The Transformation of Europe1500-1700

The Fragmentation of Europe

Let’s Revisit:

The Christian church had previously split between Rome and Byzantium into Catholic and Orthodox sects.

Revolts against the Catholic church evolved into Protestants who branched off into a number of sects according to nationalities and beliefs.

The Protestant Reformation

• German Catholic monk Martin Luther (1483-1546) protested the sale of indulgences that had become a method of building the pope’s buildings in Rome.

• With the invention of the printing press, Martin Luther publicized abuses of the Catholic church.

• He advocated a “vernacular” bible written in the native language, rather than Latin.

The Protestant Reformation• Martin Luther also advocated

the end to a priestly authority.

• Soon, the low countries of modern-day Holland and Belgium adopted a form of French Protestantism known as Calvinism.

• By the mid 17th century the protest soon took on a nationalist bent as almost half the German states rejected Catholicism in favor of Protestantism.

The Protestant Reformation

• In England, English monarch Henry VIII (1509-1547) broke with the Catholic church in order to divorce his Spanish wife ( his brother’s widow) who could not give him a male heir to the throne.

• He made himself head of the Anglican church and married Anne Boleyn (Anne gave him a daughter who later became Queen Elizabeth I). He would marry another four times after Anne in his life.

• His successors established more Protestant practices adopted by Martin Luther.

The Catholic Reformation

• The Catholic church decided to cleanse the church of its abuses and to invest in spiritual commitments.

• They hoped to win back Catholics lost to Protestantism.

• The Council of Trent met for 18 years to clarify doctrine, establish seminaries, and provide moral direction for the church.

• The Society of Jesus was created in 1540 to hold recruits to a high educational and moral standard.

Religious Wars: France• For thirty-six years, the French

Catholics fought the Huguenot Protestants for control of the French monarchy.

• From the 16th to the 18th century the name Huguenot was used to refer to a member of the Protestant Reformed Church of France, or the French Calvinists.

• A series of eight civil wars between Catholics and Protestants ended with the king’s declaration making Protestantism illegal. Protestants fled to nearby Protestant countries.

Religious Wars: Spain

Let’s Look Back

Spain Becomes an Imperial Power

• The ground work for Spain’s imperial power was established when Isabella I of Castille married Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469.

• Through Isabella and Ferdinand, Spain led the way in colonial possessions and trade.

– In Spain, Ferdinand and Isabel mobilized the Catholic Church in the form of the Spanish Inquisition to consolidate their power.

– They obtained a papal license and used it as a royal office to persecute Jews, Muslims, and any threatening Protestant movement.

Religious Wars: Spain

Religious Wars: Spain

• Under the Habsburgs, Charles I and Phillip II, the Spanish Empire expanded to include most part of South and Central America, Mexico, the Philippines, Guam, the Iberian Peninsula, including the Portuguese Empire, southern Italy, Sicily, cities in Northern Africa, and parts of modern Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.

• Along with the arrival of precious metals, spices, luxuries, and new agricultural plants, Spanish explorers and others brought back knowledge, playing a leading part in transforming the European understanding of the world.

• This was considered the Spanish Golden Age.

Religious Wars: Spain

• Spain’s King Phillip II tried to bring England back to the Catholic church by marrying the Catholic Queen Mary I of England but Mary died in 1558 childless.

• In 1588 Phillip tried to force England to return to the Roman Catholic church by sending the Spanish Armada (130 ships and 30,000 men) to dethrone Protestant Queen Elizabeth.

• English forces sent burning, unmanned ships into its midst. A strong gale helped by scattering Spanish vessels through the North Sea.

Religious Wars: Spain

• At this time, Spain controlled the Low Countries where the northern provinces were adopting Protestantism.

• The Dutch revolt against

the Spanish domination went on for forty years until the provinces gained their independence in 1581 and became the Netherlands.

Religious Wars: Thirty Years’ War

• The final religious war was the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) which was fought on German soil but engaged most European countries in fighting or financing the war.

• More than 1/3 of the German population died while no one state proved its ability to dominate the others.

Peace of Westphalia (1648)

European states regarded each other as equal.

They mutually recognized their rights to organize their own domestic affairs, including religion.

The treaty established the era of the sovereign state.

The Peace did not end war between European states.

How did England and France become such prominent forces in

Europe?

Spain

By the end of the 16th century, Spain’s power had begun to wane.

Portugal

Portugal was too small to mount much of a challenge to the French or Spanish.

Holland

• The Dutch did not have the manpower to build a standing army large enough to counter the French.

France and Britain

As a result of the economic policies implemented by the French and British, by the 18th century, they were the two most powerful and competitive states in Europe.

How did France and England accomplish this?

England’s State Building• By 1700, England had a government

that was prepared to subordinate all foreign policy to economic ends.

• Her war aims were commercial and her foreign policy shaped by pressure from manufacturers.

• The English passed a series of laws called the Navigation Acts in the mid 17th century to restrict trade in the New World with only England.

• In 1707 Parliament passed laws restricting the importation of Indian cotton textiles into England in order to protect British manufacturers and to encourage development of a British cotton textile industry.

Mercantilism

• France’s minister of finance implemented economic policies known as mercantilism.

• There was a scarcity of coin in the 1620’s.

• Not only were European states competing on the battlefield, they were competing to attract and retain as much silver and gold bullion as possible.

Mercantilism• According to mercantilist theory, a state

could gain advantage by acquiring the largest possible quantity of the world’s stock of precious metals, especially silver.

• Wars were costly and arms had to be purchased, in many instances from weapon makers outside the monarch’s own country.

• Campaigning in a foreign country required vast amounts of silver.

• To keep precious metals in one’s own state required economic policies that prevented them from flowing out in payment for anything imported, especially for goods consumed and not used in war.

Mercantilism

• Mercantilist ideas led to policies required that they use their own raw materials and manufacture within their own borders. This was an action the English took in the early 1700’s to keep Indian cotton textiles out.

• Although mercantilist policies did lead to the establishment of industries in European states, the goal was really to keep gold and silver from flowing out of the state and enriching others.

• European states were obsessed with their silver stocks.

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Consolidation of Sovereign States: The New Monarchs

• The new monarchs of England, France, and Spain increased their political power through:– taxation on sales, household items and salt.– control of the nobility, and – strongly centralized administrations.

Constitutional Monarchies

In the 17th Century, European monarchies began to develop into two distinct types:

Constitutional monarchies (England and Holland):

Although they did not have written constitutions, England and the Netherlands evolved into states where the power rested in the hands of a legislature.

These two governments were remarkably effective in harnessing popular support while allowing differing views.

A partnership between merchants and rulers allowed the state to rely on the profits of commerce while the rulers instituted policies to support it.

Absolute Monarchies

Absolute monarchies (France, Spain, Austria, Prussia,

and Russia):

The absolute monarchs operated on the basis of the “divine right of kings.”

Although disobedience and rebellion were strictly forbidden, the monarchs depended upon support from the nobility.

Absolute Monarchies: Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV declared himself to be the state: “L’etat, c’est moi.”

He turned the royal hunting lodge, Versailles, into the largest building in Europe where he was the center of all.

This way he could keep the nobles within the control of the monarchy.

Louiv XIV worked diligently with his minister to promote economic development, improvements to the infrastructure, abolishing internal tariffs, and encouraging exports.

Louis XIV also maintained an enormous standing army.

Absolute Monarchies: The Russian Tsars

The Romanovs had held a tightly controlled government since coming to power in the early 17th century.

The most important tsar was Peter I, known as Peter the Great.

He reformed the army by offering better pay and more professionalism.

He constructed a navy.He improved tax collection and

general administration.The crowning achievement of his

rule was the construction of St. Petersburg along the Baltic as a naval base and capital.

Absolute Monarchies: The Russian Tsars

The most talented successor to Peter the Great was an Austrian princess, Catherine, who had married into the Russian royal family.

To improve government efficiency, Catherine the Great divided Russia into fifty provinces and continued Peter’s promotion of development.

She tried to help oppressed serfs until a rebellion by a disgruntled ex-soldier killed numerous nobles and government officials in the steppes north of the Caspian Sea.

The rebellion failed, but from then on, Catherine vigorously protected authoritarian government.

Population Growth and Urbanization

Increased population growth of western Europe was fueled by enriched diets with the advent of new food crops from the Columbian exchange.

Because of improved diets, disease decreased and population grew.

Along with population growth, Europe continued its pattern of urbanization that had begun in the middle ages.

England and France combined the capital resources found in London or Paris with the manpower that could be tapped from the rural population.

The Emergence of Capitalism

Capitalism, an economic system in which private individuals provides goods in a free market while they bear the costs of production, emerged.

Business men hired workers and made decisions about production rather than depending upon the government or upper classes to direct commerce.

Europeans used networks of communication and transportation to provide their products to regions that had the most need and thereby profited.

For example, Dutch merchants imported grain from eastern Europe and stored it in Amsterdam and sent it to Europe when there were crop failures.

Early Capitalism

Capitalism had moral implications. Churches regarded profit as sinful. In particular, interest on loans was considered an immoral profit.

Philosophers like Adam Smith (1723-1790), however, believed that a prosperous society was the result of individuals pursuing profit.

Social Changes in Early Modern Europe

Entrepreneurs avoided guilds by using the “putting-out system,” which provided raw materials for family households to spin and weave into garments. The businessman picked up the goods, paid the family, and sold his goods in town.

The putting out system resulted in an improvement of life for the peasant class.

Western European households acquired more material objects such as cabinets and furnishings while rural people ate and dressed better.

As a result, individuals, including women, followed their own pursuits instead of family pursuits.

Capitalism strengthened the nuclear family as an economic and social unit. Love became important in the choice of a spouse. Affection between parents and children took on more importance.

Scientific Revolution

Before the 17th century, Europeans followed the scientific beliefs of Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria.

Ptolemy proposed a motionless earth surrounded by hollow concentric spheres in which were embedded the larger planets, the stars, and the sun. Beyond that was heaven.

Scientific Revolution: Copernicus

In 1543, Nicholas Copernicus argued that the earth was not the center of the universe and instead that the sun stood at the center with the planets, including the earth, revolving around it.

His ideas rejected religious views and widely accepted view of science.

Scientific Revolution: Galileo (1564-1642)

Galileo used the recently invented telescope to scan the heavens and determine that there were spots on the sun, mountains on the moon, and distant stars that no one had ever seen before.

Galileo also proved that the speed of falling objects depended on their weight rather than the height of the fall.

Scientific Revolution: Isaac Newton

In 1687, English mathematician Isaac Newton theorized that a great universal system existed in which all bodies were affected by gravitational forces.

Until Einstein in the twentieth century, Newton’s ideas were the framework for all discoveries in the physical sciences.

The Enlightenment