they are all yours; theyoffer you their blood, their substance, their lives, and theirchildren, provided the necessity for it is far off; but when itis near at hand, then they revolt. And the prince who relieson their words, without having otherwise provided for his se-curity is ruined; for friendships that are won by rewards, notby greatness and nobility of soul, although deserved, yet arenot real, and cannot be depended upon in time of adversity.

Besides, men have less hesitation in offending one whomakes himself beloved than one who makes himself feared;for love holds by a bond of obligation which, as mankind isbad, is broken on every occasion whenever it is for the inter-est of the obligated party to break it. But fear holds by theapprehension of punishment, which never leaves men. A

prince, however, should make himself feared in such a man-ner that, if he has not won the affection of his people, heshall at least not incur their hatred. . . .

IN WHAT MANNER PRINCES SHOULD KEEP THEIR FAITHIt must be evident to every one that it is more praiseworthyfor a prince always to maintain good faith, and practice in-tegrity rather than craft and deceit. And yet the experience ofour own times has shown those princes have achieved greatthings who made small account of good faith, and who un-derstood by cunning to circumvent the intelligence of others;and that in the end they got the better of those whose ac-tions were dictated by loyalty and good faith. You must know,therefore, that there are two ways of carrying on a struggle;one by law and the other by force. The first is practiced bymen, and the other by animals; and as the first is often insuf-ficient, it becomes necessary to resort to the second.

. . . If men were altogether good, this advice would bewrong; but since they are bad and will not keep faith withyou, you need not keep faith with them. Nor will a prince everbe short of legitimate excuses to give color to his breaches offaith. Innumerable modern examples could be given of this;and it could easily be shown how many treaties of peace, andhow many engagements, have been made null and void bythe faithlessness of princes; and he who has best known howto play the fox has ever been the most successful.

But it is necessary that the prince should know how tocolor this nature well, and how to be a great hypocrite anddissembler. For men are so simple, and yield so much to im-mediate necessity, that the deceiver will never lack dupes. Iwill mention one of the most recent examples. [Pope]Alexander VI never did nor ever thought of anything but todeceive, and always found a reason for doing so . . . and yethe was always successful in his deceits, because he knew theweakness of men in that particular.

It is not necessary, however, for a prince to possess all theabove-mentioned qualities; but it is essential that he shouldat least seem to have them. I will even venture to say, that tohave and practice them constantly is pernicious, but to seemto have them is useful. For instance, a prince should seem tobe merciful, faithful, humane, religious, and upright, and

D I V E R S I T Y A N D D O M I N A N C E

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should even be so in reality; but he should have his mind sotrained that, when occasion requires it, he may know how tochange to the opposite. And it must be understood that aprince, and especially one who has but recently acquired hisstate, cannot perform all those things which cause men to beesteemed as good; he being obligated, for the sake of main-taining his state, to act contrary to humanity, charity, and re-ligion. And therefore, it is necessary that he should have aversatile mind, capable of changing readily, according as thewinds and changes of fortune bid him; and, as has been saidabove, not to swerve from the good if possible, but to knowhow to resort to evil if necessity demands it.

A prince then should be very careful never to allow any-thing to escape his lips that does not abound in the above-mentioned five qualities, so that to see and to hear him hemay seem all charity, integrity, and humanity, all uprightnessand all piety. And more than all else is it necessary for a princeto seem to possess the last quality; for mankind in generaljudge more by what they see than by what they feel, everyone being capable of the former, and few of the latter. Every-body sees what you seem to be, but few really feel what youare; and those few dare not oppose the opinion of the many,who are protected by the majority of the state; for the ac-tions of all men, and especially those of princes, are judged bythe result, where there is no other judge to whom to appeal.

A prince should look mainly to the successful mainte-nance of his state. For the means which he employs for thiswill always be counted honorable, and will be praised byeverybody; for the common people are always taken in byappearances and by results, and it is the vulgar mass thatconstitutes the world.

Because, as Machiavelli argued, appearances count for asmuch in the public arena as realities, it is difficult to judge

whether rulers’ statements expressed their real feelings andbeliefs or what may have been the most expedient to say atthe moment. An example is this speech Queen Elizabeth ofEngland made at the end of November 1601 to Parliamentafter a particularly difficult year. One senior noble had led arebellion and was subsequently executed. Parliament waspressing for extended privileges. Having gained the throne in1558 after many difficulties (including a time in prison), thesixty-eight-year-old queen had much experience in the lan-guage and wiles of politics and was well aware of the impor-tance of public opinion. Reprinted many times, the speechbecame famous as “The Golden Speech of Queen Elizabeth.”

I do assure you, there is no prince that loveth his subjectsbetter, or whose love can countervail our love. There is nojewel, be it of never so rich a price, which I set before thisjewel: I mean your love. For I do esteem it more than anytreasure or riches; for that we know how to prize, but loveand thanks I count unvaluable.

And, though God has raised me high, yet this I count theglory of my crown, that I have reigned with your loves. Thismakes me that I do not so much rejoice that God hath mademe to be a Queen, as to be Queen over so thankful a people.

Therefore, I have cause to wish nothing more than to con-tent the subjects; and that is the duty I owe. Neither do I de-sire to live longer days than I may see your prosperity; andthat is my only desire.

And as I am that person that still (yet under God) has de-livered you, so I trust, by the almighty power of God, that Ishall be His instrument to preserve you from every peril, dis-honour, shame, tyranny, and oppression. . . .

Of myself I must say this: I was never any greedy scrapinggrasper, nor a straight, fast-holding prince, nor yet a waster.My heart was never set on worldly goods, but only for mysubjects’ good. What you bestow on me, I will not hoard it up,but receive it to bestow on you again. Yea, mine own proper-ties I count yours, and to be expended for your good. . . .

To be a king and wear a crown is a thing more glorious tothem that see it, than it is pleasing to them that bear it. Formyself, I was never so much enticed with the glorious nameof king, or royal authority of a queen, as delighted that Godmade me his instrument to maintain his truth and glory, andto defend this Kingdom (as I said) from peril, dishonour, tyr-anny and oppression.

There will never Queen sit in my seat with more zeal to mycountry, care for my subjects, and that sooner with willing-ness will venture her life for your good and safety than my-self. For it is not my desire to live nor reign longer than mylife and reign shall be for your good. And though you havehad and may have many more princes more mighty and wisesitting in this state, yet you never had or shall have any thatwill be more careful and loving.

Shall I ascribe anything to myself and my sexly weakness?I were not worthy to live then; and of all, most unworthy ofthe great mercies I have had from God, who has even yetgiven me a heart, which never feared foreign of home en-emy. I speak to give God the praise . . . That I should speak forany glory, God forbid.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS1. Do you find Machiavelli’s advice to be cynical or realistic?2. Describe how a member of Parliament might have re-

sponded to Queen Elizabeth’s declarations of her con-cern for the welfare of her people above all else.

3. Can a ruler be sincere and manipulative at the same time?

Source: From The Historical, Political, and Diplomatic Writings of Niccolo Machiavelli,trans. Christian E. Detmold (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1891), II: 54–59,and Heywood Townshend, Historical Collections, or an Exact Account of the Proceed-ings of the Last Four Parliaments of Q. Elizabeth (London: Basset, Crooke, and Cade-man, 1680), 263–266.

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Spanish Inquisition, to bring into line those who resistedhis authority. Suspected Protestants, as well as critics ofthe king, found themselves accused of heresy, an offensepunishable by death. Even those who were acquitted ofthe charge learned not to oppose the king again.

In France the Calvinist opponents of the Valois rulersgained the military advantage in the French Wars of Reli-gion (1562–1598), but in the interest of forging lastingunity, their leader Prince Henry of Navarre then em-braced the Catholic faith of the majority of his subjects.In their embrace of a union of church and state, the newBourbon king, Henry IV, his son King Louis XIII, and hisgrandson King Louis XIV were as supportive of theCatholic Church as their counterparts in Spain. In 1685Louis XIV even revoked the Edict of Nantes˚, by whichhis grandfather had granted religious freedom to hisProtestant supporters in 1598.

In England King Henry VIII had initially been astrong defender of the papacy against Lutheran criti-cism. But when Henry failed to obtain a papal annul-ment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, who hadnot furnished him with a male heir, he challenged thepapacy’s authority over the church in his kingdom.Henry had the English archbishop of Canterbury annulthe marriage in 1533. The breach with Rome was sealedthe next year when Parliament made the Englishmonarch head of the Church of England.

Like many Protestant rulers, Henry used his author-ity to disband monasteries and convents and seize theirlands. He gave the lands to his powerful allies and soldsome to pay for his new navy. However, under Henryand his successors the new Anglican church movedaway from Roman Catholicism in ritual and theologymuch less than was wanted by English Puritans (Calvin-ists who wanted to “purify” the Anglican church ofCatholic practices and beliefs). In 1603 the first Stuartking, James I, dismissed a Puritan petition to eliminatebishops with the statement “No bishops, no king”—a re-minder of the essential role of the church in supportingroyal power.

Over the course of the seven-teenth century, the rulers ofEngland and France wentthrough some very intense con-flicts with their leading sub-

jects over the limits of royal authority. Religion was neverabsent as an issue in these struggles, but the differentconstitutional outcomes they produced were of moresignificance in the long run.

Monarchies inEngland andFrance

So as to evade any check on his power, King CharlesI of England (see Table 16.1) ruled for eleven years with-out summoning Parliament, his kingdom’s representa-tive body. Lacking Parliament’s consent to new taxes, heraised funds by coercing “loans” from wealthy subjectsand applying existing tax laws more broadly. Then in1640 a rebellion in Scotland forced him to summon aParliament to approve new taxes to pay for an army.Noblemen and churchmen sat in the House of Lords.Representatives from the towns and counties sat in theHouse of Commons. Before it would authorize newtaxes, Parliament insisted on strict guarantees that theking would never again ignore the body’s traditionalrights. These King Charles refused to grant. When he or-dered the arrest of his leading critics in the House ofCommons in 1642, he plunged the kingdom into theEnglish Civil War.

Charles suffered defeat on the battlefield, but still re-fused to compromise. In 1649 a “Rump” Parliamentpurged of his supporters ordered him executed and re-placed the monarchy with a republic under the Puritangeneral Oliver Cromwell. During his rule, Cromwell ex-panded England’s presence overseas and imposed firmcontrol over Ireland and Scotland, but he was as unwill-ing as the Stuart kings to share power with Parliament.After his death Parliament restored the Stuart line, andfor a time it was unclear which side had won the war.

However, when King James II refused to respect Par-liament’s rights and had his heir baptized a RomanCatholic, the leaders of Parliament forced James into ex-ile in the bloodless Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Billof Rights of 1689 specified that Parliament had to becalled frequently and had to consent to changes in lawsand to the raising of an army in peacetime. Another lawreaffirmed the official status of the Church of Englandbut extended religious toleration to the Puritans.

A similar struggle in France produced a different out-come. There the Estates General represented the tradi-tional rights of the clergy, the nobility, and the towns (thatis, the bourgeoisie). The Estates General was able to as-sert its rights during the sixteenth-century French Wars ofReligion, when the monarchy was weak. But thereafterthe Bourbon monarchs generally ruled without having tocall it into session. They avoided financial crises by moreefficient tax collection and by selling appointments tohigh government offices. In justification they claimedthat the monarch had absolute authority to rule in God’sname on earth.

Louis XIV’s gigantic new palace at Versailles˚ symbol-ized the French monarch’s triumph over the traditionalrights of the nobility, clergy, and towns. Capable of hous-

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ing ten thousand people and surrounded by elaboratelylandscaped grounds and parks, the palace can be seen asa sort of theme park of royal absolutism. Elaborate cere-monies and banquets centered on the king kept the no-bles who lived at Versailles away from plotting rebellion.According to one of them, the duke of Saint-Simon˚, “noone was so clever in devising petty distractions” as theking.

The balance of powers in the English model would bewidely admired in later times. Until well after 1750 mostEuropean rulers admired and imitated the centralizedpowers and absolutist claims of the French. Some wentso far as to build imitations of the Versailles palace. Thechecks and balances of the English model had a less im-mediate effect. In his influential Second Treatise of CivilGovernment (1690), the English political philosopherJohn Locke (1632–1704) disputed monarchial claims toabsolute authority by divine right. Rather, he argued,rulers derived their authority from the consent of thegoverned and, like everyone else, were subject to the law.If monarchs overstepped the law, Locke argued, citizenshad not only the right but also the duty to rebel. The laterconsequences of this idea are considered in Chapter 21.

In addition to the bitter civilwars that pounded the HolyRoman Empire, France, andEngland, European states en-

gaged in numerous international conflicts. Warfare wasalmost constant in early modern Europe (see theChronology at the beginning of the chapter). In theirpursuit of power monarchs expended vast sums ofmoney and caused widespread devastation and death.The worst of the international conflicts, the Thirty YearsWar (1618–1648), caused long-lasting depopulation andeconomic decline in much of the Holy Roman Empire.

However, the wars also produced dramatic improve-ments in the skill of European armed forces and in theirweaponry that arguably made them the most powerfulin the world. The numbers of men in arms increasedsteadily throughout the early modern period. Frenchforces, for example grew from about 150,000 in 1630 to400,000 by the early eighteenth century. Even smallerEuropean states built up impressive armies. Sweden,with under a million people, had one of the finest andbest-armed military forces in seventeenth-century Eu-rope. Though the country had fewer than 2 million in-habitants in 1700, Prussia’s splendid army made it one ofEurope’s major powers.

Warfare andDiplomacy

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Spain France England/Great Britain

aDied a violent death. bWas overthrown.

Table 16.1 Rulers in Early Modern Western Europe

Habsburg Dynasty

Charles I (1516–1556) (Holy Roman Emperor Charles V)

Philip II (1556–1598)

Philip III (1598–1621)Philip IV (1621–1665)Charles II (1665–1700)

Bourbon Dynasty

Philip V (1700–1746)

Ferdinand VI (1746–1759)

Valois Dynasty

Francis I (1515–1547)Henry II (1547–1559)Francis II (1559–1560)Charles IX (1560–1574)Henry III (1574–1589)

Bourbon Dynasty

Henry IV (1589–1610)a

Louis XIII (1610–1643)Louis XIV (1643–1715)

Louis XV (1715–1774)

Tudor Dynasty

Henry VIII (1509–1547)Edward VI (1547–1553)Mary I (1553–1558)Elizabeth I (1558–1603)

Stuart Dynasty

James I (1603–1625)Charles I (1625–1649)a, b

(Puritan Republic, 1649–1660)Charles II (1660–1685)James II (1685–1688)b

William III (1689–1702)and Mary II (1689–1694)

Anne (1702–1714)

Hanoverian Dynasty

George I (1714–1727)George II (1727–1760)

Saint-Simon (san see-MON)

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Larger armies required more effective commandstructures. In the words of a modern historian, Europeanarmies “evolved . . . the equivalent of a central nervoussystem, capable of activating technologically differen-tiated claws and teeth.”3 New signaling techniquesimproved control of battlefield maneuvers. Frequentmarching drills trained troops to obey orders instantlyand gave them a close sense of comradeship. To defendthemselves cities built new fortifications able to with-stand cannon bombardments. Each state tried to outdoits rivals by improvements in military hardware, butbattles between evenly matched armies often ended instalemates that prolonged the wars. Victory increasinglydepended on naval superiority.

Only England did not maintain a standing army inpeacetime, but England’s rise as a sea power had begununder King Henry VIII, who spent heavily on ships andpromoted a domestic iron-smelting industry to supplycannon. The Royal Navy also copied innovative ship de-

signs from the Dutch in the second half of the seven-teenth century. By the early eighteenth century the RoyalNavy surpassed the rival French fleet in numbers. Bythen, England had merged with Scotland to becomeGreat Britain, annexed Ireland, and built a North Ameri-can empire.

Although France was Europe’s most powerful state,Louis XIV’s efforts to expand its borders and dominancewere increasingly frustrated by coalitions of the othergreat powers. In a series of eighteenth-century wars be-ginning with the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), the combination of Britain’s naval strength andthe land armies of its Austrian and Prussian allies wasable to block French expansionist efforts and preventthe Bourbons from uniting the thrones of France andSpain.

This defeat of the French monarchy’s empire-buildingefforts illustrated the principle of balance of power ininternational relations: the major European states formed

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temporary alliances to prevent any one state from be-coming too powerful. Russia emerged as a major powerin Europe after its modernized armies defeated Swedenin the Great Northern War (1700–1721). During the nexttwo centuries, though adhering to four different branchesof Christianity, the great powers of Europe—CatholicFrance, Anglican Britain, Catholic Austria, Lutheran Prus-sia, and Orthodox Russia (see Map 16.3)—maintained aneffective balance of power in Europe by shifting theiralliances for geopolitical rather than religious reasons.These pragmatic alliances were the first successful ef-forts at international peacekeeping.

To pay the extremely heavymilitary costs of their wars, Eu-ropean rulers had to increase

their revenues. The most successful of them after 1600promoted mutually beneficial alliances with the risingcommercial elite. Both sides understood that tradethrived where government taxation and regulation werenot excessive, where courts enforced contracts and col-lected debts, and where military power stood ready toprotect overseas expansion by force when necessary.

Spain, sixteenth-century Europe’s mightiest state, il-lustrates how the financial drains of an aggressive militarypolicy and the failure to promote economic developmentcould lead to decline. Expensive wars against the Ot-

Paying the Piper

tomans, northern European Protestants, and rebelliousDutch subjects caused the treasury to default on its debtsfour times during the reign of King Philip II. Moreover, theSpanish rulers’ concerns for religious uniformity and tra-ditional aristocratic privilege further undermined thecountry’s economy. In the name of religious uniformitythey expelled Jewish merchants, persecuted Protestantdissenters, and forced tens of thousands of skilled farmersand artisans into exile because of their Muslim ancestry.In the name of aristocratic privilege the 3 percent of thepopulation that controlled 97 percent of the land in 1600was exempt from taxation, while high sales taxes discour-aged manufacturing.

For a time, vast imports of silver and gold bullionfrom Spain’s American colonies filled the governmenttreasury. These bullion shipments also contributed to se-vere inflation (rising prices), worst in Spain but badthroughout the rest of western Europe as well. A Spanishsaying captured the problem: American silver was likerain on the roof—it poured down and washed away. Hugedebts for foreign wars drained bullion from Spain to itscreditors. More wealth flowed out to purchase manufac-tured goods and even food in the seventeenth century.

The rise of the Netherlands as an economic powerstemmed from opposite policies. The Spanish crown hadacquired these resource-poor but commercially success-ful provinces as part of Charles V’s inheritance. But KingPhilip II’s decision to impose Spain’s ruinously heavy

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sales tax and enforce Catholic orthodoxy drove theDutch to revolt in 1566 and again in 1572. If successful,those measures would have discouraged business anddriven away the Calvinists, Jews, and others who wereessential to Dutch prosperity. The Dutch fought withskill and ingenuity, raising and training an army and anavy that were among the most effective in Europe. By1609 Spain was forced to agree to a truce that recognizedthe autonomy of the northern part of the Netherlands. In1648, after eight decades of warfare, the independenceof these seven United Provinces of the Free Netherlands(their full name) became final.

Rather than being ruined by the long war, the UnitedNetherlands emerged as the dominant commercialpower in Europe and the world’s greatest trading nation.During the seventeenth century, the wealth of the Nether-lands multiplied. This economic success owed much to adecentralized government. During the long struggleagainst Spain, the provinces united around the prince ofOrange, their sovereign, who served as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. But in economic matters eachprovince was free to pursue its own interests. The mar-itime province of Holland grew rich by favoring com-mercial interests.

After 1650 the Dutch faced growing competitionfrom the English, who were developing their own closeassociation of business and government. In a series ofwars (1652–1678) England used its naval might to breakDutch dominance in overseas trade and to extend itsown colonial empire. With government support, the Eng-lish merchant fleet doubled between 1660 and 1700,and foreign trade rose by 50 percent. As a result, staterevenue from customs duties tripled. During the eigh-teenth century Britain’s trading position strengthenedstill more.

The debts run up by the Anglo-Dutch Wars helpedpersuade the English monarchy to greatly enlarge the gov-ernment’s role in managing the economy. The outcomehas been called a “financial revolution.” The governmentincreased revenues by taxing the formerly exempt landedestates of the aristocrats and by collecting taxes directly.Previously, private individuals known as tax farmers hadadvanced the government a fixed sum of money; in returnthey could keep whatever money they were able to collectfrom taxpayers. To secure cash quickly for warfare andother emergencies and to reduce the burden of debtsfrom earlier wars, England also followed the Dutch lead increating a central bank, from which the government wasable to obtain long-term loans at low rates.

The French government was also developing its na-tional economy, especially under Colbert. He streamlinedtax collection, promoted French manufacturing and ship-ping by imposing taxes on foreign goods, and improved

transportation within France itself. Yet the power of thewealthy aristocrats kept the French government from fol-lowing England’s lead in taxing wealthy landowners, col-lecting taxes directly, and securing low-cost loans. Nor didFrance succeed in managing its debt as efficiently as Eng-land. (The role of governments in promoting overseastrade is further discussed in Chapter 18.)

CONCLUSION

European historians have used the word revolution todescribe many different changes taking place in Eu-

rope between 1500 and 1750. The expansion of trade hasbeen called a commercial revolution, the reform of statespending a financial revolution, and the changes inweapons and warfare a military revolution. We have alsoencountered a scientific revolution and the religious rev-olution of the Reformation.

These important changes in government, economy,society, and thought were parts of a dynamic processthat began in the later Middle Ages and led to even big-ger industrial and political revolutions before the eigh-teenth century was over. Yet the years from 1500 to 1750were not simply—perhaps not even primarily—an age ofprogress for Europe. For many, the ferocious competi-tion of European armies, merchants, and ideas was awrenching experience. The growth of powerful states ex-tracted a terrible price in death, destruction, and misery.The Reformation brought greater individual choice inreligion but widespread religious persecution as well. In-dividual women rose or fell with their social class, butfew gained equality with men. The expanding economybenefited members of the emerging merchant elite andtheir political allies, but most Europeans became worseoff as prices rose faster than wages. New scientific andenlightened ideas ignited new controversies long beforethey yielded any tangible benefits.

The historical significance of this period of Euro-pean history is clearer when viewed in a global context.What stands out are the powerful and efficient Europeanarmies, economies, and governments, which larger stateselsewhere in the world feared, envied, and sometimesimitated. From a global perspective, the balance of polit-ical and economic power was shifting slowly, but inex-orably, in the Europeans’ favor. In 1500 the Ottomansthreatened Europe. By 1750, as the remaining chaptersof Part Five detail, Europeans had brought the world’sseas and a growing part of its land and people undertheir control. No single group of Europeans accom-plished this. The Dutch eclipsed the pioneering Portu-guese and Spanish; then the English and French bested

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the Dutch. Competition, too, was a factor in Europeansuccess.

Other changes in Europe during this period had nogreat overseas significance at the time. The new ideas ofthe Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment werestill of minor importance. Their full effects in furtheringEuropeans’ global dominion were felt after 1750, as PartsSix and Seven explore.

■ Key TermsRenaissance (European) stock exchange

papacy gentry

indulgence Little Ice Age

Protestant Reformation deforestation

Catholic Reformation Holy Roman Empire

witch-hunt Habsburg

Scientific Revolution English Civil War

Enlightenment Versailles

bourgeoisie balance of power

joint-stock company

■ Suggested ReadingOverviews of this period include Euan Cameron, ed., EarlyModern Europe (1999); H. G. Koenigsberger, Early Modern Eu-rope: Fifteen Hundred to Seventeen Eighty-Nine (1987); andJoseph Bergin, The Short Oxford History of Europe: The Seven-teenth Century (2001). Global perspectives can be found in Fer-nand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century,trans. Siân Reynolds, 3 vols. (1979), and Immanuel Wallerstein,The Modern World-System, vol. 2, Mercantilism and the Consol-idation of the European World-Economy, 1600–1750 (1980).

Technological and environmental changes are the focus ofGeoffrey Parker, Military Revolution: Military Innovation andthe Rise of the West, 1500–1800, 2d ed. (1996); William H. McNeill,The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society SinceA.D. 1000 (1982); Robert Greenhalgh Albion, Forests and SeaPower: The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652–1862 (1965);Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine:A History of Climate Since the Year 1000, trans. Barbara Bray(1971); and Brian Fagan, The Little Ice Age: How Climate MadeHistory, 1300–1850 (1988). Robert C. Allen, Enclosure and theYeoman: The Agricultural Development of the South Midlands,1450–1850 (1992), focuses on England.

Steven Stapin, The Scientific Revolution (1998), and Hugh Kear-ney, Science and Change, 1500–1700 (1971) are accessible introduc-tions. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution, 3ded. (1996), and A. R. Hall, The Scientific Revolution, 1500–1800:

The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude, 2d ed. (1962), areclassic studies. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature:Women,Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (1980), tries to combineseveral broad perspectives. The Sciences in Enlightened Europe,ed. W. Clark, J. Golinski, and S. Schaffer (1999), examines par-ticular topics in a sophisticated way. Dorinda Outram, The En-lightenment (1995), provides a recent summary of research.

Excellent introductions to social and economic life are GeorgeHuppert, After the Black Death: A Social History of Early ModernEurope (1986), and Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revo-lution: European Society and Economy, 1000–1700, 2d ed.(1980). Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe(1978), offers a broad treatment of nonelite perspectives, asdoes Robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Eu-rope (1994). For more economic detail see Robert S. DuPlessis,Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (1997); My-ron P. Gutmann, Toward the Modern Economy: Early Industryin Europe, 1500–1800 (1988); and Carlo M. Cipolla, ed., TheFontana Economic History of Europe, vol. 2, The Sixteenth andSeventeenth Centuries (1974).

Topics of women’s history are examined by Merry Wiesner,Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 2d ed. (2000);Bonie S. Anderson and Judith Zinsser, A History of Their Own:Women in Europe, vol. II, rev. ed. (2000); and Monica Chojnackaand Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Ages of Woman, Ages of Man(2002). An excellent place to begin examining the complex sub-ject of witchcraft is Brian Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Mod-ern Europe, 2d ed. (1995); other up-to-date perspectives can befound in J. Barry, M. Hester, and G. Roberts, eds., Witchcraft inEarly Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief (1998), andCarlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and AgrarianCults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. Johnand Anne Tedechi (1983).

Good single-country surveys are J. A. Sharpe, Early Modern Eng-land: A Social History, 2d ed. (1997); Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie,The Royal French State, 1460–1610 (1994), and The Ancien Régime:A History of France, 1610–1774 (1998); Jonathan Israel, The DutchRepublic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806 (1995); and JamesCasey, Early Modern Spain: A Social History (1999).

■ Notes1. Quoted by Carlo M. Cipolla, “Introduction,” The Fontana

Economic History of Europe, vol. 2, The Sixteenth and Sev-enteenth Centuries (Glasgow: Collins/Fontana Books, 1974),11–12.

2. Michel de Montaigne, Essais (1588), ch. 31, “Des Canni-bales.”

3. William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology,Armed Force, and Society Since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: Univer-sity of Chicago Press, 1982), 124.

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DOCUMENT 6Versailles, 1722 (photo, p. 424)

DOCUMENT 7The Spanish Armada (photo, p. 425)

How do Documents 4 through 7 illustrate theincreasing importance of public opinion in earlymodern Western Europe? What additional types ofdocuments would help you understand the ideasthat shaped political change in this era?

Document-Based QuestionPolitical Change in Early Modern Western EuropeUsing the following documents, analyze the ideasthat shaped political change in early modernWestern Europe.

DOCUMENT 1Map 16.1 Religious Reformation in Europe (p. 408)

DOCUMENT 2Two excerpts from Voltaire (p. 412)

DOCUMENT 3Excerpt from Alexander Pope (p. 412)

DOCUMENT 4Port of Amsterdam (photo, p. 415)

DOCUMENT 5Political Craft and Craftiness (Diversity and Dominance,pp. 420–421)

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