Exam 1

P E O P L E S A N D C U LT U R E S

The Making of the West

t h i r d e d i t i o n

For Bedford/St. Martin’s

Executive Editor for History: Mary Dougherty Director of Development for History: Jane Knetzger Senior Developmental Editor: Heidi L. Hood Senior Production Editor: Karen S. Baart Senior Production Supervisor: Dennis Conroy Executive Marketing Manager: Jenna Bookin Barry Editorial Assistants: Lindsay DiGianvittorio and Katherine Flynn Production Associate: Lindsay DiGianvittorio Production Assistant: David Ayers Copyeditor: Janet Renard Text Design: Janis Owens, Books By Design, Inc. Page Layout: Boynton Hue Studio Photo Research: Gillian Speeth Indexer: Leoni Z. McVey & Associates, Inc. Cover Design: Donna Lee Dennison Cover Art: Joseph Vernet, Inner Port of Marseilles, France, 1754, from the series of Ports of France

commissioned by Louis XV. © Musée National de la Marine/P. Dantec. Cartography: Mapping Specialists Limited Composition: Aptara Printing and Binding: R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company

President: Joan E. Feinberg Editorial Director: Denise B. Wydra Director of Marketing: Karen Melton Soeltz Director of Editing, Design, and Production: Marcia Cohen Managing Editor: Elizabeth M. Schaaf

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007927405

Copyright © 2009 by Bedford/St. Martin’s

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except as may be expressly permitted by the applicable copyright statutes or in writing by the Publisher.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

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For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116 (617-399-4000)

ISBN-10: 0–312–45294–2 ISBN-13: 978–0–312–45294–0 (combined edition) ISBN-10: 0–312–45295–0 ISBN-13: 978–0–312–45295–7 (Vol. I) ISBN-10: 0–312–45296–9 ISBN-13: 978–0–312–45296–4 (Vol. II) ISBN-10: 0–312–46508–4 ISBN-13: 978–0–312–46508–7 (Vol. A) ISBN-10: 0–312–46509–2 ISBN-13: 978–0–312–46509–4 (Vol. B) ISBN-10: 0–312–46510–6 ISBN-13: 978–0–312–46510–0 (Vol. C) ISBN-10: 0–312–46663–3 ISBN-13: 978–0–312–46663–3 (high school edition)

Acknowledgments: Acknowledgments and copyrights are printed at the back of the book on pages C-1–C-3, which constitute an extension of the copyright page. It is a violation of the law to reproduce these selections by any means whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright holder.

P E O P L E S A N D C U LT U R E S

BEDFORD / ST. MARTIN’S Boston ■ New York

The Making of the West

Lynn Hunt University of California, Los Angeles

Thomas R. Martin College of the Holy Cross

Barbara H. Rosenwein Loyola University Chicago

R. Po-chia Hsia Pennsylvania State University

Bonnie G. Smith Rutgers University

t h i r d e d i t i o n

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v

WHEN A BOOK GOES INTO its third edition, authors feel affirmed but also encouraged to do even better. In- structors who have read and used our book con- firmed that the new synthesis we offered in the first and second editions enabled them to bring the most current conceptualizations of the West into their classroom. From the start, our goal has been to create a text that demonstrates that the history of the West is the story of an ongoing process, not a finished re- sult with only one fixed meaning. We wanted also to make clear that there is no one Western people or culture that has existed from the beginning until now. Instead, the history of the West includes many different peoples and cultures. To convey these ideas, we have written a sustained story of the West’s devel- opment in a broad, global context that reveals the cross-cultural interactions fundamental to the shap- ing of Western politics, societies, cultures, and economies. Indeed, the first chapter opens with a sec- tion on the origins and contested meaning of Western civilization. In this conversation, we emphasize our theme of cultural borrowing between the peoples of Europe and their neighbors that has characterized Western civilization from the beginning. Continu- ing this approach in subsequent chapters, we have insisted on an expanded vision of the West that in- cludes the United States and fully incorporates eastern Europe and Scandinavia. Through the depth and breadth embraced in our narrative, we have been able to offer sustained treatment of crucial topics such as Islam and provide a more thorough treatment of globalization than any competing text. Our aim has been to convey the relevance of Western history throughout the book as essential background to today’s events, from debate over European Union membership to conflict in the Middle East. Instructors have found this synthesis essential for helping students understand the West in today’s ever-globalizing world.

Equally valuable to instructors has been the way our book is organized with a chronological framework to help students understand how polit- ical, social, cultural, and economic histories have influenced each other over time. We know from our own teaching that introductory students need

a solid chronological framework, one with enough familiar benchmarks to make the material easy to grasp. Each chapter treats all the main events, people, and themes of a period in which the West significantly changed; thus, students learn about po- litical events and social and cultural developments as they unfolded. This chronological integration also accords with our belief that it is important, above all else, for students to see the interconnec- tions among varieties of historical experience — between politics and cultures, between public events and private experiences, between wars and diplomacy and everyday life. Our chronological synthesis provides a unique benefit to students: it makes these relationships clear while highlighting the major changes of each age. For teachers, our chronological approach ensures a balanced account and provides the opportunity to present themes within their greater context. But perhaps best of all, this approach provides a text that reveals history as a process that is constantly alive, subject to pressures, and able to surprise us.

Despite gratifying praise from the many re- viewers who helped shape this edition, we felt we could do even more to help students and instruc- tors. First, we have further highlighted thematic coverage to help students discern major develop- ments. The most extensive changes we made to this end appear in the Renaissance and Reforma- tion chapters; we rewrote and reorganized the three chapters of the second edition to create a more meaningful two. Chapter 13 includes new coverage of Renaissance art and architecture and the Ottomans’ influence on the West, while Chap- ter 14 offers new consideration of the European Reformation in the context of global exploration and the spread of print culture. We have worked to make key developments clearer in other chapters as well. We united and expanded the discussion of early Canaanites and Hebrews in Chapter 2, added extended coverage of the first and second crusades in Chapter 10, refocused a section on religious fer- vor and later crusades in Chapter 11, consolidated coverage of the scientific revolution in Chapter 15,

Preface

vi Preface

and combined and strengthened a section on in- dustrialization in Chapter 21.

A second way we have chosen to help students identify and absorb major developments is by adding and refining signposts to guide student reading. Most notably, we have added new chapter- opening focus questions. Posed at the end of the opening vignettes, these single questions encapsulate the essence of the era covered in the chapter and guide students toward the core message of the chapter. To further help students as they read, we have worked hard to ensure that chapter and sec- tion overviews outline the central points of each section in the clearest manner possible. In addi- tion, we have condensed some material to better illuminate key ideas.

A third way we have made this book more useful is by adding a special feature called Seeing History. We know that today’s students are at- tuned to visual sources of information, yet they do not always receive systematic instruction in how to “read” or think critically about such sources. Similarly, we know instructors often wish to use visual evidence as the basis of class discussion but do not have materials appropriate for introduc- tory students readily at hand. We have crafted our Seeing History features to address these needs. Each single-page Seeing History feature contains a pair of images — such as paintings, sculpture, photographs, and artifacts — accompanied by back- ground information and probing questions designed to guide students through the process of reading images as historical evidence and to help them explore different perspectives and significant historical developments.

Finally, as always, we have incorporated the latest scholarly findings throughout the book so that students and instructors alike have a text that they can confidently rely on. In the third edition, we have included new and updated discussions of topics such as the demography of the later Roman republic and its effect on social change, the social and political causes of the Great Famine of the early fourteenth century, the emergence of the plague in Europe, the development of new slave- trading routes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the refugee crisis following World War II, and the enlargement of the European Union, among others.

Aided by a fresh and welcoming design, new pedagogical aids, and new multimedia offerings that give students and instructors interactive tools for study and teaching, we believe we have created a new edition even more suited to today’s Western civilization courses. In writing The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, we have aimed to com-

municate the vitality and excitement as well as the fundamental importance of history. Students should be enthused about history; we hope we have conveyed some of our own enthusiasm and love for the study of history in these pages.

Pedagogy and Features

We know from our own teaching that students need all the help they can get in absorbing and making sense of information, thinking analytically, and understanding that history itself is debated and con- stantly revised.With these goals in mind,we retained the class-tested learning and teaching aids that worked well in the first and second editions, but we have also done more to help students distill the central story of each age and give them more opportunities to develop their own historical skills.

The third edition incorporates more aids to help students sort out what is most important to learn while they read. New chapter focus ques- tions guide them toward the central themes of the era and the most significant information they should take away from their reading. Boldface key terms have been updated to concentrate on likely test items and have been expanded to include people. To help students read and study, the key terms and people are defined in a new running glossary at the bottom of pages and collected in a comprehensive glossary at the end of the book.

The study tools introduced in the previous edition continue to help students check their un- derstanding of the chapters and the periods they cover. Review questions, strategically placed at the end of each major section, help students recall and assimilate core points in digestible increments. The Chapter Review section provides a clear study plan with a table of important events, a list of key terms and people, section review questions re- peated from within the chapter, and “Making Connections” questions that encourage students to analyze chapter material or make comparisons within or beyond the chapter. Vivid chapter- opening anecdotes with overviews and chapter out- lines, timelines, and conclusions further reinforce the central developments covered in the reading.

But like a clear narrative synthesis, strong pedagogical support is not enough on its own to encourage active learning. To reflect the richness of the themes in the text and offer further oppor- tunities for historical investigation, we include a rich assortment of single-source documents (two per chapter). Nothing can give students a more di- rect experience of the past than original voices,

Preface vii

and we have endeavored to let those voices speak, whether it is Frederick Barbarossa replying to the Romans when they offer him the emperor’s crown, Marie de Sévigné’s description of the French court, or an ordinary person’s account of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution.

Accompanying these primary-source features are our unique features that extend the narrative by revealing the process of interpretation, provid- ing a solid introduction to historical argument and critical thinking, and capturing the excite- ment of historical investigation:

• NEW Seeing History features guide students through the process of reading images as historical evidence. Each of the ten features provides a pair of images with background information and questions that encourage visual analysis. Examples include comparisons of pagan and Christian sarcophagi, Persian and Arabic coins, Romanesque and Gothic naves, pre- and post–French Revolution attire, and Italian propaganda posters from World War I.

• Contrasting Views features provide three or four often conflicting primary-source accounts of a cen- tral event, person, or development, such as Julius Caesar, the First Crusade, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther, the English Civil War, and late-nineteenth- century migration.

• New Sources, New Perspectives features show stu- dents how historians continue to develop fresh in- sights using new kinds of evidence about the past, from tree rings to Holocaust museums.

• Terms of History features explain the meanings of some of the most important and contested terms in the history of the West and show how those mean- ings have developed — and changed — over time. For example, the discussion of progress shows how the term took root in the eighteenth century and has been contested in the twentieth.

• Taking Measure features introduce students to the intriguing stories revealed by quantitative analysis. Each feature highlights a chart, table, graph, or map of historical statistics that illuminates an important political, social, or cultural development.

The book’s map program has been widely praised as the most comprehensive and inviting of any competing survey text. In each chapter, we offer three types of maps, each with a distinct role in conveying information to students. Four to five full-size maps show major developments, two to four “spot” maps — small maps positioned within the discussion right where students need them — aid students’ understanding of crucial issues, and “Mapping the West” summary maps at the end of

each chapter provide a snapshot of the West at the close of a transformative period and help students visualize the West’s changing contours over time. For this edition, we have carefully considered each map, simplified where possible to better highlight essential information, and clarified and updated borders and labels where needed.

We have striven to integrate art as fully as pos- sible into the narrative and to show its value for teaching and learning. Over 425 illustrations, care- fully chosen to reflect this edition’s broad topical coverage and geographic inclusion, reinforce the text and show the varieties of visual sources from which historians build their narratives and inter- pretations. All artifacts, illustrations, paintings, and photographs are contemporaneous with the chap- ter; there are no anachronistic illustrations. Fur- thermore, along with the new Seeing History fea- tures, our substantive captions for the maps and art help students learn how to read visuals, and we have frequently included specific questions or sug- gestions for comparisons that might be developed. Specially designed visual exercises in the Online Study Guide supplement this approach. A new page design for the third edition supports our goal of intertwining the art and the narrative, and makes the new study tools readily accessible.

Supplements

As with previous editions, a well-integrated ancillary program supports The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures. Each print and new media resource has been carefully revised to provide a host of practical teaching and learning aids. (Visit the online catalog at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt/catalog for ordering information and special packaging options.)

For Students PRINT RESOURCES

Sources of THE MAKING OF THE WEST, Third Edition—Volumes I (to 1740) and II (since 1500) — by Katharine J. Lualdi, University of Southern Maine. This companion sourcebook provides written and visual sources to accompany each chapter of The Making of the West. Political, social, and cultural documents offer a variety of perspec- tives that complement the textbook and encourage students to make connections between narrative history and primary sources. Short chapter sum- maries and document headnotes contextualize the wide array of sources and perspectives repre- sented, while discussion questions guide students’

vii i Preface

reading and promote historical thinking skills. The third edition features five or more written documents per chapter and one-third more visual sources. Available free when packaged with the text and now available in the e-book (see below).

NEW Trade Books. Titles published by sister companies Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Henry Holt and Company; Hill and Wang; Picador; and St. Martin’s Press are available at a 50 percent discount when packaged with Bedford /St. Martin’s textbooks. For more information, visit bedfordstmartins.com/tradeup.

NEW The Bedford Glossary for European His- tory. This handy supplement for the survey course gives students historically contextualized definitions for hundreds of terms — from Abbasids to Zionism — that students will encounter in lec- tures, reading, and exams. Available free when packaged with the text.

Bedford Series in History and Culture. Over 100 titles in this highly praised series combine first-rate scholarship, historical narrative, and im- portant primary documents for undergraduate courses. Each book is brief, inexpensive, and focused on a specific topic or period. Package discounts are available.

NEW MEDIA RESOURCES

NEW The Making of the West e-Book. This one-of-a-kind online resource integrates the text of The Making of the West with the written and visual sources of the companion sourcebook Sources of THE MAKING OF THE WEST and the self-testing and activities of the Online Study Guide into one easy- to-use e-book. With search functions stronger than in any competing text, this e-book is an ideal study and reference tool for students. Instructors can eas- ily add their own documents, images, and other class material to customize the text.

Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/ hunt. The popular Online Study Guide for The Making of the West is a free and uniquely personal- ized learning tool to help students master themes and information presented in the textbook and improve their historical skills. Assessment quizzes let students evaluate their comprehension and provide them with customized plans for further study through a variety of activities. Instructors can monitor students’ progress through the online Quiz Gradebook or receive e-mail updates.

NEW Audio Reviews for The Making of the West at bedfordstmartins.com/audioreviews. Audio

Reviews are a new tool that fits easily into stu- dents’ lifestyles and provides a practical new way for them to study. These 25- to 30-minute sum- maries of each chapter in The Making of the West highlight the major themes of the text and help reinforce student learning.

A Student’s Online Guide to History Reference Sources at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt. This Web site provides links to history-related data- bases, indexes, and journals, plus contact informa- tion for state, provincial, local, and professional history organizations.

The Bedford Research Room at bedfordstmartins .com/hunt. The Research Room, drawn from Mike Palmquist’s The Bedford Researcher, offers a wealth of resources — including interactive tuto- rials, research activities, student writing samples, and links to hundreds of other places online — to support students in courses across the disciplines. The site also offers instructors a library of helpful instructional tools.

The Bedford Bibliographer at bedfordstmartins .com/hunt. The Bedford Bibliographer, a simple but powerful Web-based tool, assists students with the process of collecting sources and generates bibliographies in four commonly used documen- tation styles.

Research and Documentation Online at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt. This Web site provides clear advice on how to integrate primary and secondary sources into research papers, how to cite sources correctly, and how to format in MLA, APA, Chicago, or CBE style.

The St. Martin’s Tutorial on Avoiding Plagiarism at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt. This online tuto- rial reviews the consequences of plagiarism and ex- plains what sources to acknowledge, how to keep good notes, how to organize research, and how to integrate sources appropriately. The tutorial in- cludes exercises to help students practice integrating sources and recognize acceptable summaries.

For Instructors PRINT RESOURCES

Instructor’s Resource Manual. This helpful manual by Malia Formes (Western Kentucky Uni- versity) and Dakota Hamilton (Humboldt State University) offers both first-time and experienced teachers a wealth of tools for structuring and cus- tomizing Western civilization history courses of

Preface ix

different sizes. For each chapter in the textbook, the Instructor’s Resource Manual includes an out- line of chapter themes; a chapter summary; lecture and discussion topics; film and literature sugges- tions; writing and class-presentation assignments; research topic suggestions; and in-class exercises for working with maps, illustrations, and sources. The new edition includes model answers for the review questions in the book as well as a chapter- by-chapter guide to all the supplements available with The Making of the West.

Transparencies. A set of over 200 full-color acetate transparencies for The Making of the West includes all full-sized maps and many images from the text.

NEW MEDIA RESOURCES

Using the Bedford Series in History and Culture with The Making of the West at bedfordstmartins .com/usingseries. This online guide gives prac- tical suggestions for using the volumes in the Bedford Series in History and Culture in conjunc- tion with The Making of the West. This reference supplies connections between textbook themes and each series book and provides ideas for class- room discussions.

NEW HistoryClass. Bedford/St. Martin’s online learning space for history gives you the right tools and the rich content to create your course, your way. An interactive e-book and e-reader enable you to easily assign relevant textbook sections and primary documents. Access to the acclaimed con- tent library, Make History, provides unlimited access to thousands of maps, images, documents, and Web links. The tried-and-true content of the Online Study Guide offers a range of activities to help students access their progress, study more effectively, and improve their critical thinking skills. Customize provided content and mix in your own with ease — everything in HistoryClass is integrated to work together in the same space.

Instructor’s Resource CD-ROM. This disc pro- vides PowerPoint presentations built around chapter outlines, maps, figures, and selected im- ages from the textbook, plus jpeg versions of all maps, figures, and selected images.

Computerized Test Bank — by Malia Formes, Western Kentucky University; available on CD- ROM. This fully updated test bank offers over 80 exercises per chapter, including multiple-choice, identification, timelines, map labeling and analysis, source analysis, and full-length essay questions.

Instructors can customize quizzes, edit both ques- tions and answers, as well as export them to a vari- ety of formats, including WebCT and Blackboard. The disc includes answer keys and essay outlines.

Book Companion Site at bedfordstmartins.com/ hunt. The companion Web site gathers all the electronic resources for The Making of the West, in- cluding the Online Study Guide and related Quiz Gradebook, at a single Web address, providing convenient links to lecture, assignment, and research materials such as PowerPoint chapter outlines and the digital libraries at Make History.

NEW Make History at bedfordstmartins.com/ makehistory. Comprising the content of Bedford/St. Martin’s five acclaimed online li- braries — Map Central, the Bedford History Image Library, DocLinks, HistoryLinks, and PlaceLinks, Make History provides one-stop access to relevant digital content including maps, images, docu- ments, and Web links. Students and instructors alike can search this free, easy-to-use database by keyword, topic, date, or specific chapter of The Making of the West and download the content they find. Instructors can also create entire collections of content and store them online for later use or post their collections to the Web to share with students.

Content for Course Management Systems. A variety of student and instructor resources devel- oped for this textbook is ready for use in course management systems such as Blackboard, WebCT, and other platforms. This e-content includes nearly all of the offerings from the book’s Online Study Guide as well as the book’s test bank.

Videos and Multimedia. A wide assortment of videos and multimedia CD-ROMs on various top- ics in European history is available to qualified adopters.

Acknowledgments

In the vital process of revision, the authors have benefited from repeated critical readings by many tal- ented scholars and teachers. Our sincere thanks go to the following instructors, whose comments often challenged us to rethink or justify our interpretations and who always provided a check on accuracy down to the smallest detail.

Abel Alves, Ball State University

Gene Barnett, Calhoun Community College

Giovanna Benadusi, University of South Florida

x Preface

Marjorie K. Berman, Red Rocks Community College

Gregory Bruess, University of Northern Iowa

James M. Burns, Clemson University

Kevin W. Caldwell, Blue Ridge Community College

William R. Caraher, University of North Dakota

Joseph J. Casino, Villanova University, St. Joseph’s University

Sara Chapman, Oakland University

Michael S. Cole, Florida Gulf Coast University

Robert Cole, Utah State University

Theodore F. Cook, William Patterson University

Jo Ann Hoeppner Moran Cruz, Georgetown University

Luanne Dagley, Pellissippi State Technical Community College

Frederick H. Dotolo III, St. John Fisher College

Mari Firkatian, University of Hartford

David D. Flaten, Tompkins Cortland Community College

Ellen Pratt Fout, The Ohio State University

Rebecca Friedman, Florida International University

Helen Grady, Springside School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Padhraig S. Higgins, Pennsylvania State University

Ronald K. Huch, Eastern Kentucky University

Michael Innis-Jiménez, William Paterson University

Jason M. Kelly, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis

Nathaniel Knight, Seton Hall University

Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, Cleveland State University

Charles Levine, Mesa Community College

Keith P. Luria, North Carolina State University

Kathryn Lynass, Arizona State University

Michael Mackey, Community College of Denver

John McManamon, Loyola University

Anthony Makowski, Delaware County Community College

John W. Mauer, Tri-County Technical College

Lynn Wood Mollenauer, University of North Carolina–Wilmington

Michelle Anne Novak, Houston Community College

Jason M. Osborne, Northern Kentucky University

James A. Ross-Nazzal, Houston Community College–Southeast College

Daniel Sarefield, The Ohio State University

Nancy E. Shockley, New Mexico State University

Dionysios Skentzis, College of DuPage

Daniel Stephen, University of Colorado at Boulder

Charles R. Sullivan, University of Dallas

Emily Sohmer Tai, Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York

David Tengwall, Anne Arundel Community College

Andrew Thomas, Purdue University

Paul A. Townend, University of North Carolina–Wilmington

David Ulbrich, Ball State University

Karen T. Wagner, Pikes Peak Community College

William Welch Jr., Troy University

David K. White, McHenry County College

James Theron Wilson, Ball State University

Many colleagues, friends, and family members have made contributions to this work. They know how grateful we are. We also wish to acknowledge and thank the publishing team at Bedford/St. Martin’s who did so much to bring this revised edition to completion: president Joan Feinberg, editorial director Denise Wydra, publisher for his- tory Mary Dougherty, director of development for history Jane Knetzger, senior editor Heidi Hood, senior editor Louise Townsend, senior editor Sara Wise, freelance editors Betty Slack and Dale Anderson, editorial assistant and production asso- ciate Lindsay DiGianvittorio, executive marketing manager Jenna Bookin Barry, senior production editor Karen Baart, managing editor Elizabeth Schaaf, art researcher Gillian Speeth, text designer Janis Owens, page makeup artist Cia Boynton, cover designer Donna Dennison, and copyeditor Janet Renard.

Our students’ questions and concerns have shaped much of this work, and we welcome all our readers’ suggestions, queries, and criticisms. Please contact us at our respective institutions or via [email protected].

xi

Brief Contents

Prologue: The Beginnings of Human Society, to c. 4000 B.C.E. P-3

1 Early Western Civilization, 4000–1000 B.C.E. 3

2 The Near East and the Emergence of Greece, 1000–500 B.C.E. 33

3 The Greek Golden Age, c. 500–c. 400 B.C.E. 69

4 From the Classical to the Hellenistic World, 400–30 B.C.E. 103

5 The Rise of Rome, 753–44 B.C.E. 133

6 The Roman Empire, 44 B.C.E.–284 C.E. 163

7 The Transformation of the Roman Empire, 284–600 C.E. 195

8 Islam, Byzantium, and the West, 600–750 231

9 Emperors, Caliphs, and Local Lords, 750–1050 261

10 Merchants and Kings, Popes and Crusaders, 1050–1150 295

11 The Flowering of the Middle Ages, 1150–1215 327

12 The Medieval Search for Order, 1215–1340 359

13 Crisis and Renaissance, 1340–1492 387

14 Global Encounters and Religious Reforms, 1492–1560 419

15 Wars of Religion and the Clash of Worldviews, 1560–1648 451

16 State Building and the Search for Order, 1648–1690 483

17 The Atlantic System and Its Consequences, 1690–1740 519

18 The Promise of Enlightenment, 1740–1789 555

19 The Cataclysm of Revolution, 1789–1799 587

20 Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy, 1800–1830 619

21 Industrialization and Social Ferment, 1830–1850 653

22 Politics and Culture of the Nation- State, 1850–1870 689

23 Industry, Empire, and Everyday Life, 1870–1890 725

24 Modernity and the Road to War, 1890–1914 763

25 World War I and Its Aftermath, 1914–1929 799

26 The Great Depression and World War II, 1929–1945 839

27 The Cold War and the Remaking of Europe, 1945–1960s 879

28 Postindustrial Society and the End of the Cold War Order, 1960s–1989 915

29 A New Globalism, 1989 to the Present 951

Appendix: Useful Facts and Figures A-1

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Contents

Preface v

Brief Contents xi

Maps and Figures xxix

Special Features xxxv

To the Student xxxix

Authors’ Note: The B.C.E./C.E. Dating System xlv

About the Authors xlvii

Prologue The Beginnings of Human Society,

to c. 4000 B.C.E.

The Paleolithic Age, 200,000–10,000 B.C.E. P-4 The Life of Hunter-Gatherers P-5 Technology, Trade, Religion, and Hierarchy P-6

The Neolithic Age, 10,000–4000 B.C.E. P-8 The Neolithic Revolution P-8 Neolithic Origins of Modern Life and War P-10 Daily Life in the Neolithic Village of

Çatalhöyük P-10 Gender Inequality in the Neolithic Age P-14

Conclusion P-15 • Chapter Review P-16

NEW SOURCES, NEW PERSPECTIVES: Daily Bread, Damaged Bones, and Cracked Teeth P-12

P-3

xiv Contents

Chapter 1 Early Western Civilization,

4000–1000 B.C.E.

Chapter 2 The Near East and the Emergence

of Greece, 1000–500 B.C.E.

The Controversial Concept of Western Civilization 4 Defining Western Civilization 4 Locating Early Western Civilization 6

Mesopotamia, Home of the First Civilization, 4000–1000 B.C.E. 7 Cities and Society, 4000–2350 B.C.E. 7 Metals, the Akkadian Empire, and the Ur III

Dynasty, c. 2350–c. 2000 B.C.E. 12 Assyrian, Babylonian, and Canaanite

Achievements, 2000–1000 B.C.E. 13

Egypt, the First Unified Country, 3050–1000 B.C.E. 16 From Egyptian Unification to the Old Kingdom,

3050–2190 B.C.E. 16 The Middle and New Kingdoms in Egypt,

2061–1081 B.C.E. 20

The Hittites, Minoans, and Mycenaeans, 2200–1000 B.C.E. 23 The Hittites, 1750–1200 B.C.E. 24 The Minoans, 2200–1400 B.C.E. 25 The Mycenaeans, 1800–1000 B.C.E. 27 The Period of Calamities, 1200–1000 B.C.E. 28

Conclusion 29 • Chapter Review 31

TERMS OF HISTORY: Civilization 6 DOCUMENT: Hammurabi’s Laws for Physicians 15 DOCUMENT: Declaring Innocence on Judgment Day in

Ancient Egypt 22

From Dark Age to Empire in the Near East, 1000–500 B.C.E. 34 The New Empire of Assyria, 900–600 B.C.E. 35 The Neo-Babylonian Empire, 600–539 B.C.E. 36 The Persian Empire, 557–500 B.C.E. 37 The Hebrews, Origins to 539 B.C.E. 39

Remaking Greek Civilization, 1000–750 B.C.E. 42 The Greek Dark Age, 1000–750 B.C.E. 42 The Values of the Olympic Games 45 Homer, Hesiod, and Divine Justice

in Greek Myth 46

The Creation of the Greek Polis, 750–500 B.C.E. 47 The Physical Environment of the Greek

City-State 47 Trade and “Colonization,” 800–580 B.C.E. 48 Citizenship and Freedom in the Greek

City-State 51

New Directions for the Polis, 750–500 B.C.E. 57 Oligarchy in Sparta, 700–500 B.C.E. 57 Tyranny in Corinth, 657–585 B.C.E. 60 Democracy in Athens, 632–500 B.C.E. 62 New Ways of Thought and Expression,

630–500 B.C.E. 64

Conclusion 65 • Chapter Review 67

document: Homer’s Vision of Justice in the Polis 46 seeing history: Shifting Sculptural Expression:

From Egypt to Greece 50 document: Cyrene Records Its Foundation as a Greek

Colony 52 taking measure: Greek Family Size and Agricultural

Labor in the Archaic Age 55 contrasting views: Persians Debate Democracy,

Oligarchy, and Monarchy 58

3 33

Contents xv

Chapter 3 The Greek Golden Age,

c. 500–c. 400 B.C.E.

Chapter 4 From the Classical to the Hellenistic

World, 400–30 B.C.E.

Wars between Persia and Greece, 499–479 B.C.E. 71 From the Ionian Revolt to the Battle of

Marathon, 499–490 B.C.E. 71 The Great Persian Invasion, 480–479 B.C.E. 72

Athenian Confidence in the Golden Age, 478–431 B.C.E. 74 The Establishment of the Athenian Empire 74 Radical Democracy and Pericles’ Leadership,

461–431 B.C.E. 75 The Urban Landscape 77

Tradition and Innovation in Athens’s Golden Age 81 Religious Tradition in a Period of Change 81 Women, Slaves, and Metics 82 Innovations in Education and Philosophy 86 The Development of Greek Tragedy 92 The Development of Greek Comedy 95

The End of the Golden Age, 431–403 B.C.E. 96 The Peloponnesian War, 431–404 B.C.E. 97 Athens Humbled: Tyranny and Civil War,

404–403 B.C.E. 99

Conclusion 99 • Chapter Review 101

contrasting views: The Nature of Women and Marriage 84

document: Athenian Regulations for a Rebellious Ally 88 document: Sophists Argue Both Sides of a Case 90 taking measure: Military Forces of Athens and Sparta

at the Beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.E.) 98

Classical Greece after the Peloponnesian War, 400–350 B.C.E. 104 Restoring Daily Life in Athens 105 The Execution of Socrates, 399 B.C.E. 106 The Philosophy of Plato 107 Aristotle, Scientist and Philosopher 108 Greek Political Disunity 110

The Rise of Macedonia, 359–323 B.C.E. 110 The Roots of Macedonian Power 110 The Rule of Philip II, 359–336 B.C.E. 111 The Rule of Alexander the Great,

336–323 B.C.E. 112

The Hellenistic Kingdoms, 323–30 B.C.E. 115 Creating New Kingdoms 115 The Structure of Hellenistic Kingdoms 116 The Layers of Hellenistic Society 118 The End of the Hellenistic Kingdoms 120

Hellenistic Culture 120 The Arts under Royal Patronage 120 Philosophy for a New Age 122 Scientific Innovation 126 Cultural and Religious Transformations 127

Conclusion 129 • Chapter Review 131

document: Aristotle on the Nature of the Greek Polis 109 document: Epigrams by Women Poets 122 new sources, new perspectives: Papyrus Discoveries

and Menander’s Comedies 124

69 103

xvi Contents

Chapter 5 The Rise of Rome,

753–44 B.C.E.

Chapter 6 The Roman Empire,

44 B.C.E.–284 C.E.

Roman Social and Religious Traditions 134 Roman Moral Values 134 The Patron-Client System 136 The Roman Family 136 Education for Public Life 138 Public and Private Religion 138

From Monarchy to Republic 139 Roman Society under the Kings,

753–509 B.C.E. 140 The Early Roman Republic, 509–287 B.C.E. 142

Roman Imperialism and Its Consequences 145 Expansion in Italy, 500–220 B.C.E. 145 Wars with Carthage and in the East,

264–121 B.C.E. 146 Greek Influence on Roman Literature and

the Arts 149 Stresses on Republican Society 150

Upheaval in the Late Republic 152 The Gracchus Brothers and Factional Politics,

133–121 B.C.E. 152 Marius and the Origin of Client Armies,

107–100 B.C.E. 153 Sulla and Civil War, 91–78 B.C.E. 153 The Republic’s Downfall, 83–44 B.C.E. 155

Conclusion 159 • Chapter Review 161

document: The Rape and Suicide of Lucretia 144 taking measure: Census Records during the First and

Second Punic Wars 148 document: Polybius on Roman Military Discipline 154 contrasting views: What Was Julius Caesar Like? 156

Creating the Pax Romana 164 From Republic to Principate, 44–27 B.C.E. 165 Augustus’s “Restoration of the Republic,”

27 B.C.E.–14 C.E. 165 Augustan Rome 167 Imperial Education, Literature, and Art 172

Maintaining the Pax Romana 173 Making Monarchy Permanent,

14–180 C.E. 174 Life in the Roman Golden Age,

96–180 C.E. 176

The Emergence of Christianity 181 Jesus and His Teachings 181 Growth of a New Religion 182 Competing Beliefs 185

The Third-Century Crisis 188 Defending the Frontiers 188 The Severan Emperors and Catastrophe 190

Conclusion 191 • Chapter Review 193

document: Augustus, Res Gestae (My Accomplishments) 168

document: The Scene at a Roman Bath 170 contrasting views: Christians in the Empire: Conspirators

or Faithful Subjects? 186 taking measure: The Value of Roman Imperial

Coinage, 27 B.C.E.–300 C.E. 189

133 163

Contents xvii

Chapter 7 The Transformation of the

Roman Empire, 284–600 C.E.

Chapter 8 Islam, Byzantium, and

the West, 600–750

Reorganizing the Empire, 284–395 197 From Reform to Fragmentation 197 The High Cost of Rescuing the Empire 200 The Emperors and Official Religion 202

Christianizing the Empire, 312–c. 540 204 Changing Religious Beliefs 204 Establishing Christian Orthodoxy 209 The Emergence of Christian Monks 212

Non-Roman Kingdoms in the West, c. 370–550s 214 Non-Roman Migrations 215 Mixing Traditions 219

The Roman Empire in the East, c. 500–565 221 Imperial Society in the East 222 The Reign of Justinian, 527–565 223 Preserving Classical Traditions 225

Conclusion 227 • Chapter Review 229

document: Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices and Wages 201

taking measure: Peasants’ Use of Farm Produce in the Roman Empire 202

document: The Edict of Milan on Religious Liberty 203 seeing history: Changing Religious Beliefs: Pagan and

Christian Sarcophagi 206 new sources, new perspectives: Was There a Decline

and Fall of the Roman Empire? 218

Islam: A New Religion and a New Empire 232 Nomads and City Dwellers 232 The Prophet Muhammad and the

Faith of Islam 233 Growth of Islam, c. 610–632 234 The Caliphs, Muhammad’s Successors,

632–750 236 Peace and Prosperity in Islamic Lands 237

Byzantium: A Christian Empire under Siege 238 Wars on the Frontiers, c. 570–750 239 From an Urban to a Rural Way of Life 240 New Military and Cultural Forms 242 Religion, Politics, and Iconoclasm 243

Western Europe: A Medley of Kingdoms 245 Frankish Kingdoms with Roman Roots 246 Economic Activity in a Peasant Society 248 The Powerful in Merovingian Society 250 Christianity and Classical Culture in the

British Isles 253 Unity in Spain, Division in Italy 255 Political Tensions and the Power of the Pope 256

Conclusion 257 • Chapter Review 259

terms of history: Medieval 233 document: The Fatihah of the Qur’an 234 seeing history: Who Conquered Whom? A Persian and an

Arabic Coin Compared 239 taking measure: Church Repair, 600–900 243 document: On Holy Images 245 new sources, new perspectives: Anthropology,

Archaeology, and Changing Notions of Ethnicity 249

195 231

xvii i Contents

Chapter 9 Emperors, Caliphs, and Local Lords, 750–1050

Chapter 10 Merchants and Kings, Popes and Crusaders, 1050–1150

The Emperor and Local Elites in the Byzantine Empire 262 Imperial Power 262 The Macedonian Renaissance, c. 870–c. 1025 264 The Dynatoi: A New Landowning Elite 266 In Byzantium’s Shadow: Bulgaria, Serbia,

Russia 266

The Caliphate and Its Fragmentation 268 The Abbasid Caliphate, 750–c. 950 268 Regional Diversity in Islamic Lands 269 Unity of Commerce and Language 270 The Islamic Renaissance, c. 790–c. 1050 271

The Creation and Division of a New European Empire 272 The Rise of the Carolingians 272 Charlemagne and His Kingdom, 768–814 273 The Carolingian Renaissance, c. 790–c. 900 275 Charlemagne’s Successors, 814–911 277 Land and Power 278 Viking, Muslim, and Magyar Invasions,

c. 790–955 279

After the Carolingians: The Emergence of Local Rule 282 Public Power and Private Relationships 282 Warriors and Warfare 285 Efforts to Contain Violence 286 Political Communities in Italy, England,

and France 287 Emperors and Kings in Central and Eastern

Europe 289

Conclusion 291 • Chapter Review 293

document: The Book of the Prefect 265 document: When She Approached 272 contrasting views: Charlemagne: Roman Emperor, Father

of Europe, or the Chief Bishop? 276 terms of history: Feudalism 283 taking measure: Sellers, Buyers, and Donors,

800–1000 284

The Commercial Revolution 296 Fairs, Towns, and Cities 296 Organizing Crafts and Commerce 299 Communes: Self-Government for the

Towns 301 The Commercial Revolution in the

Countryside 301

Church Reform 302 Beginnings of Reform 303 The Gregorian Reform and the Investiture

Conflict, 1073–1122 305 The Sweep of Reform 307 New Monastic Orders of Poverty 309

The Crusades 311 Calling the Crusade 311 The First Crusade 313 The Crusader States 316 The Disastrous Second Crusade 317 The Long-Term Impact of the Crusades 317

The Revival of Monarchies 319 Reconstructing the Empire at Byzantium 319 England under Norman Rule 319 Praising the King of France 321 Surviving as Emperor 322

Conclusion 323 • Chapter Review 325

document: A Byzantine View of Papal Primacy 305 contrasting views: The First Crusade 314 new sources, new perspectives: The Cairo Geniza 318 document: Penances for the Invaders (1070) 322 taking measure: Slaves in England in 1086 323

261 295

Contents xix

Chapter 11 The Flowering of the Middle

Ages, 1150–1215

Chapter 12 The Medieval Search for Order,

1215–1340

New Schools and Churches 328 The New Learning and the Rise of the

University 328 Architectural Style: From Romanesque to

Gothic 332

Governments as Institutions 336 England: Unity through Common Law 336 France: Consolidation and Conquest 340 Germany: The Revived Monarchy of Frederick

Barbarossa 341 Eastern Europe and Byzantium: Fragmenting

Realms 346

The Growth of a Vernacular High Culture 346 The Troubadours: Poets of Love and Play 347 The Literature of Epic and Romance 348

Religious Fervor and Crusade 349 New Religious Orders in the Cities 349 Disastrous Crusades to the Holy Land 351 Victorious Crusades in Europe and on Its

Frontiers 353

Conclusion 355 • Chapter Review 357

seeing history: Romanesque versus Gothic: The View Down the Nave 335

contrasting views: Magna Carta 342 document: Frederick I’s Reply to the Romans 344 document: The Children’s Crusade (1212) 355

The Church’s Mission 360 Innocent III and the Fourth Lateran

Council 360 The Inquisition 362 Lay Piety 362 Jews and Lepers as Outcasts 365

The Medieval Synthesis 367 Scholasticism: Harmonizing Faith and

Reason 367 New Syntheses in Writing and Music 369 Gothic Art 370

The Politics of Control 373 The Weakening of the Empire 373 Louis IX and a New Ideal of Kingship 375 The Birth of Representative Institutions 376 The Weakening of the Papacy 377 The Rise of the Signori 379 The Mongol Takeover 380 The Great Famine 380

Conclusion 382 • Chapter Review 384

taking measure: Sentences Imposed by an Inquisitor, 1308–1323 363

new sources, new perspectives: The Peasants of Montaillou 364

document: The Debate between Reason and the Lover 369 document: Ausculta Fili (Listen, Beloved Son) 379

327 359

xx Contents

Chapter 13 Crisis and Renaissance,

1340–1492

Chapter 14 Global Encounters and Religious

Reforms, 1492–1560

Crisis: Disease, War, and Schism 388 The Black Death, 1346–1353 388 The Hundred Years’ War, 1337–1453 391 The Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople,

1453 396 The Great Schism, 1378–1417 397

The Renaissance: New Forms of Thought and Expression 401 Renaissance Humanism 401 The Arts 403

Consolidating Power 408 New Political Formations in Eastern

Europe 409 Powerful States in Western Europe 410 Republics 411 The Tools of Power 413

Conclusion 414 • Chapter Review 416

taking measure: Population Losses and the Black Death 389

contrasting views: Joan of Arc: Who Was “the Maid”? 394

document: Wat Tyler’s Rebellion (1381) 398 terms of history: Renaissance 402 document: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the

Dignity of Man 404

Widening Horizons 420 Portuguese Explorations 420 The Voyages of Columbus 421 A New Era in Slavery 423 Conquering the New World 425

The Protestant Reformation 426 The Invention of Printing 426 Popular Piety and Christian Humanism 427 Martin Luther and the Holy Roman Empire 429 Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin 432 The Anglican Church in England 433

Reshaping Society through Religion 434 Protestant Challenges to the Social Order 435 New Forms of Discipline 437 Catholic Renewal 438

A Struggle for Mastery 441 The High Renaissance Court 441 Dynastic Wars 442 Financing War 444 Divided Realms 445

Conclusion 447 • Chapter Review 449

document: Columbus Describes His First Voyage (1493) 423

seeing history: Expanding Geographic Knowledge: World Maps in an Age of Exploration 424

contrasting views: Martin Luther: Holy Man or Heretic? 431

document: Ordinances for Calvinist Churches (1547) 433

387 419

Contents xxi

Chapter 15 Wars of Religion and the Clash of

Worldviews, 1560–1648

Chapter 16 State Building and the Search

for Order, 1648–1690

Religious Conflicts Threaten State Power, 1560–1618 452 French Wars of Religion, 1562–1598 452 Challenges to Spain’s Authority 455 Elizabeth I’s Defense of English

Protestantism 458 The Clash of Faiths and Empires in

Eastern Europe 459

The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648 460 Origins and Course of the War 460 The Effects of Constant Fighting 462 The Peace of Westphalia, 1648 463

Economic Crisis and Realignment 465 From Growth to Recession 465 Consequences for Daily Life 467 The Economic Balance of Power 469

The Rise of Secular and Scientific Worldviews 471 The Arts in an Age of Crisis 471 The Natural Laws of Politics 472 The Scientific Revolution 474 Magic and Witchcraft 478

Conclusion 479 • Chapter Review 481

document: The Horrors of the Thirty Years’ War 462 taking measure: The Rise and Fall of Silver Imports to

Spain, 1550–1660 465 new sources, new perspectives: Tree Rings and the

Little Ice Age 466 seeing history: Religious Differences in Painting of the

Baroque Period: Rubens and Rembrandt 473 document: Sentence Pronounced against

Galileo (1633) 477

Louis XIV: Absolutism and Its Limits 484 The Fronde, 1648–1653 485 Court Culture as an Element of Absolutism 486 Enforcing Religious Orthodoxy 489 Extending State Authority at Home and

Abroad 489

Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe 492 Brandenburg-Prussia: Militaristic

Absolutism 493 An Uneasy Balance: Austrian Habsburgs and

Ottoman Turks 494 Russia: Setting the Foundations of Bureaucratic

Absolutism 496 Poland-Lithuania Overwhelmed 497

Constitutionalism in England 497 England Turned Upside Down, 1642–1660 498 The Glorious Revolution of 1688 502 Social Contract Theory: Hobbes and Locke 504

Outposts of Constitutionalism 505 The Dutch Republic 505 Freedom and Slavery in the New World 508

The Search for Order in Elite and Popular Culture 509 Freedom and Constraint in the Arts and

Sciences 509 Women and Manners 512 Reforming Popular Culture 514

Conclusion 515 • Chapter Review 517

document: Marie de Sévigné, Letter Describing the French Court (1675) 487

taking measure: The Seventeenth-Century Army 493 contrasting views: The English Civil War 500 document: John Milton, Defense of Freedom of the

Press (1644) 511

451 483

xxii Contents

Chapter 17 The Atlantic System and Its Consequences, 1690–1740

Chapter 18 The Promise of Enlightenment,

1740–1789

The Atlantic System and the World Economy 520 Slavery and the Atlantic System 521 World Trade and Settlement 526 The Birth of Consumer Society 528

New Social and Cultural Patterns 529 Agricultural Revolution 529 Social Life in the Cities 531 New Tastes in the Arts 534 Religious Revivals 536

Consolidation of the European State System 536 French Ambitions Thwarted 536 British Rise and Dutch Decline 538 Russia’s Emergence as a European Power 540 The Power of Diplomacy and the Importance

of Population 544

The Birth of the Enlightenment 545 Popularization of Science and Challenges to

Religion 546 Travel Literature and the Challenge to Custom

and Tradition 549 Raising the Woman Question 549

Conclusion 550 • Chapter Review 552

new sources, new perspectives: Oral History and the Life of Slaves 524

document: The Social Effects of Growing Consumption 530 taking measure: Relationship of Crop Harvested to Seed

Used, 1400–1800 531 terms of history: Progress 547 document: Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English

Nation (1733) 548

The Enlightenment at Its Height 556 Men and Women of the Republic of Letters 556 Conflicts with Church and State 558 The Individual and Society 560 Spreading the Enlightenment 564 The Limits of Reason: Roots of Romanticism

and Religious Revival 566

Society and Culture in an Age of Enlightenment 567 The Nobility’s Reassertion of Privilege 567 The Middle Class and the Making of a

New Elite 568 Life on the Margins 571

State Power in an Era of Reform 573 War and Diplomacy 573 State-Sponsored Reform 576 Limits of Reform 577

Rebellions against State Power 578 Food Riots and Peasant Uprisings 578 Public Opinion and Political Opposition 580 Revolution in North America 581

Conclusion 583 • Chapter Review 585

document: Denis Diderot, “Encyclopedia” (1755) 559 contrasting views: Women and the Enlightenment 562 terms of history: Enlightenment 565 taking measure: World Population Growth,

1700–1800 571 document: Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence

(July 4, 1776) 582

519 555

Contents xxii i

Chapter 19 The Cataclysm of Revolution,

1789–1799

Chapter 20 Napoleon and the Revolutionary

Legacy, 1800–1830

The Revolutionary Wave, 1787–1789 588 Protesters in the Low Countries and

Poland 589 Origins of the French Revolution,

1787–1789 591

From Monarchy to Republic, 1789–1793 594 The Revolution of Rights and Reason 594 The End of Monarchy 598

Terror and Resistance 600 Robespierre and the Committee of Public

Safety 600 The Republic of Virtue, 1793–1794 602 Resisting the Revolution 604 The Fall of Robespierre and the End of the

Terror 605

Revolution on the March 607 Arms and Conquests 607 European Reactions to Revolutionary

Change 608 Poland Extinguished, 1793–1795 612 Revolution in the Colonies 613

Conclusion 615 • Chapter Review 617

terms of history: Revolution 590 document: The Rights of Minorities 597 contrasting views: Perspectives on the French

Revolution 610 document: Address on Abolishing the Slave Trade

(February 5, 1790) 613

The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte 620 A General Takes Over 620 From Republic to Empire 622 The New Paternalism: The Civil Code 625 Patronage of Science and Intellectual Life 627

“Europe Was at My Feet”: Napoleon’s Conquests 628 The Grand Army and Its Victories,

1800–1807 628 The Impact of French Victories 630 From Russian Winter to Final Defeat,

1812–1815 632

The “Restoration” of Europe 636 The Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815 636 The Emergence of Conservatism 638 The Revival of Religion 639

Challenges to the Conservative Order 640 Romanticism 640 Political Revolts in the 1820s 644 Revolution and Reform, 1830–1832 646

Conclusion 649 • Chapter Review 651

seeing history: The Clothing Revolution: The Social Meaning of Changes in Post-Revolutionary Fashion 624

document: An Ordinary Soldier on Campaign with Napoleon 633

contrasting views: Napoleon: For and Against 634 document: Wordsworth’s Poetry 642

587 619

xxiv Contents

Chapter 21 Industrialization and Social

Ferment, 1830–1850

Chapter 22 Politics and Culture of the Nation-State, 1850–1870

The Industrial Revolution 654 Roots of Industrialization 654 Engines of Change 656 Urbanization and Its Consequences 661 Agricultural Perils and Prosperity 663

Reforming the Social Order 664 Cultural Responses to the Social Question 664 The Varieties of Social Reform 667 Abuses and Reforms Overseas 670

Ideologies and Political Movements 671 The Spell of Nationalism 672 Liberalism in Economics and Politics 674 Socialism and the Early Labor Movement 675

The Revolutions of 1848 678 The Hungry Forties 678 Another French Revolution 679 Nationalist Revolution in Italy 680 Revolt and Reaction in Central Europe 681 Aftermath to 1848 684

Conclusion 685 • Chapter Review 687

taking measure: Railroad Lines, 1830–1850 656 new sources, new perspectives: Statistics and the

Standard of Living of the Working Class 660 document: Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto 677 document: Alexis de Tocqueville Describes the June Days

in Paris (1848) 681

The End of the Concert of Europe 690 Napoleon III and the Quest for French

Glory 691 The Crimean War, 1853–1856: Turning

Point in European Affairs 692 Reform in Russia 694

War and Nation Building 696 Cavour, Garibaldi, and the Process of Italian

Unification 696 Bismarck and the Realpolitik of German

Unification 699 Francis Joseph and the Creation of the

Austro-Hungarian Monarchy 702 Political Stability through Gradual Reform

in Great Britain 703 Nation Building in the United States and

Canada 705

Establishing Social Order 705 Bringing Order to the Cities 706 Expanding the Reach of Government 708 Schooling and Professionalizing Society 709 Spreading Western Order beyond the West 710 Confronting the Nation-State’s Order at

Home 713

The Culture of Social Order 715 The Arts Confront Social Reality 716 Religion and National Order 718 From the Natural Sciences to Social Science 720

Conclusion 721 • Chapter Review 723

document: Mrs. Seacole: The Other Florence Nightingale 694

terms of history: Nationalism 697 document: Bismarck Tricks the Public to Get His War 701 seeing history: Photographing the Nation: Domesticity

and War 704

653 689

Contents xxv

Chapter 23 Industry, Empire, and Everyday

Life, 1870–1890

Chapter 24 Modernity and the Road

to War, 1890–1914

The Advance of Industry in an Age of Empire 727 Industrial Innovation 727 Facing Economic Crisis 729 Revolution in Business Practices 731

The New Imperialism 733 Taming the Mediterranean 733 Scramble for Africa 733 Acquiring Territory in Asia 737 Japan’s Imperial Agenda 738 The Paradoxes of Imperialism 739

Imperial Society and Culture 740 The “Best Circles” and the Expanding

Middle Class 741 Professional Sports and Organized Leisure 742 Working People’s Strategies 743 Reform Efforts for Working-Class People 746 Artistic Responses to Empire and Industry 747

The Birth of Mass Politics 750 Workers, Politics, and Protest 750 Expanding Political Participation in

Western Europe 752 Power Politics in Central and Eastern Europe 754

Conclusion 759 • Chapter Review 761

document: Imperialism’s Popularity among the People 736 contrasting views: Experiences of Migration 744 document: Henrik Ibsen, From A Doll’s House 748 taking measure: The Decline of Illiteracy 755

Public Debate over Private Life 764 Population Pressure 765 Reforming Marriage 766 New Women, New Men, and the Politics of

Sexual Identity 767 Sciences of the Modern Self 768

Modernity and the Revolt in Ideas 771 The Opposition to Positivism 771 Revolutionizing Science 772 Modern Art 773 The Revolt in Music and Dance 775

Growing Tensions in Mass Politics 776 Labor’s Expanding Power 776 Rights for Women and the Battle for Suffrage 777 Liberalism Tested 778 Anti-Semitism, Nationalism, and Zionism in

Mass Politics 779

European Imperialism Challenged 783 The Trials of Empire 784 The Russian Empire Threatened 787 Growing Resistance to Colonial Domination 788

Roads to War 790 Competing Alliances and Clashing

Ambitions 790 The Race to Arms 792 1914: War Erupts 793

Conclusion 795 • Chapter Review 797

terms of history: Modern 766 new sources, new perspectives: Psychohistory and Its

Lessons 770 document: Leon Pinsker Calls for a Jewish State 783 document: A Historian Promotes Militant Nationalism 795

725 763

xxvi Contents

Chapter 25 World War I and Its Aftermath,

1914–1929

Chapter 26 The Great Depression

and World War II, 1929–1945

The Great War, 1914–1918 800 Blueprints for War 800 The Battlefronts 803 The Home Front 806

Protest, Revolution, and War’s End, 1917–1918 810 War Protest 810 Revolution in Russia 810 Ending the War, 1918 814

The Search for Peace in an Era of Revolution 815 Europe in Turmoil 815 The Paris Peace Conference, 1919–1920 816 Economic and Diplomatic Consequences of

the Peace 820

The Aftermath of War: Europe in the 1920s 821 Changes in the Political Landscape 822 Reconstructing the Economy 824 Restoring Society 825

Mass Culture and the Rise of Modern Dictators 827 Culture for the Masses 828 Cultural Debates over the Future 828 The Communist Utopia 831 Fascism on the March in Italy 833

Conclusion 835 • Chapter Review 837

seeing history: Demonizing the Enemy: Italian Propaganda Posters from World War I 808

document: Outbreak of the Russian Revolution 813 contrasting views: Arguing with the Victors 818 taking measure: The Growth of Radio, 1924–1929 829 document: Battlefield Tourism 830

The Great Depression 840 Economic Disaster Strikes 840 Social Effects of the Depression 842 The Great Depression beyond the West 843

Totalitarian Triumph 844 The Rise of Stalinism 844 Hitler’s Rise to Power 847 The Nazification of German Politics 848 Nazi Racism 849

Democracies on the Defensive 852 Confronting the Economic Crisis 852 Cultural Visions in Hard Times 854

The Road to Global War 856 A Surge in Global Imperialism 856 The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 859 Hitler’s Conquest of Central Europe,

1938–1939 860

World War II, 1939–1945 862 The German Onslaught 862 War Expands: The Pacific and Beyond 864 The War against Civilians 864 Societies at War 866 From Resistance to Allied Victory 868 An Uneasy Postwar Settlement 873

Conclusion 875 • Chapter Review 877

document: A Family Copes with Unemployment 842 terms of history: Totalitarianism 845 contrasting views: Stalin and Hitler: For and Against 850 document: The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 858 new sources, new perspectives: Museums and

Memory 867

799 839

Contents xxvii

Chapter 27 The Cold War and the Remaking

of Europe, 1945–1960s

Chapter 28 Postindustrial Society and the End of

the Cold War Order, 1960s–1989

World Politics Transformed 880 Chaos in Europe 881 New Superpowers: The United States and

the Soviet Union 883 Origins of the Cold War 883 The Division of Germany 886

Political and Economic Recovery in Europe 888 Dealing with Nazism 888 Rebirth of the West 889 The Welfare State: Common Ground East

and West 893 Recovery in the East 894

Decolonization in a Cold War Climate 897 The End of Empire in Asia 897 The Struggle for Identity in the Middle East 899 New Nations in Africa 900 Newcomers Arrive in Europe 901

Daily Life and Culture in the Shadow of Nuclear War 902 Restoring “Western” Values 903 Consumerism and Shifting Gender Norms 905 The Culture of Cold War 908 The Atomic Brink 909

Conclusion 911 • Chapter Review 913

new sources, new perspectives: Government Archives and the Truth about the Cold War 885

taking measure: World Manufacturing Output, 1950–1970 892

document: The Schuman Plan on European Unity (1950) 893

document: Consumerism, Youth, and the Birth of the Generation Gap 905

The Revolution in Technology 916 The Information Age: Television and

Computers 916 The Space Age 918 The Nuclear Age 919 Revolutions in Biology and Reproductive

Technology 919

Postindustrial Society and Culture 921 Multinational Corporations 921 The New Worker 922 The Boom in Education and Research 924 Changing Family Life and the Generation

Gap 924 Art, Ideas, and Religion in a Technocratic

Society 925

Protesting Cold War Conditions 927 Cracks in the Cold War Order 927 The Growth of Citizen Activism 930 1968: Year of Crisis 933

The Testing of Superpower Domination and the End of the Cold War 936 A Changing Balance of World Power 936 The Western Bloc Meets Challenges with

Reform 939 Collapse of Communism in the Soviet Bloc 942

Conclusion 947 • Chapter Review 949

taking measure: Postindustrial Occupational Structure, 1984 923

seeing history: Critiquing the Soviet System: Dissident Art in the 1960s and 1970s 929

contrasting views: Feminist Debates 932 document: Margaret Thatcher’s Economic Vision 941 document: Criticizing Gorbachev 944

879 915

xxvii i Contents

Chapter 29 A New Globalism,

1989 to the Present

Collapse of the Soviet Union and Its Aftermath 953 The Breakup of Yugoslavia 953 The Soviet Union Comes Apart 956 Toward a Market Economy 958 International Politics and the New Russia 960

The Nation-State in a Global Age 961 Europe Looks beyond the Nation-State 961 Globalizing Cities and Fragmenting Nations 964 Global Organizations 965

Challenges from an Interconnected World 966 The Problems of Pollution 966 Population, Health, and Disease 968 North versus South? 969 Islam Meets the West 969 World Economies on the Rise 973

Global Culture and Society in the Twenty-first Century 974 Redefining the West: The Impact of Global

Migration 974 Global Networks and the Economy 975 A Global Culture? 977

Conclusion 981 • Chapter Review 984

document: Václav Havel, “Czechoslovakia Is Returning to Europe” 963

document: The European Green Party Becomes Transnational (2006) 967

taking measure: World Population Growth, 1950–2010 968

contrasting views: Muslim Immigrants and Turkey in the EU: The Dutch Debate Globalization 976

Appendix: Useful Facts and Figures A-1

Glossary of Key Terms and People G-1

Suggested References SR-1

Index I-1

951

xxix

Maps and Figures

Maps Prologue map 1 The Development of Agriculture P-9

Chapter 1 map 1.1 The Ancient Near East, 4000–3000 B.C.E. 8

spot map The Akkadian Empire, 2350–2200 B.C.E. 12

spot map The Kingdom of Assyria, 1900 B.C.E. 13

map 1.2 Ancient Egypt 17

map 1.3 Greece and the Aegean Sea, 1500 B.C.E. 23

mapping the west The Period of Calamities,

1200–1000 B.C.E. 30

Chapter 2 map 2.1 Expansion of the Neo-Assyrian Empire,

c. 900–650 B.C.E. 35

map 2.2 Expansion of the Persian Empire,

c. 550–490 B.C.E. 38

spot map Phoenicia and Canaan/Palestine 39

map 2.3 Dark Age Greece 43

map 2.4 Archaic Greece, 750–500 B.C.E. 48

map 2.5 Phoenician and Greek Expansion,

750–500 B.C.E. 49

spot map Sparta and Corinth, 750–500 B.C.E. 57

spot map Athens and Central Greece, 750–500 B.C.E. 62

spot map Ionia and the Aegean, 750–500 B.C.E. 65

mapping the west Mediterranean Civilizations,

c. 500 B.C.E. 66

Chapter 3 map 3.1 The Persian Wars, 499–479 B.C.E. 72

spot map The Delian and Peloponnesian Leagues 74

map 3.2 Fifth-Century B.C.E. Athens 78

spot map Theaters of Classical Greece 95

map 3.3 The Peloponnesian War, 431–404 B.C.E. 97

mapping the west Greece, Europe, and the

Mediterranean, 400 B.C.E. 100

Chapter 4 spot map Athens’s Long Walls as Rebuilt after the

Peloponnesian War 106

spot map Aristotle’s Lyceum, established 335 B.C.E. 108

map 4.1 Expansion of Macedonia under Philip II,

359–336 B.C.E. 112

map 4.2 Conquests of Alexander the Great,

336–323 B.C.E. 114

map 4.3 Hellenistic Kingdoms, 240 B.C.E. 116

mapping the west Roman Takeover of the Hellenistic

World, to 30 B.C.E. 130

Chapter 5 map 5.1 Ancient Italy, 500 B.C.E. 140

map 5.2 The City of Rome during the Republic 143

spot map Rome and Central Italy, Fifth

Century B.C.E. 145

spot map Roman Roads, 110 B.C.E. 145

map 5.3 Roman Expansion, 500–44 B.C.E. 147

spot map The Kingdom of Mithridates VI, 88 B.C.E. 154

mapping the west The Roman World at the End of

the Republic, 44 B.C.E. 160

Chapter 6 map 6.1 The Expansion of the Roman Empire,

30 B.C.E.–117 C.E. 176

map 6.2 Natural Feature and Languages

of the Roman World 178

spot map Palestine in the Time of Jesus, 30 C.E. 181

map 6.3 Christian Populations in the Late Third

Century C.E. 184

mapping the west The Roman Empire in

Crisis, 284 C.E. 192

xxx Maps and Figures

Chapter 7 map 7.1 Diocletian’s Reorganization of 293 199

spot map The Empire’s East/West Division, 395 199

map 7.2 The Spread of Christianity, 300–600 209

spot map Original Areas of Christian Splinter

Groups 211

map 7.3 Migrations and Invasions of the Fourth

and Fifth Centuries 216

map 7.4 Peoples and Kingdoms of the Roman

World, 526 220

spot map Constantinople during the Rule of

Justinian 225

mapping the west Western Europe and the Eastern

Roman Empire, 600 228

Chapter 8 map 8.1 Expansion of Islam to 750 236

map 8.2 Byzantine and Sasanid Empires, c. 600 241

map 8.3 Diagram of the City of Ephesus 242

map 8.4 The Merovingian Kingdoms in the

Seventh Century 247

spot map Tours, c. 600 248

spot map The British Isles 253

spot map Lombard Italy, Early Eighth Century 255

mapping the west Europe and the Mediterranean,

c. 750 258

Chapter 9 map 9.1 The Expansion of Byzantium, 860–1025 263

spot map The Balkans, c. 850–950 267

map 9.2 Islamic States, c. 1000 269

map 9.3 Expansion of the Carolingian Empire

under Charlemagne 275

map 9.4 Muslim, Viking, and Magyar Invasions

of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries 281

spot map England in the Age of King Alfred,

871–899 288

spot map The Kingdom of the Franks under Hugh

Capet, 987–996 289

spot map The Ottoman Empire, 936–1002 289

mapping the west Europe and the Mediterranean,

c. 1050 292

Chapter 10 map 10.1 Medieval Trade Routes in the Eleventh

and Twelfth Centuries 298

spot map The World of the Investiture Conflict,

c. 1070–1122 306

map 10.2 The First Crusade, 1096–1099 312

spot map Jewish Communities Attacked during

the First Crusade 313

spot map The Crusader States in 1109 316

spot map Norman Conquest of England, 1066 320

mapping the west Major Religions in the West,

c. 1150 324

Chapter 11 map 11.1 Europe in the Age of Henry II

and Frederick Barbarossa, 1150–1190 338

spot map The Consolidation of France under

Philip Augustus, 1180–1223 340

spot map Eastern Europe and Byzantium, c. 1200 346

map 11.2 Crusades and Anti-Heretic Campaigns,

1150–1204 352

map 11.3 The Reconquista, 1150–1212 354

spot map The Albigensian Crusade, 1209–1229 355

mapping the west Europe and Byzantium, c. 1215 356

Chapter 12 spot map Blood Libel Charges in

Europe, c. 1100–1300 366

spot map Italy at the End of the Thirteenth

Century 373

map 12.1 Europe in the Time of Frederick II,

r. 1212–1250 374

map 12.2 France under Louis IX, r. 1226–1270 376

map 12.3 The Mongol Invasions to 1259 381

mapping the west Europe, c. 1340 383

Chapter 13 map 13.1 The Hundred Years’ War, 1337–1453 393

map 13.2 Ottoman Expansion in the Fourteenth

and Fifteenth Centuries 397

spot map The Hussite Revolution, 1415–1436 400

spot map Hanseatic League 409

Maps and Figures xxxi

spot map Spain before Unification, Late Fifteenth

Century 410

spot map Expansion of Burgundy, 1384–1476 410

spot map Growth of the Swiss Confederation,

1291–1386 411

spot map Italy at the Peace of Lodi, 1454 412

mapping the west Europe, c. 1492 415

Chapter 14 map 14.1 Early Voyages of World Exploration 422

map 14.2 Spanish and Portuguese Colonies in

the Americas, 1492–1560 425

spot map Luther’s World in the Early

Sixteenth Century 430

spot map Calvin’s World in the Mid-Sixteenth

Century 432

map 14.3 The Peasants’ War of 1525 435

map 14.4 Habsburg-Valois-Ottoman Wars,

1494–1559 442

mapping the west Reformation Europe, c. 1560 447

Chapter 15 map 15.1 Protestant Churches in France, 1562 453

map 15.2 The Empire of Philip II, r. 1556–1598 456

spot map The Netherlands during the Revolt,

c. 1580 456

spot map Retreat of the Spanish Armada, 1588 459

spot map Russia, Poland-Lithuania, and Sweden

in the Late 1500s 460

map 15.3 The Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of

Westphalia, 1648 463

map 15.4 European Colonization of the Americas,

c. 1640 470

mapping the west The Religious Divisions of

Europe, c. 1648 480

Chapter 16 spot map The Fronde, 1648–1653 486

map 16.1 Louis XIV’s Acquisitions, 1668–1697 492

map 16.2 State Building in Central and Eastern

Europe, 1648–1699 494

spot map Poland-Lithuania in the Seventeenth

Century 497

spot map England during the Civil War 499

map 16.3 Dutch Commerce in the Seventeenth

Century 506

mapping the west Europe at the End of the

Seventeenth Century 516

Chapter 17 map 17.1 European Trade Patterns, c. 1740 522

map 17.2 Europe, c. 1715 537

map 17.3 Russia and Sweden after the Great

Northern War, 1721 543

spot map Austrian Conquest of Hungary,

1657–1730 544

mapping the west Europe in 1740 551

Chapter 18 map 18.1 War of the Austrian Succession,

1740–1748 574

map 18.2 The Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763 575

spot map The First Partition of Poland, 1772 576

spot map The Pugachev Rebellion, 1773 579

mapping the west Europe and the World, c. 1780 583

Chapter 19 spot map The Low Countries in 1787 589

map 19.1 Revolutionary Paris, 1789 594

spot map The Great Fear, 1789 595

map 19.2 Redrawing the Map of France, 1789–1791 596

spot map The Vendeé Rebellion, 1793 604

map 19.3 French Expansion, 1791–1799 608

map 19.4 The Second and Third Partitions of

Poland, 1793 and 1795 612

spot map St. Domingue on the Eve of the

Revolt, 1791 614

mapping the west Europe in 1799 616

Chapter 20 map 20.1 Napoleon’s Empire at Its Height, 1812 628

spot map France’s Retreat from America 629

spot map Consolidation of German and Italian

States, 1812 630

spot map The Spanish War for Independence,

1807–1813 632

xxxii Maps and Figures

map 20.2 Europe after the Congress of Vienna,

1815 637

map 20.3 Revolutionary Movements of the 1820s 644

spot map Nationalistic Movements in the Balkans,

1815–1830 645

map 20.4 Latin American Independence, 1804–1830 647

mapping the west Europe in 1830 650

Chapter 21 map 21.1 Industrialization in Europe, c. 1850 657

map 21.2 The Spread of Cholera, 1826–1855 662

spot map The Opium War, 1839–1842 671

map 21.3 Languages of Nineteenth-Century Europe 673

map 21.4 The Revolutions of 1848 679

spot map The Divisions of Italy, 1848 680

mapping the west Europe in 1850 686

Chapter 22 map 22.1 The Crimean War, 1853–1856 692

map 22.2 Unification of Italy, 1859–1870 698

map 22.3 Unification of Germany, 1862–1871 700

spot map The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, 1867 702

map 22.4 U.S. Expansion, 1850–1870 706

spot map Indian Resistance, 1857 711

map 22.5 The Paris Commune, 1871 714

mapping the west Europe and the Mediterranean,

1871 722

Chapter 23 spot map The Suez Canal and British Invasion

of Egypt, 1882 733

map 23.1 Africa, c. 1890 735

spot map British Colonialism in the Malay

Peninsula and Burma, 1826–1890 737

map 23.2 Expansion of Russia in Asia, 1865–1895 738

spot map The Union of Indochina, 1893 738

map 23.3 Expansion of Berlin to 1914 755

map 23.4 The Balkans, c. 1878 757

spot map Russia: The Pale of Settlement in the

Nineteenth Century 758

mapping the west The West and the World, c. 1890 760

Chapter 24 spot map Principal Ethnic Groups in

Austria-Hungary, c. 1900 781

map 24.1 Jewish Migrations in the Late Nineteenth

Century 782

map 24.2 Africa in 1914 784

spot map The Struggle for Ethiopia, 1896 785

map 24.3 Imperialism in Asia, 1894–1914 786

spot map Russian Revolution of 1905 787

map 24.4 The Balkans, 1908–1914 791

mapping the west Europe at the Outbreak of World

War I, August 1914 796

Chapter 25 map 25. 1 The Fronts of World War I, 1914–1918 802

spot map The Schlieffen Plan 803

map 25.2 The Western Front 804

map 25. 3 The Russian Civil War, 1917–1922 814

map 25. 4 Europe and the Middle East after the

Peace Settlements of 1919–1920 817

spot map The Little Entente 821

spot map National Minorities in Postwar Poland 822

spot map The Irish Free State and Ulster, 1921 824

mapping the west Europe and the World in 1929 836

Chapter 26 map 26.1 The Expansion of Japan, 1931–1941 857

spot map The Ethiopian War, 1935–1936 859

map 26.2 The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 860

map 26.3 The Growth of Nazi Germany,

1933–1939 862

spot map The Division of France, 1940 863

map 26.4 Concentration Camps and Extermination

Sites in Europe 865

map 26.5 World War II in Europe and Africa 869

map 26.6 World War II in the Pacific 872

mapping the west Europe at War’s End, 1945 876

Chapter 27 map 27.1 The Impact of World War II on Europe 883

spot map Yugoslavia after the Revolution 886

Maps and Figures xxxii i

map 27.2 Divided Germany and the Berlin Airlift,

1946–1949 887

map 27.3 European NATO Members and the Warsaw

Pact in the 1950s 888

spot map The Korean War, 1950–1953 898

spot map Indochina, 1954 898

map 27.4 The Partition of Palestine and the

Creation of Israel, 1947–1948 899

map 27.5 The Decolonization of Africa, 1951–1990 900

map 27.6 The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 911

mapping the west The Cold War World, c. 1960 912

Chapter 28 map 28.1 The Airbus Production System 922

map 28.2 The Vietnam War, 1954–1975 930

spot map Prague Spring, 1968 935

spot map Israel after the Six-Day War, 1967 937

spot map Nationalist Movements of the 1970s 939

mapping the west The Collapse of Communism

in Europe, 1989–1990 948

Chapter 29 map 29.1 Eastern Europe in the 1990s 954

map 29.2 The Former Yugoslavia, c. 2000 955

map 29.3 Countries of the Former Soviet Union,

c. 2000 957

map 29.4 The European Union in 2007 962

map 29.5 The Middle East in the Twenty-first

Century 971

spot map Tigers of the Pacific Rim, c. 1995 973

mapping the west The World in the New

Millennium 983

Figures figure 1.1 Cuneiform Writing 11

figure 1.2 Egyptian Hieroglyphics 18

figure 3.1 Triremes, the Foremost Classical

Greek Warships 75

figure 3.2 Styles of Greek Capitals 78

figure 6.1 Cutaway Reconstruction of the Forum

of Augustus 167

figure 10.1 Floor Plan of a Cistercian Monastery 310

figure 11.1 Floor Plan of a Romanesque Church 333

figure 11.2 Elements of a Gothic Cathedral 334

figure 11.3 Genealogy of Henry II 337

figure 11.4 Troubadour Song: “I Never Died

for Love” 348

figure 17.1 African Slaves Imported into American

Territories, 1701–1810 521

figure 17.2 Annual Imports in the Atlantic Slave

Trade, 1450–1870 523

figure 23.1 European Emigration, 1870–1890 746

figure 24.1 The Growth in Armaments, 1890–1914 793

figure 25.1 The Rising Cost of Living During

World War I 809

figure 26.1 Weapons Production of the Major

Powers, 1939–1945 868

figure 27.1 Military Spending and the Cold War

Arms Race, 1950–1970 891

figure 27.2 Women in the Workforce, 1950–1960 907

figure 28.1 Fluctuating Oil Prices, 1955–1985 938

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xxxv

Documents Hammurabi’s Laws for Physicians 15

Declaring Innocence on Judgment Day in Ancient Egypt 22

Homer’s Vision of Justice in the Polis 46

Cyrene Records Its Foundation as a Greek Colony 52

Athenian Regulations for a Rebellious Ally 88

Sophists Argue Both Sides of a Case 90

Aristotle on the Nature of the Greek Polis 109

Epigrams by Women Poets 122

The Rape and Suicide of Lucretia 144

Polybius on Roman Military Discipline 154

Augustus, Res Gestae (My Accomplishments) 168

The Scene at a Roman Bath 170

Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices and Wages 201

The Edict of Milan on Religious Liberty 203

The Fatihah of the Qur’an 234

On Holy Images 245

The Book of the Prefect 265

When She Approached 272

A Byzantine View of Papal Primacy 305

Penances for the Invaders (1070) 322

Frederick I’s Reply to the Romans 344

The Children’s Crusade (1212) 355

The Debate between Reason and the Lover 369

Ausculta Fili (Listen, Beloved Son) 379

Wat Tyler’s Rebellion (1381) 398

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man 404

Columbus Describes His First Voyage (1493) 423

Ordinances for Calvinist Churches (1547) 433

The Horrors of the Thirty Years’ War 462

Sentence Pronounced against Galileo (1633) 477

Marie de Sévigné, Letter Describing the French Court (1675) 487

John Milton, Defense of Freedom of the Press (1644) 511

The Social Effects of Growing Consumption 530

Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733) 548

Denis Diderot, “Encyclopedia” (1755) 559

Special Features

Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) 582

The Rights of Minorities 597

Address on Abolishing the Slave Trade (February 5, 1790) 613

An Ordinary Soldier on Campaign with Napoleon 633

Wordsworth’s Poetry 642

Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto 677

Alexis de Tocqueville Describes the June Days in Paris (1848) 681

Mrs. Seacole: The Other Florence Nightingale 694

Bismarck Tricks the Public to Get His War 701

Imperialism’s Popularity among the People 736

Henrik Ibsen, From A Doll’s House 748

Leon Pinsker Calls for a Jewish State 783

A Historian Promotes Militant Nationalism 795

Outbreak of the Russian Revolution 813

Battlefield Tourism 830

A Family Copes with Unemployment 842

The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 858

The Schuman Plan on European Unity, 1950 893

Consumerism, Youth, and the Birth of the Generation Gap 905

Margaret Thatcher’s Economic Vision 941

Criticizing Gorbachev 944

Václav Havel, “Czechoslovakia Is Returning to Europe” 963

The European Green Party Becomes Transnational (2006) 967

Contrasting Views Persians Debate Democracy, Oligarchy, and Monarchy 58

The Nature of Women and Marriage 84

What Was Julius Caesar Like? 156

Christians in the Empire: Conspirators or Faithful Subjects? 186

Charlemagne: Roman Emperor, Father of Europe, or the Chief Bishop? 276

The First Crusade 314

Magna Carta 342

Joan of Arc: Who Was “the Maid”? 394

Martin Luther: Holy Man or Heretic? 431

The English Civil War 500

Women and the Enlightenment 562

Perspectives on the French Revolution 610

Napoleon: For and Against 634

Experiences of Migration 744

Arguing with the Victors 818

Stalin and Hitler: For and Against 850

Feminist Debates 932

Muslim Immigrants and Turkey in the EU: The Dutch Debate Globalization 976

xxxvi Special Features

Special Features xxxvii

New Sources, New Perspectives Daily Bread, Damaged Bones, and Cracked Teeth P-12

Papyrus Discoveries and Menander’s Comedies 124

Was There a Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? 218

Anthropology, Archaeology, and Changing Notions of Ethnicity 249

The Cairo Geniza 318

The Peasants of Montaillou 364

Tree Rings and the Little Ice Age 466

Oral History and the Life of Slaves 524

Statistics and the Standard of Living of the Working Class 660

Psychohistory and Its Lessons 770

Museums and Memory 867

Government Archives and the Truth about the Cold War 885

Terms of History Civilization 6

Medieval 233

Feudalism 283

Renaissance 402

Progress 547

Enlightenment 565

Revolution 590

Nationalism 697

Modern 766

Totalitarianism 845

Seeing History Shifting Sculptural Expression: From Egypt to Greece 50

Changing Religious Beliefs: Pagan and Christian Sarcophagi 206

Who Conquered Whom? A Persian and an Arabic Coin Compared 239

Romanesque versus Gothic: The View Down the Nave 335

Expanding Geographic Knowledge: World Maps in an Age of Exploration 424

Religious Differences in Painting of the Baroque Period: Rubens and

Rembrandt 473

The Clothing Revolution: The Social Meaning of Changes in

Post-Revolutionary Fashion 624

Photographing the Nation: Domesticity and War 704

Demonizing the Enemy: Italian Propaganda Posters from World War I 808

Critiquing the Soviet System: Dissident Art in the 1960s and 1970s 929

Taking Measure Greek Family Size and Agricultural Labor in the Archaic Age 55

Military Forces of Athens and Sparta at the Beginning of the

Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.E.) 98

Census Records during the First and Second Punic Wars 148

The Value of Roman Imperial Coinage, 27 B.C.E.–300 C.E. 189

Peasants’ Use of Farm Produce in the Roman Empire 202

Church Repair, 600–900 243

Sellers, Buyers, and Donors, 800–1000 284

Slaves in England in 1086 323

Sentences Imposed by an Inquisitor, 1308–1323 363

Population Losses and the Black Death 389

The Rise and Fall of Silver Imports to Spain, 1550–1660 465

The Seventeenth-Century Army 493

Relationship of Crop Harvested to Seed Used, 1400–1800 531

World Population Growth, 1700–1800 571

Railroad Lines, 1830–1850 656

The Decline of Illiteracy 755

The Growth of Radio, 1924–1929 829

World Manufacturing Output, 1950–1970 892

Postindustrial Occupational Structure, 1984 923

World Population Growth, 1950–2010 968

xxxvii i Special Features

This guide to your textbook introduces the unique features that will help you understand the fascinating story of Western Civilization.

To the Student

Tools to help you focus on what is important

Read the chapter outlines to preview the topics and themes to come.

Consult the running glossary for definitions of the bolded Key Terms and People.

Preview chapter events and keep track of time with chapter timelines.

Use the review questions at the end of each major section to check your understanding of key concepts.

Read the focus questions at the start of each chapter to think about the main ideas you should look for as you read.

xxxix

xl To the Student

Special features introduce the way historians work and help you learn to think critically about the past.

Numerous individual primary-source documents offer direct experiences of the past and the opportunity to consider sources historians use.

Contrasting Views provide three or four often conflict- ing eyewitness accounts of a cen- tral event, person, or development to foster critical thinking skills.

Seeing History pairs two visuals with background informa- tion and probing questions to encourage analysis of images as historical evidence.

New Sources, New Perspectives show how new evidence leads historians to fresh insights—and sometimes new interpretations.

Terms of History identify a term central to history writing and reveal how it is hotly debated.

Taking Measure data reveal how individual facts add up to broad trends and introduce quantitative analysis skills.

To the Student xli

Art and maps extend the chapter, and help you analyze images and put events in geographical context.

Full-size maps show major historical developments and carry informative captions.

Web references direct you to visual activities designed to help you analyze images.

Mapping the West summary maps provide a snapshot of the West at the close of each chapter.

“Spot” maps offer geographical de- tails right where you need them.

xli i To the Student

Tools to help you remember the chapter’s main points and do further research

For print and Web resources for papers or further study, consult the For Further Explo- ration boxes at the end of each chapter, which guide you to annotated lists of suggested ref- erences, additional primary-source materials, and related Web resources.

Test your knowledge of the important concepts and historical figures in the Key Terms and People lists, which include page references to the text discussion and running glossary definition. These definitions are also in the glossary at the end of the book.

Answer the Review Questions, which repeat the chapter’s end-of- section comprehension prompts.

Answer the analytical Making Connections questions, which will help you link ideas within or across chapters.

Read the chapter conclusions to review how the chap- ters’ most important themes and topics fit together and learn how they connect to the next chapter.

Visit the free online study guide, which provides quizzes and activities to help you master the chapter material.

Review the Important Events chronologies to make sure you under- stand the relationships between major events in the chapter and their sequence.

To the Student xli i i

In each chapter of this textbook you will find many primary sources to broaden your understanding of the development of the West. Primary sources refer to firsthand, contemporary accounts or direct evidence about a particular topic. For example, speeches, letters, diaries, song lyrics, and newspaper articles are all primary sources that historians use to construct accounts of the past. Nonwritten materials such as maps, paintings, artifacts, and even architecture and music can also be primary sources. Both types of historical documents in this textbook — written and visual — provide a glimpse into the lives of the men and women who influenced or were influenced by the course of Western history.

To guide your interpretation of any source, you should begin by asking several basic questions, listed below, as starting points for observing, analyzing, and interpreting the past. Your answers should prompt further questions of your own.

1. Who is the author? Who wrote or created the material? What was his or her author- ity? (Personal? institutional?) Did the author have specialized knowledge or experi- ence? If you are reading a written document, how would you describe the author’s tone of voice? (Formal, personal, angry?)

2. Who is the audience? Who were the intended readers, listeners, or viewers? How does the intended audience affect the ways that the author presents ideas?

3. What are the main ideas? What are the main points that the author is trying to con- vey? Can you detect any underlying assumptions of values or attitudes? How does the form or medium affect the meaning of this document?

4. In what context was the document created? From when and where does the docu- ment originate? What was the interval between the initial problem or event and this document, which responded to it? Through what form or medium was the document communicated? (For example, a newspaper, a government record, an illustration.) What contemporary events or conditions might have affected the creation of the doc- ument?

5. What’s missing? What’s missing or cannot be learned from this source, and what might this omission reveal? Are there other sources that might fill in the gaps?

Now consider these questions as you read “Columbus Describes His First Voyage (1493),” the document on the next page. Compare your answers to the sample obser- vations provided.

How to Read Primary Sources

xliv To the Student

1. Who is the author? The title and headnote that precede each document contain in- formation about the authorship and date of its creation. In this case, the Italian ex- plorer Christopher Columbus is the author. His letter describes events in which he was both an eyewitness and a participant.

2. Who is the audience? Columbus sent the letter to Raphael Sanchez, treasurer to Fer- dinand and Isabella — someone who Columbus knew would be keenly interested in the fate of his patrons’ investment. Because the letter was also a public document writ- ten to a crown official, Columbus would have expected a wider audience beyond Sanchez. How might his letter have differed had it been written to a friend?

3. What are the main ideas? In this segment, Columbus describes his encounter with the native people. He speaks of his desire to establish good relations by treating them fairly, and he offers his impressions of their intelligence and naiveté — characteristics he implies will prove useful to Europeans. He also expresses an interest in converting them to Christianity and making them loyal subjects of the crown.

4. In what context was the document created? Columbus wrote the letter in 1493, within six months of his first voyage. He would have been eager to announce the suc- cess of his endeavor.

5. What’s missing? Columbus’s letter provides just one view of the encounter. We do not have a corresponding account from the native Americans’ perspective nor from anyone else travelling with Columbus. With no corroboration evidence, how reliable is this description?

Note: You can use these same questions to analyze visual images. Start by determining who created the image — whether it’s a painting, photograph, sculpture, map, or arti- fact — and when it was made. Then consider the audience for whom the artist might have intended the work and how viewers might have reacted. Consult the text for in- formation about the time period, and look for visual cues such as color, artistic style, and use of space to determine the central idea of the work. As you read, consult the captions in this book to help you evaluate the images and to ask more questions of your own.

xlv

The B.C.E./C.E. Dating System “When were you born?”“What year is it?”We custom- arily answer questions like these with a number, such as “1987” or “2004.” Our replies are usually auto- matic, taking for granted the numerous assumptions Westerners make about how dates indicate chronol- ogy. But to what do numbers such as 1987 and 2004 actually refer? In this book the numbers used to specify dates follow a recent revision of the system most common in the Western secular world. This sys- tem reckons the dates of solar years by counting backward and forward from the traditional date of the birth of Jesus Christ, over two thousand years ago.

Using this method, numbers followed by the abbreviation B.C.E., standing for “before the com- mon era” (or, as some would say, “before the Christian era”), indicate the number of years counting backward from the assumed date of the birth of Jesus Christ. B.C.E. therefore indicates the same chronology marked by the traditional abbre- viation B.C. (“before Christ”). The larger the num- ber following B.C.E. (or B.C.), the earlier in history is the year to which it refers. The date 431 B.C.E., for example, refers to a year 431 years before the birth of Jesus and therefore comes earlier in time than the dates 430 B.C.E., 429 B.C.E., and so on. The same calculation applies to numbering other time intervals calculated on the decimal system: those of ten years (a decade), of one hundred years (a century), and of one thousand years (a millen- nium). For example, the decade of the 440s B.C.E. (449 B.C.E. to 440 B.C.E.) is earlier than the decade of the 430s B.C.E. (439 B.C.E. to 430 B.C.E.). “Fifth century B.C.E.” refers to the fifth period of 100 years reckoning backward from the birth of Jesus and covers the years 500 B.C.E. to 401 B.C.E. It is earlier in history than the fourth century B.C.E. (400 B.C.E. to 301 B.C.E.), which followed the fifth century B.C.E. Because this system has no year “zero,” the first century B.C.E. covers the years 100 B.C.E. to 1 B.C.E. Dating millennia works similarly: the second millennium B.C.E. refers to the years 2000 B.C.E. to 1001 B.C.E., the third millennium to the years 3000 B.C.E. to 2001 B.C.E., and so on.

To indicate years counted forward from the traditional date of Jesus’ birth, numbers are fol- lowed by the abbreviation C.E., standing for “of the common era” (or “of the Christian era”). C.E. therefore indicates the same chronology marked by the traditional abbreviation A.D., which stands for the Latin phrase anno Domini (“in the year of the Lord”). A.D. properly comes before the date be- ing marked. The date A.D. 1492, for example, translates as “in the year of the Lord 1492,” mean- ing 1492 years after the birth of Jesus. Under the B.C.E./C.E. system, this date would be written as 1492 C.E. For dating centuries, the term “first cen- tury C.E.” refers to the period from 1 C.E. to 100 C.E. (which is the same period as A.D. 1 to A.D. 100). For dates C.E., the smaller the number, the earlier the date in history. The fourth century C.E. (301 C.E. to 400 C.E.) comes before the fifth century C.E. (401 C.E. to 500 C.E.). The year 312 C.E. is a date in the early fourth century C.E., while 395 C.E. is a date late in the same century. When numbers are given without either B.C.E. or C.E., they are pre- sumed to be dates C.E. For example, the term eigh- teenth century with no abbreviation accompany- ing it refers to the years 1701 C.E. to 1800 C.E.

No standard system of numbering years, such as B.C.E./C.E., existed in antiquity. Different people in different places identified years with varying names and numbers. Consequently, it was difficult to match up the years in any particular local sys- tem with those in a different system. Each city of ancient Greece, for example, had its own method for keeping track of the years. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides, therefore, faced a problem in presenting a chronology for the famous Pelo- ponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, which began (by our reckoning) in 431 B.C.E. To try to ex- plain to as many of his readers as possible the date the war had begun, he described its first year by three different local systems: “the year when Chry- sis was in the forty-eighth year of her priesthood at Argos, and Aenesias was overseer at Sparta, and Pythodorus was magistrate at Athens.”

A Catholic monk named Dionysius, who lived in Rome in the sixth century C.E., invented the

Authors’ Note

xlvi Authors’ Note

The system of numbering years from the birth of Jesus is far from the only one in use today. The Jewish calendar of years, for example, counts for- ward from the date given to the creation of the world, which would be calculated as 3761 B.C.E. under the B.C.E./C.E. system. Under this system, years are designated A.M., an abbreviation of the Latin anno mundi, “in the year of the world.” The Islamic calendar counts forward from the date of the prophet Muhammad’s flight from Mecca, called the Hijra, in what is the year 622 C.E. The abbreviation A.H. (standing for the Latin phrase anno Hegirae, “in the year of the Hijra”) indicates dates calculated by this system. Anthropology commonly reckons distant dates as “before the present” (abbreviated B.P.).

History is often defined as the study of change over time; hence the importance of dates for the historian. But just as historians argue over which dates are most significant, they disagree over which dating system to follow. Their debate reveals per- haps the most enduring fact about history — its vitality.

system of reckoning dates forward from the birth of Jesus. Calling himself Exiguus (Latin for “the little” or “the small”) as a mark of humility, he placed Jesus’ birth 754 years after the foundation of ancient Rome. Others then and now believe his date for Jesus’s birth was in fact several years too late. Many scholars today calculate that Jesus was born in what would be 4 B.C.E. according to Dionysius’s system, although a date a year or so earlier also seems possible.

Counting backward from the supposed date of Jesus’ birth to indicate dates earlier than that event represented a natural complement to reck- oning forward for dates after it. The English histo- rian and theologian Bede in the early eighth century was the first to use both forward and backward reckoning from the birth of Jesus in a historical work, and this system gradually gained wider ac- ceptance because it provided a basis for standard- izing the many local calendars used in the Western Christian world. Nevertheless, B.C. and A.D. were not used regularly until the end of the eighteenth century. B.C.E. and C.E. became common in the late twentieth century.

La st H1 xlvii

xlvi i

LYNN HUNT, Eugen Weber Professor of Modern Euro- pean History at the University of California, Los Ange- les, received her B.A. from Carleton College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. She is the author of Revolution and Urban Politics in Provincial France (1978); Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (1984); The Family Romance of the French Revolution (1992); and Inventing Human Rights (2007). She is also the coauthor of Telling the Truth about His- tory (1994); coauthor of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution (2001, with CD-ROM); editor of The New Cultural History (1989); editor and translator of The French Revolution and Human Rights (1996); and coeditor of Histories: French Constructions of the Past (1995), Beyond the Cultural Turn (1999), and Human Rights and Revolutions (2000). She has been awarded fellowships by the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and is a fel- low of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She served as president of the American Historical As- sociation in 2002.

THOMAS R. MARTIN, Jeremiah O’Connor Professor in Classics at the College of the Holy Cross, earned his B.A. at Princeton University and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard University. He is the author of Sovereignty and Coinage in Classical Greece (1985) and Ancient Greece (1996, 2000) and is one of the originators of Perseus: In- teractive Sources and Studies on Ancient Greece (1992, 1996, and www.perseus.tufts.edu), which, among other awards, was named the EDUCOM Best Software in So- cial Sciences (History) in 1992. He serves on the edito- rial board of STOA (www.stoa.org) and as codirector of its DEMOS project (online resources on ancient Athen- ian democracy). A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Amer- ican Council of Learned Societies, he is currently con- ducting research on the comparative historiography of ancient Greece and ancient China.

BARBARA H. ROSENWEIN, professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, earned her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Rhinoceros Bound: Cluny in the Tenth Century (1982); To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny’s Property, 909–1049 (1989); Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Me- dieval Europe (1999); A Short History of the Middle Ages (2001); Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (2006); and Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World (2006). She is the editor of Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (1998) and coeditor of De- bating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings (1998) and Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts: Religion in Me- dieval Society (2000).A recipient of Guggenheim and Na- tional Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, she is currently working on a general history of emotions in the West.

R. PO-CHIA HSIA, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University, received his B.A. from Swarthmore College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. He is the author of Society and Religion in Münster, 1535–1618 (1984); The Myth of Ritual Mur- der: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (1988); So- cial Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550–1750 (1989); Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (1992); The World of the Catholic Renewal (1997); and Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions: Maria Theresa von Fugger-Wellenburg (1690–1762) and Jesuit Mission- aries to China and Vietnam (2006). He has edited or coedited In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile Rela- tions in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (1995); The German People and the Reformation (1998); Calvin- ism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age (2002); A Companion to the Reformation World (Black- well Companion Series, 2004); Cultural Translation in Early Modern Europe (2007); and Cambridge History of

About the Authors

xlvii i About the Authors

France (1985); Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700 (1989); The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice (1998); Imperialism (2000); and Europe in the Contemporary World: 1900 to the Present (2007). She is also the coauthor and translator of What Is Property? (1994); editor of Global Feminisms since 1945 (2000) and Women’s History in Global Perspective (3 vols. 2004–2005); coeditor of History and the Texture of Modern Life: Selected Writings of Lucy Maynard Salmon, Gendering Disability (2004); and general editor of Oxford Encyclope- dia of Women in World History (4 vols. 2007). She has re- ceived fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Davis Center of Princeton Univer- sity, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Currently she is studying the globalization of European culture since the seventeenth century.

Christianity, Volume 6, Reform and Expansion, 1500–1660 (2007). An academician at the Academia Sinica, Taiwan, he has also been awarded fellowships by the Woodrow Wilson International Society of Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Davis Center of Princeton University, the Mellon Foundation, the American Coun- cil of Learned Societies, and the American Academy in Berlin. Currently he is working on the cultural con- tacts between Europe and Asia between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

BONNIE G. SMITH, Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University,earned her B.A.at Smith Col- lege and her Ph.D.at the University of Rochester.She is the author of Ladies of the Leisure Class (1981); Confessions of a Concierge: Madame Lucie’s History of Twentieth-Century

P E O P L E S A N D C U LT U R E S

The Making of the West

t h i r d e d i t i o n

In 1997, archaeologists working in the East African nation ofEthiopia discovered fossilized skulls that dated from at least 160,000years ago. These bones are the oldest remains ever found from the species Homo sapiens (“wise human being”)—people whose brains and

appearances were similar (though not identical) to ours. This new in-

formation excited scientists because it supported the “out of Africa”

theory about human origins, which claims that Homo sapiens first ap-

peared in Africa perhaps as early as 200,000 years ago and then spread

from that continent all over the world.

The innovations that early human beings made in technology, trade,

religion, and social organization formed the basis of our modern way of

life. They also led to the emergence of war. Just as with the discovery of

the skull, researchers keep uncovering new information that changes our

knowledge about the past and therefore our thinking about how the past

relates to the present. This process of discovery always involves question-

ing and debate. When we study history, therefore, we have to expect dis-

agreements, especially about how to understand past events, what those

events meant then, and what they mean today. Recent discoveries of hu-

man remains in Asia, for example, have reignited debate over the “out of

Africa” theory, bringing back the once-discarded idea that human beings

arose independently in different parts of the earth.

Scientists studying fossilized bones and those studying human mi-

tochondrial DNA (the type inherited from the mother) have shown

that it took millions of years for the earliest human species to emerge.

According to the “out of Africa” theory, human beings exactly like us

The Paleolithic Age, 200,000–10,000 B.C.E. P-4 • The Life of Hunter-Gatherers • Technology, Trade, Religion,

and Hierarchy

The Neolithic Age, 10,000–4000 B.C.E. P-8 • The Neolithic Revolution • Neolithic Origins of Modern Life and War • Daily Life in the Neolithic Village of

Çatalhöyük • Gender Inequality in the Neolithic Age

P–3

Prologue: The Beginnings of Human Society tO c. 4000 b.c.e.

Stone Age Handaxe Archaeologists regard stone cutting tools like this one, called a handaxe, as the first great invention. Stone Age peoples made handaxes for hundreds of thousands of years, probably using hammers made from bone or wood to chip off flakes from the stone to create knifelike edges for cutting and scraping. This sharp tool would have been especially useful for butchering animals, such as the hippopotamuses that African hunter-gatherers killed for meat. Shown here at its full size (about seven and three-quarter inches top to bottom), this handaxe was, like all others, shaped to fit the human palm; users probably wrapped the tool in a piece of hide to protect their hands from cuts. (© The Trustees of The British Museum.)

(Homo sapiens sapiens, meaning “wise, wise human being”) first developed in sub-Saharan Africa more than fifty thousand years ago. Starting about forty-five thousand years ago, those human beings began moving out of Africa, first into the Near East1 and then into Europe and Asia.

This migration took place in the period com- monly called the Stone Age, during which human beings made their most durable tools from stones, before they learned to work metals. Human soci- ety began in the Stone Age, which archaeologists divide into two parts to mark the greatest turning point in human history, the invention of agricul- ture and the domestication of animals and the enormous changes in human society that these in- novations brought. The first, older part, the Pale- olithic (“Old Stone”) Age, dates from about 200,000 B.C.E. to about 10,000 B.C.E. The second, newer part, the Neolithic (“New Stone”) Age, dates from about 10,000 B.C.E. to about 4000 B.C.E.

Archaeology — the study of physical evidence from the past — is our only source of information about the Stone Age; there are no documents to inform us about the lives of early human beings because people did not invent writing until about 4000–3000 B.C.E. Historians sometimes label the

time before the invention of writing prehistory, be- cause history traditionally means having written sources about the past. Historians also usually do not apply the word civilization to human society in the Stone Age because people then had not yet be- gun to live in cities or form political states (people living in a defined territory and organized under a central political authority), important character- istics that historians look for when defining civi- lization. (The first cities and political states emerged about the same time as writing, as we will see in Chapter 1.)

It was in the Neolithic Age that, instead of only hunting and gathering food in the wild, people learned how to produce their own food by raising crops and domesticating animals. These techno- logical innovations produced lasting changes in human society, especially in strengthening social hierarchy, supporting gender inequality, and en- couraging war for conquest. Historians continue to debate what was positive and what was negative in the consequences, intentional and uninten- tional, that this turning point produced for human society.

Focus Question: What were the most significant changes in humans’ lives during the Stone Age?

The Paleolithic Age, 200,000–10,000 B.C.E. Human society began during the Paleolithic Age and was organized to suit a mobile way of life be- cause human beings in this early period roamed around in small groups to hunt and gather food in the wild. The most notable feature of early Pa-

P–4 Prologue ■ The Beginnings of Human Society to c . 4000 b.c .e .

200,000 b.c.e. 50,000 b.c.e. 10,000 b.c.e. 0

1 The term Near East, like Middle East, has undergone several changes in meaning over time. Both terms reflect the geographi- cal point of view of Europeans. Today, the term Middle East, more commonly employed in politics and journalism than in history, usually refers to the area encompassing the Arabic-speaking coun- tries of the eastern Mediterranean region as well as Israel, Iran, Turkey, Cyprus, and much of North Africa. Ancient historians, by contrast, generally use the term ancient Near East to designate Ana- tolia (often called Asia Minor, today occupied by the Asian por- tion of Turkey), Cyprus, the lands around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, the Arabian peninsula, Mesopotamia (the lands north of the Persian Gulf, today Iraq and Iran), and Egypt. In this book we will observe the common usage of the term Near East to mean the lands of southwestern Asia and Egypt.

Paleolithic Age: The “Old Stone” Age, dating from about 200,000 to 10,000 B.C.E. Neolithic Age: The “New Stone” Age, dating from about 10,000 to 4000 B.C.E.

■ 50,000–45,000 Homo sapiens sapiens migrate from Africa into southwest Asia and Europe

■ 10,000–8000 Neolithic Revolution in the Fertile Crescent and the Sahara Desert

■ 200,000–160,000 Beginning of Paleolithic Age

■ 8000 Walled settlement at Jericho

■ 7000–5500 Farming community thrives at Çatalhöyük

political states: People living in a defined territory with bound- aries and organized under a system of government with pow- erful officials, leaders, and judges.

leolithic society was that the group probably made important decisions in common, with all adult men and women having a more or less equal say. Over time, however, Paleolithic peoples created a more complex social organization as they devel- oped trade to acquire goods from long distances, technology such as fire for heat and cooking, reli- gious beliefs to express their understanding of death, and a hierarchical ranking of people in so- ciety to denote differences in status.

The Life of Hunter-Gatherers The characteristics of human society in the Pale- olithic period originally reflected the conditions of life for hunter-gatherers, the term historians use for people who roamed all their lives, hunting wild animals and foraging. They never settled perma- nently in one place. Although they knew a great deal about how to survive in the natural environ- ment, they had not yet learned to produce their own food by growing crops and raising animals. Instead, they hunted wild game for meat; fished in lakes and rivers; collected shellfish along the shore; and gathered wild grains, fruits, and nuts.

Archaeology reveals that a change in weather patterns apparently motivated hunter-gatherers of the Homo sapiens sapiens type to begin wander- ing out of Africa around 50,000–45,000 B.C.E. Long periods without rain drove game animals into southwest Asia and then Europe to find water, and at least some of the mobile human populations who hunted them in African lands followed this moving food into new continents. There is no ev- idence to explain why some hunter-gatherers left Africa in the Paleolithic period while others stayed behind.

When these Homo sapiens sapiens hunter- gatherers reached Europe and Asia, they met there earlier types of human beings who had already mi- grated out of Africa, such as the heavy-browed, squat-bodied Neanderthal type (named after the Neander valley in Germany, where their fossil re- mains were first found; their body type is often used to represent “cave men” in popular art). Even- tually Homo sapiens sapiens replaced all earlier types of people around the globe, walking across then-existent land bridges to reach the Americas and Australia.

Archaeological excavations of hunter-gatherers’ campsites tell us about their lives on the move, showing that over time they invented new forms of tools, weapons, and jewelry and began burying their dead with special care. Anthropologists have also reconstructed the lives of ancient hunter- gatherers from comparative study of the few groups who lived on as hunter-gatherers into mod- ern times, such as the !Kung San of southern Africa’s Kalahari Desert, the Aborigines in Aus- tralia, and the Coahuiltecans in the American Southwest. These two categories of evidence sug- gest that Paleolithic hunter-gatherers banded to- gether in groups numbering around twenty or thirty to hunt and gather food that they shared with each other. Their average life expectancy was about twenty-five to thirty years. Since they had not learned to domesticate animals or to make wheels for carts, they walked everywhere. Because women of childbearing age had to carry and nurse their babies, it was difficult for them to roam long distances. They and the younger children therefore gathered plants, fruits, and nuts close to camp and caught small animals such as frogs and rabbits. The plant food that they gathered provided the major- ity of the group’s diet. Men did most of the hunt- ing of large animals, which frequently took them far from camp to kill prey at close range with rocks and spears; butchered hippopotamus bones found near the skulls in Ethiopia show that early humans hunted these dangerous animals. Women proba- bly participated in hunts when the group used nets to catch wild animals.

Each band of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers moved around searching for food, usually ranging over an area that averaged roughly sixty miles across in any one direction. They tended not to in- trude on other bands’ areas, but there were no set boundaries or central settlements to identify a band’s territory. To judge from the battles observed between surviving tribes of hunter-gatherers, when bands fought with each other, the conflict was more skirmish than total battle, and there was as much display as serious fighting; for ancient hunter- gatherers, there was nothing to take from another group that one’s own group did not already pos- sess, except other people. Hunter-gatherers’ con- stant walking, bending, and lifting kept them in fine physical shape for hunting and the occasional battle, but they counted on their knowledge as much as their strength. Most important, they planned ahead for cooperative hunts at favorite spots, such as river crossings or lakes with shallow banks, where experience taught they were likely to find herds of large animals fording the stream and drinking water.

The Paleolithic Age, 200,000–10,000 b.c .e . P–5to c . 4000 b.c .e .

hunter-gatherers: Human beings who roam to hunt and gather food in the wild and do not live in permanent, settled commu- nities.

Homo sapiens sapiens: The scientific name (in Latin) of the type of early human being identical to people today; it means “wise, wise human being.”

Paleolithic hunter-gatherers also used their knowledge to establish camps year after year in particularly good spots for gathering wild plants. They took shelter from the weather in caves or temporary dwellings made from branches and an- imal skins. On occasion, they built sturdier shel- ters, such as the dome-like hut found in Ukraine that was constructed from the bones of mam- moths. Nevertheless, they never built permanent homes; they had to roam to survive.

Hunter-gatherers probably lived originally in egalitarian societies, meaning that all adults en- joyed a general equality in making decisions for the group. This cooperation reflected the fact that men and women both worked hard to provide food for the group, even if they tended to divide this labor by gender, with men doing more hunt- ing and women more gathering. At some point, however, differences in social status began to emerge. Most likely, age was the first basis of so- cial status: older people of both genders won pres- tige and probably positions of leadership from the wisdom gained from long experience of life in an era when most people died of illness or accidents before they were thirty years old. Women past childbearing age, who were therefore free to help out in multiple ways, and strong and clever men who hunted dangerous animals also likely held higher status.

Technology, Trade, Religion, and Hierarchy Paleolithic people made changes in their lives that turned out to be important for the later develop- ment of civilization. In technology, learning how to create ever sharper edges and points in stone or bone or wood created better cutting tools and weapons for hunting, digging out roots, and mak-

ing clothes from animal skins, thereby increasing the chances for survival. The discovery of how to make fire was especially important because Pale- olithic people had to endure the cold of extended ice ages, when the northern European glaciers moved much farther south than usual. The cold- est part of the most recent ice age started about twenty thousand years ago and created a harsh cli- mate in much of Europe for nearly ten thousand years. Hunter-gatherers’ knowledge of how to con- trol fire led to the invention of cooking. This was a crucial innovation because it turned indigestible wild plants, such as grains, into edible and nutri- tious food.

Long-distance trade also began in the Stone Age. When hunter-gatherers encountered other bands, they exchanged things they had made, such as blades and jewelry, as well as natural objects such as flint or seashells. Trade could move valu- able objects great distances from their original re- gion: for example, ocean shells worn as jewelry made their way inland, far from the sea, through repeated swaps from one group to another.

Archaeological discoveries suggest that Pale- olithic hunter-gatherers developed religious be- liefs, a crucial factor in the evolution of human society; ancient peoples always saw religion as nec- essary for living a successful and just life. Colorful late Paleolithic cave paintings found in Spain and France hint at hunter-gatherers’ religious ideas as well as display their artistic ability. Using strong, dark lines and earthy colors, Paleolithic artists painted on the walls of caves that were set aside as special places, not used as day-to-day shelters. The paintings, which primarily depict large animals, suggest that these powerful beasts played a signif- icant role in the religion of Paleolithic hunter- gatherers. Still, there remains a great deal we cannot yet understand about their beliefs, such as the meaning of the dots, rectangles, and hands that they often drew beside their paintings of animals.

Stone Age burial sites provide evidence of re- ligious beliefs. The early skulls found in Ethiopia have missing jaws and marks in the bone, indica- tions that these early people cut away the flesh from dead persons’ heads as part of a careful bur-

P–6 Prologue ■ The Beginnings of Human Society to c . 4000 b.c .e .

A Paleolithic Shelter This is a reconstruction of a hut that Paleolithic people built around

fifteen thousand years ago from the bones of giant mammoths in what is now Ukraine, in east-central Europe. Animal hides would

have been used to cover the structure, like a tent on poles. It was big enough for a small group to huddle inside to

survive cold weather. (RIA Novosti.)

ial process (and not for cannibalism, as some have said). Another indication of belief is the care with which later Paleolithic bands buried their dead, decorating the corpses with red paint, flowers, and seashells. This elaborate procedure suggests that Stone Age people wondered about the mystery of death and perhaps had ideas about an afterlife.

Important evidence for early religious beliefs also comes from the discovery of specially shaped female figurines at late Paleolithic sites all over Europe. Modern archaeologists called these stat- uettes of women with extra-large breasts, ab- domens, buttocks, and thighs Venus figurines, after the Roman goddess of sexual love (see the Venus of Willendorf, shown here). The oversized features of these sculptures suggest that the people who made them had a special set of beliefs and rituals regarding fertility and birth.

Burials reveal more than religious beliefs; they also show that, by late Paleolithic times, hunter- gatherer society had begun to mark significant dif- ferences in status among people. Those who were buried with valuable items such as weapons, tools, animal figurines, ivory beads, and bracelets must have had special social standing. These object-rich burials reveal that late Paleolithic groups had begun organizing their society according to a hierarchy, a ranking system identifying certain people as more important and more dominant than others. This is the earliest evidence for social

differentiation, the marking of certain people as wealthier, more respected, or more powerful than others in their society.

Despite their varied knowledge and techno- logical skill, prehistoric hunter-gatherers lived pre- carious lives that were dominated by the relentless search for something to eat. Survival was a risky business. The groups that survived were those that

The Paleolithic Age, 200,000–10,000 b.c .e . P–7to c . 4000 b.c .e .

hierarchy: The system of ranking people in society according to their importance and dominance.

Prehistoric Venus Figurine This limestone statuette, four and a half inches high, was found at Willendorf, in Austria. Carved in the later Paleolithic period and originally colored red, it probably was meant to have symbolic power expressing the importance of women’s fertility. The emphasis on the woman’s breasts and pubic area have led scholars to call such statuettes Venus figurines, after the Roman goddess of love and sex; archaeologists have uncovered many of them all across Europe. Since no written records exist to explain the significance of such figurines’ hairstyle, obesity, and pronounced sexual characteristics, we can only speculate about the complex meanings that early peoples attributed to them. How would you explain this figurine’s appearance? (© SuperStock.)

Bison Painting in the Cave at Lascaux Stone Age people painted these bison on the rock walls of a large cave at Lascaux in central France about 15,000 B.C.E., to judge from radiocarbon dating of charcoal found on the floor. Using black, red, yellow, and white pigments, the artists made the deep cave into an art gallery by filling it with pictures of large mammals such as these European buffaloes, horses, deer, bears, and wooly rhinoceroses. Some scholars have suggested that the scenes symbolized the importance of hunting to the people who painted them, but this guess seems wrong because the bones from butchered animals found in the cave are 90 percent reindeer, while no reindeer pictures exist in the cave. (Caves of Lascaux, Dordogne, France/ The Bridgeman Art Library.)

■ For more help analyzing this image, see the visual activity for this prologue in the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

learned to cooperate in finding food and shelter; to profit from innovations such as fire, tools, and trade; and to teach their children the knowledge, beliefs, and social traditions that had helped them endure in a harsh world.

Review: What were the most important activities, skills, and beliefs that helped Paleolithic hunter- gatherers survive?

The Neolithic Age, 10,000–4000 B.C.E. By around 10,000 to 8000 B.C.E., people in the Near East had opened the way to a different kind of so- ciety by learning to produce their food and build permanent settlements that housed larger popula- tions than the twenty- to thirty-member bands of hunter-gatherers. In this new society, dominance by men replaced the general equality in status and decision making between men and women that likely existed in earlier times. In addition, war be- came a prominent part of human life.

The invention of agriculture and permanent settlements in the Neolithic Age occurred over a long time, but, once established, they changed for- ever the way human beings lived; eventually, these changes would make civilization possible. Daily life as we know it today still depends on agricul- ture and the domestication of animals, develop- ments that began about 10,000–8000 B.C.E., at the beginning of the Neolithic period. These radical innovations in the way humans acquired food caused such fundamental changes in our way of life that they are called the Neolithic Revolution.

The Neolithic Revolution Revolutionary change took place in human history in the Neolithic Age when hunter-gatherers learned to sow and harvest crops and to raise an- imals for food. Exactly how they gained this knowledge remains mysterious. Recent archaeo- logical research, however, indicates that it took thousands of years for people to develop agricul- ture. The process began in the part of the Near East that we call the Fertile Crescent because, unlike most regions of the earth, its hillier regions hap-

pened to have the right combination of soil, wa- ter, temperature, and wild mammals for the inven- tion of farming and the domestication of animals. The Fertile Crescent stretches in an arc, or cres- cent, along the foothills and lowlands that run northward from modern Israel across southeast- ern Turkey and Syria and then turn in a southeast- erly direction down to the plain of the lower stretches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now southern Iraq (Map 1).

The slow process of trial and error through which former hunter-gatherers developed agricul- ture had complex origins. Recent archaeological excavations at Göbelki Tepe (“stomach-shaped little hill”), a site in southeastern Turkey, have revealed stone-lined rooms in the earth decorated with stone pillars eight feet tall or more that are carved to depict animals, from boars and bears to birds and snakes. Free-standing sculptures of an- imals seem to have been placed atop the rooms’ walls. Radiocarbon dating suggests these rooms were built around 9300 B.C.E., which would make them contemporary with the first attested agri- culture or perhaps even earlier. Some scholars speculate that hunter-gatherers built these mon- uments for religious purposes and that the large amount of time they spent together in one place to create such elaborate structures and art led them to develop agriculture as a new way to feed themselves.

Only further archaeological research can re- veal whether Stone Age religious activity had the unintentional consequence of generating agricul- ture. What seems certain is that climate change contributed significantly to the Neolithic Revolu- tion. About ten to twelve thousand years ago, the long-term weather pattern in the Fertile Crescent became milder and rainier than it had been dur- ing the ice age that had just ended. This change promoted the growth of abundant fields of wild cereal grains. Similarly, recent archaeological research reveals that increased rain in the Sahara Desert, in central Africa, created there lush grass- lands called savannahs that attracted hunter- gatherer nomads from the southern part of the continent; in a slow process of change, these people built settlements, domesticated cattle instead of only hunting wild animals, and created intricate pottery suited to their new way of life.

The hunter-gatherers living in the Fertile Crescent began to gather more and more of their food from the now easily available wild grains. This regular supply of food in turn promoted human fertility, which led to a growth in population, a process that might have already begun as a result

P–8 Prologue ■ The Beginnings of Human Society to c . 4000 b.c .e .

Neolithic Revolution: The invention of agriculture, the domes- tication of animals, and the consequent changes in human so- ciety that occurred about 10,000–8,000 B.C.E. in the Near East.

of the milder climate. The more children that were born, the greater the need to exploit the food sup- ply efficiently. Over centuries, people learned to plant part of the seeds from one crop of grain to produce another crop. Since Neolithic women did most of the gathering of plant food, they had the greatest knowledge of plant life and therefore probably played the major role in the invention of agriculture and the fashioning of tools needed to turn grains into food, such as grinding stones for making flour. At this early stage in the develop- ment of agriculture, women and children did most of the agricultural labor, using hand tools to grow and harvest crops, while men continued to hunt.

During the early Neolithic period, people also learned to breed and herd animals that they could

eat, a development that helped replace the meat previously acquired by hunting large mammals, many of which had by now been hunted to extinc- tion. Fortunately for the people in the Fertile Cres- cent, their region was home to surviving large mammals that could be domesticated. Unlike African animals such as the zebra or the hippopota- mus, the wild sheep, goats, and cattle of the Fertile Crescent could, over the span of generations, be turned into animals accustomed to live closely and interdependently with human beings. The sheep was the first animal to be domesticated as a source of meat, beginning about 8500 B.C.E. (The dog had been domesticated much earlier but was not usu- ally eaten.) By about 7000 B.C.E., domesticated an- imals had become common throughout the Near

The Neolithic Age, 10,000–4000 b.c .e . P–9to c . 4000 b.c .e .

0 250 500 kilometers

0 250 500 miles

c. 10,000–6500 B.C.E.

c. 6500–5000 B.C.E.

c. 5000–4000 B.C.E.

Fertile Crescent

N

S

EW

Early agricultural sites

Black Sea

A T L A N T I C O C E A N

P ersian

Gulf

C aspian

Sea

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

N ile

R.

D

anube R.

T igris R.

Euphrates R.

A F R I C A

E U R O P E

Presumed ancient coastline

M ESOPOTAM

IA

BRITISH ISLES

ASIAA L P S

TAU RU

S M TS

.

ZAGROS M TS.

CAUCASUS MTS.

Jericho

Çatalhöyük

MAP 1 The Development of Agriculture From around 10,000 to 8000 B.C.E., people learned to plant seeds to grow nourishing plants and to domesticate animals in the Fertile Crescent, the foothills of the semicircle of mountains that curved up and around from the eastern end of the Mediterranean down to Mesopotamia, where reliable rainfall and moderate temperatures prevailed. At about the same time, domestication of animals took place in the grasslands then flourishing in the Sahara region of Africa. The invention of irrigation in the Fertile Crescent allowed farmers to grow lush crops in the region’s arid plains, providing resources that eventually spurred the emergence of the first large cities by about 4000 B.C.E.

East. In this early period of domestication, some people lived as pastoralists, meaning they obtained their food mainly from the herds of animals that they kept, frequently moving around to find fresh grazing land. They also cultivated small temporary plots from time to time when they found a suit- able area. Other people, relying more and more on growing crops for their livelihood, kept small herds close to their settlements. Men, women, and chil- dren alike could therefore tend the animals. These earliest domesticated herds seem to have been used only as a source of meat, not for products such as milk or wool.

Neolithic Origins of Modern Life and War The Neolithic Revolution laid the foundation for civilization and our modern way of life. The re- markable new knowledge of how to produce food and the consequent division and specialization of labor emerged through innovative human re- sponses to the link between environmental change and population growth (see “New Sources, New Perspectives,” page P-12). Furthermore, the Ne- olithic Revolution reveals the importance of demography — the study of the size, growth, den- sity, distribution, and vital statistics of the human population — in understanding historical change.

Agriculture and population growth influenced each other during the Neolithic Age. First, to be able to raise crops on a permanent basis, people had to stop roaming and settle in one place with adequate land and water. Farming communities thus sprang up in the Fertile Crescent starting around 10,000 B.C.E., sharing the region with pas- toralists. Parents began to have more children be- cause agriculture required a great deal of labor and because the ready availability of food from the fields and herds could support a larger population. At the same time, living in close quarters with do- mesticated animals, which might well be penned right next to or even inside the house, exposed people in these settlements to new epidemic dis- eases transmitted from animals to humans. Hunter-gatherers had largely escaped this danger because they had no groups of animals around them every day, although they could sometimes become infected by eating diseased wild animals. Since many viruses that afflict people today origi- nated in domesticated animals before moving into

the human population — for example, the avian influenza (bird flu) virus — we are still living with this unintended consequence of the Neolithic Revolution.

Two central features of Neolithic farming vil- lages helped create conditions that eventually con- tributed to the creation of civilization: they were permanent, and they supported larger populations than were characteristic of hunter-gatherer soci- ety. Much bigger and more densely packed than the temporary settlements of the Paleolithic Age, early farming communities had sturdy houses built from mud bricks and used containers made of pottery (whose broken remains provide evi- dence for chronology and cultural development). The first homes were apparently circular huts, like those known from Jericho (in what is today Israel). Around two thousand people had settled in Jeri- cho by 8000 B.C.E., their huts sprawling over about twelve acres.

Jericho’s remains also reveal that war became a prominent part of life during the Neolithic Rev- olution. The most remarkable part of the village was the massive fortification wall surrounding the community. Ten feet thick, the wall was crowned with a stone tower thirty feet in diameter enclos- ing an internal flight of stairs; this massive struc- ture shows that the inhabitants of Jericho feared attacks by their neighbors (see Jericho’s wall and tower, on page P-11). The growing prosperity that the Neolithic Revolution had brought evidently also spurred war for conquest and acquisition.

Neolithic people from the Fertile Crescent opened the way for civilization to develop in other regions by gradually spreading their knowledge of agriculture abroad. Farmers looking for more land migrated westward from the Near East and brought the new technology of farming into areas where it was not previously known. Although re- cent scholarship argues that human beings in other areas, especially Asia, independently developed agriculture and the domestication of animals, mi- grants from the Near East were the ones who spread this knowledge across Europe by 4000 B.C.E.

Daily Life in the Neolithic Village of Çatalhöyük An archaeological site northwest of the Fertile Crescent, in present-day Turkey, provides vital ev- idence for the vast changes in human life brought on by this spread of knowledge during the Ne- olithic Age, especially how agriculture’s greater ef- ficiency in providing food led to the division and specialization of labor. At this site, on a plain near

P–10 Prologue ■ The Beginnings of Human Society to c . 4000 b.c .e .

demography: The study of the size, growth, density, distribu- tion, and vital statistics of the human population.

of meat and, by this time, hides and milk. They continued to hunt, too, as we can tell from the hunting scenes they drew on the walls of some of their buildings, recalling the cave paintings of much earlier times. Unlike hunter-gatherers, how- ever, these villagers no longer had to depend on the hit-or-miss luck of the hunt or risk being killed by wild animals to acquire meat and leather. At its height, the village’s population reached perhaps six thousand people.

The diversity of occupations practiced at Çatalhöyük reveals a significant change from ear- lier times, anticipating the division of labor char- acteristic of the later cities of the first fully developed civilizations. Since the community could produce enough food to support itself with- out everyone having to work in the fields or herd cattle, some people could develop crafts as full- time occupations. Just as others in the community produced food for them, craft specialists produced goods for those who produced the food. Craft spe- cialists continued to fashion tools, containers, and ornaments in the traditional way — from wood,

The Neolithic Age, 10,000–4000 b.c .e . P–11to c . 4000 b.c .e .

a river, a large mound rises from the countryside. Known to us only by its modern Turkish name, Çatalhöyük (meaning “Fork Mound”), the site re- veals what daily life was like in a Neolithic farm- ing community. By 7000 to 6500 B.C.E., the farmers of Çatalhöyük had erected a settlement of mud- brick houses sharing common walls. They con- structed their dwellings in the rectangular shape still used for most homes today, with one striking difference: they had no doors in their outer walls. Instead, they entered their homes by climbing down a ladder through a hole in the flat roof. Since this hole also served as a vent for smoke from the family fire, getting into a house at Çatalhöyük could be a grimy experience. But the absence of ex- terior doors also meant that the walls of the com- munity’s outermost houses served as the village’s fortification wall to defend it against attacks.

The people of Çatalhöyük fed themselves by growing wheat, barley, and vegetables such as field peas; they diverted water from the nearby river into their fields to increase their harvests. They also kept domesticated cattle to provide their main supply

Tower in the Stone Wall of Neolithic Jericho The circular mass in the center of this photograph is the base of a tower in the stone wall that the people of Jericho (today in Israel) built to protect their community around 8000–7000 B.C.E. This is one of the earliest defensive walls ever discovered: most of the people in this era still lived in unwalled collections of mud huts, but the inhabitants of Jericho had reached a more complex level of social organization that allowed them to collaborate on major building projects. The agricultural fields that lay outside the walls supplied the overwhelming majority of Jericho’s economy, while the wall surrounding their settlement provided security for the residents’ homes and storehouses and thus protected their improving standard of living. (Photo: Zev Radovan.)

P–12 Prologue ■ The Beginnings of Human Society to c . 4000 b.c .e .

The invention of agriculture helped people produce a morepredictable and plentiful supply of food, which in turn al-lowed the population to expand. This change came at a price. Recent scientific research in biological anthropology and osteological archaeology (the study of ancient bones and teeth) has uncovered dramatic evidence of the physical stress endured by some of the individuals working in early agriculture. Excava- tors at Tell Abu Hureyra in Syria have found bones and teeth from people living around 6000 B.C.E. that reveal the pain that the new technology could cause. The big toes of these ancient people especially show proof of extreme and prolonged dorsi- flexion —bending the front of the foot up toward the shin. Dor- siflexion made the ends of the toe bones become flatter and broader than normal through the constant pressure of being bent in the same position for long periods of time.

What activity could the people have been pursuing so doggedly that it deformed their bones? The only posture that creates such severe bending of the foot is kneeling for extended periods. Osteologists confirmed that kneeling was common in this population by finding several cases of arthritic changes in knee joints and lower spines in skeletons at the site.

But why were the people kneeling for so long? Other bone evidence offered the first clue to solving this mystery. The skele- tons showed strongly developed attachment points for the del- toid muscle on the humerus (the bone in the upper arm) and prominent growth in the lower arm bones. These characteristics mean that the people had especially strong deltoids for pushing their shoulders back and forth and powerful biceps for rotating

their forearms. Whatever they were doing made them use their shoulders and arms vigorously.

The skeletons’ teeth provided the next clue. Everyone except the very youngest individuals had deeply worn and often frac- tured teeth. This damage indicated that they regularly chewed

N E W S O U R C E S , N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S

Daily Bread, Damaged Bones, and Cracked Teeth

at Çatalhöyük specialized in weaving textiles, and the scraps of cloth discovered there are the oldest examples of this craft ever found. Like other early technological innovations, metallurgy and the production of cloth apparently also developed in- dependently in other places.

Trade — another central aspect of human ex- istence that became increasingly prominent in the Neolithic Age —also figured in the economy of this early farming community. The trading contacts the Neolithic villagers made with other settlements increased the level of economic interconnection among far-flung communities that had begun in the Paleolithic period. Trade allowed the people of

Bones from Tell Abu Hureyra, Syria These big toes from a middle-aged man reveal severe arthritic changes to the joint. Osteologists interpret this damage as evidence of extreme and prolonged dorsiflexion, or bending of the foot. (The Natural History Museum, London. )

bone, hide, and stone— but they now also worked with the material of the future: metal. So far, ar- chaeologists are certain only that metalworkers at Çatalhöyük knew how to fashion lead into pen- dants and to hammer naturally occurring lumps of copper into beads and tubes for jewelry. But traces of slag, the scum that floats on molten metal, have been found on the site, suggesting that the workers may have begun to develop the technique of smelting metal from ore. This tricky process — the basis of true metallurgy and an essential tech- nology of civilization — required temperatures of seven hundred degrees centigrade and took cen- turies for metalworkers to perfect. Other workers

food full of rock dust, which probably resulted from grain being ground in rock bowls.

The final clue came from art. Later paintings and sculptures from the region show people, usually women, kneeling down to grind grain into flour by pushing and rotating a stone roller back and forth on heavy grinding stones tilted away from them. This posture is exactly what would cause deformation of the big toes and arthritis in the knees and lower back. People grinding grain

this way would have to push off hard from their toes with every stroke down the stone, and vigorously use the muscles of their shoulders and forearms to apply pressure to the roller. In addi- tion, the flour would pick up tiny particles from the wearing down of the stones used to grind it; bread made from it would have a sandy consistency hard on teeth. That Neolithic people worked so constantly and so hard at processing the grain they grew, no matter the toll on their bones and their teeth, shows how vital this supply of food had become to them.

At this Syrian site, everyone’s bones — men’s, women’s, and even children’s —show the same signs of the kneeling and grind- ing activity. Evidently the production of flour for bread was so crucial that no gender division of this labor was possible or de- sirable, as it seems to have become in later times. Regardless of who used it, this new technology that provided essential food for the community took its toll in individual pain and hardship.

Questions to Consider 1. What other new technologies that have increased productiv-

ity and bettered human life have also involved new pains and stresses?

2. How do you decide what price —financial, physical, emo- tional — is worth paying for new technology? Who will make those decisions?

Further Reading Hillman, G. “Traditional Husbandry and Processing of Archaic

Cereals in Recent Times: The Operations, Products, and Equipment Which Might Feature in Sumerian Texts.” Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 1 (1984): 114–52.

Molleson, Theya. “Seed Preparation in the Mesolithic: The Oste- ological Evidence.” Antiquity 63 (1989): 358.

Moore, A. M. T. “The Excavation of Tell Abu Hureyra in Syria: A Preliminary Report.” Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 41 (1975): 50–71.

Sculpture from Giza, Egypt In this statuette, a woman grinds grain into flour. The sculptor shows her rubbing her severely flexed left foot with the toes of her right foot, probably trying to ease the throbbing resulting from hours of kneeling. (Courtesy of The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.)

The Neolithic Age, 10,000–4000 b.c .e . P–13to c . 4000 b.c .e .

ligion. Like the hunter-gatherers before them, they sculpted figurines depicting amply endowed women, who perhaps represented goddesses of birth, although some figurines recently found with skeletal designs suggest they were also related to ideas about death. The villagers had a deep inter- est in the mystery of death, demonstrated by the skulls displayed in the shrines and wall paintings of vultures devouring headless corpses. They buried their dead, some holding skulls decorated with painted plaster, under the floors of their houses. Perhaps they believed their dead ancestors had power and therefore wanted to keep them close by. A remarkable wall painting also suggests

Çatalhöyük to acquire goods from far away, such as shells from the Mediterranean Sea to wear as ornaments and a special flint from far to the east to shape into ceremonial daggers. The villagers acquired these prized materials by offering obsid- ian in exchange, a local volcanic glass whose glossy luster and capacity to hold a sharp edge made it valuable.

Religion was a central feature of life in the community, as seen from the shrines and burial sites uncovered by archaeologists. The villagers outfitted their shrines with paintings and sculp- tures of bulls’ heads and female breasts, perhaps as symbols of male and female elements in their re-

maintain peace and order in Paleolithic hunter- gatherer bands because their responsibilities were more complicated. Furthermore, households that were successful in farming, herding, crafts produc- tion, and trade generated surpluses in wealth that set them apart from those whose efforts proved less fortunate.

Gender Inequality in the Neolithic Age The social equality between men and women that had existed in hunter-gatherer bands dwindled away during the Neolithic Age. By about 4000 B.C.E., when the first political states had begun to

P–14 Prologue ■ The Beginnings of Human Society to c . 4000 b.c .e .

that the people of Çatalhöyük regarded the vol- cano looming over their settlement as an angry god whom they needed to please. As it turned out, Çatalhöyük never recovered from a volcanic erup- tion that overwhelmed the settlement about four- teen hundred years after its foundation.

The people of Çatalhöyük had a clear social hierarchy, another example of the lasting changes that occurred in the Neolithic Age. The villagers developed a hierarchical society because they needed leaders to plan and regulate irrigation, trade, the exchange of food and goods between farmers and crafts producers, and the defense of the community against enemies. These leaders held more authority than had been required to

Model of a House at Çatalhöyük Archaeologists built this model of a house to show how Neolithic villagers lived in Çatalhöyük (today in central Turkey) from around 6500 to 5500 B.C.E. The wall paintings and bull-head sculpture had religious meaning, perhaps linked to the graves that the residents dug under the floor for their dead. The main entrance to the house was through the ceiling, as the houses were built right next to each other without streets in between, only some space for dumping refuse; the roofs served as walkways. Why do you think the villagers chose this arrangement for their settlement? (Çatalhöyük Research Project.)

emerge in the Near East, patriarchy was the rule. (Political states also emerged at various other dis- tant places around the world, including India, China, and the Americas — whether through inde- pendent development or some process of mutual influence we cannot yet say.) The reasons for the appearance of patriarchy remain uncertain, but they perhaps involved gradual changes in agricul- ture and herding over many centuries. After about 4000 B.C.E., plows pulled by large animals were used to cultivate land that was difficult to sow. Men apparently operated this new technology of plow- ing, probably because it required much more phys- ical strength than digging with sticks and hoes, as women had done with hand tools in the earliest period of agriculture. Men also looked after the larger herds that had become more common in settled communities; people were now keeping cattle as sources of milk and raising sheep for wool. The herding of a community’s large groups of an- imals tended to take place at a distance from the home settlement because the animals continually needed new grazing land. As with hunting in hunter-gatherer populations, men, free from hav- ing to nurse children, took on this task, which re- quired ranging a long way from home.

Women probably became more tied to the central settlement because they had to bear and raise more children as agriculture became more in- tensive and therefore required more and more la- bor than had food gathering or the earliest forms of farming. Women also took responsibility for the new labor-intensive tasks needed to process the secondary products of larger herds. For example, they now turned milk into cheese and yogurt and made cloth by spinning and weaving wool. Men’s predominant role in agriculture and herding in the late Neolithic period, combined with women’s lessened mobility and increasingly home-based tasks, apparently led to women’s loss of equality with men in these early times of human society.

Review: What were the consequences of the Neolithic Revolution for people’s lives?

Conclusion Permanent homes, more reliable food supplies from agriculture and domesticated animals, spe- cialized occupations, hierarchical societies in which men hold the most power, and war have characterized Western history from the Neolithic period forward. For this reason, the broad outlines of the life of Neolithic villagers might seem unre- markable to us today. But the Neolithic way of life in built environments surrounded by cultivated fields and herds would have seemed astounding, we can guess, to Paleolithic hunter-gatherers such as the roaming African hippopotamus hunters who now rank as the earliest known Homo sapi- ens. The Neolithic Revolution was the most im- portant change in the early history of human beings; it literally overturned the ways in which people interacted with the natural environment and with one another. Now that farmers and herders could produce a surplus of food to sup- port other people, specialists in art, architecture, crafts, religion, and politics could emerge. Hand in hand with these developments came a new divi- sion of labor by gender that saw men begin to take over agriculture and herding while women took up new tasks at home, leading to a loss of gender equality. At the same time, war between newly prosperous communities became common. These changes altered the course of human history and spurred the development of civilization as we know it today.

For Further Exploration ■ For suggested references, including Web sites,

for topics in this chapter, see page SR-1 at the end of the book.

■ For Web sites and documents related to topics in this chapter, see Make History at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

Conclusion P–15to c . 4000 b.c .e .

patriarchy: Dominance by men in society and politics.

P–16 Prologue ■ The Beginnings of Human Society

Key Terms and People Making Connections

Review Questions

1. Explain whether you think human life was more stressful in the Paleolithic period or the Neolithic period.

2. What do you think were the most important differences and similarities between Stone Age life and modern life? Why?

1. What were the most important activities, skills, and beliefs that helped Paleolithic hunter-gatherers survive?

2. What were the consequences of the Neolithic Revolution for people’s lives?

Chapter Review

Paleolithic Age (P-4)

Neolithic Age (P-4)

political states (P-4)

hunter-gatherers (P-5)

Homo sapiens sapiens (P-5)

hierarchy (P-7)

Neolithic Revolution (P-8)

demography (P-10)

patriarchy (P-15)

For Practice quizzes, a customized study plan, and other study tools, see the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

Important Events

200,000–160,000 b.c.e. Beginning of the Paleolithic (“Old Stone”) Age

50,000–45,000 b.c.e. Homo sapiens sapiens migrate from Africa into southwest Asia and Europe

10,000–8000 b.c.e. The Neolithic (“New Stone”) Revolution in the Fertile Crescent and the Sahara Desert

8000 b.c.e. Walled settlement at Jericho (in modern Israel)

7000–5500 b.c.e. Farming community thrives at Çatalhöyük (in modern Turkey)

to c . 4000 b.c .e .

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In Tlaxcala, New Spain (present-day Mexico), Indians newly con-verted to Christianity performed a pageant organized in 1539 byCatholic missionaries. The festivities celebrated a truce recently concluded between the Habsburg emperor Charles V and the French

king Francis I. The Conquest of Jerusalem, as the drama was called, fea-

tured a combined army from Spain and New Spain fighting to protect

the pope, defeat the Muslims, and win control of the holy city of

Jerusalem. In the play, a miracle saves the Christian soldiers, and the

Muslims give up and convert to Christianity. Although it is hard to

imagine what the Indians made of this celebration of places and people

far away, the event reveals a great deal about the Europeans: still pre-

occupied with battling the Muslims and still fighting among them-

selves, Europeans now pursued their interests worldwide. Yet even as

their explorations and conquests transformed the New World, disputes

over the “true” religion divided Europeans into hostile camps. Catholic

missionaries saw their success in converting Indians as a sign of God’s

favor in the struggle against the Protestant reformers, who had begun

to spread their message in Europe not long before the pageant in

Tlaxcala took place.

Led first by the Portuguese and then Spanish explorers, Europeans

sailed into contact with peoples and cultures hitherto unknown to Latin

Christendom. Motivated by the desire to find gold, win personal glory,

extend the reach of Christianity, and chart the unknown, European

Widening Horizons 420 • Portuguese Explorations • The Voyages of Columbus • A New Era in Slavery • Conquering the New World

The Protestant Reformation 426 • The Invention of Printing • Popular Piety and Christian Humanism • Martin Luther and the

Holy Roman Empire • Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin • The Anglican Church in England

Reshaping Society through Religion 434 • Protestant Challenges to the

Social Order • New Forms of Discipline • Catholic Renewal

A Struggle for Mastery 441 • The High Renaissance Court • Dynastic Wars • Financing War • Divided Realms

419

Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

C H A P T E R

14

Cortés In this Spanish depiction of the landing of Hernán Cortés in Mexico in 1519, the ships and arms of the Spanish are a commanding presence, especially in comparison to the nakedness and lack of firearms among the Indians and the kneeling stance of their leader. A Spanish artist painted this miniature, which measures only 61⁄8 inches by 41⁄4 inches. It probably accompanied an account of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. On the back of the picture is a small map of the west coast of Europe and Africa and the east coast of Central America. Europeans relied on such images, and especially on maps, to help them make sense of all the new information flooding into Europe from faraway places. Many Spaniards viewed Cortés’s conquests as a sign of divine favor in a time of religious division. Some even believed that Cortés was born the same day, or at least the same year, as Martin Luther, the German monk who had initiated the Protestant Reformation just two years before Cortés’s landing (in fact, Luther was born two years before Cortés). (Erich Lessing/ Art Resource, NY.)

voyagers subjugated native peoples, declared their control over vast new lands, and established a new system of slavery linking Africa and the New World. Millions of Indians died of diseases un- knowingly imported by the Europeans. The dis- covery of new crops — corn, potatoes, tobacco, coffee, and cocoa — and of gold and silver mines brought new patterns of consumption, and new objects of conflict, to Europe. This spiral of changes in ecology, agriculture, and social patterns is so momentous that historians now call it the Columbian exchange after Christopher Columbus, who started the process.

The invention of the printing press in the 1440s helped spread news of the European explo- rations, but it had an even more significant impact when it hastened the breakup of Christian unity under the impact of the Protestant Reformation. After the German Catholic monk Martin Luther criticized corrupt church practices in 1517, printed broadsheets, pamphlets, and books quickly spread his message and helped make the Protestant break with Roman Catholicism permanent. Religious di- vision soon engulfed the German states and reached into Switzerland, France, and England. Re- sponding to the desire for reform that fed the Protestant movement, Catholics undertook their own renewal. When radical Protestants threatened to overthrow the social and political order, more mainstream Protestants, like Catholics, insisted that the state oversee religious, moral, and social matters.

Confrontations between Protestants and Catholics complicated the long-standing rivalries between princes. Traditional sources of enmity between the Christian powers did not disappear, and the Ottomans continued their thrust into Hungary. Now, however, the Catholic Habsburg emperor had to wage war against Protestant German princes and religious divisions threatened the stability of the monarchy in England and Scot- land. Divisions between Catholics and Protestants

420 Chapter 14 ■ Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

1490 1500 1510 1520

■ 1492 Columbus reaches the Americas

■ 1494 Italian Wars begin; Treaty of Tordesillas

■ 1516 Erasmus publishes Greek New Testament; More, Utopia

■ 1517 Luther composes ninety-five theses

■ 1520 Luther publishes three treatises; Zwingli breaks from Rome

would shape the course of European history for several generations.

Focus Question: Why did Christian unity break up in Europe just when Europeans began to expand their influence overseas in dramatic fashion?

Widening Horizons The maritime explorations of Portugal and Spain brought Europe to the attention of the rest of the world. Fourteenth-century Mongols had been more interested in conquering China and Persia — lands with sophisticated cultures — than in invad- ing Europe; Persian historians of the early fifteenth century dismissed Europeans as “barbaric Franks”; and China’s Ming dynasty rulers, who sent mar- itime expeditions to Southeast Asia and East Africa around 1400, seemed unaware of the Europeans, even though Marco Polo and other Italian mer- chants had appeared at the court of the preceding Mongol Yuan dynasty. By the end of the fifteenth century, in contrast, Europeans could no longer be ignored. The Portuguese and Spanish, inspired by a crusading spirit against Islam and by riches to be won through trade in spices and gold, sailed across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans. The English, French, and Dutch followed a century later, creating a new global exchange of people, crops, and diseases that would shape the modern world. As a result of these European expeditions, the people of the Americas for the first time con- fronted forces that threatened to destroy not only their culture but even their existence.

Portuguese Explorations The first phase of European overseas expansion began in 1433 with Portuguese exploration of the West African coast and culminated in 1519–1522

with Spanish circumnavigation of the globe. Look- ing back, the sixteenth-century Spanish historian Francisco López de Gómora described the Iberian maritime voyages to the East and West Indies as “the greatest event since the creation of the world, apart from the incarnation and death of him who created it.”

The Portuguese hoped to find a sea route to the spice-producing lands of South and Southeast Asia in order to bypass the Ottoman Turks, who controlled the traditional land routes between Europe and Asia. Rumors of vast gold mines in West Africa and the legend of a mysterious Christian kingdom established by Prester John and sur- rounded by Muslims drew sailors to voyages de- spite the possibilities of shipwreck and death. Success in the voyages of exploration depended on several technological breakthroughs, including the caravel, a small, easily maneuvered three-masted ship that used triangular lateen sails adapted from the Arabs. (The sails permitted a ship to tack against headwinds.) Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal (1394–1460) personally financed many voyages with revenues from a noble crusading or- der. The first triumphs of the Portuguese attracted a host of Christian, Jewish, and even Arab sailors, astronomers, and cartographers to the service of Prince Henry and King John II (r. 1481–1495). They compiled better tide calendars and books of sailing directions for pilots that enabled sailors to venture farther into the oceans and reduced — though did not eliminate — the dangers of sea travel.

Searching for gold and then slaves, the Por- tuguese gradually established forts down the West African coast. In 1487–1488, they reached the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa; ten years later, Vasco da Gama led a Portuguese fleet around the cape and reached as far as Calicut, India, the center of the spice trade. His return to Lisbon with twelve pieces of Chinese porcelain for the Portuguese king set off two centuries of porcelain

mania. Until the early eighteenth century, only the Chinese knew how to produce porcelain (in vases or dinnerware), so over the next two hundred years Western merchants would import no fewer than seventy million pieces of porcelain, still known to- day as “china.” In 1512, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sailor in Spanish service, led the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe. By 1517, a chain of Portuguese forts dotted the Indian Ocean — at Mozambique, Hormuz (at the mouth of the Persian Gulf), Goa (in India), Colombo (in modern Sri Lanka), and Malacca (modern Malaysia) (Map 14.1).

The Voyages of Columbus One of many sailors inspired by the Portuguese ex- plorations, Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) opened an entirely new direction for discovery. Most likely born in Genoa of Italian parents, Columbus sailed the West African coast in Por- tuguese service between 1476 and 1485. Fifteenth- century Europeans already knew that the world was round (see “Seeing History,” page 424). Columbus had studied The Travels of Marco Polo, written more than a century earlier, and wanted to sail west to reach “the lands of the Great Khan,” unaware that the Mongol Empire had already col- lapsed in eastern Asia. Hugely underestimating the distance of such a voyage, Columbus dreamed of finding a new route to the East’s gold and spices. After the Portuguese refused to fund his plan, Columbus turned to the Spanish monarchs Is- abella of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon, who agreed to finance his venture.

On August 3, 1492, with ninety men on board two caravels and one larger merchant ship for car- rying supplies, Columbus set sail westward. His

Widening Horizons 4211492–1560

1530 1540 1550 1560

■ 1527 Charles V’s imperial troops sack Rome

■ 1529 Colloquy of Marburg

■ 1534 Henry VIII breaks with Rome; Affair of the Placards in France

■ 1536 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

■ 1540 Jesuits (Society of Jesus) established

■ 1545–1563 Catholic Council of Trent

■ 1525 German Peasants’ War

Christopher Columbus: An Italian sailor (1451–1506) who opened up the New World by sailing west across the Atlantic in search of a route to Asia.

■ 1555 Peace of Augsburg

■ 1559 Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis

■ 1547 Charles V defeats Protestants at Mühlberg

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MAP 14.1 Early Voyages of World Exploration Over the course of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, European shipping dominated the Atlantic Ocean after the pioneering voyages of the Portuguese, who also first sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to the Indian Ocean and the Cape Horn to the Pacific. The search for spices and the need to circumnavigate the Ottoman Empire inspired these voyages.

contract stipulated that he would claim Castilian sovereignty over any new land and inhabitants and share any profits with the crown. Reaching what is today the Bahamas on October 12, Columbus mis- took the islands to be part of the East Indies, not far from Japan. As the Spaniards explored the Caribbean islands, they encountered communities of peaceful Indians, the Arawaks, who were awed by the Europeans’ military technology, not to men- tion their appearance. Although many positive en- tries in the ship’s log testified to Columbus’s personal goodwill toward the Indians, the Euro- peans’ objectives were clear: find gold, subjugate the Indians, and propagate Christianity. (See Doc- ument, “Columbus Describes His First Voyage,” above.)

Excited by the prospect of easy riches, many flocked to join Columbus’s second voyage. When Columbus departed Cádiz in September 1493, he commanded a fleet of seventeen ships carrying some fifteen hundred men, many of whom be- lieved that all they had to do was “to load the gold into the ships.” Failing to find the imagined gold mines and spices, Columbus and his crew began capturing Caribs, enemies of the Arawaks, with the intention of bringing them back as slaves. In 1494, Columbus proposed setting up a regular slave trade based in Hispaniola. The Spaniards exported

enslaved Indians to Spain, and slave traders sold them in Seville. When the Spanish monarchs real- ized the vast potential for material gain of their new dominions, they asserted direct royal author- ity by sending officials and priests to the Ameri- cas, which were named after the Italian Amerigo Vespucci, who led a voyage across the Atlantic in 1499–1502.

To head off looming conflicts between the Spanish and the Portuguese, Pope Alexander VI helped negotiate the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. It divided the Atlantic world between the two mar- itime powers, reserving for Portugal the West African coast and the route to India and giving Spain the oceans and lands to the west (see Map 14.1). The agreement allowed Portugal to claim Brazil in 1500, when it was accidentally “discov- ered” by Pedro Alvares Cabral (1467–1520) on a voyage to India.

A New Era in Slavery The European voyages of discovery initiated a new era in slavery, both by expanding the economic scale of slave labor and by attaching race and color to servitude. Slavery had existed since antiquity and flourished in many parts of the world. Some slaves were captured in war or by piracy; others —

Widening Horizons 4231492–1560

Columbus Describes His First Voyage (1493)

D O C U M E N T

In this famous letter to Raphael Sanchez, treasurer to his patrons, Ferdinand and Is- abella, Columbus recounts his initial jour- ney to the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and tells of his achievements. This passage reflects the first contact between native Americans and Europeans; already the themes of trade, subjugation, gold, and con- version emerge in Columbus’s own words.

Indians would give whatever the seller re- quired; . . . Thus they bartered, like idiots, cotton and gold for fragments of bows, glasses, bottles, and jars; which I forbad as being unjust, and myself gave them many beautiful and acceptable articles which I had brought with me, taking nothing from them in return; I did this in order that I

might the more easily conciliate them, that they might be led to become Christians, and be inclined to entertain a regard for the King and Queen, our Princes and all Spaniards, and that I might induce them to take an interest in seeking out, and col- lecting, and delivering to us such things as they possessed in abundance, but which we greatly needed. They practise no kind of idolatry, but have a firm belief that all strength and power, and indeed all good things, are in heaven, and that I had de- scended from thence with these ships and sailors, and under this impression was I re- ceived after they had thrown aside their fears. Nor are they slow or stupid, but of very clear understanding; and those men who have crossed to the neighbouring is- lands give an admirable description of

everything they observed; but they never saw any people clothed, nor any ships like ours. On my arrival at that sea, I had taken some Indians by force from the first island that I came to, in order that they might learn our language, and communicate to us what they know respecting the country; which plan succeeded excellently, and was a great advantage to us, for in a short time, either by gestures and signs, or by words, we were enabled to understand each other. These men are still travelling with me, and although they have been with us now a long time, they continue to entertain the idea that I have descended from heaven.

Source: Christopher Columbus, Four Voyages to the New World. Translated by R. H. Major (New York: Corinth Books, 1961), 8–9.

424 Chapter 14 ■ Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

On the eve of Christopher Colum-bus’s voyages, most Europeans knewthat the world was round and many shared Columbus’s view that new routes to Asia and its riches could be found by sail- ing west. Beyond that, however, geographic knowledge of what precisely lay on the other side of the Atlantic was sketchy at best. Even those regions familiar to Europe through trade and exploration — Africa and parts of Asia— were often shown in- accurately on maps of the day.

The hand-colored map at the top pro- duced by a German geographer, Henricus Martellus, depicts the world as Europeans knew it just before Columbus’s first voy- age. How accurate is its rendition of Eu- rope, the Mediterranean, and Africa? Note that the Americas are not shown as a sep- arate continent, but rather are joined to the Asian landmass on the far right. (Scholars have identified several major Latin Amer- ican rivers, including the Orinooko and the Amazon in part of lower right-hand quad- rant of the map.) How does this map help explain Columbus’s mistake about where he had landed in 1492? What else does it tell you about Europeans’ perceptions of the world in this period?

By 1570, when Abraham Ortelius’s map was printed, European knowledge of world geography had grown by leaps and bounds thanks to the voyages of exploration. Ortelius, a well-traveled and prominent geographer and cartographer, included this map in his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theater of the World), consid- ered to be the first modern atlas. Judging from this map, what areas of the world have come into greater focus? What areas are still inaccurately portrayed and rudi- mentary in some respects? How might you account for that? What advantages do ac- curate maps offer you, beyond knowing where you are headed? What else does the later map reveal about Europeans’ knowl- edge of the world after less than a century of exploration?

Expanding Geographic Knowledge: World Maps in an Age of Exploration

S E E I N G H I S T O R Y

World Map by Henricus Martellus, 1489. (The Art Archive/ British Library.)

World Map by Abraham Ortelius, 1570. (By permission of the British Library.)

Africans — were sold by other Africans and Bedouin traders to Christian buy- ers; in western Asia, parents sold their children out of poverty into servitude; and many in the Balkans became slaves when their land was devastated by Ot- toman invasions. Slaves could be Greek, Slav, European, African, or Turkish. Many served as domestics in European cities of the Mediterranean such as Barcelona or Venice. Others sweated as galley slaves in Ottoman and Christian fleets. Still others worked as agricultural laborers on Mediterranean islands. In the Ottoman army, slaves even formed an important elite contingent.

From the fifteenth century onward, Africans increasingly filled the ranks of slaves. Exploiting warfare between groups within West Africa, the Por- tuguese traded in gold and “pieces,” as African slaves were called, a practice condemned at home by some conscien- tious clergy. Manoel Severim de Faria, for example, observed that “one cannot yet see any good effect resulting from so much butchery; for this is not the way in which commerce can flourish and the preaching of the gospel progress.” Critical voices, however, could not deny the potential for profits that the slave trade brought to Portugal. Most slaves toiled in the sugar plantations of the Por- tuguese Atlantic islands and in Brazil. A fortunate few had somewhat easier lives as domestic servants in Portugal, where African freedmen and slaves, some thirty-five thousand in the early sixteenth century, constituted almost 3 percent of the pop- ulation, a percentage that was much higher than in other European countries.

In the Americas, slavery would expand enor- mously in the following centuries. Even outspoken critics of colonial brutality toward indigenous peoples defended the development of African slav- ery. The Spanish Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–1566), for example, argued that Africans were constitutionally more suitable for labor than native Americans and should therefore be im- ported to the plantations in the Americas to re- lieve the indigenous peoples, who were being worked to death.

Conquering the New World In 1500, on the eve of European invasion, the na- tive peoples of the Americas lived in a great diver-

sity of social and political arrangements. Some were nomads roaming large, sparsely inhabited territories; others practiced agriculture in com- plexly organized states. Among the settled peoples, the largest groupings could be found in the Mex- ican and Peruvian highlands. Combining an elab- orate religious culture with a rigid social and political hierarchy, the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru ruled over subjugated Indian popu- lations in their respective empires. From their large urban capitals, the Aztecs and Incas controlled large swaths of land and could be ruthless as conquerors.

The Spanish explorers organized their expedi- tions to the mainland of the Americas from a base in the Caribbean (Map 14.2). Two prominent commanders, Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) and Francisco Pizarro (c. 1475–1541), gathered men and arms and set off in search of gold. With them came Catholic priests intending to bring Chris- tianity to supposedly uncivilized peoples. Some natives who resented their subjugation by the Aztecs joined Cortés and his soldiers. With a band of fewer than two hundred men, Cortés captured

Widening Horizons 4251492–1560

Hernán Cortés: A Spanish explorer (1485–1547) who captured the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán (present-day Mexico City), in 1519.

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MAP 14.2 Spanish and Portuguese Colonies in the Americas, 1492–1560 The discovery of precious metals fueled the Spanish and Portuguese explorations and settlements of Central and South America, establishing the foundations of European colonial empires in the New World.

the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán (present-day Mexico City), in 1519. Two years later, Mexico, then named New Spain, was added to the empire of the new ruler of Spain, Charles V, grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella. To the south, Pizarro con- quered the Peruvian highlands. The Spanish Em- pire was now the largest in the world, stretching from Mexico to Chile.

The Aztecs and Incas fell to the superior war technology of the Spanish conquistadores. Next the conquistadores subdued the Mayas on the Yucatán peninsula, a people with a sophisticated knowledge of cosmology and arithmetic. The gold and silver mines in Mexico proved a treasure trove for the Spanish crown, but the real prize was the discovery of vast silver deposits in Potosí (today in Bolivia). When the Spaniards began importing the gold and silver they found in the New World, in- flation soared in a fashion never before witnessed in Europe.

Not to be outdone by the Spaniards, other European powers joined the scramble for gold in the New World. In North America, the French went in search of a “northwest passage” to China. The French wanted to establish settle- ments in what became Canada, but the climate and the hostility of the indigenous peoples de- feated them. Permanent European settlements in Canada and the present-day United States would succeed only in the seventeenth century, and by then the English had entered the contest for world mastery. Even before the French and the English, the Dutch entered the colonial com- petition. After they broke away from Spain late in the sixteenth century, the Dutch set about sys- tematically and aggressively taking over Spanish and Portuguese trade routes. By the mid-seven- teenth century, they had become the wealthiest people (per capita) in the world.

The discovery of the Americas resulted in a significant global movement of peoples, animals, plants, manufactured goods, and precious met- als. Tobacco and cocoa were among the exotic items brought from the Americas to Europe. Voy- ages to the New World also brought diseases from Europe to the unsuspecting peoples of America. Without natural immunity, the Amerindians died in catastrophic numbers. Within fifty years of Columbus’s first voyage, the indigenous popula- tions of the Caribbean Islands had been wiped out.

Review: Which European countries led the way in maritime exploration, and what were their motives?

The Protestant Reformation In the sixteenth century, religious reformers led by Martin Luther shattered the unity of Western Christendom, supplied by the Roman Catholic Church since the fourth century. The invention of printing with movable type proved crucial to the rapid spread of the Protestant message. The pop- ular piety that swept Europe in the closing decades of the 1400s, along with Christian humanism, also helped pave the way for the reformers by focusing attention on corrupt practices and clerical abuses. The Catholic church might nonetheless have es- caped a schism had it not been for the drive, tal- ent, and theological brilliance of Luther and other reformers such as Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin. They turned reform into protest — hence the name of their movement, Protestantism.

The Invention of Printing Printing with movable type, developed in the 1440s by Johannes Gutenberg, a German gold- smith, marked a revolutionary departure from the old practice of copying works by hand or stamp- ing pages with individually carved wood blocks. Printing itself predated movable type: the Chinese had been printing by woodblock since the tenth century, and woodcut pictures made their appear- ance in Europe in the early fifteenth century. Mov- able type, however, allowed entire manuscripts to be printed more quickly. Single letters, made in metal molds, could be emptied out of a frame and new ones inserted to print each new page. Also, the large-scale production of paper had paved the way for the invention of printing. Papermaking came to Europe from China via Arab intermedi- aries. By the fourteenth century, paper mills in Italy were producing paper that was more fragile but also much cheaper than parchment or vellum, the animal skins that Europeans had previously used for writing.

The invention of movable type in the West no doubt owed something to the twenty-six- character alphabets found in most European lan- guages; setting twenty-six characters in metal type was much easier than trying to set the hundreds or even thousands of different picture-like charac- ters that made up written Chinese. (See Printing Press, page 427.) In 1467, two German printers es- tablished the first press in Rome; within five years, they had produced twelve thousand volumes, a feat that in the past would have required a thousand scribes working full-time.

In the 1490s, the German city of Frankfurt be- came an international meeting place for printers

426 Chapter 14 ■ Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

and booksellers, establishing a book fair that re- mains an unbroken tradition to this day. Early printed books attracted an elite audience; their expense made them inaccessible to most literate people, who comprised a minority of the popula- tion in any case. Gutenberg’s famous two-volume Latin Bible was a luxury item, and only 185 copies were printed. Gutenberg Bibles remain today a treasure that only the greatest libraries possess.

The invention of mechanical printing dramat- ically increased the speed at which knowledge could be transmitted and freed individuals from having to memorize everything that they learned. Printed books and pamphlets, even one-page fly- ers, might create a wider community of scholars no longer dependent on personal patronage or church sponsorship for texts. Printing thus en- couraged the free expression and exchange of ideas, and its disruptive potential did not go un- noticed by political and religious authorities. Rulers and bishops in the German states, the birth- place of the printing industry, moved quickly to issue censorship regulations, but their efforts could not prevent the outbreak of the Protestant Refor- mation.

Popular Piety and Christian Humanism The Christianizing of Europe had taken many cen- turies to complete, and by 1500 most people in Europe believed devoutly. However, the vast ma- jority of them had little knowledge of Catholic doctrine. More popular forms of piety such as pro- cessions, festivals, and marvelous tales of saints’ miracles captivated ordinary believers.

Urban merchants and artisans, more likely than the general population to be literate and crit- ical of their local priests, yearned for a faith more meaningful to their daily lives and for a clergy more responsive to their needs. They wanted priests to preach edifying sermons, to administer the sacraments conscientiously, and to lead moral lives, so they generously donated money to estab- lish new preaching positions for university-trained clerics. The merchants resented the funneling of the Catholic church’s rich endowments to the younger children of the nobility who took up re- ligious callings to protect the wealth of their fam- ilies. The young, educated clerics funded by the merchants often came from cities themselves. They formed the backbone of Christian humanism and sometimes became reformers, too.

Humanism originated during the Renaissance in Italy among highly educated individuals at- tached to the personal households of prominent rulers. North of the Alps, however, humanists fo- cused more on religious revival and the inculca- tion of Christian piety, through such means as the model school of the Brethren of the Common Life. The Brethren preached self-discipline and often criticized the local clergy for their inadequate training and lax morals. Two men, the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536) and the English lawyer Thomas More (1478–1535), stood out as representatives of these Christian hu- manists, who coupled their love of classical learn-

The Protestant Reformation 4271492–1560

Printing Press This illustration from a French manuscript of 1537 depicts typical printing equipment of the sixteenth century. An artisan is using the screw press to apply the inked type to the paper. Also shown are the composed type secured in a chase, the printed sheet (four pages of text printed on one sheet) held by the seated proofreader, and the bound volume. When two pages of text were printed on one standard-sized sheet, the bound book was called a folio. A bound book with four pages of text on one sheet was called a quarto (“in four”), and a book with eight pages of text on one sheet was called an octavo (“in eight”). The last is a pocket-size book, smaller than today’s paperback. (The Granger Collection, New York.)

Christian humanism: A general intellectual trend in the six- teenth century that coupled love of classical learning, as in Renaissance humanism, with an emphasis on Christian piety.

ing with the emphasis on Christian piety. They both longed for ideal societies based on peace and morality but faced a world that seemed bent on violent division instead.

Erasmus. Just as Cicero had dominated ancient Roman letters, Erasmus towered over the human- ist world of early-sixteenth-century Europe. An in- timate friend of kings and popes, he became known across Europe. Disseminated by the print- ing press, Erasmus’s books made him famous. He devoted years to preparing a critical edition of the New Testament in Greek with a translation into Latin, which was finally published in 1516.

Only through education, Erasmus believed, could individuals reform themselves and society. He strove for a unified, peaceful Christendom in which charity and good works, not empty cere- monies, would mark true religion and in which learning and piety would dispel the darkness of ig- norance. He elaborated many of these ideas in his Handbook of the Militant Christian (1503), an elo- quent plea for a simple religion devoid of greed and the lust for power. In The Praise of Folly (1509), he satirized values held dear by his contempo- raries. Modesty, humility, and poverty represented the true Christian virtues in a world that wor- shipped pomposity, power, and wealth. The wise

appeared foolish, he concluded, for their wisdom and values were not of this world.

He instructed the young future emperor Charles V to rule as a just Christian prince and ex- pressed deep sorrow about the brutal fighting that had ravaged Europe for decades. A man of peace and moderation, Erasmus soon found himself challenged by angry younger men and radical ideas once the Reformation took hold; he eventually chose Christian unity over reform and schism. His dream of Christian pacifism crushed, he lived to see dissenters executed — by Catholics and Protes- tants alike — for speaking their conscience. Eras- mus spent his last years in Freiburg and Basel, isolated from the Protestant community, his writ- ings condemned by many in the Catholic church. After the Protestant Reformation had been se- cured, the saying arose that “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched.” Some blamed the humanists for the emergence of Luther and Protestantism, de- spite the humanists’ decision to remain in the Catholic church.

Thomas More. If Erasmus found himself aban- doned by his times, his good friend across the Eng- lish Channel, Thomas More, to whom The Praise of Folly was dedicated, met with even greater suf- fering. Like the humanists of Italy, More chose to

428 Chapter 14 ■ Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

Albrecht Dürer, The Knight, Death, and the Devil Dürer’s 1513 engraving of the knight depicts a grim and determined warrior advancing in the face of devils, one of whom holds out an hourglass with a grimace while another wields a menacing pike. An illustration for Erasmus’s The Handbook of the Militant Christian, this scene is often interpreted as portraying a Christian clad in the armor of righteousness on a path through life beset by death and demonic temptations. Yet the knight in early-sixteenth-century Germany had become a mercenary, selling his martial skills to princes. Some waylaid merchants, robbed rich clerics, and held citizens for ransom. The most notorious of these robber-knights, Franz von Sickingen, was declared an outlaw by the emperor and murdered in 1522. (Bridgeman- Giraudon/ Art Resource, NY.)

■ For more help analyzing this image, see the visual activity for this chapter in the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

serve his prince. In 1529, he became lord chancel- lor, the chief officer of the English government. King Henry VIII had his own issues with the pa- pacy and, in 1532, broke with the Roman Catholic church. He pulled England out from under papal control and began appointing his own bishops. In protest against Henry’s newly asserted control of the clergy, More resigned his position and was ex- ecuted in 1535 for refusing to subscribe to Henry VIII’s version of the Protestant Reformation. By executing More, Henry created a martyr revered for centuries by Catholics and by those who be- lieved in liberty of conscience.

From any perspective, More was an audacious, even eccentric thinker. In his best-known work, Utopia (1516), he describes an ideal imaginary land that stands in stark contrast to his own soci- ety. A just, equitable, and hardworking commu- nity, Utopia (meaning both “no place” and “best place” in Greek) was the opposite of England. In Utopia, everyone worked the land for two years; and since Utopians enjoyed public schools, com- munal kitchens, hospitals, and nurseries, they had no need for money or private property. Dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and natural religion, with equal distribution of goods and few laws, Utopians knew neither crime nor internal discord.

Yet even in More’s Utopia some oddities existed — voluntary slavery, for example, and strictly controlled travel. Although premarital sex brought severe punishment, prospective marriage partners could examine each other naked before making their final decisions. Men headed Utopia’s households and exercised authority over women and children. And Utopians did not shy away from declaring war on their neighbors to protect their way of life. More nonetheless created an imaginary society that was paradise when compared with a Christian Europe battered by division and violence. The Christian humanists offered stirring visions of a better future, but peace, moderation, unity, and any idea of Utopia would all be submerged in the coming flood of radical religious change.

Martin Luther and the Holy Roman Empire The Protestant Reformation began when the crisis of faith of one man, Martin Luther (1483–1546), started an international movement. Luther was an improbable spiritual revolutionary. Son of a miner

and a deeply pious mother, he began his studies in the law. Caught in a storm on a lonely road one midsummer’s night, the young student grew terri- fied by the thunder and lightning. He implored the help of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, and promised to enter a monastery if she protected him. Luther abandoned his law studies and entered the Augustinian order. There he experienced his religious crisis and its resolution: the doctrine of faith alone as the means to salvation.

Even though as a monk Luther took up all the practices offered by the church to achieve personal salvation, he did not feel saved. He prayed, he took the sacraments, and as a priest he even said Mass. He did all the good works that the church pre- scribed yet still felt bereft of God’s love. He came to believe that the church gave external behavior more weight than spiritual intentions. The sacra- ment of penance was a case in point. Instead of emphasizing the remorse that led the sinner to confess his sins to a priest and then receive for- giveness from the priest in God’s name, the church emphasized the penance imposed by the priest. Some priests abused their authority by demand- ing sexual or monetary favors before granting for- giveness. Luther found peace inside himself when he became convinced that sinners were saved only through faith and that faith was a gift freely given by God. No amount of good works, he believed, could produce the faith on which salvation de- pended. Shortly before his death, Luther recalled his crisis:

Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction [in penance]. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and se- cretly . . . I was angry with God. . . . At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, “In [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written,‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’” There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith.

Just as Luther was working out his own per- sonal search for salvation, a priest named Johann Tetzel arrived in Wittenberg, where Luther was a university professor, to sell indulgences. Penance normally consisted of spiritual duties (prayers, pil- grimages), but the church also asked for monetary substitutions, called indulgences. Indulgences could even be bought for a deceased relative, which would forgive that person’s time in purgatory and release the soul for heaven. Luther denounced what he, like so many of the Church’s other crit-

The Protestant Reformation 4291492–1560

Martin Luther: A German monk (1483–1546) who started the Protestant Reformation in 1517 by challenging the practices and doctrines of the Catholic church and advocating salvation through faith alone.

ics, saw as a corrupt practice, al- lowing sinners to buy rather than to earn forgiveness of their sins. But Luther’s objections went far deeper. He believed that indul- gences, like the sacrament of penance, were ultimately useless unless one had faith. No one, he felt, could be allowed to think that such a purchase had any- thing to do with salvation.

Armed with his sense of God’s justice and grace, Luther composed ninety-five theses for academic debate in 1517. Among them were at- tacks on the sale of indulgences and the purchase of church offices. Printed, the theses became pub- lic and unleashed a torrent of pent-up resentment and frustration among the laypeople. What began as a theological debate in a provincial university soon engulfed the Holy Roman Empire. (See “Contrasting Views,” page 431.) Luther’s earliest supporters included younger Christian humanists and clerics who shared his critical attitude toward the church establishment. None of these Evangel- icals, as they called themselves, came from the up- per echelons of the church; many were from urban middle-class backgrounds, and most were univer- sity trained. The Evangelicals represented social groups most ready to challenge clerical author- ity — merchants, artisans, and literate urban laypeople. But illiterate artisans and peasants also rallied to Luther, sometimes with an almost fanat- ical zeal. They and he believed they were living in the last days of the world. Luther and his cause might be a sign of the approaching Last Judgment.

Initially, Luther presented himself as the pope’s “loyal opposition,” but in 1520, he burned his bridges with the publication of three fiery trea- tises. In Freedom of a Christian, written in Latin for the learned and addressed to Pope Leo X, Luther argued that faith, not good works, saved sinners from damnation, and he sharply distin- guished between true Gospel teachings and in- vented church doctrines. Luther advocated “the priesthood of all believers,” insisting that the Bible provided all the teachings necessary for Christian living and that a professional caste of clerics should not hold sway over laypeople. Freedom of a Chris- tian circulated widely in an immediate German translation. Its principles “by faith alone,” “by Scripture alone,” and “the priesthood of all believ- ers” became central features of the reform move- ment.

In his second treatise, To the Nobility of the German Nation, written in German, Luther ap-

pealed to German identity and to the nobles as the natural leaders of any reform movement. He de- nounced the corrupt Italians in Rome who were cheating and exploiting his compatriots and called on the German princes to defend their nation and reform the church. Luther’s third treatise, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, condemned the papacy as the embodiment of the An- tichrist.

From Rome’s perspective, the “Luther Affair,” as church officials called it, concerned only one unruly monk. When the pope ordered him to obey his superiors and keep quiet, Luther tore up the decree. Spread by the printing press, Luther’s ideas circulated through- out the Holy Roman Empire, letting loose forces that neither the church nor Luther could control. Social, nationalist, and religious protests fused with lower-class resentments, much as in the Czech movement that Jan Hus had inspired a century earlier. Like Hus, Luther appeared before an emperor: in 1521, he defended his faith at the Imperial Diet of Worms before Charles V (r. 1519–1556), the newly elected Holy Roman Emperor who, at the age of nineteen, ruled over the Low Countries, Spain, Spain’s Italian and New World dominions, and the Austrian Habs- burg lands. Luther shocked Germans by declar- ing his admiration for the Czech heretic. But unlike Hus, Luther did not suffer martyrdom be- cause he enjoyed the protection of Frederick the Wise, the elector of Saxony and Luther’s lord. Frederick was one of the seven electors whom Charles V had bribed to become Holy Roman Emperor, and Charles had to treat him with re- spect. The emperor soon had cause to regret his reluctance to punish Luther.

Lutheran propaganda flooded German towns and villages. Hundreds of pamphlets lambasted the papacy and the Catholic clergy; others simpli- fied the message of Luther for the common folk. Sometimes only a few pages in length, these broad- sheets were often illustrated with crude satirical cartoons. City dwellers proved particularly recep- tive to Luther’s teachings; they were literate and were eager to read the Bible for themselves. Mag- istrates began to curtail clerical privileges and

430 Chapter 14 ■ Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

Charles V: Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1519–1556) and the most powerful ruler in sixteenth-century Europe; he reigned over the Low Countries, Spain, Spain’s Italian and New World dominions, and the Austrian Habsburg lands.

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Luther’s World in the Early Sixteenth Century

The Protestant Reformation 4311492–1560

When Martin Luther criticized the papacy and the Catholic church, he was hailed as a godly prophet by some and condemned as a heretic by others. Both Protestants and Catholics used popular prop- aganda to argue their cause. They spread their message to a largely illiterate or semiliterate soci- ety through pamphlets, woodcuts, and broadsheets in which visual images took on increasing impor- tance, to appeal to a wide public. These polemical works were distributed in the thousands to cities and market towns throughout the Holy Roman Empire. A few were even translated into Latin to reach an audience outside of Germany.

The 1521 woodcut by Matthias Gnidias rep- resents Luther standing above his Catholic oppo- nent, the Franciscan friar Thomas Murner, who is depicted here as a crawling dragon, Leviathan, the biblical monster (Document 1). Another positive image of Luther, also published in 1521, depicts him as inspired by the Holy Spirit (Document 2). An anti-Luther image from a few years later rep- resents him as a seven-headed monster (Document 3), signifying that the reformer is the source of discord within Christianity. This image appeared in a book published in 1529 by the Dominican friar Johannes Cochlaeus, one of Luther’s vociferous opponents.

Visual examples of religious propaganda worked effectively to demonize enemies and to contrast sharply good and evil. The 1520s saw the most intense production of these cheap polemical visual prints, but the use of visual propaganda would continue for more than a century in the religious conflict.

1. Matthias Gnidias’s Representation of Luther and Leviathan (1521)

Dressed in a friar’s robes, the Murner-Leviathan monster breathes “ignis, sumus, & sul- phur” — fire, smoke, and sul- phur. The good friar, Luther, holds the Bible in his hands, and is represented here as a prophet (foretelling the end of the world). The vertical Latin cap- tion declares that the Lord will visit the earth with his sword and kill the Leviathan monster; he will trample underfoot lions and dragons; and the dragon, with a halter around its nostrils, will be dragged away on a hook.

2. Luther as Monk, Doctor, Man of the Bible, and Saint (1521)

This woodcut by an anonymous artist appeared in a volume that the Strasbourg printer Johann Schott published in 1521. In addition to being one of the major centers of printing, Strasbourg was also a stronghold of the reform movement. Note the use of traditional symbols to signify Luther’s holiness: the Bible in his hands, the halo, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, and his friar’s robes. Although the cult of saints and monasticism came under se- vere criticism during the Reformation, the repre- sentation of Luther in traditional symbols of sanctity stressed his conservative values instead of his radical challenge to church authorities.

3. The Seven-Headed Martin Luther by Johannes Cochlaeus (1529)

The seven heads are labeled (from left to right) doctor, Martin, Luther, ecclesiast, enthusiast, visitirer, and Barrabas. The term en- thusiast represented a name of abuse, applied usually by the Catholic church to Anabaptists and religious radicals of all sorts. Visitirer is a pun in German on the word Tier, meaning “ani- mal.” Cochlaeus also mocks the new practice of Protes- tant clergy visiting parishes to check up on pastors’ and parishioners’ adherence to reformed doctrines and rit- uals in order to enforce Christian discipline. From left to right, Luther’s many heads gradually reveal him to be a rebel, as Barrabas was condemned to die as a rabble-rouser by the Ro- mans but instead was freed and his place taken by Je- sus at the crucifixion. The number seven also alludes to the seven deadly sins.

Questions to Consider 1. Why did Johannes Cochlaeus condemn Martin Luther? How

did he construct a negative image of Luther? 2. Evaluate the visual representations of Luther as a godly man.

Which one is more effective?

C O N T R A S T I N G V I E W S

Martin Luther: Holy Man or Heretic?

Luther and Leviathan

Seven-Headed Luther. (The Granger Collection, New York.)

Luther as Monk. (The Granger Collection, New York.)

subordinate the clergy to municipal authority. Luther’s message — that each Christian could ap- peal directly to God for salvation — spoke to townspeople’s spiritual needs and social vision. From Wittenberg, the many streams of the reform movement quickly merged and threatened to swamp all before it.

Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin Separate reform movements sprang up in Swiss cities. In 1520, just three years after Luther’s initial break with Rome, the chief preacher of Zurich, Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), openly declared himself a reformer. Like Luther, Zwingli attacked corruption in the Catholic church hierarchy, and he also questioned fasting and clerical celibacy. Under Zwingli’s leadership, Zurich served as the center for the Swiss and southern German reform movement. Lu- ther and Zwingli did not agree on all points of doctrine. Luther insisted that Christ was both truly and symbolically present in the Eucharist, the central Christian sacrament that Christians par- took of in communion; Zwingli, however, viewed the Eucharistic bread and wine as symbols of Christ’s union with believers.

In 1529, troubled by these differences and other disagree- ments, Evangelical princes and magistrates assembled the major reformers in the Colloquy of Marburg, in central Germany. After several days of intense discussions, the reformers managed to resolve some differences over doc- trine, but Luther and Zwingli failed to agree on the meaning of the Eucharist. The issue of the Eu- charist would soon divide Lutherans and Calvin- ists as well.

Under the leadership of John Calvin (1509–1564), another wave of reform pounded at the gates of Rome. Born in Picardy, in northern France, Calvin studied in Paris and Orléans, where he took a law degree. A gifted intellectual attracted to humanism, Calvin could have enjoyed a bril- liant career in government or the church. Instead, experiencing a crisis of faith, like Luther, he sought salvation through intense theological study. Calvin

read the works of the leading French humanists who sought to reform the church from within, and he also examined Luther’s writings. Gradually, he came to question fundamental Catholic teachings.

On Sunday, October 18, 1534, Parisians found church doors posted with ribald broadsheets de- nouncing the Catholic Mass. Smuggled into France from the Protestant and French-speaking parts of Switzerland, the broadsheets provoked a wave of royal repression in the capital. In response to this so-called Affair of the Placards, the govern- ment arrested hundreds of French Protestants, ex- ecuted some of them, and forced many more, including Calvin, to flee abroad.

On his way to Strasbourg, a haven for religious dissidents, Calvin detoured to Geneva — the

French-speaking Swiss city-state where he would find his life’s work. Genevans had renounced their allegiance to the Catholic bishop, and local supporters of reform begged Calvin to stay and labor there. Although it took some time for Calvin to solidify his position in the city, his sup- porters eventually triumphed and he remained in Geneva until his death in 1564.

Under Calvin’s leadership, Geneva became a Christian re- public on the model set out in his Institutes of the Christian Reli- gion, first published in 1536. No reformer prior to Calvin had ex-

pounded on the doctrines, organization, history, and practices of Christianity in such a systematic, logical, and coherent manner. Calvin followed Luther’s doctrine of salvation to its ultimate logi- cal conclusion: if God is almighty and humans cannot earn their salvation by good works, then no Christian can be certain of salvation. Develop- ing the doctrine of predestination, Calvin argued that God had ordained every man, woman, and child to salvation or damnation — even before the creation of the world. Thus, in Calvin’s theology, God saved only the “elect”; he knew their identity eternally.

Predestination could terrify, but it could also embolden. A righteous life might be a sign of a person’s having been chosen for salvation. Thus, Calvinist doctrine demanded rigorous discipline. The knowledge that only the elect, a small group,

432 Chapter 14 ■ Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

John Calvin: French-born Christian humanist (1509–1564) and founder of Calvinism, one of the major branches of the Protes- tant Reformation; he led the reform movement in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1541 to 1564.

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Calvin’s World in the Mid-Sixteenth Century

predestination: John Calvin’s doctrine that God preordained salvation or damnation for each person before creation; those chosen for salvation were considered the “elect.”

would be saved should guide the actions of the godly in an uncertain world. Fusing church and society into what followers named the Reformed church, Geneva became a theocratic city-state dominated by Calvin and the elders of the Re- formed church. Its people were rigorously moni- tored; detractors said that they were bullied. (See Document, “Ordinances for Calvinist Churches,” above.)

Calvin tolerated no dissent. While passing through Geneva in 1553, the Spanish physician Michael Servetus was arrested because he had pub- lished books attacking Calvin and questioning the doctrine of the Trinity, the belief that there are three persons in one God — the Father, the Son (Christ), and the Holy Spirit. Upon Calvin’s advice, the au- thorities executed Servetus. Despite the outcry over this action, Geneva became the new center of the Reformation, the place where pastors trained for missionary work and where books about Calvinist

doctrines were produced and exported all over Eu- rope. The Calvinist movement spread to France, the Low Countries, England, Scotland, the German states, Poland, Hungary, and eventually New Eng- land, becoming the established form of the Refor- mation in many of these countries.

The Anglican Church in England England followed its own path, with reform led by the king rather than by men trained as Catholic clergy. Despite a tradition of religious dissent that went back to John Wycliffe, Protestantism gained few English adherents in the 1520s. King Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547) changed that when he broke

The Protestant Reformation 4331492–1560

Ordinances for Calvinist Churches (1547)

D O C U M E N T

The Calvinist churches, like others during the Protestant Reformation, emphasized the need for stricter moral regulation of indi- vidual behavior. These ordinances placed on churches in Geneva and surrounding areas show how all aspects of behavior, including popular entertainments, were subject to scrutiny.

Concerning the Times of Assembling at Church

That the temples be closed for the rest of the time [outside the time of services], in order that no one shall enter therein out of hours, impelled thereto by superstition; and if anyone be found engaged in any special act of devotion therein or nearby he shall be admonished for it: if it be found to be of a superstitious nature for which simple correction is inadequate then he shall be chastised.

Blasphemy.

Whoever shall have blasphemed, swearing by the body or by the blood of our Lord, or in similar manner, he shall be made to

kiss the earth for the first offence; for the second to pay 5 sous, and for the third 6 sous, and for the last offence be put in the pillory for one hour.

Drunkenness.

1. That no one shall invite another to drink under penalty of 3 sous.

2. That taverns shall be closed during the sermon, under penalty that the tavern- keeper shall pay 3 sous, and whoever may be found therein shall pay the same amount.

3. If anyone be found intoxicated he shall pay for the first offence 3 sous and shall be remanded to the consistory [church council or governing body]; for the sec- ond offence he shall be held to pay the sum of 6 sous, and for the third 10 sous and be put in prison.

4. That no one shall make roiaumes [pop- ular festivals] under penalty of 10 sous.

Songs and Dances.

If anyone sings immoral, dissolute or outrageous songs, or dance the virollet

or other dance, he shall be put in prison for three days and then sent to the con- sistory.

Usury.

That no one shall take upon interest or profit more than five per cent., upon penalty of confiscation of the principal and of being condemned to make restitu- tion as the case may demand.

Games.

That no one shall play at any dissolute game or at any game whatsoever it may be, neither for gold nor silver nor for any excessive stake [i.e., gambling], upon penalty of 5 sous and forfeiture of stake played for.

Source: George L. Burns, ed., in Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, 6 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania History Department, 1898–1912), vol. 1, 2–5.

Henry VIII: The English king (r. 1509–1547) who first opposed the Protestant Reformation and then broke with the Catholic church, naming himself head of the Anglican church in the Act of Supremacy of 1534.

with the Roman Catholic church for reasons that were both personal and political. The resulting An- glican church retained many aspects of Catholic worship but nonetheless aligned itself in the Protestant camp.

At first, Henry opposed the Reformation, even receiving the title Defender of the Faith from Pope Leo X for a treatise Henry wrote against Luther. A robust, ambitious, and well-educated man, Henry wanted to make his mark on history and, with the aid of his chancellors Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and Thomas More, he vigorously suppressed Protes- tantism and executed its leaders. But by 1527, the king wanted to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon (d. 1536), the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain and the aunt of Charles V. The eighteen-year marriage had produced a daughter, Mary (known as Mary Tudor), but Henry desper- ately needed a male heir to consolidate the rule of the still-new Tudor dynasty. Moreover, he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, a lady at court and a strong supporter of the Reformation. Henry claimed that his marriage to Catherine had never been valid because she was the widow of his older brother, Arthur. Arthur and Catherine’s marriage, which apparently was never consummated, had been annulled by Pope Julius II to allow the mar- riage between Henry and Catherine to take place. Now Henry asked the reigning pope, Clement VII, to declare his marriage to Catherine invalid.

Around “the king’s great matter” unfolded a struggle for political and religious control. When Henry failed to secure papal approval of his di- vorce, he chose two Protestants as his new loyal servants: Thomas Cromwell (1485–1540) as chan-

cellor and Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) as arch- bishop of Canterbury. Under their leadership, the English Parliament passed a number of acts that severed ties between the English church and Rome. The most important of these, the Act of Su- premacy of 1534, made Henry the head of the An- glican church (the Church of England). Other legislation invalidated the claims of Mary, his daughter with Catherine, to the throne, recognized his marriage to Anne Boleyn, and allowed the English crown to embark on the dissolution of the monasteries. In an effort to consolidate support behind his version of the Reformation, Henry sold off monastic lands to the local gentry and aristoc- racy. Henry thus missed a golden opportunity to make the English crown as rich as its French coun- terpart by adding those lands to its own holdings.

By 1536, Henry had grown tired of Anne Boleyn, who had given birth to a daughter, the fu- ture Queen Elizabeth I, but had produced no sons. He ordered Anne beheaded on the charge of adul- tery, an act that he defined as treason. The king would go on to marry four other wives but father only one son, Edward. Thomas More had also been executed for treason, in 1535, and Cromwell suf- fered the same fate in 1540 after he lost the king’s favor. When Henry died in 1547, the principle of royal supremacy in religious matters was firmly established, but much would now depend on who held the crown.

Review: How did Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Henry VIII challenge the Roman Catholic church?

Reshaping Society through Religion The religious upheavals of the sixteenth century affected European society in two contradictory ways: first, the reformers and their followers chal- lenged political authority and the social order, and second, in reaction to the more extreme manifes- tations of the first, they underlined the need for discipline in worship and social behavior. Peasant rebels and radical Protestants known as Anabap- tists wanted to push the Reformation in a more populist direction. They took the phrase “priest- hood of all believers” quite literally and sided with the poor and the downtrodden. Like Catholics, Protestant authorities then became alarmed by the subversive potential of religious reforms. They viewed the Reformation not as a political and so- cial movement, but as a way of instilling greater

434 Chapter 14 ■ Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

T H E P R O G R E S S O F T H E R E F O R M A T I O N

1517 Martin Luther disseminates ninety-five theses attacking the sale of indulgences and other church practices

1520 Reformer Huldrych Zwingli breaks with Rome

1525 Peasants’ War in German states divides reform move- ment

1529 Lutheran German princes protest the condemnation of religious reform by Charles V

1534 The Act of Supremacy establishes King Henry VIII as head of the Anglican church, severing ties to Rome

1534–1535 Anabaptists take over the German city of Münster in a failed experiment to create a holy community

1541 John Calvin establishes himself permanently in Geneva, making that city a model of Christian reform and discipline

discipline in individual worship and church organ- ization. Bible reading became a potent tool in the creation of this new, internally motivated person. At the same time, the Roman Catholic church un- dertook reforms of its own and launched an offensive against the Protestant Reformation, sometimes called the Counter-Reformation.

Protestant Challenges to the Social Order When Luther described the freedom of the Chris- tian, he meant an entirely spiritual freedom. But others interpreted his call for freedom in social and political terms. During the 1520s and 1530s, two movements emerged in the Holy Roman Empire to demand more far-reaching changes. In 1525, peasants and urban artisans rose up against the Catholic church and landed nobility and armed themselves to pursue their goals. Anabaptists ex- perimented with new social and political doc- trines. Some rejected violence, but one Anabaptist group tried to create a perfect Christian commu-

nity in the German town of Münster. The results were disastrous.

The Peasants’ War of 1525. The Catholic church was the largest landowner in the Holy Roman Em- pire: about one-seventh of the empire’s territory consisted of ecclesiastical principalities in which bishops and abbots exercised both secular and churchly power. Luther’s anticlerical message struck home with peasants who paid taxes to both their lord and the Catholic church. In the spring of 1525, many peasants in southern and central Germany, joined by urban workers, rose in rebel- lion (Map 14.3). In Thuringia (central/eastern Germany), the rebels followed an ex-priest, Thomas Müntzer (1468?–1525), who promised to chastise the wicked and thus clear the way for the Last Judgment.

The Peasants’ War split the reform movement. Princes and city officials, ultimately supported by Luther, turned against the rebels. Catholic and Protestant princes joined hands to crush Müntzer and his supporters. All over the empire, princes

Reshaping Society through Religion 4351492–1560

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MAP 14.3 The Peasants’ War of 1525 The centers of uprisings clustered in southern and central Germany, where the density of cities encouraged the spread of discontent and allowed for alliances between urban masses and rural rebels. The proximity to the Swiss Confederation, a stronghold of the Reformation move- ment, also inspired antiestablishment uprisings.

trounced peasant armies, hunted down their lead- ers, and uprooted all opposition. By the end of the year, more than 100,000 rebels had been killed and many others maimed, imprisoned, or exiled. Ini- tially, Luther had tried to mediate the conflict, crit- icizing the princes for their brutality toward the peasants but also warning the rebels against mix- ing religion and social protest. Luther believed that God ordained rulers, who must therefore be obeyed even if they were tyrants. The kingdom of God belonged not to this world but to the next, he insisted. Luther considered Müntzer’s mixing of religion and politics the greatest danger to the Re- formation, nothing less than “the devil’s work.” When the rebels ignored Luther’s appeal and con- tinued to follow more radical preachers, Luther called on the princes to slaughter the rebels and restore the divinely ordained social order.

Fundamentally conservative in its political philosophy, the Lutheran church henceforth de- pended on established political authority for its protection. It lost supporters in rural areas and be- came an increasingly urban phenomenon. The ul- timate victors were the German princes. They

defeated the peasants, sided with Luther, and con- fronted the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who declared Roman Catholicism the empire’s only le- gitimate religion. The fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire only increased as people came to support their Protestant princes against Charles’s Catholic orthodoxy.

Anabaptists. While Zwingli challenged the Ro- man Catholic church in public, some laypeople in Zurich secretly pursued their own path to reform. Taking their cue from the New Testament’s de- scriptions of the first Christian community, these men and women believed that true faith came only to those with reason and free will. How could a baby knowingly choose Christ? Only adults could believe and accept baptism; hence, the Anabaptists (literally, “rebaptizers”) rejected the validity of in- fant baptism and called for adult rebaptism. Many were pacifists who also refused to acknowledge the authority of law courts and considered themselves a community of true Christians unblemished by sin. The Anabaptist movement drew its leadership primarily from the artisan class and its members from the middle and lower classes — men and women attracted by a simple but radical message of peace and salvation.

Zwingli immediately attacked the Anabaptists for their refusal to bear arms and swear oaths of allegiance, sensing accurately that they were repu- diating his theocratic (church-directed) order. When persuasion failed to convince the Anabap- tists, Zwingli urged Zurich magistrates to impose the death sentence. Thus, the evangelical reform- ers themselves created the Reformation’s first mar- tyrs of conscience.

Despite condemnation in 1529 of the move- ment by the Holy Roman Emperor, Anabaptism spread rapidly from Zurich to many cities in south- ern Germany. In 1534, one Anabaptist group, be- lieving the end of the world was imminent, seized control of the city of Münster. Proclaiming them- selves a community of saints, the Münster Anabap- tists abolished private property in imitation of the early Christians and dissolved traditional mar- riages, allowing men, like Old Testament patri- archs, to have multiple wives, to the consternation of many women. Besieged by a combined Protes- tant and Catholic army, the city fell in June 1535. The Anabaptist leaders died in battle or were exe- cuted, their bodies hung in cages affixed to the church tower. Their punishment was intended as a

436 Chapter 14 ■ Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

German Peasants’ War of 1525 This colored woodcut depicts peasants attacking the pope, a monk, and a nobleman during the massive rural uprisings against the church that took place in southern and central Germany in 1525. Even the heavens show signs of trouble: a comet and clouds in the shape of a goat signify bloodshed and sin. (The Granger Collection, New York.)

Anabaptists: Sixteenth-century Protestants who believed that only adults could truly have faith and accept baptism.

warning to all who might want to take the Refor- mation away from the Protestant authorities and hand it to the people. The Anabaptist movement in northwestern Europe nonetheless survived un- der the determined pacifist leadership of the Dutch reformer Menno Simons (1469–1561), whose fol- lowers were eventually named Mennonites.

New Forms of Discipline Faced with the social firestorms ignited by reli- gious reform, the middle-class urbanites who sup- ported the Protestant Reformation urged greater religious conformity and stricter moral behavior. To gain more control over religious ferment, Protestant rulers and clergy encouraged Bible reading and a new work ethic. Ordinary men and women who learned how to behave as virtuous Christians at home and in Sunday worship applied what they learned in their households and their businesses. Protestants did not have monasteries or convents or saints’ lives to set examples; they sought moral examples in their own homes, in the sermons of their preachers, and in their own reading of the Bible. The new emphasis on self- discipline led to growing impatience with the poor, now viewed as lacking personal virtue, and greater emphasis on regulation of marriage, now seen as critical to social discipline in general. Although some of these attitudes had medieval roots, the Protestant Reformation fostered their spread and Catholics soon began to embrace them.

Reading the Bible. The only Bible authorized by the Catholic church was the Latin Bible, or Vulgate, even though it contained errors of translation from the Greek and Hebrew. In 1522, Martin Luther translated Erasmus’s Greek New Testament into German, the first full vernacular translation in that language. A new Bible-centered culture be- gan to take root, as more than 200,000 copies of Luther’s New Testament were printed over twelve years, an immense number for the time. In 1534, Luther completed a translation of the Old Testa- ment. Peppered with witty phrases and colloquial expressions, Luther’s Bible was a treasure chest of the German language.

Found for the most part in urban and literate households, the German Bible occupied a central place in a family’s history. Generations handed down valuable editions, and pious citizens often bound Bibles with family papers or other reading material. Bible reading became a common pastime undertaken in solitude or in family and church gatherings. To counter Protestant success, Catholic

German Bibles soon appeared, thus sanctioning Bible reading by the Catholic laity, a sharp depar- ture from medieval church practice. In the same year that Luther’s German New Testament ap- peared in print, the French humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (c. 1455–1536) translated the Vulgate (Latin) New Testament into French.

Catholic authorities did not always welcome translations, however. Sensing a potentially dan- gerous association between the vernacular Bible and heresy, England’s Catholic church hierarchy had reacted swiftly against English-language Bibles. When William Tyndale (1495–1536) trans- lated the Bible into English, he was burned at the stake as a heretic. After Henry VIII’s break with Rome and adoption of the Reformation, in con- trast, his government promoted an English Bible based on Tyndale’s translation.

Public Relief for the Poor. In the early sixteenth century, secular governments began to take over institutions of public charity from the church. This development, which took place in both Catholic and Protestant Europe, grew out of two trends: a new upsurge in poverty brought about by popu- lation growth and spiraling inflation, and the rise of a work ethic that included growing hostility to- ward the poor.

By 1500, the cycle of demographic collapse and economic depression triggered by the Black Death of 1346–1353 had passed. Between 1500 and 1560, rapid economic and population growth created prosperity for some and stress — caused or heightened by increased inflation — for many. Wanderers and urban beggars were by no means novel, but the reaction to poverty was. Sixteenth- century moralists decried the crime and sloth of vagabonds. Rejecting the notion that the poor played a central role in the Christian idea of sal- vation and that charity and prayers united rich and poor, these moralists distinguished between the genuine poor, or “God’s poor,” and vagabonds; they insisted that the latter, who were able-bodied, should be forced to work.

The Reformation provided an opportunity to restructure relief for the poor. Instead of decen- tralized, private initiatives often overseen by reli- gious orders, Protestant magistrates appointed officials to head urban agencies that would certify the genuine poor and distribute welfare funds to them. This development progressed rapidly in ur- ban areas, where poverty was most visible, and transcended religious divisions. During the 1520s, cities in the Low Countries, Italy, and Spain passed ordinances that prohibited begging and instituted

Reshaping Society through Religion 4371492–1560

public charity. In 1526, the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives, a Catholic, wrote On the Support of the Poor, a Latin treatise urging authorities to estab- lish public poor relief; the work was soon trans- lated into French, Italian, German, and English. National laws followed. In 1531, Henry VIII asked justices of the peace (unpaid local magistrates) to license the poor in England and to differentiate be- tween those who could work and those who could not. In 1540, Charles V imposed a welfare tax in Spain to augment that country’s inadequate sys- tem of private charity. In Spain, however, the reli- gious orders continued to dominate the system of almsgiving.

Reforming Marriage. In their effort to establish order and discipline, Protestant reformers de- nounced sexual immorality and glorified the fam- ily. The early Protestant reformers like Luther championed the end of clerical celibacy and em- braced marriage. Luther, once a celibate priest himself, married a former nun. The idealized pa- triarchal family provided protection against the forces of disorder and a place where reform values could be inculcated. Protestant magistrates estab-

lished marital courts, passed new marriage laws, closed brothels, and inflicted harsher punishments for sexual deviance.

Prior to the Reformation, despite the legisla- tion of church councils, marriages had largely been private affairs between families; some couples never even registered with the church. The Catholic church recognized any promise made be- tween two consenting adults (with the legal age of twelve for females, fourteen for males) in the pres- ence of two witnesses as a valid marriage. Many couples simply lived together as common-law hus- band and wife. Young men sometimes promised marriage in a passionate moment, only to renege later. The overwhelming number of cases in Catholic church courts involved young women seeking to enforce promises after they had ex- changed their personal honor — that is, their virginity — for the greater honor of marriage.

The Reformation proved more effective than the late medieval church in suppressing common- law marriages. Protestant governments asserted greater official control over marriage, and Catholic governments followed suit. A marriage was legiti- mate only if registered by both a government offi- cial and a member of the clergy. In many Protestant countries, the new marriage ordinances also re- quired parental consent, thus giving householders immense power in regulating not only marriage but also the transmission of family property.

In the fervor of the early Reformation years, the first generation of Protestant women attained greater marital equality than those of subsequent generations. Katharina Zell, wife of the reformer Matthew Zell, defended her equality by citing a Bible verse when a critic used St. Paul to support his argument that women should remain silent in church. Katharina retorted, “I would remind you of the word of this same apostle that in Christ there is no male nor female.” Katharina helped feed and clothe the thousands of refugees who flooded Strasbourg after their defeat in the Peasants’ War. In 1534, she published a collection of hymns. Outraged by the intolerance of a new breed of Protestant clergy, she reprimanded a prominent Lutheran pastor for his persecution of dissenters: “You young fellows tread on the graves of the first fathers of this church in Strasbourg and punish all who disagree with you, but faith cannot be forced.”

Catholic Renewal Like a slumbering giant finally awakened, the Catholic church decided in the 1540s to undertake drastic action to fend off the Protestant threat. Pope Paul III convened a general council of the

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The Disciplined Home Proper table manners reflected discipline and morality in the godly household, an ideal of the religious reformers of the sixteenth century. The householder, the father patriarch, leads his wife and children in prayer before a meal. The orderly behavior parallels the comfort (oven, smoked glass windows, chan- deliers, timber ceiling, and cabinets) of a well-off patrician family. (Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Germany.)

Jesuits: Members of the Society of Jesus, a Catholic religious order founded by Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) and approved by the pope in 1540. Jesuits served as missionaries and edu- cators all over the world.

church in 1545 at Trent, a town on the border be- tween the Holy Roman Empire and Italy. Meeting sporadically over nearly twenty years (1545–1563), the Council of Trent effectively set the course of Catholicism until the 1960s. Catholic leaders sought a renewal of religious devotion and spiri- tuality as well as a clarification of church doctrine. New religious orders set out to win converts over- seas or to reconvert Catholics who had turned to Protestantism. Catholic clergy emphasized the pageantry of ritual and the decoration of churches in order to counter the austerity of Protestant wor- ship. At the same time, the church did not hesitate to root out dissent by giving greater powers to the Inquisition, including the power to censor books. The papal Index, or list of prohibited books, was established in 1557 and not abolished until 1966.

The Council of Trent. Italian and Spanish clergy predominated among the 255 bishops, archbish- ops, and cardinals attending the Council of Trent. Though its deliberations were interrupted first by an outbreak of the plague and then by warfare, the council came up with a remarkably wide-ranging series of decisions. It condemned the central doc- trines of Protestantism. Salvation depended on faith and good works, not faith alone. On the sacrament of the Eucharist, the council reaffirmed that the bread of communion “really, truly” be- comes Christ’s body — a rejection of all Protestant positions on this issue so emphatic as to preclude compromise. It reasserted the supremacy of cleri- cal authority over the laity; the church’s interpre- tation of the Bible could not be challenged, and the Vulgate was the only authoritative version. The council rejected divorce, permitted by Protestants, and reaffirmed the legitimacy of indulgences. It also called for reform from within, however, insist- ing that bishops henceforth reside in their dio- ceses and decreeing that seminaries for the training of priests be established in every diocese.

The Council of Trent marked a watershed; henceforth, the schism between Protestant and Catholic remained permanent, and all hopes of rec- onciliation faded. The focus of the Catholic church turned now to rolling back the tide of dissent.

New Religious Orders. The energy of the Catholic renewal expressed itself most vigorously in the founding of new religious orders. Several were founded in early-sixteenth-century Italy and

reflected an intense religious revival in the Italian cities from the 1490s to the 1520s. The most im- portant of these, the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, was established by a Spanish nobleman, Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556). Inspired by tales of chival- ric romances and the national glory of the recon- quista, Ignatius eagerly sought to prove himself as a soldier. In 1521, while defending a Spanish bor- der fortress against French attack, he sustained a severe injury. During his convalescence, Ignatius read lives of the saints; once he recovered, he aban- doned his quest for military glory in favor of serv- ing the church.

Attracted by his activist piety, young men gravitated to this charismatic figure. Thanks to a cardinal’s intercession, Ignatius gained a hearing before the pope, and in 1540 the church recognized his small band. With Ignatius as its first general, the Jesuits became the most vigorous defenders of papal authority. The society quickly expanded; by the time of Ignatius’s death in 1556, Europe had one thousand Jesuits. They established hundreds of colleges throughout the Catholic world, educat- ing future generations of Catholic leaders. Jesuit missionaries played a key role in the global Por- tuguese maritime empire and brought Roman Catholicism to Africans, Asians, and native Amer- icans. Together with other new religious orders, the Jesuits restored the confidence of the faithful in the dedication and power of the Catholic church. They also acquired a reputation for bringing controversy in their wake and for being drawn to power as counselors to powerful nobles and kings.

Missionary Zeal. To win new souls, Catholic missionaries set sail throughout the globe. They saw their effort as proof of the truth of Roman Catholicism and the success of their missions as a sign of divine favor, both particularly important in the face of Protestant challenge. But the mis- sionary zeal of Catholics brought conflicting mes- sages to indigenous peoples: for some, the message of a repressive and coercive alien religion; for oth- ers, a sweet sign of reason and faith. Frustrated in his efforts to convert Brazilian Indians, a Jesuit missionary wrote to his superior in Rome in 1563 that “for this kind of people it is better to be preaching with the sword and rod of iron.”

To ensure rapid Christianization, European missionaries focused initially on winning over lo- cal elites. The recommendation of a Spanish royal

Reshaping Society through Religion 4391492–1560

Council of Trent: A general council of the Catholic church that met at Trent between 1545 and 1563 to set Catholic doctrine, reform church practices, and defend the church against the Protestant challenge.

official in Mexico City was typical. He wrote to the crown in 1525:

In order that the sons of caciques [chiefs] and native lords may be instructed in the faith,Your Majesty must command that a college be founded wherein they may be taught . . . to the end that they may be ordained priests. For he who shall become such among them, will be of greater profit in attracting others to the faith than will fifty [European] Christians.

Nevertheless, this recommendation was not adopted and the Catholic clergy in Spanish Amer- ica remained overwhelmingly European.

After an initial period of relatively little racial discrimination, the Catholic church in the Amer- icas and Africa adopted strict rules based on color. For example, the first Mexican Ecclesiastical Provincial Council in 1555 declared that holy or- ders were not to be conferred on Indians, mesti- zos (people of mixed European-Indian parentage), or mulattoes (people of mixed European-African heritage); along with descendants of Muslims, Jews, and persons who had been sentenced by the Spanish Inquisition, these groups were deemed “inherently unworthy of the sacerdotal [priestly] office.” Europeans’ sense of racial superiority led them to perceive native Americans’ and Africans’ resistance to domination as “treachery.”

In East Asia, as in the Americas, Christian missionaries under Portuguese protection con- centrated their efforts on the elites, preaching the Gospel to Confucian scholar-officials in China and to the samurai (the warrior aristocracy) in Japan. However, European missionaries in Asia greatly admired Chinese and Japanese civilization and thus used the sermon rather than the sword to win converts (see the illustration on this page). The Jesuit Francis Xavier preached in India and Japan, his work greatly assisted by a network of Por- tuguese trading stations. He died in 1552, await- ing permission to travel to China. A pioneer missionary in Asia, Xavier had prepared the ground for future missionary successes in Japan and China. The efforts of the Catholic missionar- ies seemed highly successful: vast multitudes of native Americans had become nominal Christians by the second half of the sixteenth century, and thirty years after Francis Xavier’s 1549 landing in Japan, the Jesuits could claim more than 100,000 Japanese converts.

Review: How did the forces for radical change un- leashed by the Protestant Reformation interact with the urge for social order and stability?

440 Chapter 14 ■ Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

The Portuguese in Japan In this sixteenth-century Japanese black- lacquer screen painting of Portuguese missionaries, the Jesuits are dressed in black and the Franciscans in brown. At the lower right corner is a Portuguese nobleman depicted with exaggerated “Western” features. The Japanese considered themselves lighter in skin color than the Portuguese, whom they classified as “barbarians.” In turn, the Portuguese classified Japanese (and Chinese) as “whites.” The perception of ethnic differences in the sixteenth century, however, depended less on skin color than on clothing, eating habits, and other cultural signals. Color classifications were unstable and changed over time: by the late seventeenth century, Europeans no longer regarded Asians as “whites.” (Laurie Platt Winfrey, Inc.)

A Struggle for Mastery In the sixteenth century, conflicts generated by the Reformation posed new challenges to the ambi- tions of rulers. Even as courts continued to spon- sor the arts and literature of the Renaissance, princes and kings seized opportunities to build stronger states by fighting wars. Wars justified in- creased taxes, and growing revenues fostered the creation of a central bureaucracy housed at court. Victory on the battlefield translated into territory and just as important into reputation and awe. But victory required skills in making war; monarchs eagerly sought new military technology and bat- tlefield ploys. One major obstacle complicated these efforts at state building: religious division. Could states maintain their authority if individu- als were allowed to choose their religion? Al- most everywhere, violence failed to settle religious differences. By 1560, an exhausted Europe had achieved a provisional peace, but one fraught with the seeds of future conflict.

The High Renaissance Court At the center of art patronage, dynastic competition, and religious division lay the court, the focus of princely power and intrigue and the agent of state building. Kings, princes, and popes alike used their courts to keep an eye on their leading courtiers (car- dinals in the case of popes) and im- press their other subjects. Briefly defined, the court was the ruler’s household. Around the prince gath- ered a community of household ser- vants, noble attendants, councilors, officials, artists, and soldiers. Renais- sance culture had been promoted by this political elite, and that culture now entered its “high” or most sophisticated phase. Its acclaimed representative was Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), an immensely talented Italian artist who sculpted a gigantic nude statue (see right) for officials in Florence and then painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for the recently elected Pope Julius II.

Italian artists also flocked to the French court of Francis I (r. 1515–1547), which swelled to the largest in Europe. In addition to the king’s own household, the queen and the queen mother each had her own staff of maids and chefs, as did each of the royal chil-

dren. The royal household employed officials to handle finances and provide guard duty, clothing, and food; in addition, physicians, librarians, mu- sicians, dwarfs, animal trainers, and a multitude of hangers-on bloated its size. By 1535, the French court numbered 1,622 members. Although Fran- cis built a magnificent Renaissance palace at Fontainebleau, where he hired Italian artists to produce paintings and sculpture, the French court often moved from palace to palace. It took no fewer than eighteen thousand horses to transport the people, furniture, and documents — not to mention the dogs and falcons for the royal hunt. Hunting was no mere diversion; it represented a form of mock combat, essential in the training of a military elite. Francis himself loved war games

and almost lost his own life when, storming a house during one mock battle, he was hit

on the head by a burning log. Two Italian writers helped define the

new culture of courtesy, or proper court behavior, that developed in such a set-

ting: Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), in service at the Este court in

Ferrara, and Baldassare Cas- tiglione (1478–1529), a servant

of the duke of Urbino and the pope. Considered one of the greatest Renaissance poets,

A Struggle for Ma stery 4411492–1560

Michelangelo’s David Michelangelo combined the classical nude statue with the biblical figure of David in this larger-than-life sculpture showing the young man preparing for action against the giant Goliath. Originally commissioned by church officials in Florence, the statue ended up standing in front of city hall as a com- memoration of the recapture of the city-state’s freedom. Michelangelo’s intentions are not easy to decipher. David’s slingshot is barely visible on his left shoulder, and his easy slouch seems incongruous for a coming battle. An earlier drawing by Michelangelo showed David standing on the head of the defeated Goliath, a much more common depiction. What do you deduce from this portrayal? (Nimatallah/ Art Resource, NY.)

Ariosto composed a long epic poem, Orlando Furioso, which represented court culture as the highest synthesis of Christian and classical values. The poem’s tales of combat, valor, love, and magic captivated the court’s noble readers. In The Courtier, Castiglione represented court culture as a synthesis of military virtues and literary and artistic cultivation. His characters debate the qual- ities of an ideal courtier in a series of eloquent di- alogues. The true courtier, Castiglione asserts, is a gentleman who speaks in a refined language and carries himself with nobility and dignity in the service of his prince and his lady.

Princes faced greater challenges than did their courtiers, and courtesy was not always their most cherished virtue. The greatest writer on politics of the age, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), under- lined the need for pragmatic, even cold calculation in his controversial essay The Prince. Was it better, he asked, for a prince to be feared by his people or loved?

It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved. . . . Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrate- ful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you

succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children . . . when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you.

Machiavelli insisted that princes could benefit their subjects only by maintaining a firm grip on power, if necessary through deceit and manipula- tion. Machiavellian has remained ever since a term for using cunning and duplicity to achieve one’s ends.

Dynastic Wars Even as the Renaissance developed in the princely courts and the Reformation took hold in the Ger- man states, the Habsburgs (the ruling family in Spain and then the Holy Roman Empire) and the Valois (the ruling family in France) fought each other for domination of Europe (Map 14.4). French claims provoked the Italian Wars in 1494, which soon escalated into a general conflict that involved most Christian monarchs and the Mus- lim Ottoman sultan as well. From 1494 to 1559, the Valois and Habsburg dynasties, both Catholic, remained implacable enemies. The fighting raged in Italy and the Low Countries. During the 1520s,

442 Chapter 14 ■ Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

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MAP 14.4 Habsburg-Valois-Ottoman Wars, 1494–1559 As the dominant European power, the Habsburg dynasty fought on two fronts: a religious war against the Islamic Ottoman Empire and a political war against the French Valois, who challenged Habsburg hegemony. The Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Low Countries all became theaters of war.

the Habsburgs enjoyed the upper hand. In 1525, the troops of Charles V crushed the French army at Pavia, Italy, counting among their captives the French king himself, Francis I. Forced to re- nounce all claims to Italian territory to gain his freedom, Francis furiously repudiated the treaty the moment he reached France, reigniting the conflict.

In 1527, Charles’s troops captured and sacked Rome because the pope had allied with the French. Many of the imperial troops were German Protes- tant mercenaries, who pillaged Catholic churches and brutalized the Catholic clergy. Protestants and Catholics alike interpreted the sack of Rome by im- perial forces as a punishment of God; even the Catholic church read it as a sign that reform was necessary. Finally, in 1559, the French gave up their claims in Italy and signed the Treaty of Cateau- Cambrésis, ending the conflict. As was common in such situations, marriage sealed the peace between rival dynasties; the French king Henry II married his sister to the duke of Savoy, an ally of the Habs- burgs, and his daughter to the Habsburg king of Spain, Philip II.

The dynastic struggle (Valois versus Habsburg ruling family) had drawn in many other belliger- ents, who fought on one side or the other for their own benefit. Some acted purely out of power con- siderations, such as England, first siding with the Valois and then with the Habsburgs. Others fought for their independence, such as the papacy and the

Italian states, which did not want any one power to dominate Italy. Still others chose sides for reli- gious reasons, such as the Protestant princes in Germany, who exploited the Valois-Habsburg con- flict to extract religious concessions from the em- peror in 1555. The Ottoman Turks saw in this fight an opportunity to expand their territory.

The Ottoman Empire reached its height of power under Sultan Suleiman I, known as Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566). In 1526, a Turk- ish expedition destroyed the Hungarian army at Mohács (see the illustration on page 443). Three years later, the Ottomans laid siege to Vienna; though unsuccessful, the attack sent shock waves throughout Christian Europe. In 1535, Charles V led a campaign to capture Tunis, the lair of North African pirates loyal to the Ottomans. Desperate to overcome Charles’s superior Habsburg forces, the French king Francis I forged an alliance with the Turkish sultan. Coming to the aid of the French, the Turkish fleet besieged the Habsburg troops holding Nice, on the southern coast of France. Francis even ordered all inhabitants of nearby Toulon to vacate the town so that he could turn it into a Muslim colony for eight months, complete with a mosque and slave market. The French alliance with the Turks scandalized many Christians, but it reflected the spirit of the times:

A Struggle for Ma stery 4431492–1560

Suleiman the Magnificent: Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (r. 1520–1566) at the time of its greatest power.

Charles V and Francis I Make Peace This fresco from the Palazzo Farnese in the town of Caprarola north of Rome shows French king Francis I and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V agreeing to the Truce of Nice in 1538, one of many peace agreements made and then broken during the wars between the Habsburgs and the Valois. Pope Paul III, who negotiated the truce, stands behind and between them. Charles is on the right pointing to Francis. The truce is the one celebrated in the Tlaxcala pageant described at the start of this chapter. (The Art Archive/ Palazzo Farnese Caprarola/ Dagli Orti.)

the age-old idea of the Christian crusade against Islam now had to compete with a new political strategy that considered religion only one factor among many in power politics. Religion could be sacrificed, if need be, on the altar of state building.

Constantly distracted by the challenges of the Ottomans to the east and the German Protestants at home, Charles V could not crush the French with one swift blow. Years of conflict drained the treasuries of all rulers, because warfare was becom- ing more expensive. The formula that war raises revenues that in turn build governments could de- volve into an absurdity if wars could not be won. The race for battlefield superiority was on.

Financing War The sixteenth century marked the beginning of su- perior Western military technology. All armies grew in size and their firepower became ever more deadly, increasing the cost of war. Heavier artillery

pieces meant that the rectangular walls of medieval cities had to be transformed into fortresses with jutting ramparts and gun emplacements. Royal revenues could not keep up with war expenditures. To pay their bills, governments routinely devalued their coinage (the sixteenth-century equivalent of printing more paper money), causing prices to rise rapidly.

Charles V boasted the largest army in Eu- rope, but like everyone else he sank into debt. Between 1520 and 1532, Charles borrowed 5.4 million ducats, primarily to pay his troops; from 1552 to 1556, his war loans soared to 9.6 million ducats. On his death in 1547, Francis I owed the bankers of Lyon almost 7 million French pounds — approximately the entire royal income for that year. The European powers literally fought themselves into bankruptcy. Taxation, the sale of offices, and outright confiscation failed to bring in enough money to satisfy the war ma- chine. Both the Habsburg and the Valois kings

444 Chapter 14 ■ Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

The Siege of Vienna, 1529 This illustration from an Ottoman manuscript of 1588 depicts the Turkish siege of Vienna (the siege guns can be seen in the center of the picture). Sultan Suleiman I (Suleiman the Magnificent) led an army of more than 100,000 men against Vienna, capital of the Austrian Habsburg lands. Several attacks on the city failed, and the Ottomans withdrew in October 1529. They maintained control over Hungary, but the logistics of moving so many men and horses kept them from advancing any farther westward into Europe. (The Art Archive/ Topkapi Museum Istanbul/ Dagli Orti.)

looked to the leading bankers to finance their costly wars.

Foremost among these financiers was the Fug- ger bank, the largest such enterprise in sixteenth- century Europe. Based in the southern German imperial city of Augsburg, the Fugger family and their associates built an international financial em- pire that helped to make kings. The enterprise be- gan with Jakob Fugger (1459–1525), who became personal banker to Charles V’s grandfather Maxi- milian I. Constantly short of cash, Maximilian granted the Fugger family numerous mining and minting concessions. To pay for the service of pro- viding and accepting bills of exchange, the Fuggers charged substantial fees and made handsome prof- its. By the end of his life, Maximilian was so deeply in debt to Jakob Fugger that he had to pawn the royal jewels.

In 1519, Fugger assembled a consortium of German and Italian bankers to secure the election of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor. For the next three decades, the alliance between Europe’s biggest international bank and its largest empire remained very close. Between 1527 and 1547, the Fugger bank’s assets more than doubled; more than half came from loans to the Habsburgs. Charles stayed barely one step ahead of his credi- tors, and his successor in Spain gradually lost con- trol of the Spanish state finances. Debt forced the Valois and the Habsburgs to sign the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559, ending more than sixty years of warfare, but the cycle of financial crises and warfare continued until the late eighteenth century.

Divided Realms All European rulers viewed religious division as a dangerous challenge to the unity and stability of their rule. Subjects who considered their rulers heretics or blasphemers could only cause trouble, as the Peasants’ War of 1525 had amply demon- strated. Moreover, religious differences encour- aged the formation of competing noble factions, which easily led to violence when weak monarchs or children ruled.

France. King Francis I tolerated Protestants un- til the Affair of the Placards in 1534. Even then, the government did not try to root out Protes- tantism, and the Reformed (Calvinist) church grew steadily. During the 1540s and 1550s, many French noble families — including some of the most powerful — converted to Calvinism and af- forded the Protestants a measure of protection, es-

pecially in southern and western France. Francis and his successor, Henry II (r. 1547–1559), suc- ceeded in maintaining a balance of power between Catholics and Calvinists, but after Henry’s death the weakened monarchy could no longer hold to- gether the fragile realm. The real drama of the Re- formation in France took place after 1560, when the country plunged into four decades of religious wars, whose savagery was unparalleled elsewhere in Europe.

England and Scotland. Religious divisions at the very top threatened the control of the English and Scottish rulers. Before his death in 1547, Henry VIII had succeeded in making England officially Protestant, but would they remain Protestants and if so, what kind of Protestants would his subjects become? Each of his children offered answers to that question, and the answers could not have been more contradictory. The advisers of the boy king Edward VI (r. 1547–1553) furthered the Reforma- tion by welcoming prominent religious refugees from the continent. The refugees had been deeply influenced by Calvinism and wanted to see Eng- land move in that austere direction. But Edward died at age fifteen, opening the way to his Catholic half-sister, Mary Tudor, who had been restored to the line of succession by an act of Parliament un- der Henry VIII in 1544.

When Mary (r. 1553–1558) came to the throne, she restored Catholicism and persecuted Protes- tants. Nearly three hundred Protestants perished at the stake, and more than eight hundred fled to the Protestant German states and Switzerland. Fi- nally, when Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth, succeeded her half-sister Mary, becoming Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603), the English Protestant cause again gained momentum. Under Elizabeth’s leadership, Anglicanism eventually defined the character of the English nation. Catholics were tol- erated only if they kept their opinions on religion and politics to themselves. A tentative but nonetheless real peace returned to England.

Still another pattern of religious politics un- folded in Scotland, where powerful noble clans di- rectly challenged royal power. Protestants formed a small minority in Scotland until the 1550s. The most prominent Scottish reformer, John Knox (1514–1572), spent many of his early years in ex- ile in England and on the continent because of his devout Calvinism. At the center of Scotland’s con- flict over religion stood Mary of Guise, a native French woman and Catholic married to the king of Scotland, James V. After he died in 1542, she surrounded herself and her daughter Mary Stuart,

A Struggle for Ma stery 4451492–1560

also a Catholic and heir to the throne, with French advisers. When Mary Stuart married Francis, the son of Henry II and the heir to the French throne, in 1558 many Scottish noblemen, alienated by this pro-French atmosphere, joined the pro-English, anti-French Protestant cause.

John Knox helped bring matters to a head when he published in 1558 a diatribe against both Mary Tudor of England and Mary of Guise. The era’s suspicion of female rulers and regents also played a part in the work, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment [Rule] of Women. In 1560, Protestant nobles gained control of the Scottish Parliament and dethroned the re- gent Mary of Guise. Eventually they forced her daughter, Mary, by then known as queen of Scots, to flee to England, and installed Mary’s infant son James as king. Scotland would turn toward the Calvinist version of the Reformation and thus es- tablish the potential for conflict with England and its Anglican church.

The German States. In the German states, the Protestant princes and cities formed the Schmal- kaldic League in 1531. Headed by the elector of Saxony and Philip of Hesse (the two leading Protestant princes), the league included most of the imperial cities, the chief source of the empire’s wealth. Opposing the league were Emperor Charles V, the bishops, and the few remaining Catholic princes. Although Charles had to concen- trate on fighting the French and the Turks during the 1530s, he eventually secured the western Mediterranean and then turned his attention back home to central Europe to try to resolve the grow- ing religious differences in his lands.

In 1541, Charles convened an Imperial Diet at Regensburg in an effort to mediate between Protestants and Catholics, only to see negotiations between the two sides rapidly break down. Rather than accept a permanent religious schism, Charles prepared to fight the Protestant Schmalkaldic League. To this end, he secured French neutrality in 1544 and papal support in 1545. War broke out in 1547, the year after Martin Luther’s death. Us- ing seasoned Spanish veterans and German allies, Charles occupied the German imperial cities in the south, restoring Catholic elites and suppress- ing the Reformation. In 1547, he defeated the Schmalkaldic League’s armies at Mühlberg and captured the leading Lutheran princes. Jubilant, Charles restored Catholics’ right to worship in Protestant lands while permitting Lutherans to keep their own rites. Protestant resistance to the declaration was deep and widespread: many pas-

tors went into exile, and riots broke out in many cities.

For Charles V, the reaction of his former allies proved far more alarming than Protestant resist- ance. His success frightened some Catholic pow- ers. With Spanish troops controlling Milan and Naples, Pope Julius III (r. 1550–1555) feared that papal authority would be subjugated by imperial might. In the Holy Roman Empire, Protestant princes spoke out against “imperial tyranny.” Jeal- ously defending their traditional liberties against an overmighty emperor, the Protestant princes, led by Duke Maurice of Saxony, a former ally, raised another army to fight Charles. The princes de- clared war in 1552 and chased a surprised, unpre- pared, and practically bankrupt emperor back to Italy.

Forced to compromise, Charles V agreed to the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. The settlement rec- ognized the Lutheran church in the empire; ac- cepted the secularization of church lands but “reserved” the remaining ecclesiastical territories (mainly the bishoprics) for Catholics; and, most important, established the principle that all princes, whether Catholic or Lutheran, enjoyed the sole right to determine the religion of their lands and subjects. Significantly, Calvinist, Anabaptist, and other dissenting groups were excluded from the settlement. Ironically, the religious revolt of the common people had culminated in a princes’ ref- ormation. As the constitutional framework for the Holy Roman Empire, the Augsburg settlement pre- served a fragile peace in central Europe until 1618, but the exclusion of Calvinists would prompt fu- ture conflict.

Exhausted by decades of war and disappointed by the disunity in Christian Europe, Emperor Charles V resigned his many thrones in 1555 and 1556, leaving his Netherlandish-Burgundian and Spanish dominions to his son, Philip II, and his Austrian lands to his brother, Ferdinand (who was also elected Holy Roman Emperor to succeed Charles). Retiring to a monastery in southern Spain, the most powerful of the Christian mon- archs spent his last years quietly seeking salvation.

Review: How did religious divisions complicate the efforts of rulers to maintain political stability and build stronger states?

446 Chapter 14 ■ Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

Peace of Augsburg: The treaty of 1555 that settled disputes be- tween Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and his Protestant princes. It recognized the Lutheran church and established the principle that all Catholic or Lutheran princes enjoyed the sole right to determine the religion of their lands and subjects.

Conclusion Europe became a global power while at the same time undergoing a searing internal religious up- heaval that permanently divided Christians. Even as Portuguese and Spanish explorers claimed new lands and Catholic missionaries gathered new souls for the church from Mexico to Japan, Luther,

Calvin, and a host of others formed competing branches of Protestants in Europe. Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans disagreed on many points of doctrine and church organization, but they all broke definitively from the Roman Catholic church. Protestant laypeople and priests established new Christian communities with new forms of ritual, new doctrines, new social prac-

Conclusion 4471492–1560

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Reformation Europe, c. 1560 The fortunes of Roman Catholicism were at their lowest point around 1560. Northern Germany and Scandinavia owed allegiance to the Lutheran church; England broke away under a national church headed by its monarchs; and the Calvinist Reformation would extend across large areas of western, central, and eastern Europe. Southern Europe remained solidly Catholic.

tices, and clergy with vastly different powers and personal lives from those of the Roman Catholic clergy. Catholic priests could not marry; Protes- tant clergymen could. Catholic clergymen said Mass and heard confessions; Protestant clergy preached the word of God and left confession and penance to the individual sinner, a matter between God and the human heart. Central to the Protes- tant cause was the belief that people are saved by faith alone; no amount of good works will bring salvation.

Erasmus and many intellectuals and artists of his generation had hoped that Emperor Charles V, the most powerful ruler in all Europe, would be able to bring peace, justice, and victory against the infidel Turks. For the generation that came of age before the Reformation, Christian humanism, the new invention of printing, and the maritime exploits of the Portuguese and Spanish seemed to promise a new golden age for Europe. The Protes- tant Reformation shattered their dream of pow- erful princes encouraging gradual improvement and change from within the Catholic church. In- stead of leading a crusade against Islam, Charles V wore himself out in ceaseless struggle against Francis I of France and the German Protestants. Christianity split into a number of hostile camps battling one another with words and swords. The consequences were censorship, repression of dis- senters, and, for many, death. After the brutal sup- pression of popular revolts in the 1520s and 1530s,

448 Chapter 14 ■ Global Encounters and Religious Reforms 1492–1560

religious persecution became a Christian institu- tion: Luther called on the princes to kill rebellious peasants in 1525, Zwingli advocated the drown- ing of Anabaptists, and Calvin supported the death sentence for Michael Servetus. Executions in Catholic lands provided Protestants with a steady stream of martyrs. The two peace settle- ments in the 1550s failed to provide long-term so- lutions: the Peace of Augsburg gradually disintegrated as the religious struggles in the empire intensified, and the Treaty of Cateau- Cambrésis provided only a brief respite. Worse was yet to come. In the following generations, civil war and international conflicts would set Catholics against Protestants in numerous futile attempts to restore a single faith.

For Further Exploration ■ For suggested references, including Web sites,

for topics in this chapter, see page SR-1 at the end of the book.

■ For additional primary-source material from this period, see Chapter 14 in Sources of THE MAKING OF THE WEST, Third Edition.

■ For Web sites and documents related to topics in this chapter, see Make History at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

Chapter Review 4491492–1560

Key Terms and People Making Connections

Review Questions

1. Why was Charles V ultimately unable to prevent religious division in his lands?

2. How did the different religious groups respond to the opportunity presented by the printing press?

1. Which European countries led the way in maritime explo- ration and what were their motives?

2. How did Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Henry VIII challenge the Roman Catholic church?

3. How did the forces for radical change unleashed by the Protestant Reformation interact with the urge for social or- der and stability?

4. How did religious divisions complicate the efforts of rulers to maintain political stability and build stronger states?

Chapter Review

Christopher Columbus (421)

Hernán Cortés (425)

Christian humanism (427)

Martin Luther (429)

Charles V (430)

John Calvin (432)

predestination (432)

Henry VIII (433)

Anabaptists (436)

Council of Trent (439)

Jesuits (439)

Suleiman the Magnificent (443)

Peace of Augsburg (446)

For practice quizzes, a customized study plan, and other study tools, see the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

Important Events

1492 Columbus reaches the Americas

1494 Italian Wars begin; Treaty of Tordesillas di- vides Atlantic world between Portugal and Spain

1516 Erasmus publishes Greek edition of the New Testament; More writes Utopia

1517 Luther composes ninety-five theses to chal- lenge Catholic church

1520 Luther publishes three treatises; Zwingli breaks from Rome

1525 German Peasants’ War

1527 Charles V’s imperial troops sack Rome

1529 Colloquy of Marburg assembles to address disagreements between German and Swiss church reformers

1534 Henry VIII breaks with Rome; Affair of the Placards in France

1536 Calvin publishes Institutes of the Christian Religion

1540 Jesuits (Society of Jesus) established as new Catholic order

1545–1563 Catholic Council of Trent condemns Protestant beliefs and confirms church doctrine and sacraments

1547 Charles V defeats Protestants at Mühlberg

1555 Peace of Augsburg ends religious wars and recognizes Lutheran church in German states

1559 Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis ends wars between Habsburg and Valois rulers

In May 1618, Protestants in the kingdom of Bohemia furiouslyprotested the Holy Roman Emperor’s attempts to curtail their hard-won religious freedoms. Protestants wanted to build new churches; the Catholic emperor wanted to stop them. Tensions boiled over when

two Catholic officials tried to dissolve the meetings of Protestants. On

May 23, a crowd of angry Protestants surged up the stairs of the royal

castle in Prague, trapped the two Catholic deputies, dragged them

screaming for mercy to the windows, and hurled them to the pavement

below. One of the rebels jeered: “We will see if your [Virgin] Mary can

help you!” But because they landed in a dung heap, the Catholic

deputies survived. One of the two limped off on his own; the other was

carried by his servants to safety. Although no one died, the defenestra-

tion (from the French for “window,” la fenêtre) of Prague touched off

the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which eventually involved almost

every major power in Europe. Before it ended, the fighting had devas-

tated the lands of central Europe and produced permanent changes in

European politics and culture.

The Thirty Years’ War grew out of the religious conflicts initiated

by the Reformation. When Martin Luther began the Protestant Refor-

mation in 1517, few could have predicted that he would be unleashing

such dangerous forces, but religious turmoil and warfare followed al-

most immediately upon Luther’s break with the Catholic church. From

its establishment in 1555 until the early 1600s, the Peace of Augsburg

maintained relative calm in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire by

granting each ruler the right to determine the religion of his territory.

But in western Europe, religious strife increased dramatically after 1560

as Protestants made inroads in France, the Spanish-ruled Netherlands,

and England. All in all, nearly constant warfare marked the century

Religious Conflicts Threaten State Power, 1560–1618 452 • French Wars of Religion, 1562–1598 • Challenges to Spain’s Authority • Elizabeth I’s Defense of English

Protestantism • The Clash of Faiths and Empires

in Eastern Europe

The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648 460 • Origins and Course of the War • The Effects of Constant Fighting • The Peace of Westphalia, 1648

Economic Crisis and Realignment 465 • From Growth to Recession • Consequences for Daily Life • The Economic Balance of Power

The Rise of Secular and Scientific Worldviews 471 • The Arts in an Age of Crisis • The Natural Laws of Politics • The Scientific Revolution • Magic and Witchcraft

451

Wars of Religion and the Clash of Worldviews 1560–1648

C H A P T E R

15

The Defenestration of Prague, 1618 In this copper-plate engraving by Swiss artist Matthäus Merian (1593–1650), Czech Protestants attack the Catholic deputies sent to disband their meeting. The attackers are about to throw the two Catholics out of the windows of the royal castle (that is, the Catholics are about to suffer “defenestration”). The defenestration touched off the Thirty Years’ War. (Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/ Art Resource, NY.)

between 1560 and 1648. These struggles often be- gan as religious conflicts, but religion was rarely the sole motive; political ambitions, commercial competition, and long-standing rivalries between the leading powers inevitably raised the stakes of conflict.

Although particularly dramatic and deadly, the church-state crisis was only one of a series of upheavals that shaped this era. In the early seven- teenth century, a major economic downturn led to food shortages, famine, and disease in much of Europe. These catastrophes hit especially hard in the central European lands devastated by the fighting of the Thirty Years’ War and helped shift the bal- ance of economic power to northwestern Europe, away from the Mediterranean and central Europe. The deepening sense of crisis prompted some to seek new, nonreligious grounds for all forms of authority, whether artistic, political, or philosoph- ical. The emergence of a secular worldview that relied on new scientific methods of research would ultimately reshape Western attitudes over the long term.

Focus Question: What were the long-term political, economic, and intellectual consequences of the conflicts over religious belief?

Religious Conflicts Threaten State Power, 1560–1618 The Peace of Augsburg made Lutheranism a legal religion in the predominantly Catholic Holy Ro- man Empire, but it did not extend recognition to Calvinists. Although the followers of Martin Luther (Lutherans) and those of John Calvin (Calvinists) similarly refused the authority of the Catholic church, they disagreed with each other

452 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

1560 1580 1600

■ 1562 French Wars of Religion

■ 1566 Calvinist revolt against Spain

■ 1569 Poland-Lithuania formed

■ 1588 England defeats Spanish Armada

■ 1571 Battle of Lepanto

■ 1598 Edict of Nantes

■ 1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

■ 1601 Shakespeare, Hamlet

about religious doctrine and church organization. The rapid expansion of Calvinism after 1560 threatened to alter the religious balance of power in much of Europe. Calvinists challenged Catholic dominance in France, the Spanish-ruled Nether- lands, Scotland, and Poland-Lithuania. In England, they sought to influence the new Protestant monarch, Elizabeth I. Calvinists were not the only source of religious contention, however. Philip II of Spain fought the Muslim Ottoman Turks in the Mediterranean and expelled the remnants of the Muslim population in Spain. To the east, the Rus- sian tsar Ivan IV fought to make Muscovy the cen- ter of an empire based on Russian Orthodox Christianity.

French Wars of Religion, 1562–1598 Calvinism spread in France after 1555, when the Genevan Company of Pastors sent missionaries supplied with false passports and often disguised as merchants. The Calvinist pastors moved rapidly among their growing flock, which gathered in se- cret in towns near Paris or in the south. Calvinist nobles provided military protection to local con- gregations and helped set up a national organiza- tion for the French Calvinist — or Huguenot — church. In 1562, rival Huguenot and Catholic armies began fighting a series of wars that threat- ened to tear the French nation into shreds (Map 15.1).

Religious Division in the Nobility. Armed strug- gle erupted because the French kings could not keep a lid on religious conflict. By the end of the 1560s, nearly one-third of the nobles had joined the Huguenots, and they could raise their own armies. Conversion to Calvinism in French noble families often began with the noblewomen, some of whom sought intellectual independence as well as spiritual renewal in the new faith. Charlotte de

Bourbon, for example, fled from a Catholic convent and eventually married William of Orange, the leader of the anti- Spanish resistance in the Netherlands. Calvinist noblewomen protected pastors, provided money and advice, and helped found schools and establish relief for the poor.

A series of family tragedies prevented the French kings from acting decisively to prevent the spread of Calvinism. King Henry II was accidentally killed during a jousting tournament in 1559 and his fif- teen-year-old son, Francis, died soon after. Ten-year-old Charles IX (r. 1560–1574) became king, with his mother, Catherine de Médicis, as regent, or acting ruler. An ambassador commented on the weakness of Catherine’s hold: “It is sufficient to say that she is a woman, a foreigner, and a Flo- rentine to boot, born of a simple house, altogether beneath the dignity of the Kingdom of France.” The Huguenots fol- lowed the lead of the Bourbon family, who were close relatives of the French king and stood first in line to inherit the throne if the Valois kings failed to produce a male heir. The most militantly Catholic nobles took their cues from the Guise family, who aimed to block Bourbon ambitions. Catherine tried to play the Bourbon and Guise factions against each other, but civil war erupted in 1562. Both sides commit- ted terrible atrocities. Priests and pastors were murdered, and massacres of whole congregations became frighteningly com- monplace.

Religious Conflicts Threaten State Power, 1560–1618 4531560–1648

1620 1640 1660

■ 1618 Thirty Years’ War

■ 1625 Grotius, The Laws of War and Peace

■ 1633 Galileo forced to recant

■ 1635 French declare war on Spain

■ 1648 Peace of Westphalia

Catherine de Médicis: Italian-born mother of French king Charles X; she served as regent and tried but failed to prevent religious warfare between Calvinists and Catholics.

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MAP 15.1 Protestant Churches in France, 1562 Calvinist missionaries took their message from their headquarters in Geneva across the border into France. The strongest concentration of Protestants was in southern France. The Bourbons, leaders of the Protestants in France, had their family lands in Navarre, a region in southwestern France that had been divided between France and Spain.

St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 1572. Al- though a Catholic herself, Catherine feared the rise of Guise influence, so she arranged the marriage of the king’s Catholic sister, Marguerite de Valois, to Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot and Bourbon. Just four days after the wedding in August 1572, assassins tried but failed to kill one of the Huguenot nobles allied with the Bourbons. Per- haps herself implicated in the botched plot and panicked at the thought of Huguenot revenge, Catherine convinced her son to go on the offen- sive by ordering the death of Huguenot leaders who had come to Paris for the wedding. Violence almost immediately spiraled out of control. On St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, a bloodbath began, fueled by years of growing animosity between Catholics and Protestants. (See Massacre Moti- vated by Religion, at left.) In three days, Catholic mobs murdered three thousand Huguenots in Paris. Wherever Calvinists lacked military protec- tion, they were at risk. Ten thousand Huguenots died in the provinces over the next six weeks. The pope joyfully ordered the church bells rung throughout Catholic Europe; Spain’s Philip II wrote Catherine that it was “the best and most cheerful news which at present could come to me.”

The massacre settled nothing. Huguenot pam- phleteers now proclaimed their right to resist a tyrant who worshipped idols (a practice that Calvinists equated with Catholicism). This right of resistance was linked to a political notion of con- tract; upholding the true religion was part of the contract imagined as binding the ruler to his sub- jects. Both the right of resistance and the idea of a contract fed into the larger doctrine of constitu- tionalism — that a government’s legitimacy rested on its upholding a constitution or contract be- tween ruler and ruled. Constitutionalism was used to justify resistance movements from the sixteenth century onward. Protestants and Catholics alike now saw the religious conflict as an international struggle for survival that required aid to their fel- low Catholics or Protestants in other countries. In this way, the French Wars of Religion paved the way for wider international conflicts over religion in the decades to come.

Henry IV and the Edict of Nantes. The religious division in France grew even more dangerous when Charles IX died and his brother Henry III (r. 1574–1589) became king. Like his brothers be- fore him, Henry III failed to produce an heir. Next in line to the throne was none other than the Protestant Bourbon leader Henry of Navarre, a distant cousin of the Valois ruling family and brother-in-law of Charles and Henry. Convinced

454 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

Massacre Motivated by Religion The Italian artist Giorgio Vasari painted St. Bartho- lomew’s Night: The Massacre of the Huguenots for a public room in Pope Gregory XIII’s residence. How did the artist celebrate what he saw as a Catholic victory over Protestant heresy? (Scala/ Art Resource, NY.)

that Henry III lacked the will to root out Protes- tantism, the Guises formed the Catholic League, which requested help from Spanish king Philip II. Henry III responded with a fatal trick: in 1588, he summoned the two Guise leaders to a meeting and had his men kill them. A few months later, a fanatical monk stabbed Henry III to death, and Henry of Navarre became Henry IV (r. 1589–1610), despite Philip II’s attempt to block his ascension with military intervention.

Henry IV soon concluded that to establish control over war-weary France he had to place the interests of the French state ahead of his Protes- tant faith. In 1593, he publicly embraced Catholi- cism, reputedly explaining his conversion with the statement “Paris is worth a Mass.” Within a few years he defeated the ultra-Catholic opposition and drove out the Spanish. In 1598, he made peace with Spain and issued the Edict of Nantes, in which he granted the Huguenots a large measure of religious toleration. The approximately 1.25 million Huguenots became a legally protected mi- nority within an officially Catholic kingdom of some 20 million people. Protestants were free to worship in specified towns and were allowed their own troops, fortresses, and even courts. Few be- lieved in religious toleration, but Henry IV fol- lowed the advice of those moderate Catholics and Calvinists called politiques who urged him to give priority to the development of a durable state. Al- though their opponents hated them for their com- promising spirit, the politiques believed that religious disputes could be resolved only in the peace provided by strong government.

The Edict of Nantes ended the French Wars of Religion, but Henry still needed to reestablish monarchical authority and hold the fractious nobles in check. He used court festivities and royal processions to rally subjects around him, and he allowed rich merchants and lawyers to buy offices and, in exchange for an annual payment, pass their positions on to their heirs to sell them to someone else. This new social elite was known as the “no- bility of the robe” (named after the robes that mag- istrates wore, much like those judges wear today). Income raised by the increased sale of offices re- duced the state debt and also helped Henry strengthen the monarchy. His efforts did not, how- ever, prevent his enemies from assassinating him in 1610 after nineteen unsuccessful attempts.

Challenges to Spain’s Authority

Although he failed to prevent Henry IV from tak- ing the French throne in 1589, Philip II of Spain (r. 1556–1598) was the most powerful ruler in Europe (Map 15.2). In addition to the western Habsburg lands in Spain and the Netherlands, Philip had inherited from his father, Charles V, all the Spanish colonies recently settled in the New World of the Americas. Gold and silver funneled from the colonies supported his campaigns against the Ottoman Turks and the French and the English Protestants. But all of the money of the New World could not prevent Philip’s eventual defeat in the Netherlands, where Calvinist rebels established an independent Dutch Republic that soon vied with Spain, France, and England for commercial su- premacy.

Philip II, the Catholic King. A deeply devout Catholic, Philip II came to the Spanish throne at age twenty-eight determined to restore Catholic unity in Europe and lead the Christian defense against the Muslims. In his quest, Philip benefited from a series of misfortunes. His four wives all died, but through them he became part of four royal families: Portuguese, English, French, and Austrian. His brief marriage to Mary Tudor (Mary I of England) did not produce an heir, but it and his subsequent marriage to Elisabeth de Valois, the sister of Charles IX and Henry III of France, gave him reason enough for involvement in English and French affairs. In 1580, when the king of Portugal died without a direct heir, Philip took over this neighboring realm with its rich empire in Africa, India, and the Americas.

Philip insisted on Catholic unity in his own possessions and worked to forge an international Catholic alliance against the Ottoman Turks. In 1571, he achieved the single greatest military vic- tory of his reign when he joined with Venice and the papacy to defeat the Turks in a great sea battle off the Greek coast at Lepanto. Fifty thousand sailors and soldiers fought on the allied side, and eight thousand died. Spain now controlled the western Mediterranean. But Philip could not rest on his laurels. Between 1568 and 1570, the Moriscos — Muslim converts to Christianity who

Religious Conflicts Threaten State Power, 1560–1618 4551560–1648

Edict of Nantes: The decree issued by French king Henry IV in 1598 that granted the Huguenots a large measure of religious toleration.

politiques (poh lih TEEK): Political advisers during the sixteenth-century French Wars of Religion who argued that com- promise in matters of religion would strengthen the monarchy.

Philip II: King of Spain (r. 1556–1598) and the most powerful ruler in Europe; he reigned over the western Habsburg lands and all the Spanish colonies recently settled in the New World.

Lepanto: A site off the Greek coast where, in 1571, the allied Catholic forces of Spain’s king Philip II, Venice, and the papacy defeated the Ottoman Turks in a great sea battle; the victory gave the Christian powers control of the Mediterranean.

remained secretly faithful to Islam — had revolted in the south of Spain, killing ninety priests and fif- teen hundred Christians. Philip retaliated by forc- ing fifty thousand to leave their villages and resettle in other regions. In 1609, his suc- cessor, Philip III, ordered their ex- pulsion from Spanish territory, and by 1614 some 300,000 Moriscos had been forced to re- locate to North Africa.

The Revolt of the Netherlands. The Calvinists of the Netherlands were less easily intimidated than the Moriscos: they were far from Spain and accustomed to being left alone. When Calvinists in the Netherlands attacked Catholic

churches in 1566, smashing stained-glass windows and statues of the Virgin Mary, Philip sent an army to punish the rebels. Calvinist resistance contin- ued despite this occupation, and in November

1576 Philip’s long-unpaid armies sacked Antwerp, then Europe’s wealthiest commercial city. In eleven days of horror known as the Spanish Fury, the Spanish soldiers slaughtered seven thou- sand people. Led by Prince William of Orange (whose name came from the lands he owned in southern France), the Nether- lands’ seven Protestant northern provinces formally allied with the ten Catholic southern provinces and drove out the Spaniards. The

456 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

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MAP 15.2 The Empire of Philip II, r. 1556–1598 Spanish king Philip II drew revenues from a truly worldwide empire. In 1580, he was the richest European ruler, but the demands of governing and defending his control of such far-flung territories eventually drained many of his resources.

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southern provinces nonetheless remained Cath- olic, French-speaking in parts, and suspicious of the increasingly strict Calvinism in the north. In 1579, they returned to the Spanish fold. Despite the assassination in 1584 of William of Orange, Spanish troops never regained control in the north. Spain would not formally recognize Dutch independence until 1648, but by the end of the six- teenth century the Dutch Republic (sometimes called Holland after the most populous of its seven provinces) was a self-governing state sheltering a variety of religious groups.

Religious toleration thrived because the cen- tral government did not have the power to enforce religious orthodoxy. Urban merchant and profes- sional families known as regents controlled the towns and provinces. In the absence of a national bureaucracy, a single legal system, or a central court, each province governed itself and sent del-

egates to the one common institution, the States General, which carried out the wishes of the strongest individual provinces and their ruling families. Although the princes of Orange resembled a ruling family, their powers paled next to those of local elites. One-third of the Dutch population remained Catholic, and local authorities allowed them to worship as they chose in private. The Dutch Republic also had a relatively large Jewish population because many Jews had settled there after being driven out of Spain and Portugal. From 1597, Jews could worship openly in their syna- gogues. This openness to various religions would help to make the Dutch Republic one of Europe’s chief intellectual and scientific centers in the sev- enteenth and eighteenth centuries.

Well situated for maritime commerce, the Dutch Republic developed a thriving economy based on shipping and shipbuilding. Dutch

Religious Conflicts Threaten State Power, 1560–1618 4571560–1648

Philip II of Spain The king of Spain is shown here (kneeling in black) with his allies at the battle of Lepanto, the doge of Venice on his left and Pope Pius V on his right. El Greco painted this canvas, sometimes called The Dream of Philip II, in 1578 or 1579. The painting is typically mannerist in the way it crowds figures into every available space, uses larger-than-life or elongated bodies, and creates new and often bizarre visual effects. What can we conclude about Philip II’s character from the way he is depicted here? (© The National Gallery, London.)

merchants favored free trade in Europe because they could compete at an advantage. Whereas elites in other countries focused on their landholdings, the Dutch looked for investments in trade. After the Dutch gained independence, Amsterdam became the main European money market for two cen- turies. The city was also a primary commodities market and a chief supplier of arms — to allies, neutrals, and even enemies. Dutch entrepreneurs

produced goods at lower prices than competitors and marketed them more efficiently. The Dutch controlled many overseas markets thanks to their preeminence in seaborne commerce: by 1670, the Dutch commercial fleet was larger than the Eng- lish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Austrian fleets combined.

Elizabeth I’s Defense of English Protestantism As the Dutch revolt unfolded, Philip II became increasingly infuriated with Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603), who had succeeded her half-sister Mary Tudor as queen of England. Philip had been married to Mary and had enthusiastically sec- onded Mary’s efforts to return England to Catholi- cism. When Mary died in 1558, Elizabeth rejected Philip’s proposal of marriage and promptly brought Protestantism back to England. Eventu- ally, she provided funds and troops to the Dutch Protestant cause. As Elizabeth moved to solidify her personal power and the authority of the An- glican church (Church of England), she had to squash uprisings by Catholics in the north and at least two serious plots against her life. In the long run, however, her greater challenges came from the Calvinist Puritans and Philip II.

Puritanism and the Church of England. The Puritans were strict Calvinists who opposed all vestiges of Catholic ritual in the Church of England. After Elizabeth became queen, many Puritans returned from exile abroad, but Elizabeth resisted their demands for drastic changes in church ritual and governance. The Church of Eng- land’s Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, issued un- der her authority in 1563, incorporated elements of Catholic ritual along with Calvinist doctrines. Puritan ministers angrily denounced the Church of England’s “popish attire and foolish disguis- ing, . . . tithings, holy days, and a thousand more abominations.” To accomplish their reforms, Puritans tried to undercut the crown-appointed bishops’ authority by placing control of church ad- ministration in the hands of a local presbytery, that is, a group made up of the minister and the elders of the congregation. Elizabeth rejected this Calvin- ist presbyterianism.

458 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

Elizabeth I: English queen (r. 1558–1603) who oversaw the return of the Protestant Anglican church and, in 1588, the suc- cessful defense of the realm against the Spanish Armada.

Puritans: Strict Calvinists who opposed all vestiges of Catholic ritual in the Church of England.

Queen Elizabeth I of England The Anglican (Church of England) Prayerbook of 1569 included a hand- colored print of Queen Elizabeth saying her prayers. As queen, Elizabeth was also official head of the Church of England—the scepter or sword at her feet symbolizes her power. She named bishops and made final decisions about every aspect of church governance. (HIP/ Art Resource, NY.)

■ For more help analyzing this image, see the visual activity for this chapter in the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

The Puritans nonetheless steadily gained in- fluence. Known for their emphasis on strict moral lives, the Puritans tried to close England’s theaters and Sunday fairs. Every Puritan father — with the help of his wife — was to “make his house a little church” by teaching the children to read the Bible. At Puritan urging, a new translation of the Bible, known as the King James Bible after Elizabeth’s successor, James I, was authorized in 1604. Believ- ing themselves God’s elect — those whom God has chosen for mercy and salvation — and England an “elect nation,” the Puritans also pushed Elizabeth to help Protestants on the continent. Elizabeth ini- tially resisted, but after Philip II annexed Portugal and began to interfere in French affairs, she sent funds to the Dutch rebels and in 1585 dispatched seven thousand soldiers to help them.

Triumph over Spain. Although enraged by Eliza- beth’s aid to the Dutch rebels against his rule, Philip II bided his time as long as Elizabeth re- mained unmarried and her Catholic cousin Mary Stuart, better known as Mary, Queen of Scots, stood next in line to inherit the English throne. In 1568, Scottish Calvinists forced Mary to abdicate the throne of Scotland in favor of her one-year-old son James (eventually James I of England), who was then raised as a Protes- tant. After her abdication, Mary spent nearly twenty years under house arrest in England, foment- ing plots against Elizabeth. In 1587, when a letter from Mary of- fering her succession rights to Philip was discovered, Elizabeth overcame her reluctance to exe- cute a fellow monarch and or- dered Mary’s beheading.

Now determined to act, Philip II sent his armada (Span- ish for “fleet”) of 130 ships from Lisbon toward the English Chan- nel in May 1588. The English scat- tered the Spanish Armada by sending blazing fire ships into its midst. A great gale then forced the Spanish to flee around Scot- land. When the armada limped home in Septem- ber, half the ships had been lost and thousands of sailors were dead or starving. Protestants through- out Europe rejoiced. Philip and Catholic Spain suf- fered a crushing psychological blow. A Spanish monk lamented, “Almost the whole of Spain went into mourning.”

By the time Philip II died in 1598, his great empire had begun to lose its luster. The costs of fighting the Dutch, the English, and the French had mounted, and an overburdened peasantry could no longer pay the taxes required to meet rising ex- penses. In his novel Don Quixote (1605), the Span- ish writer Miguel de Cervantes captured the disappointment of thwarted imperial ambition. Cervantes himself had been wounded at Lepanto. His novel’s hero, a minor nobleman, wants to un- derstand “this thing they call reason of state,” but he reads so many romances and books of chivalry that he loses his wits and wanders the countryside hoping to re-create the heroic deeds of times past.

England could never have defeated Spain in a head-to-head battle on land, but Elizabeth made the most of her limited means and consolidated the country’s position as a Protestant power. In her early years, she held out the prospect of marriage to many political suitors; but in order to maintain her — and England’s — independence, she never married. Her chosen successor, James I (r. 1603–1625), came to the throne as king of both

Scotland and England. Shake- speare’s tragedies Hamlet (1601), King Lear (1605), and Macbeth (1606), written around the time of James’s succession, might all be read as commentaries on the un- certainties faced by Elizabeth and James. But Elizabeth’s story, un- like Shakespeare’s tragedies, had a happy ending; she left James se- cure in a kingdom of growing weight in world politics.

The Clash of Faiths and Empires in Eastern Europe In the east, the most contentious border divided Christian Europe from the Islamic realm of the Ottoman Turks. Even after their defeat at Lepanto in 1571, the Ottomans continued their at- tacks, seizing Venetian-held Cy-

prus in 1573. In the Balkans, the Turks allowed their Christian subjects to cling to the Orthodox faith rather than forcibly converting them to Is- lam. They also tolerated many prosperous Jewish communities, which grew with the influx of Jews expelled from Spain.

The Muscovite tsars officially protected the Russian Orthodox church, which faced no compe- tition within Russian lands. Building on the base

Religious Conflicts Threaten State Power, 1560–1618 4591560–1648

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laid by his grandfather Ivan III, Tsar Ivan IV (r. 1533–1584) stopped at nothing in his endeavor to make Muscovy the center of a mighty Russian em- pire. Given to unpredictable fits of rage, Ivan tor- tured priests, killed numerous boyars (nobles), and murdered his own son with an iron rod during a quarrel. His epithet “the Terrible” reflects not only the terror he unleashed but also the awesome im- pression he evoked. Cunning and cruel, Ivan came to embody barbarism in the eyes of Westerners. One English visitor commented disapprovingly that the Russian government “is very similar to the Turkish, which they apparently try to imitate.”

Ivan initiated Russian expansion eastward into Siberia and also tried to gain new territory to the west, when he tried, unsuccessfully, to seize parts

of present-day Estonia and Latvia to provide Russia direct access to the Baltic Sea. Two formidable foes blocked Ivan’s plans for expansion: Sweden (which then included much of present-day Finland) and Poland-Lithuania. Their rulers hoped to annex the eastern Baltic provinces themselves. Poland and the grand duchy of Lithuania united into a single commonwealth in 1569 and controlled an extensive terri-

tory stretching from the Baltic Sea to deep within present-day Ukraine and Belarus. Poland-Lithua- nia, like the Dutch Republic, was one of the great exceptions to the general trend toward greater monarchical authority; the country’s nobles elected their king and placed severe limits on his authority. Noble converts to Lutheranism or Calvinism feared religious persecution by the Catholic majority, so the Polish-Lithuanian nobles insisted that their kings accept the principle of re- ligious toleration as a prerequisite for election.

Poland-Lithuania threatened the rule of Ivan’s successors in Russia. After Ivan IV died in 1584, a terrible period of chaos known as the Time of Troubles ensued, during which the king of Poland- Lithuania tried to put his son on the Russian throne. In 1613, an army of nobles, townspeople, and peasants finally expelled the intruders and put on the throne a nobleman, Michael Romanov (r. 1613–1645), who established an enduring new dynasty. With the return of peace, Muscovite Russia resumed the process of state building.

Review: How did state power depend on religious unity at the end of the sixteenth century and start of the seventeenth?

The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648

Although the eastern states managed to avoid civil wars over religion in the early seventeenth century, the rest of Europe was drawn into the final and most deadly of the wars of religion, the Thirty Years’ War. It began in 1618 with conflicts between Catholics and Protestants within the Holy Roman Empire and eventually involved most European states. By its end in 1648, many central European lands lay in ruins and the balance of power had shifted away from the Habsburg powers — Spain and Austria — toward France, England, and the Dutch Republic. Prolonged warfare created tur- moil and suffering, but it also fostered the growth of armies and bureaucracies; out of the carnage would emerge centralized and powerful states that made increasing demands on ordinary people.

Origins and Course of the War The fighting that devastated central Europe had its origins in a combination of religious dispute, ethnic competition, and political weakness. The Austrian Habsburgs officially ruled over the huge Holy Roman Empire, which comprised eight major ethnic groups. The emperor and four of the seven elec- tors who chose him were Catholic; the other three electors were Protestants. The Peace of Augsburg of 1555 (see Chapter 14) was supposed to main- tain the balance between Catholics and Lutherans, but it had no mechanism for resolving conflicts; tensions rose as the new Catholic religious order, the Jesuits, won many Lutheran cities back to Catholicism and as Calvinism, unrecognized under the peace, made inroads into Lutheran areas. By 1613, two of the three Protestant electors had be- come Calvinists.

These conflicts came to a head when the Catholic Habsburg heir Archduke Ferdinand was crowned king of Bohemia in 1617. The Austrian Habsburgs held not only the imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire but also a collection of sep- arately administered royal crowns, of which Bohemia was one. Once crowned, Ferdinand began to curtail the religious freedom previously granted to Protestants. The Czechs, the largest ethnic group in Bohemia, responded with the so-called defen- estration of Prague and promptly established a Protestant assembly to spearhead resistance. A year later, when Ferdinand was elected emperor (as Ferdinand II, r. 1619–1637), the rebellious Bohemians deposed him and chose in his place the young Calvinist Frederick V of the Palatinate

460 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

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(r. 1616–1623). A quick series of clashes ended in 1620 when the imperial armies defeated the out- manned Czechs at the battle of White Mountain, near Prague. Like the martyrdom of the religious reformer Jan Hus in 1415, White Mountain be- came an enduring symbol of the Czechs’ desire for self-determination. They would not gain their in- dependence until 1918.

White Mountain did not end the war, which soon spread to the German lands of the empire. Private mercenary armies (armies for hire) began to form during the fighting, and the emperor had little control over them. The meteoric rise of one commander,Albrecht von Wallenstein (1583–1634), showed how political ambition could trump religious conviction. A Czech Protestant by birth, Wallenstein offered in 1625 to raise an army for Ferdinand II and soon had in his employ 125,000 soldiers, who occupied and plundered much of Protestant Germany with the emperor’s approval.

The Lutheran king of Denmark, Christian IV (r. 1596–1648), responded by invading northern Germany to protect the Protestants and to extend his own influence. Despite Dutch and English en- couragement, Christian lacked adequate military support, and Wallenstein’s forces defeated him. Emboldened by his general’s victories, Ferdinand issued the Edict of Restitution in 1629, which out- lawed Calvinism in the empire and reclaimed Catholic church properties confiscated by the Lutherans.

With Protestant interests in serious jeopardy, Gustavus Adolphus (r. 1611–1632) of Sweden marched into Germany in 1630. Declaring his sup- port for the Protestant cause, he also intended to gain control over trade in northern Europe. His highly trained army of some 100,000 soldiers made Sweden, with a population of only one million, the supreme power of northern Europe. Hoping to block Spanish intervention in the war and win in- fluence and perhaps territory in the Holy Roman Empire, the French monarchy’s chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), offered to subsi- dize the Lutheran Gustavus. This agreement be- tween the Swedish Lutheran and French Catholic powers to fight the Catholic Habsburgs showed that state interests could outweigh all other con- siderations.

Gustavus defeated the imperial army and occupied the Catholic parts of southern Germany before he was killed at the battle of Lützen in 1632. Once again the tide turned, but this time it swept Wallenstein with it. Because Wallenstein was rumored to be negotiating with Protestant pow- ers, Ferdinand dismissed his general and had him assassinated.

France openly joined the fray in 1635 by de- claring war on Spain and soon after forged an al- liance with the Calvinist Dutch to aid them in their ongoing struggle for official independence from Spain. Religion took a backseat to dynastic rivalry as the two Catholic powers France and Spain

The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648 4611560–1648

The Violence of the Thirty Years’ War The French artist Jacques Callot produced this engraving of the Thirty Years’ War as part of a series called The Miseries and Misfortunes of War (1633). It shows the rape, torture, and pillaging inflicted by soldiers on noncombatants they found in their path. (The Granger Collection, New York.)

pummeled each other. Advised by his minister Richelieu, who held the high rank of cardinal in the Catholic church, the French king Louis XIII (r. 1610–1643) hoped to profit from the troubles of Spain in the Netherlands and from the conflicts between the Austrian emperor and his Protestant subjects. The Swedes kept up their pressure in Germany, the Dutch attacked the Spanish fleet, and a series of internal revolts shook the cash- strapped Spanish crown. In 1640, peasants in the rich northeastern province of Catalonia rebelled, overrunning Barcelona and killing the viceroy; the Catalans resented government confiscation of their crops and demands that they house and feed soldiers on their way to the French frontier. The Portuguese revolted in 1640 and proclaimed inde- pendence like the Dutch. In 1643, the Spanish suffered their first major defeat at French hands. Although the Spanish were forced to concede in- dependence to Portugal (part of Spain only since 1580), they eventually suppressed the Catalan revolt.

France, too, finally faced exhaustion after years of rising taxes and recurrent revolts. Richelieu died in 1642. Louis XIII followed him a few months later and was succeeded by his five-year-old son, Louis XIV. With yet another foreign queen mother — she was the daughter of the Spanish

king — serving as regent and an Italian cardinal, Mazarin, providing advice, French politics once again moved into a period of instability, rumor, and crisis. All sides were ready for peace.

The Effects of Constant Fighting When peace negotiations began in the 1640s, they did not come a moment too soon for the ordinary people of Europe. Some towns had faced up to ten or eleven prolonged sieges during the decades of fighting. Even worse suffering took place in the countryside. Peasants fled their villages, which were often burned down (see Document, “The Horrors of the Thirty Years’ War,” above). At times, desperate peasants revolted and attacked nearby castles and monasteries. War and intermittent out- breaks of plague cost some German towns one- third or more of their population. One-third of the inhabitants of Bohemia also perished.

Soldiers did not fare all that much better. An Englishman who fought for the Dutch army in 1633 described how he slept on the wet ground, got his boots full of water, and “at peep of day looked like a drowned ratt.” Governments increas- ingly short of funds often failed to pay the troops, and frequent mutinies, looting, and pillaging re- sulted. Armies attracted all sorts of displaced people

462 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

The Horrors of the Thirty Years’ War

D O C U M E N T

Hans Grimmelshausen experienced the Thirty Years’ War firsthand and then wrote about it in his novel The Adventures of a Simpleton (published in 1669). He had been a Lutheran schoolboy when soldiers from an unidentified army looted his town. Later he served as a musketeer in the Catholic imperial armies and converted to Catholicism. In the novel, he writes from the point of view of a “sim- pleton,” a naive peasant who does not under- stand what is happening around him as a group of cavalrymen ransack the village.

What they did not intend to take along they broke and spoiled. Some ran their swords into the hay and straw, as if there hadn’t been hogs enough to stick. Some shook the feathers out of beds and put ba- con slabs, hams, and other stuff in the tick-

ing, as if they might sleep better on these. Others knocked down the hearth and broke the windows, as if announcing an everlasting summer. They flattened out copper and pewter dishes and baled the ruined goods. They burned up bedsteads, tables, chairs, and benches, though there were yards of dry firewood outside the kitchen. Jars and crocks, pots and casseroles all were broken, either because they preferred their meat broiled or be- cause they thought they’d eat only one meal with us. In the barn, the hired girl was handled so roughly that she was un- able to walk away, I am ashamed to report. They stretched the hired man out flat on the ground, stuck a wooden wedge in his mouth to keep it open, and emptied a milk bucket full of stinking manure drippings

down his throat; they called it a Swedish cocktail. He didn’t relish it and made a very wry face. . . . Then they used thumb- screws, which they cleverly made out of their pistols, to torture the peasants, as if they wanted to burn witches. Though he had confessed to nothing as yet, they put one of the captured hayseeds in the bake- oven and lighted a fire in it. They put a rope around someone else’s head and tightened it like a tourniquet until blood came out of his mouth, nose, and ears. In short, every soldier had his favorite method of making life miserable for peasants, and every peasant had his own misery.

Source: The Adventures of Simplicius Simpliccissimus, 2nd ed. Trans. George Schulz-Behrend (Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1993), 6–7.

desperately in need of provisions. In the last year of the Thirty Years’ War, the Imperial-Bavarian Army had 40,000 men entitled to draw rations — and more than 100,000 wives, prostitutes, servants, children, and other camp followers forced to scrounge for their own food.

The Peace of Westphalia, 1648 The comprehensive settlement provided by the Peace of Westphalia — named after the German province where negotiations took place — would serve as a model for resolving future conflicts among warring European states. For the first

time, a diplomatic congress convened to address international disputes, and those signing the treaties guaranteed the resulting settlement. A method still in use, the congress was the first to bring all parties together, rather than two or three at a time.

The Winners and Losers. France and Sweden gained most from the Peace of Westphalia. Al- though France and Spain continued fighting until 1659, France acquired parts of Alsace and replaced Spain as the prevailing power on the continent. Baltic conflicts would not be resolved until 1661, but Sweden took several northern territories from the Holy Roman Empire (Map 15.3).

The Habsburgs lost the most. The Spanish Habsburgs recognized Dutch independence after eighty years of war. The Swiss Confederation and the German princes demanded autonomy from the Austrian Habsburg rulers of the Holy Roman

The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648 4631560–1648

Peace of Westphalia: The settlement (1648) of the Thirty Years’ War; it established enduring religious divisions in the Holy Ro- man Empire by which Lutheranism would dominate in the north, Calvinism in the area of the Rhine River, and Catholicism in the south.

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MAP 15.3 The Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia, 1648 The Thirty Years’ War involved many of the major continental European powers. The arrows marking invasion routes show that most of the fighting took place in central Europe in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire. The German states and Bohemia sustained the greatest damage during the fighting. None of the combatants emerged unscathed because even ultimate winners such as Sweden and France depleted their resources of men and money.

Empire. Each German prince gained the right to establish Lutheranism, Catholicism, or Calvinism in his state, a right denied to Calvinist rulers by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. The independence ceded to German princes sustained political divi- sions that would remain until the nineteenth cen- tury and prepared the way for the emergence of a new power, the Hohenzollern Elector of Branden- burg, who increased his territories and developed a small but effective standing army. After losing considerable territory in the west, the Austrian Habsburgs turned eastward to concentrate on restoring Catholicism to Bohemia and wresting Hungary from the Turks.

The Peace of Westphalia permanently settled the distributions of the main religions in the Holy Roman Empire: Lutheranism would dominate in the north, Calvinism in the area of the Rhine River,

and Catholicism in the south. Most of the territo- rial changes in Europe remained intact until the nineteenth century. In the future, international warfare would be undertaken for reasons of na- tional security, commercial ambition, or dynastic pride rather than to enforce religious uniformity. As the politiques of the late sixteenth century had hoped, state interests now outweighed motivations of faith in political affairs.

Growth of State Authority. Warfare increased the reach of states: as armies grew to bolster the war effort, governments needed more money and more supervisory officials. The rate of land tax paid by French peasants doubled in the eight years after France joined the war. In addition to raising taxes, governments deliberately depreciated the value of the currency, which often resulted in in- flation and soaring prices. Rulers also sold new of- fices and manipulated the embryonic stock and bond markets. When all else failed, they declared bankruptcy. The Spanish government, for example, did so three times in the first half of the seven- teenth century. From Portugal to Muscovy, ordinary people resisted new taxes by forming makeshift armies and battling royal forces. With their color- ful banners, unlikely leaders, strange names (the Nu-Pieds, or “Barefooted,” in France, for instance), and crude weapons, the rebels usually proved no match for state armies, but they did keep officials worried and troops occupied.

To meet these new demands, monarchs relied on advisers who took on the role of modern prime ministers. Continuity in Swedish affairs, especially after the death of Gustavus Adolphus, largely de- pended on Axel Oxenstierna, who held office for more than forty years. Louis XIII’s chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, proclaimed the priority of rai- son d’état (reason of state), that is, the state’s in- terest above all else. He silenced Protestants within France because they had become too independent, and he crushed noble and popular resistance to Louis’s policies. He set up intendants — delegates from the king’s council dispatched to the provinces — to oversee police, army, and financial affairs.

To justify the growth of state authority and the expansion of government bureaucracies, rulers carefully cultivated their royal images. (See The Arts and State Power, at left.) James I of England

464 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

The Arts and State Power King Philip IV of Spain commissioned Diego Velázquez to paint this portrait in 1634–1635. He hung the painting in the new palace, called Buen Retiro, that he built near Madrid in the 1630s. Philip’s court at Buen Retiro included formal gardens, artificial ponds, a huge iron bird cage (which led some critics to call the whole thing a chicken coop), a zoo, and a courtyard for bullfights as well as rooms filled with sculptures and paintings. Note that Philip looks completely in control, almost impassive, even though the horse is rearing. In this way the artist emphasizes the king’s mastery. (All rights reserved. © Museo Nacional del Prado—Madrid.)

raison d’état (ray ZOHN day TAH): French for “reason of state,” the political doctrine, first proposed by Cardinal Richelieu of France, which held that the state’s interests should prevail over those of religion.

argued that he ruled by divine right and was accountable only to God: “The state of monarchy is the supremest thing on earth; for kings are not only God’s lieutenant on earth, but even by God himself they are called gods.” He advised his son to maintain a manly appearance (his own well- known homosexual liaisons did not make him seem less manly to his subjects): “Eschew to be ef- feminate in your clothes, in perfuming, preening, or such like.”Appearance counted for so much that most rulers regulated who could wear which kinds of cloth and decoration, reserving the richest and rarest, such as ermine and gold, for themselves.

Review: Why did a war fought over religious differ- ences result in stronger states?

Economic Crisis and Realignment The devastation caused by the Thirty Years’ War deepened an economic crisis that was already under way. After a century of rising prices, caused partly by massive transfers of gold and silver from the New World and partly by population growth, in the early 1600s prices began to level off and even to drop, and in most places population growth slowed. With fewer goods being produced, inter- national trade fell into recession. Agricultural yields also declined, and peasants and townspeo- ple alike were less able to pay the escalating taxes needed to finance the wars. Famine and disease trailed grimly behind economic crisis and war, in some areas causing large-scale uprisings and re- volts. Behind the scenes, the economic balance of power gradually shifted as northwestern Europe began to dominate international trade and broke the stranglehold of Spain and Portugal in the New World.

From Growth to Recession Population grew and prices rose in the second half of the sixteenth century. Even though religious and political turbulence led to population decline in some cities, such as war-torn Antwerp, overall rates of growth remained impressive: in the sixteenth century, parts of Spain doubled in population and England’s population grew by 70 percent. The sup- ply of precious metals swelled, too. In the 1540s, new silver mines were discovered in Mexico and Peru. Spanish gold imports peaked in the 1550s,

silver in the 1590s. (See “Taking Measure,” below.) This flood of precious metals combined with pop- ulation growth to fuel an astounding inflation in food prices in western Europe — 400 percent in the sixteenth century — and a more moderate rise in the cost of manufactured goods. Wages rose much more slowly, at about half the rate of the increase in food prices. Governments always overspent rev- enues, and by 1600 most of Europe’s rulers faced deep deficits.

Recession did not strike everywhere at the same time, but the warning signs were unmistak- able. Foreign trade slumped as war and an uncer- tain money supply made business riskier. After 1625, silver imports to Spain declined, in part be- cause so many of the native Americans who worked in Spanish colonial mines died from dis- ease and in part because the mines themselves were progressively depleted. Textile production fell in many countries and in some places nearly

Economic Crisis and Realignment 4651560–1648

T A K I N G M E A S U R E

The Rise and Fall of Silver Imports to Spain, 1550–1660 Gold and silver from the New World enabled the king of Spain to pursue aggressive policies in Europe and around the world. At what point did silver imports reach their highest level? Was the fall in silver imports precipitous or gradual? What can we con- clude about the resources available to the Spanish king? (From Earl J. Hamilton, American Revolution and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650

[Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934].)

0 1550 1570 1590 1610 1630 1650

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collapsed, largely because of decreased demand and a shrinking labor force. Even the relatively limited trade in African slaves stagnated, though its growth would resume after 1650 and skyrocket after 1700. African slaves were first transported to the new colony of Virginia in 1619, foreshadowing a ma- jor transformation of economic life in the New World colonies.

Demographic slowdown also signaled eco- nomic trouble. Despite population growth in some areas, Europe’s total population may actually have declined, from 85 million in 1550 to 80 million in 1650. In the Mediterranean, growth had already stopped in the 1570s. The most sudden reversal occurred in central Europe as a result of the Thirty Years’ War: one-fourth of the inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire perished in the 1630s and 1640s. Population growth continued only in England, the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands, and Scandinavia.

Where the population stagnated or declined, agricultural prices dropped because of less de-

mand, and farmers who produced for the market suffered. The price of grain fell most precipitously, causing many farmers to convert grain-growing land to pasture or vineyards. In some places, peas- ants abandoned their villages and left land to waste, as had happened during the plague epi- demic of the late fourteenth century. The only country that emerged unscathed from this down- turn was the Dutch Republic, thanks to a growing population and tradition of agricultural innova- tion. Inhabiting Europe’s most densely populated area, the Dutch developed systems of field drainage, crop rotation, and animal husbandry that provided high yields of grain for both people and animals. Their foreign trade, textile industry, crop production, and population all grew. After the Dutch, the English fared best; unlike the Spanish, the English never depended on infusions of New World gold and silver to shore up their economy, and unlike most continental European countries, England escaped the direct impact of the Thirty Years’ War.

466 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

Global cooling helped bring aboutthe economic crisis of the seven-teenth century. Glaciers advanced, average temperatures fell, and winters were often exceptionally severe. Canals and rivers essential to markets froze over. Great storms disrupted ocean traffic — in fact, one storm changed the escape route of the Spanish Armada. Even in the val- leys far from the mountain glaciers, cooler weather meant lower crop yields, which quickly translated into hunger and greater susceptibility to disease, leading in turn to population decline. Some historians of climate refer to the entire period 1600–1850 as the little ice age because glaciers advanced during this time and re- treated only after 1850; others argue that the period 1550–1700 was the coldest, but either time frame includes the seven- teenth century. Given the current debates about global warming, how can we sift through the evidence to come up with a reliable interpretation? Since systematic

records of European temperatures were kept only from the 1700s onward, how do historians know that the weather was cooler?

Information about climate comes from various sources. The advance of gla- ciers can be seen in letters complaining to the authorities. In 1601, for example, panic-stricken villagers in Savoy (in the French Alps) wrote, “We are terrified of the glaciers . . . which are moving forward all the time and have just buried two of our villages.” Yearly temperature fluctua- tions can be determined from the dates of wine harvests; growers harvested their grapes earliest when the weather was warmest and latest when it was coolest. Scientists study ice cores taken from Greenland to determine temperature vari- ations; such studies seem to indicate that the coolest times were the periods 1160–1300; the 1600s; and 1820–1850. The period 1730–1800 appears to have been warmer. Recently, scientists have de-

veloped techniques for sampling corals in the tropics and sediments on oceanic shelves to provide evidence of climate change.

But the most striking are data gath- ered from tree rings (the science is called dendrochronology or dendroclimatol- ogy). Timber samples have been taken from very old oak trees and also from ancient beams in buildings and ar- chaeological digs and from logs left long undisturbed in northern bogs and riverbeds. In cold summers, trees lay down thinner growth rings; in warm ones, thicker rings. Information about tree rings confirms the conclusions drawn from wine harvest and ice core samples: the seventeenth century was rel- atively cold. Recent tree ring studies have shown that some of the coldest summers were caused by volcanic eruptions; ac- cording to a study of more than one hun- dred sites in North America and Europe, the five coldest summers in the past four

N E W S O U R C E S , N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S

Tree Rings and the Little Ice Age

Historians have long disagreed about the causes of the early-seventeenth-century reces- sion. Some cite the inability of agriculture to support a growing population by the end of the sixteenth century; others blame the Thirty Years’ War, the states’ demands for more taxes, the ir- regularities in money supply resulting from rudi- mentary banking practices, or the waste caused by middle-class expenditures in the desire to em- ulate the nobility. To this list of causes, recent re- searchers have added climatic changes. (See “New Sources, New Perspectives,” page 466.) Cold winters and wet summers meant bad har- vests, and these natural disasters ushered in a host of social catastrophes. When the harvest was bad, prices shot back up and many could not af- ford to feed themselves.

Consequences for Daily Life The recession of the early 1600s had both short- term and long-term effects. In the short term, it

aggravated the threat of food shortages, increased the outbreaks of famine and disease, and caused people to leave their families and homes. In the long term, it deepened the division between pros- perous and poor peasants and fostered the devel- opment of a new pattern of late marriages and smaller families.

Famine and Disease. When grain harvests fell short, peasants immediately suffered because, out- side of England and the Dutch Republic, grain had replaced more expensive meat as the essential staple of most Europeans’ diets. By the end of the sixteenth century, the average adult European ate more than four hundred pounds of grain per year. Peasants lived on bread, soup with a little fat or oil, peas or lentils, garden vegetables in season, and only occasionally a piece of meat or fish. Usually the adverse years differed from place to place, but from 1594 to 1597 most of Europe suffered from shortages; the resulting famine triggered revolts from Ireland to Muscovy.

Economic Crisis and Realignment 4671560–1648

The Frozen Thames This painting by Abraham Hondius of the frozen Thames River in London dates to 1677. In the 1670s and 1680s the Thames froze several times. Diarists recorded that shopkeepers even set up their stalls on the ice. The expected routines of daily life changed during the cooling down of the seventeenth century, and contemporaries were shocked enough by the changes to record them for posterity. (Museum of London.)

hundred years were in 1601, 1641, 1669, 1699, and 1912 (four out of five in the seventeenth century), and all but the summer of 1699 came in years following recorded eruptions.

Questions to Consider 1. What were the historical consequences of

global cooling in the seventeenth century? 2. Why would trees be especially valuable

sources of information about climate?

Further Reading Climate of the Past: http://www.clim-past

.net/recentpapers.html Jones, P. D., ed. History and Climate:

Memories of the Future? 2001.

Most people, however, did not respond to their dismal circumstances by rebelling. They sim- ply left their huts and hovels and took to the road in search of food and charity. Men left their fam- ilies to search for better conditions in other parishes or even other countries. Those left behind might be reduced to eating chestnuts, roots, bark, and grass. Overwhelmed officials recorded pitiful tales of suffering. Women and children died while waiting in line for food at convents or churches. In eastern France in 1637, a witness reported, “The roads were paved with people. . . . Finally it came to cannibalism.” Compassion sometimes gave way

to fear when hungry vagabonds, who sometimes banded together to beg for bread, became more aggressive, occasionally threatening to burn a barn if they were not given food.

Successive bad harvests led to malnutrition, which weakened people and made them more sus- ceptible to such epidemic diseases as the plague, typhoid fever, typhus, dysentery, smallpox, and in- fluenza. Disease did not spare the rich, although many epidemics hit the poor hardest. The plague was feared most: in one year it could cause the death of up to half of a town’s or village’s popula- tion, and it struck with no discernible pattern. Nearly 5 percent of France’s entire population died just in the plague of 1628–1632.

The Changing Status of the Peasantry. Eco- nomic crisis widened the gap between rich and poor. Peasants shouldered many burdens, includ- ing rent and various fees for inheriting or selling land and tolls for using mills, wine presses, or ovens. States collected direct taxes on land and sales taxes on such consumer goods as salt, an es- sential preservative. Protestant and Catholic churches alike exacted a tithe (a tax equivalent to one-tenth of the parishioner’s annual income); of- ten the clergy took their tithe in the form of crops and collected it directly during the harvest. Any reversal of fortune could force peasants into the homeless world of vagrants and beggars, who numbered as much as 2 percent of the total pop- ulation.

In England, the Dutch Republic, northern France, and northwestern Germany, the peasantry was disappearing. Improvements gave some peas- ants the means to become farmers who rented sub- stantial holdings, produced for the market, and in good times enjoyed relative comfort and higher status. Those who could not afford to plant new crops such as maize (American corn) or to use techniques that ensured higher yields became simple laborers with little or no land of their own. One-half to four-fifths of the peasants did not have enough land to support a family. They descended deeper into debt during difficult times and often lost their land to wealthier farmers or to city offi- cials intent on developing rural estates.

As the recession deepened, women lost some of their economic opportunities. Widows who had been able to take over their late husbands’ trade now found themselves excluded by the urban guilds or limited to short tenures. Many women went into domestic service until they married, some for their entire lives. When town govern- ments began to fear the effects of increased mo-

468 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

The Life of the Poor This mid-seventeenth-century painting by the Dutch artist Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne depicts the poor peasant weighed down by his wife and child. An empty food bowl signifies their hunger. In retrospect, this painting seems unfair to the wife of the family; she is shown in clothes that are not nearly as tattered as her husband’s and is portrayed entirely as a burden, rather than as a help in getting by in hard times. In reality, many poor men abandoned their homes in search of work, leaving their wives behind to cope with hungry children and what remained of the family farm. (Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Mrs. F. F. Prentiss Fund, 1920. Inv # 1960.94.)

bility from country to town and town to town, they carefully regulated the work of female servants, re- quiring women to stay in their positions unless they could prove mistreatment by a master.

Effects on Marriage and Childbearing. European families reacted to economic downturn by post- poning marriage and having fewer children. When hard times passed, more people married and had more children. But even in the best of times, one- fifth to one-quarter of all children died in their first year, and half died before age twenty. Child- birth still carried great risks for women, about 10 percent of whom died in the process. Even in the richest and most enlightened homes, childbirth of- ten occasioned an atmosphere of panic. To allay their fears, women sometimes depended on magic stones, special pilgrimages, or prayers. Midwives delivered most babies; physicians were scarce, and even those who did attend births were generally less helpful than midwives. The Englishwoman Alice Thornton described in her diary how a doctor bled her to prevent a miscarriage after a fall (bloodletting, often by the application of leeches, was a common medical treatment); her son died anyway in a breech birth that almost killed her, too.

It might be assumed that families would have more children to compensate for high death rates, but beginning in the early seventeenth century and continuing until the end of the eighteenth, fami- lies in all ranks of society started to limit the num- ber of children. Because methods of contraception were not widely known, they did this for the most part by marrying later; the average age at marriage during the seventeenth century rose from the early twenties to the late twenties. The average family had about four children. Poorer families seem to have had fewer children, wealthier ones more. Peasant couples, especially in eastern and south- eastern Europe, had more children than urban couples because cultivation still required intensive manual labor — and having children was the most economical means of securing enough laborers.

The consequences of late marriage were pro- found. Young men and women were expected to put off marriage (and sexual intercourse) until their mid to late twenties — if they were among the lucky 50 percent who lived that long and not among the 10 percent who never married. Because both Protestant and Catholic clergy alike stressed sexual fidelity and abstinence before marriage, the number of births out of wedlock was relatively small (2–5 percent of births); premarital inter- course was generally tolerated only after a couple had announced their engagement.

The Economic Balance of Power

Just as the recession produced winners and losers among ordinary people, so too it created winners and losers among the competing states of Europe. The economies of southern Europe declined dur- ing this period, whereas those of the northwest emerged stronger. Competition in the New World reflected and reinforced this shift as the English, Dutch, and French rushed to establish trading out- posts and permanent settlements to compete with the Spanish and Portuguese.

Regional Differences. The new powers of north- western Europe with their growing Atlantic trade gradually displaced the Mediterranean economies, which had dominated European commerce since the time of the Greeks and Romans. With expand- ing populations and geographical positions that promoted Atlantic trade, England and the Dutch Republic vied with France to become the leading mercantile powers. Northern Italian industries were eclipsed; Spanish commerce with the New World dropped. Amsterdam replaced Seville, Venice, Genoa, and Antwerp as the center of Eu- ropean trade and commerce. Even the plague con- tributed to this difference. Whereas central Europe and the Mediterranean countries took generations to recover from its ravages, northwestern Europe quickly replaced its lost population, no doubt be- cause this area’s people had suffered less from the effects of the Thirty Years’ War and from the mal- nutrition related to the economic crisis.

All but the remnants of serfdom had disap- peared in western Europe, yet in eastern Europe nobles reinforced their dominance over peasants, and the burden of serfdom increased. The price rise of the sixteenth century prompted Polish and eastern German nobles to increase their holdings and step up their production of grain for western markets. They demanded more rent and dues from their peasants, whom the government decreed must stay in their villages. In the economic down- turn of the first half of the seventeenth century, peasants who were already dependent became serfs — completely tied to the land. A local official might complain of “this barbaric and as it were Egyptian servitude,” but he had no power to fight the nobles. In Muscovy, the complete enserfment of the peasantry would eventually be recognized in the Code of Laws in 1649. Although enserfment produced short-term profits for landlords, in the long run it retarded economic development in eastern Europe and kept most of the population in a stranglehold of illiteracy and hardship.

Economic Crisis and Realignment 4691560–1648

Competition in the New World. Economic re- alignment also took place across the Atlantic ocean. Because Spain and Portugal had divided be- tween themselves the rich spoils of South Amer- ica, other prospective colonizers had to carve niches in seemingly less hospitable places, espe- cially North America and the Caribbean (Map 15.4). Eventually, the English, French, and Dutch would dominate commerce with these colonies. Many European states, including Sweden and Den- mark, rushed to join the colonial competition as a

way of increasing national wealth. To this end, they chartered private joint-stock companies to enrich investors by importing fish, furs, tobacco, and pre- cious metals, if they could be found, and to de- velop new markets for European products.

In establishing permanent colonies, the Euro- peans created whole new communities across the Atlantic. Careful plans could not always surmount the hazards of transatlantic shipping, however. Originally, the warm climate of Virginia made it an attractive destination for the Pilgrims, a small

English sect that attempted to separate from the Church of England. But the Mayflower, which had sailed for Vir- ginia with Pilgrim emigrants, landed far to the north in Massachusetts, where in 1620 the settlers founded New Plymouth Colony. By the 1640s, the British North American colonies had more than fifty thousand people — not including the Indians, whose numbers had been decimated in epidemics and wars — and the foundations of repre- sentative government in locally chosen colonial assemblies.

In contrast, French Canada had only about three thousand European inhabitants by 1640. Though thin in numbers, the French rapidly moved into the Great Lakes region. Fur traders sought beaver pelts to make the hats that had taken Paris fashion by storm. Jesuit missionaries lived with native American groups, learning their languages and describing their ways of life. Both England and France turned their attention to the Caribbean in the 1620s and 1630s when they occupied the islands of the West Indies after driving off the native Caribs. These islands would prove ideal for a plantation economy of tobacco and sugarcane.

Even as the British and French moved into North America and the Caribbean, Spanish explorers traveled the Pacific coast up to what is now northern California and pushed into New Mexico. On the other side of the world, in the Philippines, the Spanish competed with local Muslim rulers and indigenous tribal leaders to extend their control. Catholic missionaries printed tracts in Spanish and the is- lands’ native Tagalog and established a university in 1611. Spanish officials

470 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

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worked closely with the missionaries to rule over a colony composed of indigenous peoples, Span- iards, and some Chinese merchants.

Review: What were the consequences of economic recession in the early 1600s?

The Rise of Secular and Scientific Worldviews The countries that moved ahead economically in the first half of the seventeenth century — England, the Dutch Republic, and to some extent France — turned out to be the most receptive to new secular worldviews. In the long-term process known as secularization, religion became a mat- ter of private conscience rather than public policy. Secularization did not entail a loss of religious faith, but it did prompt a search for nonreligious explanations for political authority and natural phenomena. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, art, political theory, and sci- ence all began to break their bonds with religion. The visual arts, for example, more frequently de- picted secular subjects. Scientists and scholars sought laws in nature to explain politics as well as

movements in the heavens and on earth. A scien- tific revolution was in the making. Yet traditional attitudes did not disappear. Belief in magic and witchcraft pervaded every level of society. People of all classes believed that the laws of nature re- flected a divine plan for the universe. They ac- cepted supernatural explanations for natural phenomena, a view only gradually and partially undermined by new ideas.

The Arts in an Age of Crisis Two new forms of artistic expression — profes- sional theater and opera — provided an outlet for secular values in an age of conflict over religious beliefs. The greatest playwright of the English lan- guage, William Shakespeare, never referred to re- ligious disputes in his plays, and he always set his most personal reflections on political turmoil and uncertainty in faraway times or places. Religion played an important role in the new mannerist and baroque styles of painting, however, even though many rulers commissioned paintings on secular subjects for their own uses.

Theater in the Age of Shakespeare. The first professional acting companies performed before paying audiences in London, Seville, and Madrid in the 1570s. In previous centuries, traveling com- panies made their living by playing at major reli- gious festivals and by repeating their performances in small towns and villages along the way. A huge outpouring of playwriting followed upon the formation of permanent professional theater

The Rise of Secul ar and Scientif ic Worldviews 4711560–1648

secularization: The trend toward making religious faith a pri- vate domain rather than one directly connected to state power and science; it prompted a search for nonreligious explanations for political authority and natural phenomena.

“Savages” of the New World The half-dressed savage appears much like a noble Italian in Paolo Farinati’s 1595 painting America; he holds a crucifix in his right hand, signifying his conversion to Christianity. But to his left, a figure is roasting human flesh. Europeans were convinced that many native peoples were cannibals. What can we conclude from this painting about European attitudes toward peoples of the New World? (Villa della Torre, Mezzane de Sotto, Verona.)

companies. The Spanish playwright Lope de Vega (1562–1635) alone wrote more than fifteen hun- dred plays. Theaters were extremely popular de- spite Puritan opposition in England and Catholic objections in Spain. Shopkeepers, apprentices, lawyers, and court nobles crowded into open-air theaters to see everything from bawdy farces to profound tragedies.

The most enduring and influential playwright of the time was the Englishman William Shake- speare (1564–1616), who wrote three dozen plays, comedies as well as tragedies, and acted in one of the chief troupes. Although Shakespeare’s plays were not set in contemporary England, they re- flected the concerns of his age: the nature of power and the crisis of authority. His tragedies in partic- ular show the uncertainty and even chaos that re- sult when power is misappropriated or misused. In Hamlet (1601), for example, Hamlet’s mother marries the man who murdered his royal father and usurped the crown. In the end, Hamlet, his mother, and the usurper all die. One character in the final act describes the tragic story of Prince Hamlet as one “Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts; /Of accidental judgments, casual slaugh- ters; /Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause.” Like many real-life people, Shakespeare’s tragic characters found little peace in the turmoil of their times.

Mannerism and the Baroque in Art. Although painting did not always touch broad popular au- diences in the ways that theater could, new styles in art and especially church architecture helped shape ordinary people’s experience of religion. In the late sixteenth century, the artistic style known as mannerism emerged in the Italian states and soon spread across Europe. Mannerism was an al- most theatrical style that allowed painters to dis- tort perspective to convey a message or emphasize a theme. The most famous mannerist painter, called El Greco because he was of Greek origin, trained in Venice and Rome before he moved to Spain in the 1570s. The religious intensity of El Greco’s pictures found a ready audience in Catholic Spain, which had proved immune to the Protestant suspicion of ritual and religious im- agery (see Philip II of Spain, page 457).

The most important new style was the baroque, which, like mannerism, originated in the Italian states. In place of the Renaissance empha- sis on harmonious design, unity, and clarity, the

baroque featured curves, exaggerated lighting, in- tense emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism. Like many other historical designations, the word baroque was not used as a label by people living at the time; in the eighteenth century, art critics coined the word to mean shockingly bizarre, confused, and extrava- gant, and until the late nineteenth century, art historians and collectors largely disdained the baroque.

Closely tied to Catholic resurgence after the Reformation, the baroque melodramatically reaf- firmed the emotional depths of the Catholic faith and glorified both church and monarchy (see “See- ing History,” page 473). The style spread from Rome to other Italian states and then into central Europe. The Catholic Habsburg territories, includ- ing Spain and the Spanish Netherlands, embraced the style. The Spanish built baroque churches in their American colonies as part of their massive conversion campaign.

Opera. A new secular musical form, the opera, grew up parallel to the baroque style in the visual arts. First influential in the Italian states, opera combined music, drama, dance, and scenery in a grand sensual display, often with themes chosen to please the ruler and the aristocracy. Operas could be based on typically baroque sacred subjects or on traditional stories. Like many playwrights, in- cluding Shakespeare, opera composers often turned to familiar stories their audiences would recognize and readily follow. One of the most innovative composers of opera was Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643), whose work contributed to the development of both opera and the orches- tra. His earliest operatic production, Orfeo (1607), was based on Greek mythology. It required an orchestra of about forty instruments, and unlike previous composers, Monteverdi wrote parts for specific instruments as well as voices.

The Natural Laws of Politics In reaction to the religious wars, writers not only began to defend the primacy of state interests over those of religious conformity but also insisted on secular explanations for politics. Machiavelli had pointed in this direction with his advice to Renais- sance princes in the early sixteenth century, but this secular intellectual movement gathered steam in the aftermath of the religious violence un- leashed by the Reformation. Adherents believed that religious toleration could not take hold until government could be organized on some prin- ciple other than one king, one faith. The French

472 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

baroque (buh ROHK): An artistic style of the seventeenth cen- tury that featured curves, exaggerated lighting, intense emo- tions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism.

The Rise of Secul ar and Scientif ic Worldviews 4731560–1648

A lthough the arts rarely reflect rigidreligious or political divisions,artists do respond to the times in which they live. Protestant artists could not ignore the growing influence of the baroque style, but they also sought to dis- tinguish themselves from it because of its association with the Catholic Counter- Reformation. The baroque style empha- sized intense emotions, monumental decors, and even a kind of artistic sensa- tionalism. Protestant artists, like Protes- tant preachers, wanted to produce strong reactions, too, but they placed more em- phasis on the inner experience than on public display.

Here you see two paintings on the same biblical theme, one by Peter Paul

Rubens (1577–1640), the great Catholic pioneer of the baroque style, and one by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), a Dutch Protestant. The subject of the paintings, taken from the Old Testament, is a scandalous one: when King David saw Bathsheba bathing, he fell in love with her, seduced her, and arranged for her husband to be killed in battle so that he might marry her.

Even though the central figure is the same in each painting, the artists’ treat- ments are not. Look at the differences in settings, the number of people in the pic- tures, the colors, the lighting, and espe- cially the facial expressions. In the Rubens, Bathsheba is about to receive a letter of summons from King David (shown on the

balcony above), whereas in the Rembrandt she has just read the letter. What are the differences in feeling conveyed in the two depictions of Bathsheba? Why would Rembrandt draw attention to the sadness felt by Bathsheba, and how might this relate to the Protestant emphasis on each person’s individual relationship to God? How do the setting and the lighting rein- force this emphasis on inwardness in the Rembrandt painting? Do not assume, however, that every difference in ap- proach can be attributed to religious dif- ferences. Rembrandt created his own sensation by depicting Bathsheba almost entirely nude (and using his own mistress as the model).

Religious Differences in Painting of the Baroque Period: Rubens and Rembrandt

S E E I N G H I S T O R Y

Peter Paul Rubens, Bathsheba at the Fountain, c. 1635. (© Gemaeldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany/ The Bridgeman

Art Library.)

Rembrandt van Rijn, Bathsheba at Her Bath, 1654. (© Louvre, Paris, France/ Giraudon/ The Bridgeman Art Library.)

politiques Michel de Montaigne and Jean Bodin started the search for those principles, and the Dutch legal scholar Hugo Grotius developed ideas on government that would influence John Locke and the American revolutionaries of the eigh- teenth century.

Montaigne and Bodin. Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) was a French magistrate who re- signed his office in the midst of the wars of reli- gion to write about the need for tolerance and open-mindedness. Although himself a Catholic, Montaigne painted on the beams of his study the statement “All that is certain is that nothing is cer- tain.” To capture this need for personal reflection in a tumultuous age of religious discord, he in- vented the essay as a short and pithy form of ex- pression. He revived the ancient doctrine of skepticism, which held that total certainty is never attainable — a doctrine, like toleration of religious differences, that was repugnant to Protestants and Catholics alike, both of whom were certain that their religion was the right one. He also questioned the common European habit of calling the native peoples of the New World barbarous and savage: “Everyone gives the title of barbarism to every- thing that is not in use in his own country.”

The French Catholic lawyer Jean Bodin (1530–1596) sought systematic secular answers to the problem of disorder in The Six Books of the Re- public (1576). Comparing the different forms of government throughout history, he concluded that there were three basic types of sovereignty: monar- chy, aristocracy, and democracy. Only strong monarchical power offered hope for maintaining order, he insisted. Bodin rejected any doctrine of the right to resist tyrannical authority: “I denied that it was the function of a good man or of a good citizen to offer violence to his prince for any rea- son, however great a tyrant he might be” (and, it might be added, whatever his ideas on religion). While Bodin’s ideas helped lay the foundation for absolutism, the idea that the monarch should be the sole and uncontested source of power, his sys- tematic discussion of types of governments im- plied that they might be subject to choice and undercut the notion that monarchies were or- dained by God, as most rulers maintained.

Grotius and Natural Law. During the Dutch re- volt against Spain, Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) furthered secular thinking by attempting to systematize the notion of “natural law” — laws of nature that give legitimacy to government and stand above the actions of any particular ruler or

religious group. Grotius argued that natural law stood beyond the reach of either secular or divine authority; it would be valid even if God did not exist (though Grotius himself believed in God). By this account, natural law — not scripture, religious authority, or tradition — should govern politics. Such ideas got Grotius into trouble with both Catholics and Protestants. His work The Laws of War and Peace (1625) was condemned by the Catholic church, while the Dutch Protestant gov- ernment arrested him for taking part in religious controversies. Grotius’s wife helped him escape prison by hiding him in a chest of books. He fled to Paris, where he got a small pension from Louis XIII and served as his ambassador to Sweden. The Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus claimed that he kept Grotius’s book under his pillow even while at battle. Grotius was one of the first to argue that international conventions should govern the treat- ment of prisoners of war and the making of peace treaties.

Grotius’s conception of natural law also chal- lenged the widespread use of torture. Most states and the courts of the Catholic church used torture when a serious crime had been committed and the evidence seemed to point to a particular defendant but no definitive proof had been established. The judges ordered torture — hanging the accused by the hands with a rope thrown over a beam, press- ing the legs in a leg screw, or just tying the hands very tightly — to extract a confession, which had to be given with a medical expert and notary pres- ent and had to be repeated without torture. Chil- dren, pregnant women, the elderly, aristocrats, kings, and even professors were exempt.

To be in accord with natural law, Grotius ar- gued, governments had to defend natural rights, which he defined as life, body, freedom, and honor. Grotius did not encourage rebellion in the name of natural law or rights, but he did hope that some- day all governments would adhere to these prin- ciples and stop killing their own and one another’s subjects in the name of religion. Natural law and natural rights would play an important role in the founding of constitutional governments from the 1640s forward and in the establishment of various charters of human rights in our own time.

The Scientific Revolution Although the Catholic and Protestant churches en- couraged the study of science and many prominent scientists were themselves clerics, the search for a secular, scientific method of determining the laws of nature undermined traditional accounts of

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natural phenomena. Christian doctrine had incor- porated the scientific teachings of ancient philoso- phers, especially Ptolemy and Aristotle; now these came into question. A revolution in astronomy contested the Ptolemaic view, endorsed by the Catholic church, which held that the sun revolved around the earth. Startling breakthroughs took place in medicine, too, which laid the foundations for modern anatomy and pharmacology. Support- ers of these new developments argued for a scien- tific method that would combine experimental observation and mathematical deduction. The use of scientific method culminated in the astounding breakthroughs of Isaac Newton at the end of the seventeenth century. Newton’s ability to explain the motion of the planets, as well as everyday objects on earth, gave science enormous new prestige.

The Revolution in Astronomy. The traditional account of the movement of the heavens derived from the second-century Greek astronomer Ptolemy, who put the earth at the center of the cos- mos. Above the earth were fixed the moon, the stars, and the planets in concentric crystalline spheres; beyond these fixed spheres dwelt God and the angels. The planets revolved around the earth at the command of God. In this view, the sun re- volved around the earth; the heavens were perfect and unchanging, and the earth was “corrupted.” Ptolemy insisted that the planets revolved in per- fectly circular orbits (because circles were more “perfect” than other figures). To account for the actual elliptical paths that could be observed and calculated, he posited orbits within orbits, or epicycles.

In 1543, the Polish clergyman Nicolaus Coper- nicus (1473–1543) began the revolution in astron- omy by publishing his treatise On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres. Copernicus attacked the Ptolemaic account, arguing that the earth and planets revolved around the sun, a view known as heliocentrism (a sun-centered universe). He dis- covered that by placing the sun instead of the earth at the center of the system of spheres, he could eliminate many epicycles from the calculations. In other words, he claimed that the heliocentric view simplified the mathematics. Copernicus died soon after publishing his theories, but when the Italian monk Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) taught helio-

centrism, the Catholic Inquisition (set up to seek out heretics) arrested him and burned him at the stake.

Copernicus’s views began to attract wide- spread attention in the early 1600s, when as- tronomers systematically collected evidence that undermined the Ptolemaic view. A leader among them was the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), who designed his own instruments and observed a new star in 1572 and a comet in 1577. These discoveries called into question the traditional view that the universe was unchanging. Brahe still rejected heliocentrism, but the assistant he employed when he moved to Prague in 1599, Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), was converted to the Copernican view. Kepler continued Brahe’s collection of planetary observations and used the evidence to develop his three laws of planetary mo- tion, published between 1609 and 1619. Kepler’s laws provided mathematical backing for heliocen- trism and directly challenged the claim long held, even by Copernicus, that planetary motion was circular. Kepler’s first law stated that the orbits of the planets are ellipses, with the sun always at one focus of the ellipse.

The Italian Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) pro- vided more evidence to support the heliocentric view and also challenged the doctrine that the heavens were perfect and unchanging. After learn- ing in 1609 that two Dutch astronomers had built a telescope, he built a better one and observed the earth’s moon, four satellites of Jupiter, the phases of Venus (a cycle of changing physical appear- ances), and sunspots. The moon, the planets, and the sun were no more perfect than the earth, he insisted, and the shadows he could see on the moon could only be the product of hills and val- leys like those on earth. Galileo portrayed the earth as a moving part of a larger system, only one of many planets revolving around the sun, not as the fixed center of a single, closed universe.

Because he recognized the utility of the new science for everyday projects, Galileo published his work in Italian, rather than Latin. But he meant only to instruct an educated elite of merchants and aristocrats. The new science, he claimed, suited “the minds of the wise,” not “the shallow minds of the common people.”After all, his discoveries chal- lenged the commonsensical view that it is the sun that rises and sets while the earth stands still. If the Bible was wrong about motion in the universe, as Galileo’s position implied, the error came from the Bible’s use of common language to appeal to the lower orders. The Catholic church was not molli- fied by this explanation. In 1616, the church for-

The Rise of Secul ar and Scientif ic Worldviews 4751560–1648

scientific method: The combination of experimental observa- tion and mathematical deduction that was used to determine the laws of nature and became the secular standard of truth.

heliocentrism: The view articulated by Polish clergyman Nicolaus Copernicus that the earth and planets revolve around the sun.

bade Galileo to teach that the earth moves; then, in 1633, it accused him of not obeying the earlier order. Forced to appear before the Inquisition, he agreed to publicly recant his assertion about the movement of the earth to save himself from tor- ture and death. (See Document, “Sentence Pro- nounced against Galileo,” page 477, and painting, The Trial of Galileo, above.) Afterward, he lived under house arrest and could publish his work only in the Dutch Republic, which had become a haven for iconoclastic scientists and thinkers.

Breakthroughs in Medicine. Just as astronomical knowledge was based on Ptolemy’s work, medical knowledge in Europe was, until the mid-sixteenth century, based on the writings of the second- century Greek physician Galen, Ptolemy’s contem- porary. Galen derived his knowledge of the anatomy of the human body from partial dissections. In the same year that Copernicus challenged the tradi- tional account in astronomy (1543), the Flemish scientist Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) did the same for anatomy. Drawing on public dissections (which had been condemned by the Catholic church since 1300) he performed himself, Vesalius refuted Galen’s work in his illustrated anatomical text, On the Construction of the Human Body. The German physician Paracelsus (1493–1541) went even further than Vesalius. In 1527, he burned Galen’s text at the University of Basel, where he was a professor of medicine. Paracelsus performed operations (at the time, most academic physicians

taught medical theory, not practice) and pursued his interests in magic, alchemy, and astrology. He also experimented with new drugs and thus helped establish the modern science of pharmacology.

Like Vesalius, the Englishman William Harvey (1578–1657) used dissection to examine the cir- culation of blood within the body, demonstrating how the heart worked as a pump. The heart and its valves were “a piece of machinery,” Harvey in- sisted. They obeyed mechanical laws just as the planets and earth revolved around the sun in a me- chanical universe. Nature could be understood by experiment and rational deduction, not by follow- ing traditional authorities.

Scientific Method: Bacon and Descartes. In the 1630s, the European intellectual elite began to ac- cept the new scientific views. Ancient learning, the churches and their theologians, and long-standing popular beliefs all seemed to be undercut by the scientific method. Two men were chiefly responsi- ble for spreading the reputation of the scientific method in the first half of the seventeenth century: the English Protestant politician Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and the French Catholic mathemati- cian and philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650). They represented the two essential halves of the scientific method: inductive reasoning through observation and experimental research, and de- ductive reasoning from self-evident principles.

In The Advancement of Learning (1605), Bacon attacked reliance on ancient writers and optimisti-

476 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

The Trial of Galileo In this anonymous painting of the trial held in 1633, Galileo appears seated on a chair in the center facing the church officials who accused him of heresy for insisting that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe (heliocentrism). Catholic officials forced him to recant or suffer the death penalty. (Erich Lessing/ Art Resource, NY.)

cally predicted that the scientific method would lead to social progress. The minds of the medieval scholars, he said, had been “shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle, their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monas- teries and colleges,” and they could therefore pro- duce only “cobwebs of learning” that were “of no substance or profit.” Advancement would take place only through the collection, comparison, and analysis of information. Knowledge, in Bacon’s view, must be empirically based (that is, gained by observation and experiment). Claiming that God had called the Catholic church “to account for their degenerate manners and ceremonies,” Bacon looked to the Protestant English state, which he served as lord chancellor, for leadership on the road to scientific advancement.

Although Descartes agreed with Bacon’s denunciation of traditional learning, he saw that the attack on tradition might only replace the dog- matism of the churches with the skepticism of Montaigne — that nothing at all was certain. Descartes aimed to establish the new science on more secure philosophical foundations, those of mathematics and logic. In his Discourse on Method (1637), he argued that mathematical and mechan- ical principles provided the key to understanding all of nature, including the actions of people and

states. All prior assumptions must be repudiated in favor of one elementary principle: “I think, there- fore I am.” Everything else could — and should — be doubted, but even doubt showed the certain existence of someone thinking. Begin with the sim- ple and go on to the complex, Descartes asserted, and believe only those ideas that present themselves “clearly and distinctly.” He insisted that human rea- son could not only unravel the secrets of nature but also prove the existence of God. Although he hoped to secure the authority of both church and state, his reliance on human reason rather than faith irritated authorities, and his books were banned in many places. He moved to the Dutch Republic to work in peace. Scientific research, like economic growth, became centered in the northern, Protes- tant countries, where it was less constrained by church control than in the Catholic south.

Newton and the Consolidation of the Scientific Revolution. The power of the new scientific method was dramatically confirmed in the grand synthesis of the laws of movement developed by the English natural philosopher Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Born five years after the publication of Descartes’s Discourse on Method and educated at Cambridge University, where he later became a professor, Newton attacked an astounding variety

The Rise of Secul ar and Scientif ic Worldviews 4771560–1648

Sentence Pronounced against Galileo (1633)

D O C U M E N T

In 1633, the Roman Inquisition, a commit- tee of cardinals of the Catholic church, considered the case against Galileo and pro- nounced its final judgment. It found Galileo guilty of heresy against Catholic doctrine for defending heliocentrism but allowed him to recant and thus avoid the death penalty usual in cases of heresy. In 1980, Pope John Paul II appointed a commission to review the evidence and verdict. Four years later, the commission published its findings and concluded that the judges who condemned Galileo were wrong.

We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare that you, the above-mentioned Galileo, because of the things deduced in the trial and confessed by you as above, have ren- dered yourself according to this Holy

Office [Inquisition] vehemently suspected of heresy, namely of having held and be- lieved a doctrine which is false and con- trary to the divine and Holy Scripture: that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west, and the earth moves and is not the center of the world, and that one may hold and defend as probable an opinion after it has been declared and defined contrary to Holy Scripture. Consequently you have in- curred all the censures and penalties im- posed and promulgated by the sacred canons and all particular and general laws against such delinquents. We are willing to absolve you from them provided that first, with a sincere heart and un- feigned faith, in front of us you abjure, curse, and detest the above-mentioned

errors and heresies, and every other er- ror and heresy contrary to the Catholic and Apostolic Church, in the manner and form we will prescribe to you.

Furthermore, so that this serious and pernicious error and transgression of yours does not remain completely unpun- ished, and so that you will be more cau- tious in the future and an example for others to abstain from similar crimes, we order that the book Dialogue [Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632] by Galileo Galilei be prohibited by public edict.

Source: Maurice A. Finocchiaro, ed., The Galileo Affairs: A Documentary History (Berkeley: Univer- sity of California Press, 1989), 291.

of problems in mathematics, mechanics, and op- tics. For example, he established the basis for the new mathematics of moving bodies, the infinites- imal calculus. After years of labor, he finally brought his most significant mathematical and mechanical discoveries together in his master- work, Principia Mathematica (1687). In it, he de- veloped his law of universal gravitation, which explained both movement on earth and the mo- tion of the planets. His law held that every body in the universe exerts over every other body an at- tractive force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This law of universal gravitation explained Kepler’s elliptical planetary orbits just as it accounted for the way an apple fell to the ground.

To establish his law of universal gravitation, Newton first applied mathematical principles to formulate three fundamental physical laws: (1) in the absence of force, motion continues in a straight line; (2) the rate of change in the motion of an object is a result of the forces acting on it; and (3) the action of one object on another has an equal and opposite reaction. Newtonian physics thus combined mass, inertia, force, velocity, and acceleration — all key concepts in modern science — and made them quantifiable. Newton knew that the stakes were high: “From the same principles [of motion] I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the World.”

Once set in motion, in Newton’s view, the uni- verse operated like a masterpiece made possible by the ingenuity of God. Newton saw no con- flict between faith and science. He believed that by demonstrating that the physical uni- verse followed rational principles, natural philosophers could prove the existence of God and so liberate humans from doubt and the fear of chaos. Even while laying the foundation for modern physics, optics, and mechanics, Newton spent long hours trying to calculate the date of the beginning of the world and its end with the second coming of Jesus. Others, less devout than Newton, envisioned a clockwork universe that had no need for God’s continuing intervention.

Some scientists, especially those on the continent, were reluctant to accept New- ton’s planetary theories. The Dutch scien- tist Christian Huygens, for example, declared the concept of attraction (action at a distance) “absurd.” But within a couple of generations, Newton’s work had gained widespread assent, partly because of exper- imental verification.

Magic and Witchcraft

Despite the new emphasis on clear reasoning, ob- servation, and independence from past authori- ties, magic and science were still closely linked even in the greatest minds. Many scholars, like Paracelsus and Newton, studied alchemy along- side other scientific pursuits. Elizabeth I main- tained a court astrologer who was also a serious mathematician, and many writers distinguished between “natural magic,” which was close to ex- perimental science, and demonic “black magic.” The astronomer Tycho Brahe defended his studies of alchemy and astrology as part of natural magic.

In a world in which most people believed in astrology, magical healing, prophecy, and ghosts, it is hardly surprising that many of Europe’s learned people also firmly believed in witchcraft, that is, the exercise of magical powers gained by a pact with the devil. The same Jean Bodin who ar- gued against religious fanaticism insisted on death for witches — and for those magistrates who would not prosecute them. In France alone, 345 books and pamphlets on witchcraft appeared be- tween 1550 and 1650. Trials of witches peaked in Europe between 1560 and 1640, the very time of the celebrated breakthroughs of the new science. Montaigne was one of the few to speak out against executing accused witches: “It is taking one’s con- jectures rather seriously to roast someone alive for them,” he wrote in 1580.

Belief in witches was not new in the sixteenth century. Witches had long been blamed for de-

478 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

Giving a Child to Satan This woodcut from Francesco Maria Guazzo’s Compendium Maleficarum of 1608 shows witches giving a child to the devil. Many believed that witches made a pact with the devil to carry out his evil deeds. (The Art Archive/ Dagli Orti [A].)

stroying crops and causing personal catastrophes ranging from miscarriage to madness. What was new was official persecution by state and religious authorities. In a time of economic crisis, plague, warfare, and the clash of religious differences, witchcraft trials provided an outlet for social stress and anxiety, legitimated by state power. Denunci- ation and persecution of witches coincided with the spread of reform, both Protestant and Catholic. Witch trials concentrated especially in the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire, the boiling cauldron of the Thirty Years’ War.

The victims of the persecution were over- whelmingly female: women accounted for 80 per- cent of the accused witches in about 100,000 trials in Europe and North America during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. About one-third were sentenced to death. Before 1400, when witchcraft trials were rare, nearly half of those accused had been men. Why did attention now shift to women? Official descriptions of witchcraft oozed lurid de- tails of sexual orgies, incest, homosexuality, and cannibalism, in which women acted as the devil’s sexual slaves. Social factors help explain the promi- nence of women among the accused. Accusers were almost always better off than those they ac- cused. The poorest and most socially marginal people in most communities were elderly spinsters and widows. Because they were thought likely to hanker after revenge on those more fortunate, they were singled out as witches.

Witchcraft trials declined when scientific thinking about causes and effects raised questions about the evidence used in court: how could judges or jurors be certain that someone was a witch? The tide turned everywhere at about the same time, as physicians, lawyers, judges, and even clergy came to suspect that accusations were based on popular superstition and peasant untrustworthiness. As early as the 1640s, French courts ordered the ar- rest of witch-hunters and released suspected witches. In 1682, a French royal decree treated witchcraft as fraud and imposture, meaning that the law did not recognize anyone as a witch. In 1693, the jurors who had convicted twenty witches in Salem, Massachusetts, recanted, claiming: “We confess that we ourselves were not capable to un- derstand. . . . We justly fear that we were sadly de- luded and mistaken.” The Salem jurors had not stopped believing in witches; they had simply lost confidence in their ability to identify them. This was a general pattern. Popular attitudes had not changed; what had changed was the attitudes of the elites. When physicians and judges had be- lieved in witches and carried out official persecu- tions, with torture, those accused of witchcraft had

gone to their deaths in record numbers. But when the same groups distanced themselves from pop- ular beliefs, the trials and the executions stopped.

Review: How could belief in witchcraft and the rising prestige of scientific method coexist?

Conclusion The witchcraft persecutions reflected the traumas of these times of religious war, economic decline, and crises of political and intellectual authority. Faced with new threats, some people blamed poor widows or struggling neighbors for their prob- lems; others joined desperate revolts, and still oth- ers emigrated to the New World to seek a better life. Even rulers confronted frightening choices: forced abdication, death in battle, or assassination often accompanied their religious decisions, and economic shocks could threaten the stability of their governments.

Deep differences over religion shaped the des- tinies of every European power in this period. These quarrels came to a head in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which cut a path of destruction through central Europe and involved most of the European powers. Repulsed by the effects of reli- gious violence on international relations, Euro- pean rulers agreed to a peace that effectively removed disputes between Catholics and Protes- tants from the international arena. The growing separation of political motives from religious ones did not mean that violence or conflict had ended, however. Struggles for religious uniformity within states would continue, though on a smaller scale. Larger armies required more state involvement, and almost everywhere rulers emerged from these decades of war with expanded powers that they would seek to extend further in the second half of the seventeenth century. The growth of state power directly changed the lives of ordinary people: more men went into the armies, and most families paid higher taxes. The constant extension of state power is one of the defining themes of modern history; religious warfare gave it a jump-start.

For all their power and despite repeated ef- forts, rulers could not control economic, social, or intellectual trends. The economic downturn of the seventeenth century produced unexpected conse- quences for European states even while it made life miserable for many ordinary people; eco- nomic power and vibrancy shifted from the Med- iterranean world to northwestern Europe be- cause England, France, and the Dutch Republic,

Conclusion 4791560–1648

especially, suffered less from the fighting of the Thirty Years’War and recovered more quickly from the loss of population and production during bad times.

In the face of violence and uncertainty, some began to look for secular alternatives in art, poli- tics, and science. Although it would be foolish to claim that everyone’s mental universe changed be- cause of the clash between religious and secular worldviews, a truly monumental shift in attitudes had begun. Secularization encompassed the grow- ing popularity of nonreligious forms of art, such as theater and opera; the search for nonreligious foundations of political authority; and the estab- lishment of scientific method as the standard of truth. Proponents of these changes did not re- nounce their religious beliefs or even hold them less

fervently, but they did insist that attention to state interests and scientific knowledge could diminish religious violence and popular superstitions.

480 Chapter 15 ■ Wars of Religion and the Cl a sh of Worldviews 1560–1648

For Further Exploration ■ For suggested references, including Web sites,

for topics in this chapter, see page SR-1 at the end of the book.

■ For additional primary-source material from this period, see Chapter 15 in Sources of THE MAKING OF THE WEST, Third Edition.

■ For Web sites and documents related to topics in this chapter, see Make History at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

ENGLANDENGLAND

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The Religious Divisions of Europe, c. 1648 The Peace of Westphalia recognized major religious divisions within Europe that have endured for the most part to the present day. Catholicism dominated in southern Europe, Lutheranism had its stronghold in northern Europe, and Calvinism flourished along the Rhine River. In southeastern Europe, the Islamic Ottoman Turks accommodated the Greek Orthodox Christians under their rule but bitterly fought the Catholic Austrian Habsburgs for control of Hungary.

Chapter Review 4811560–1648

Key Terms and People Making Connections

Review Questions

1. How did the balance of power shift in Europe between 1560 and 1648? What were the main reasons for the shift?

2. Relate the new developments in the arts and sciences to the political and economic changes of this period of crisis.

1. How did state power depend on religious unity at the end of the sixteenth century and start of the seventeenth?

2. Why did a war fought over religious differences result in stronger states?

3. What were the consequences of economic recession in the early 1600s?

4. How could belief in witchcraft and the rising prestige of sci- entific method coexist?

Chapter Review

Catherine de Médicis (453)

Edict of Nantes (455)

politiques (455)

Philip II (455)

Lepanto (455)

Elizabeth I (458)

Puritans (458)

Peace of Westphalia (463)

raison d’état (464)

secularization (471)

baroque (472)

scientific method (475)

heliocentrism (475) For practice quizzes, a customized study plan, and other study tools, see the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

Important Events

1562 French Wars of Religion begin

1566 Revolt of Calvinists in the Netherlands against Spain begins

1569 Formation of commonwealth of Poland- Lithuania

1571 Battle of Lepanto marks victory of West over Ottomans at sea

1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of French Protestants

1588 English defeat of the Spanish Armada

1598 French Wars of Religion end with Edict of Nantes

1601 William Shakespeare, Hamlet

1618 Thirty Years’ War begins

1625 Hugo Grotius publishes The Laws of War and Peace

1633 Galileo Galilei is forced to recant his support of heliocentrism

1635 French join the Thirty Years’ War by declaring war on Spain

1648 Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years’ War

In May 1664, King Louis XIV of France organized a weeklong seriesof entertainments for his court at Versailles, where he had recentlybegun construction of a magnificent new palace. More than six hun- dred members of his court attended the series of spectacles called “The

Delights of the Enchanted Island.” The carefully orchestrated activities

opened with an elaborate parade of the king and his courtiers, accom-

panied by an eighteen-foot-high float in the form of a chariot dedi-

cated to Apollo, Greek god of the sun and Louis’s personally chosen

emblem. The king’s favorite artists presented works specially prepared for

the occasion, including ballets, plays, and musical concerts. Equestrian

tournaments, visits to the king’s personal collection of wild animals

and birds, and a huge fireworks display captivated the audience. Every

detail of the festivities appeared in an official program published the

same year.

Louis XIV spared no expense in promoting his image, especially to

those most dangerous to him, the leading nobles of his kingdom. Other

mid-seventeenth-century rulers followed his example or explicitly re-

jected it, but they could not afford to ignore it. All governments faced

the daunting task of rebuilding authority after the wars over religion

and the economic recession of the early seventeenth century. As part

of his campaign to underline his majesty, Louis encouraged leading

nobles to dispense huge sums to entertain him and his court. He always

spent even more in order to show that he was richer and more pow-

erful than any noble or than any other monarch.

Louis XIV’s model of state building was known as absolutism, a

system of government in which the ruler claims sole and uncontestable

power. Although absolutism exerted great influence beginning in the

mid-1600s, especially in central and eastern Europe, it faced competition

Louis XIV: Absolutism and Its Limits 484 • The Fronde, 1648–1653 • Court Culture as an Element

of Absolutism • Enforcing Religious Orthodoxy • Extending State Authority at

Home and Abroad

Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe 492 • Brandenburg-Prussia: Militaristic

Absolutism • An Uneasy Balance: Austrian Habsburgs

and Ottoman Turks • Russia: Setting the Foundations

of Bureaucratic Absolutism • Poland-Lithuania Overwhelmed

Constitutionalism in England 497 • England Turned Upside Down,

1642–1660 • The Glorious Revolution of 1688 • Social Contract Theory:

Hobbes and Locke

Outposts of Constitutionalism 505 • The Dutch Republic • Freedom and Slavery in the New World

The Search for Order in Elite and Popular Culture 509 • Freedom and Constraint in

the Arts and Sciences • Women and Manners • Reforming Popular Culture

483

State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

C H A P T E R

16

Louis XIV and His Bodyguards One of Louis XIV’s court painters, the Flemish artist Adam Frans van der Meulen, depicted the king arriving at the palace of Versailles, still under construction (the painting dates from 1669). None of the gardens, pools, or statues had been installed. Louis is the only figure facing the viewer, and his dress is much more colorful than that of anyone else in the painting. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.)

from constitutionalism, a system in which the ruler shares power with an assembly of elected rep- resentatives. Constitutionalism led to weakness in Poland-Lithuania, but it provided a strong foun- dation for state power in England, the Dutch Republic, and the British North American colonies. Constitutionalism triumphed in England, how- ever, only after one king had been executed as a traitor and another had been deposed. The Eng- lish conflicts over the nature of authority found their most enduring expression in the writings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, which laid the foundations of modern political science.

Whether absolutist or constitutionalist, nations faced similar challenges in the mid-seventeenth century. Competition in the international arena required resources, and all states raised taxes in this period, provoking popular protests and rebellions. Monarchs still relied on religion to justify their divine right to rule, but they increasingly sought secular defenses of their powers, too. Absolutism and constitutionalism were the two main re- sponses to the threat of disorder and breakdown left as a legacy of the wars over religion.

The search for order took place not only in government and politics but also in intellectual, cultural, and social life.Artists sought means of glo- rifying power and expressing order and symmetry in new fashion. As states consolidated their power, elites endeavored to distinguish themselves more clearly from the lower orders. The upper classes emulated the manners developed at court and tried in every way to distance themselves from anything viewed as vulgar or lower class. Officials, clergy, and laypeople all worked to reform the poor, now seen

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1640 1650 1660

■ 1642–1646 English civil war ■ 1649 Charles I beheaded; new Russian legal code

■ 1651 Hobbes, Leviathan ■ 1660 Monarchy restored in England

■ 1661 Barbados institutes slave code

■ 1648 Peace of Westphalia; Fronde revolt in France; Ukranian Cossacks rebel; Dutch Republic recognized as independent

as a major source of disorder. Whether absolutist or constitutionalist, seventeenth-century states all aimed to extend control over their subjects’ lives.

Focus Question: What were the most important differences between absolutism and constitutionalism, and how did they establish order?

Louis XIV: Absolutism and Its Limits French king Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) personified the absolutist ruler, who in theory shared his power with no one. Louis personally made all im- portant state decisions and left no room for dis- sent. In 1655, he reputedly told the Paris high court of justice, “L’état, c’est moi” (“I am the state”), em- phasizing that state authority rested in him per- sonally. Louis cleverly manipulated the affections and ambitions of his courtiers, chose as his min- isters middle-class men who owed everything to him, built up Europe’s largest army, and snuffed out every hint of religious or political opposition. Yet the absoluteness of his power should not be exaggerated. Like all other rulers of his time, Louis depended on the cooperation of many people: local officials who enforced his decrees, peasants and artisans who joined his armies and paid his taxes, creditors who loaned crucial funds, clergy who preached his notion of Catholicism, and nobles who joined court festivities rather than stay- ing home and causing trouble.

constitutionalism: A system of government in which rulers share power with parliaments made up of elected representa- tives.

absolutism: A system of government in which the ruler claims sole and uncontestable power.

Louis XIV: French king (r. 1643–1715) who personified the ab- solutist ruler; in theory he shared his power with no one, but in practice he had to gain the cooperation of nobles, local offi- cials, and even the ordinary subjects who manned his armies and paid his taxes.

The Fronde, 1648–1653

Louis XIV’s absolutism built on a long French tra- dition of increasing centralization of state author- ity, but before he could establish his preeminence he had to weather a series of revolts known as the Fronde. Derived from the French word for a child’s slingshot, the term was used by critics to signify that the revolts were mere child’s play. In fact, how- ever, they posed an unprecedented threat to the French crown. Louis was only five when he came to the throne in 1643 upon the death of his father, Louis XIII, who with his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, had steered France through increasing involvement in the Thirty Years’ War, rapidly climbing taxes, and innumerable tax revolts. Louis XIV’s mother, Anne of Austria, and her Italian- born adviser and rumored lover, Cardinal Mazarin (1602–1661), ruled in the young monarch’s name.

To meet the financial pressure of fighting the Thirty Years’ War, Mazarin sold new offices, raised taxes, and forced creditors to extend loans to the government. In 1648, a coalition of his opponents presented him with a charter of demands that, if granted, would have given the parlements (high courts) a form of constitutional power with the right to approve new taxes. Mazarin responded by arresting the leaders of the parlements. He soon faced the series of revolts that at one time or an- other involved nearly every social group in France.

The Fronde posed an immediate menace to the young king. Fearing for his safety, his mother and members of his court took Louis and fled Paris. With civil war threatening, Mazarin and Anne agreed to compromise with the parlements. The nobles saw an opportunity to reassert their claims to power against the weakened monarchy and renewed their demands for greater local con- trol, which they had lost when the French Wars of Religion ended in 1598. Leading noblewomen often played key roles in the opposition to

Mazarin, carrying messages and forging alliances, especially when male family members were in prison. While the nobles sought to regain power and local influence, the middle and lower classes chafed at the repeated tax increases. Conflicts erupted throughout the kingdom as nobles, par- lements, and city councils all raised their own

Louis X IV: Absolutism and Its L imits 4851648–1690

1670 1680 1690

■ 1667 First of Louis XIV’s many wars

■ 1678 Madame de Lafayette, The Princess of Clèves

■ 1683 Austrian Habsburgs break Turkish siege of Vienna

■ 1685 Louis XIV revokes Edict of Nantes

■ 1688 William and Mary crowned

■ 1690 Locke, Two Treatises of Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Louis XIV, Conqueror of the Fronde In this painting of 1654, Louis XIV is depicted as the Roman god Jupiter, who crushes the discord of the Fronde (represented on the shield by the Medusa’s head made up of snakes). When the Fronde began, Louis was only ten years old; at the time of this painting, he was sixteen. The propaganda about his divine qualities had already begun. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/ Art Resource, NY.)

armies to fight either the crown or each other, and rampaging soldiers devastated rural areas and disrupted commerce. The urban poor, such as those in the southwestern city of Bordeaux, sometimes revolted as well.

Neither the nobles nor the judges of the parlements really wanted to overthrow the king; they simply wanted a greater share in power. Mazarin and Anne eventually got the upper hand because their opponents failed to maintain unity in fighting the king’s forces. But Louis XIV never forgot the hu- miliation and uncertainty that

marred his childhood. His own policies as ruler would be designed to prevent the recurrence of any such revolts. Yet, for all his success, peasants would revolt against the introduction of new taxes on at least five more occasions in the 1660s and 1670s, requiring tens of thousands of soldiers to reestab- lish order. Absolutism was in part a fervent hope and not always a reality.

Court Culture as an Element of Absolutism When Cardinal Mazarin died in 1661, Louis XIV, then twenty-two years old, decided to rule with- out a first minister. He described the dangers of his situation in memoirs he wrote later for his son’s instruction: “Everywhere was disorder. My Court

as a whole was still very far removed from the sen- timents in which I trust you will find it.” Louis listed many other problems in the kingdom, but none occupied him more than his attempts to con- trol France’s leading nobles, some of whom came from families that had opposed him militarily dur- ing the Fronde.

Typically quarrelsome, the French nobles had long exercised local authority by maintaining their own fighting forces, meting out justice on their es- tates, arranging jobs for underlings, and resolving their own conflicts through dueling. Louis set out to domesticate the warrior nobles by replacing violence with court ritual, such as the festivities at Versailles described at the beginning of this chap- ter. Using a systematic policy of bestowing pen- sions, offices, honors, gifts, and the threat of disfavor or punishment, Louis induced the nobles to cooperate with him and made himself the cen- ter of French power and culture. The aristocracy increasingly vied for his favor, attended the ballets and theatricals he put on, and learned the rules of etiquette he supervised — in short, became his clients, dependent on him for advancement. Great nobles competed for the honor of holding his shirt when he dressed, foreign ambassadors squabbled for places near him, and royal mistresses basked in the glow of his personal favor. Far from the court, however, nobles could still make considerable trouble for the king, and royal officials learned to compromise with them.

Those who did come to the king’s court were kept on their toes. The preferred styles changed without notice, and the tiniest lapse in attention to etiquette could lead to ruin. Madame de

486 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

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The Fronde, 1648–1653

Louis XIV Visits the Royal Tapestry Workshop This tapestry was woven at the Gobelins tapestry workshop between 1673 and 1680. It shows Louis XIV (wearing a red hat) and his minister Colbert (dressed in black, holding his hat) visiting the workshop on the outskirts of Paris. The workshop artisans scurry to show Louis all the luxury objects they manufacture. Louis bought the workshop in 1662 and made it a national enterprise for making tapestries and furniture. (Bridgeman- Giraudon/ Art Resource, NY.)

Lafayette described the court in her novel The Princess of Clèves (1678): “The Court gravitated around ambition. Nobody was tranquil or indif- ferent — everybody was busily trying to better his or her position by pleasing, by helping, or by hin- dering somebody else.” Elisabeth Charlotte, duchess of Orléans, the German-born sister-in-law of Louis, complained that “everything here is pure self-interest and deviousness.” (See Document, “Marie de Sévigné, Letter Describing the French Court,” above.)

Politics and the Arts. Louis XIV appreciated the political uses of every form of art. Mock battles, extravaganzas, theatrical performances, even the king’s dinner — Louis’s daily life was a public per- formance designed to enhance his prestige. Call- ing himself the Sun King, after Apollo, Greek god of the sun, Louis stopped at nothing to burnish this radiant image. He played Apollo in ballets per- formed at court; posed for portraits with the em- blems of Apollo (laurel, lyre, and tripod); and adorned his palaces with statues of the god. He also emulated the style and methods of ancient Roman emperors. At a celebration for the birth of his first son in 1662, Louis dressed in Roman at- tire, and many engravings and paintings showed him as a Roman emperor. Commissioned histo-

ries vaunted his achievements, and coins and medals spread his likeness throughout the realm.

The king’s officials treated the arts as a branch of government. The king gave pensions to artists who worked for him and sometimes protected writers from clerical critics. The most famous of these was the playwright Molière, whose comedy Tartuffe (1664) made fun of religious hypocrites and was loudly condemned by church leaders. Louis forced Molière to delay public performances of the play after its premiere at the festivities of May 1664 but resisted calls for his dismissal. Louis’s ministers set up royal academies of dance, painting, architecture, music, and science and took control of the Académie française (French Acad- emy), which to this day decides on correct usage of the French language. Louis’s government also regulated the number and locations of theaters and closely censored all forms of publication.

Music and theater enjoyed special promi- nence. Louis commissioned operas to celebrate royal marriages, baptisms, and military victories. His favorite composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully, wrote sixteen operas for court performances as well as many ballets. Louis himself danced in the bal- lets if a role seemed especially important. Play- wrights often presented their new plays first to the court. Pierre Corneille and Jean-Baptiste Racine

Louis X IV: Absolutism and Its L imits 4871648–1690

Marie de Sévigné, Letter Describing the French Court (1675)

D O C U M E N T

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné (1626–1696), was the most famous letter writer of her time. A noblewoman born in Paris, she frequented court circles and wrote about her experiences to her friends and relatives, especially her daugh- ter. Although not published in her lifetime, her letters soon gained fame and were copied and read by those in her circle. She wrote her later letters with this audience in mind and so downplayed her own personal feel- ings, except those of missing her daughter to whom she was deeply attached. This letter from 1675 to her daughter recounts court intrigue surrounding Louis XIV’s mistress and the shock when one of France’s leading generals was killed in battle. Though Sévi- gné enjoyed spending time at Louis XIV’s

court, she could also write about it with bit- ing wit.

They [the king and his court] were to set off today for Fontainebleau [one of the king’s castles near Paris], where the enter- tainments were to become boring by their very multiplicity. Everything was ready when a bolt fell from the blue that shat- tered the joy. The populace says it is on ac- count of Quantova [Sévigné’s nickname for the king’s mistress, Madame de Mon- tespan, who gave birth to seven children fathered by Louis XIV], the attachment is still intense. Enough fuss is being made to upset the curé [priest] and everybody else, but perhaps not enough for her, for in her visible triumph there is an underlying sad-

ness. You talk of the pleasures of Versailles, and at the time when they were off to Fontainebleau to plunge into joys, lo and behold M. De Turenne [commander of the French armies during the Dutch War] killed, general consternation, Monsieur le Prince [de Condé, another leading gen- eral], rushing off to Germany, France in desolation. Instead of seeing the end of the campaigns and having your brother back [Sévigné’s son served in the army], we don’t know where we are. There you have the world in its triumph and, since you like them, surprising events.

Source: Madame de Sévigné: Selected Letters, translated Leonard Tancock (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 165.

wrote tragedies set in Greece or Rome that cele- brated the new aristocratic virtues that Louis aimed to inculcate: a reverence for order and self- control. All the characters were regal or noble, all the language lofty, all the behavior aristocratic.

The Palace of Versailles. Louis glorified his im- age as well through massive public works projects. Veterans’ hospitals and new fortified towns on the frontiers represented his military might. Urban improvements, such as the reconstruction of the Louvre palace in Paris, proved his wealth. But his most ambitious project was the construction of a new palace at Versailles, twelve miles from the tur- bulent capital (see illustration below).

Building began in the 1660s. By 1685, the fren- zied effort engaged thirty-six thousand workers, not including the thousands of troops who diverted a local river to supply water for pools and foun- tains. The gardens designed by landscape architect André Le Nôtre reflected the spirit of Louis XIV’s rule: their geometrical arrangements and clear

lines showed that art and design could tame nature and that order and control defined the exercise of power. Le Nôtre’s geometrical landscapes were later imitated in places as far away as St. Petersburg in Russia and Washington, D.C. Versailles symbol- ized Louis’s success in reining in the nobility and dominating Europe, and other monarchs eagerly mimicked French fashion and often conducted their business in French.

Yet for all its apparent luxury and frivolity, life at Versailles was often cramped and cold. Fifteen thousand people crowded into the palace’s apart- ments, including all the highest military officers, the ministers of state, and the separate households of each member of the royal family. Refuse col- lected in the corridors during the incessant build- ing, and thieves and prostitutes overran the grounds. By the time Louis actually moved from the Louvre to Versailles in 1682, he had reigned as monarch for thirty-nine years. After his wife’s death in 1683, he secretly married his mistress, Françoise d’Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon, and

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The Palace of Versailles This painting by Jean-Baptiste Martin from the late seventeenth century gives a good view of one section of the palace and especially the geometrically arranged gardens. What would observers conclude about Louis XIV when they viewed this scene? (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/ Art Resource, NY.)

conducted most state affairs from her apartments at the palace. Her opponents at court complained that she controlled all the appointments, but her efforts focused on her own projects, including her favorite: the founding in 1686 of a royal school for girls from impoverished noble families. She also inspired Louis XIV to increase his devotion to Catholicism.

Enforcing Religious Orthodoxy Louis believed that he reigned by divine right. He served as God’s lieutenant on earth and even claimed certain godlike qualities. As Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627–1704) explained, “We have seen that kings take the place of God, who is the true father of the human species. We have also seen that the first idea of power which exists among men is that of the paternal power; and that kings are modeled on fathers.” The king, like a father, should instruct his subjects in the true religion, or at least make sure that others did so. In religious questions, too, the king’s endeavors to gain more complete control showed both his wide- ranging ambition and the nature of the obstacles he faced.

Louis’s campaign for religious conformity first focused on the Jansenists, Catholics whose doctrines and practices resembled some aspects of Protes- tantism. Following the posthumous publication of the book Augustinus (1640) by the Flemish theolo- gian Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), the Jansenists stressed the need for God’s grace in achieving salva- tion. They emphasized the importance of original sin and resembled the English Puritans in their austere religious practice. Prominent among the Jansenists was Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), a mathe- matician of genius, who wrote his Provincial Letters (1656–1657) to defend Jansenism against charges of heresy. Many judges in the parlements likewise endorsed Jansenist doctrine.

Some questioned Louis’s understanding of the finer points of doctrine: according to his sister-in- law, Louis himself “has never read anything about religion, nor the Bible either, and just goes along believing whatever he is told.” But Louis rejected any doctrine that gave priority to considerations of individual conscience over the demands of the official church hierarchy, especially when that doc- trine had been embraced by some noble support- ers of the Fronde. Louis preferred teachings that stressed obedience to authority. Therefore, in 1660 he began enforcing various papal bulls (decrees) against Jansenism and closed down Jansenist the- ological centers. Jansenists were forced under- ground for the rest of his reign.

After many years of escalating pressure on the Calvinist Huguenots, Louis decided in 1685 to eliminate all of the Calvinists’ rights. Louis consid- ered the Edict of Nantes (1598), by which his grandfather Henry IV granted the Protestants re- ligious freedom and a degree of political inde- pendence, a temporary measure, and he fervently hoped to reconvert the Huguenots to Catholicism. His revocation of the Edict of Nantes closed their churches and schools, banned all their public ac- tivities, and exiled those who refused to embrace the state religion. Tens of thousands of Huguenots responded by emigrating to England, Brandenburg- Prussia, the Dutch Republic, or North America. Many now wrote for publications attacking Louis XIV’s absolutism. Protestant European countries were shocked by this crackdown on religious dis- sent and would cite it in justification of their wars against Louis.

Extending State Authority at Home and Abroad Louis XIV could not have enforced his religious policies without the services of a nationwide bu- reaucracy. Bureaucracy — a network of state offi- cials carrying out orders according to a regular and routine line of authority — comes from the French word bureau, for “desk,” which came to mean “office,” both in the sense of a physical space and a position of authority. Louis personally super- vised the activities of his bureaucrats and worked to ensure his supremacy in all matters. But he al- ways had to negotiate with nobles and local offi- cials who sometimes thwarted his will.

Bureaucracy and Mercantilism. Louis extended the bureaucratic forms his predecessors had devel- oped, especially the use of intendants, officials who held their positions directly from the king rather than owning their offices, as crown officials had tra- ditionally done. Louis handpicked an intendant for each region to represent his rule against entrenched local interests such as the parlements, provincial es- tates, and noble governors; they supervised the col- lection of taxes, the financing of public works, and the provisioning of the army. In 1673, Louis decreed that the parlements could no longer vote against his proposed laws or even speak against them. His

Louis X IV: Absolutism and Its L imits 4891648–1690

revocation of the Edict of Nantes: French king Louis XIV’s de- cision to eliminate the rights of Calvinists granted in the edict of 1598; Louis banned all Calvinist public activities and forced those who refused to embrace the state religion to flee.

bureaucracy: A network of state officials carrying out orders ac- cording to a regular and routine line of authority.

intendants reduced local powers over finances and insisted on more efficient tax collection.

Louis’s success in consolidating his authority depended on hard work, an eye for detail, and an ear to the ground. In his memoirs he described the tasks he set for himself:

to learn each hour the news concerning every province and every nation, the secrets of every court, the mood and weaknesses of each Prince and of every foreign minister; to be well-informed on an infinite number of matters about which we are supposed to know nothing; to elicit from our subjects what they hide from us with the greatest care; to discover the most remote opinions of our courtiers and the most hidden interests of those who come to us with quite contrary professions [claims].

To gather all this information, Louis relied on a se- ries of talented ministers, usually of modest origins, who gained fame, fortune, and even noble status from serving the king. Most important among them was Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683), the son of a wool merchant turned royal official. Colbert had managed Mazarin’s personal finances and worked his way up under Louis XIV to become head of royal finances, public works, and the navy. He founded a family dynasty that eventually produced five ministers of state, an archbishop, two bishops, and three generals.

Colbert used the bureaucracy to establish a new economic doctrine, mercantilism. According to mercantilist policy, governments must inter- vene to increase national wealth by whatever means possible. Such government intervention inevitably increased the role and eventually the number of bureaucrats needed. Under Colbert, the French government established overseas trad- ing companies, granted manufacturing monopo- lies, and standardized production methods for textiles, paper, and soap. A government inspection system regulated the quality of finished goods and compelled all craftsmen to organize into guilds, in which masters could supervise the work of the journeymen and apprentices. To protect French production, Colbert rescinded many internal cus- toms fees but enacted high foreign tariffs, which cut imports of competing goods. To compete more effectively with England and the Dutch Re- public, Colbert also subsidized shipbuilding, a policy that dramatically expanded the number of seaworthy vessels. Such mercantilist measures aimed to ensure France’s prominence in world markets and to provide the resources needed to fight wars against the increasingly long list of en-

emies. Although later economists questioned the value of this state intervention in the economy, virtually every government in Europe embraced mercantilism.

Colbert’s mercantilist projects extended to Canada, where in 1663 he took control of the trading company that had founded New France. He aimed to regulate all economic activity in the colonies. For example, he forbade colonial busi- nesses from manufacturing anything already pro- duced in mainland France. With the goal of establishing permanent settlements like those in the British North American colonies, he trans- planted several thousand peasants from western France to the present-day province of Quebec, which France had claimed since 1608. He also tried to limit expansion westward, without suc- cess. Despite initial interruption of French fur- trading convoys by the Iroquois, in 1672 fur trader Louis Jolliet and Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette reached the upper Mississippi River and traveled downstream as far as Arkansas. In 1684, French explorer Sieur de La Salle went all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico, claiming a vast territory for Louis XIV and calling it Louisiana after him. Colbert’s successors em- braced the expansion he had resisted, thinking it crucial to competing successfully with the Eng- lish and the Dutch in the New World.

The Army and War. Colonial settlement occupied only a small portion of Louis XIV’s attention, how- ever, for his main foreign policy goal was to extend French power in Europe. In pursuing this purpose, he inevitably came up against the Spanish and Aus- trian Habsburgs, whose lands encircled his. To expand French power, Louis needed the biggest possible army. His powerful ministry of war cen- tralized the organization of French troops. Bar- racks built in major towns received supplies from a central distribution system. The state began to provide uniforms for the soldiers and to offer vet- erans some hospital care. A militia draft instituted in 1688 supplemented the army in times of war and enrolled a hundred thousand men. Louis’s wartime army could field a force as large as that of all his enemies combined.

Absolutist governments always tried to in- crease their territorial holdings, and as Louis ex- tended his reach, he gained new enemies. In 1667–1668, in the War of Devolution (so called because Louis claimed that lands in the Spanish Netherlands should devolve to him since the Span- ish king had failed to pay the dowry of Louis’s Spanish bride), Louis defeated the Spanish armies

490 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

mercantilism: The doctrine that governments must intervene to increase national wealth by whatever means possible.

but had to make peace when England, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic joined the war. In the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668, he gained control of a few towns on the border of the Spanish Nether- lands. Pamphlets sponsored by the Habsburgs ac- cused Louis of aiming for “universal monarchy,” or domination of Europe.

In 1672, Louis XIV opened hostilities against the Dutch because they stood in the way of his acquisition of more territory in the Spanish Netherlands. He declared war again on Spain in 1673. By now the Dutch had allied themselves with their former Spanish masters to hold off the French. Louis also marched his troops into terri- tories of the Holy Roman Empire, provoking many of the German princes to join with the em- peror, the Spanish, and the Dutch in an alliance against Louis, now denounced as a “Christian Turk” for his imperialist ambitions. But the French armies more than held their own. Faced with bloody but inconclusive results on the bat- tlefield, the parties agreed to the Treaty of Nij- megen of 1678–1679, which ceded several Flemish towns and the Franche-Comté region to Louis, linking Alsace to the rest of France. French government deficits soared, and in 1675 increases in taxes touched off the most serious antitax re- volt of Louis’s reign.

Louis had no intention of standing still. Heart- ened by the Habsburgs’ seeming weakness, he pushed eastward, seizing the city of Strasbourg in 1681 and invading the province of Lorraine in 1684. In 1688, he attacked some of the small Ger- man cities of the Holy Roman Empire. As Louis’s own mental powers diminished with age, he ap- parently lost all sense of measure. His armies laid waste to German cities such as Mannheim; his gov- ernment ordered the local military commander to “kill all those who would still wish to build houses there.” Between 1689 and 1697, a coalition known as the League of Augsburg — made up of England, Spain, Sweden, the Dutch Republic, the Austrian emperor, and various German princes — fought Louis XIV to a stalemate. When hostilities ended in the Peace of Rijswijk in 1697, Louis returned many of his conquests made since 1678 with the exception of Strasbourg (Map 16.1). Louis never lost his taste for war, but his allies learned how to set limits on his ambitions. (See Chapter 17 for the end of Louis’s reign.)

Louis was the last French ruler before Napoleon to accompany his troops to the battle- field. In later generations, as the military became more professional, French rulers left the fighting to their generals. Although Louis had eliminated

the private armies of his noble courtiers, he con- stantly promoted his own military prowess in or- der to keep his noble officers under his sway. He had miniature battle scenes painted on his high heels and commissioned tapestries showing his military processions into cities, even those he did not take by force. He seized every occasion to as- sert his supremacy, insisting that other fleets salute his ships first.

War required money and men, which Louis obtained by expanding state control over finances, conscription, and military supply. Thus, abso- lutism and warfare fed each other as the bureau- cracy created new ways to raise and maintain an army and the army’s success in war justified fur- ther expansion of state power. But constant war- fare also eroded the state’s resources. Further administrative and legal reform, the elimination of the buying and selling of offices, and the lowering of taxes — all were made impossible by the need for more money.

Ordinary people suffered the most for Louis’s ambitions. By the end of the Sun King’s reign, one in six Frenchmen had served in the military. Louis XIV’s armies swelled to twice the size of the armies France fielded during the Thirty Years’ War. In ad- dition to the higher taxes paid by everyone, those who lived on the routes leading to the battlefields had to house and feed soldiers; only nobles were exempt from this requirement. Fulfilling these

Louis X IV: Absolutism and Its L imits 4911648–1690

W A R S O F L O U I S X I V

1667–1668 War of Devolution

Enemies: Spain, Dutch Republic, England, Sweden

Ended by Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668, with France gaining towns in Spanish Netherlands (Flanders)

1672–1678 Dutch War

Enemies: Dutch Republic, Spain, Holy Roman Empire

Ended by Treaty of Nijmegen, 1678–1679, which gave several towns in Spanish Netherlands and Franche-Comté to France

1688–1697 War of the League of Augsburg

Enemies: Holy Roman Empire, Sweden, Spain, England

Ended by Peace of Rijswijk, 1697, with Louis returning all his conquests made since 1678 except Strasbourg

demands could be difficult, if not impossible, es- pecially during the months from November to March when weather made military campaigns difficult. Soldiers had to be fed, even when locals found themselves living off the food stored from the previous fall harvest. When food fell short, sol- diers sometimes gave in to the temptation to pil- lage, extort, or steal from local residents.

Review: How “absolute” was the power of Louis XIV?

Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe Central and eastern European rulers saw in Louis XIV a powerful model of absolutist state building, yet they did not blindly emulate the Sun King, in part because they confronted conditions peculiar to their regions. The ruler of Brandenburg-Prussia had to rebuild lands ravaged by the Thirty Years’ War and unite far-flung territories. The Austrian Habsburgs needed to govern a mosaic of ethnic

492 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

MAP 16.1 Louis XIV’s Acquisitions, 1668–1697 Every ruler in Europe hoped to extend his or her territorial control, and war was often the result. Louis XIV steadily encroached on the Spanish Netherlands to the north and the lands of the Holy Roman Empire to the east. Although coalitions of European powers reined in Louis’s grander ambitions, he nonetheless incorporated many neighboring territories into the French crown.

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and religious groups while fighting off the Ottoman Turks. The Russian tsars wanted to extend their power over an extensive but relatively impoverished empire. The great exception to ab- solutism in eastern Europe was Poland-Lithuania, where a long crisis virtually destroyed central au- thority and pulled much of eastern Europe into its turbulent wake.

Brandenburg-Prussia: Militaristic Absolutism Brandenburg-Prussia began as a puny state on the Elbe River, but it had a remarkable future. In the nineteenth century, it would unify the disparate German states into modern-day Germany. The ruler of Brandenburg was an elector, one of the seven German princes entitled to select the Holy Roman Emperor. Since the sixteenth century the ruler of Brandenburg had also controlled the duchy of East Prussia; after 1618, the state was called Brandenburg-Prussia. Despite meager re- sources, Frederick William of Hohenzollern, who was the Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia (r. 1640–1688), succeeded in welding his scattered lands into an absolutist state.

Pressured first by the necessities of fighting the Thirty Years’ War and then by the demands of re-

construction, Frederick William was determined to force his territories’ estates (representative assem- blies) to grant him a dependable income. The Great Elector struck a deal with the Junkers (nobles) of each province: in exchange for allowing him to col- lect taxes, he gave them complete control over their enserfed peasants and exempted them from taxa- tion. The tactic worked. By the end of his reign, the estates met only on ceremonial occasions.

Supplied with a steady income, Frederick William could devote his attention to military and bureaucratic consolidation. Over forty years he ex- panded his army from eight thousand to thirty thousand men. (See “Taking Measure,” above.) The army mirrored the rigid domination of nobles over peasants that characterized Brandenburg-Prussian society: peasants filled the ranks, and Junkers be- came officers. Nobles also took positions as bu- reaucratic officials, but military needs always had priority. The elector named special war commis- sars to take charge not only of military affairs but also of tax collection. To hasten military dis- patches, he also established one of Europe’s first state postal systems.

As a Calvinist ruler, Frederick William avoided the ostentation of the French court, even while fol- lowing the absolutist model of centralizing state power. He boldly rebuffed Louis XIV by welcom- ing twenty thousand French Huguenot refugees af- ter Louis’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In pursuing foreign and domestic policies that pro- moted state power and prestige, Frederick William adroitly switched sides in Louis’s wars and would

Absolutism in Central and Ea stern Europe 4931648–1690

Frederick William of Hohenzollern: The Great Elector of Bran- denburg-Prussia (r. 1640–1688) who brought his nation through the end of the Thirty Years’ War and then succeeded in welding his scattered lands into an absolutist state.

T A K I N G M E A S U R E

The Seventeenth-Century Army The figures in this chart are only ap- proximate, but they tell an important story. What conclusions can you draw about the relative weight of the mili- tary in the different European states? Why would England have such a smaller army than the others? Is the absolute or the relative size of the military the most important indicator? (From André Corvisier, Armées et sociétés en

Europe de 1494 à 1789 (Paris: Presses

Universitaires de France, 1976), 126.)

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*Figures for the end of the seventeenth century, ranging from 1688 for Prussia to 1710 for France

stop at almost nothing to crush resistance at home. In 1701, his son Frederick I (r. 1688–1713) per- suaded Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I to grant him the title “king in Prussia.” Prussia had arrived as an important power.

An Uneasy Balance: Austrian Habsburgs and Ottoman Turks Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I (r. 1658–1705) ruled over a variety of territories of different eth- nicities, languages, and religions, yet in ways sim- ilar to his French and Prussian counterparts, he gradually consolidated his power. In addition to holding Louis XIV in check on his western fron- tiers, Leopold confronted the ever-present chal- lenge of the Ottoman Turks to the east.

The Austrian Version of Absolutism. Like all the Holy Roman Emperors since 1438, Leopold was an Austrian Habsburg. He was simultaneously duke

of Upper and Lower Silesia, count of Tyrol, arch- duke of Upper and Lower Austria, king of Bohemia, king of Hungary and Croatia, and ruler of Styria and Moravia (Map 16.2). Some of these territories were provinces in the Holy Roman Empire; others were simply ruled from Vienna as Habsburg family holdings.

In response to the weakening of the Holy Ro- man Empire by the ravages of the Thirty Years’ War, the emperor and his closest officials took con- trol over recruiting, provisioning, and strategic planning and worked to replace the mercenaries hired during the war with a permanent standing army that promoted professional discipline. To pay for the army and staff his growing bureaucracy, Leopold gained the support of local aristocrats and chipped away at provincial institutions’ powers.

Intent on replacing Bohemian nobles who had supported the 1618 revolt against Austrian author- ity, the Habsburgs promoted a new nobility made up of Czechs, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and

494 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

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MAP 16.2 State Building in Central and Eastern Europe, 1648–1699 The Austrian Habsburgs had long contested the Ottoman Turks for dominance of eastern Europe, and by 1699 they had pushed the Turks out of Hungary. In central Europe, the Austrian Habsburgs confronted the growing power of Brandenburg-Prussia, which had emerged from relative obscurity after the Thirty Years’ War to begin an aggressive program of expanding its military and its territorial base. As emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian Habsburg ruler governed a huge expanse of territory, but the emperor’s control was in fact only partial because of guarantees of local autonomy.

even Irish who used German as their common tongue, professed Catholicism, and loyally served the Austrian dynasty. Bohemia became a virtual Austrian colony. “Woe to you,” lamented a Czech Jesuit in 1670, addressing Leopold,“the nobles you have oppressed, great cities made small. Of smil- ing towns you have made straggling villages.” Aus- trian censors prohibited publication of this protest for over a century.

Battle for Hungary. Austria had fought the Turks for control of Hungary for more than 150 years. In 1682, when war broke out again, Leopold I’s Austria controlled the northwest section of Hungary; the Turks occupied the center; and in the east, the Turks demanded tribute from the Hun- garian princes who ruled Transylvania. In 1683, the Turks pushed all the way to the gates of Vienna and laid siege to the Austrian capital. With the help of Polish cavalry, the Austrians finally broke the siege and turned the tide in a major counteroffen- sive (see illustration at right). By the Treaty of Kar- lowitz of 1699, the Ottoman Turks surrendered almost all of Hungary to the Austrians, marking the beginning of the decline of Ottoman power.

Hungary’s “liberation” from the Turks came at a high price. The fighting laid waste vast stretches of Hungary’s central plain, and the population may have declined by as much as 65 percent in the seventeenth century. Once the Turks had been beaten back, Austrian rule over Hungary tight- ened. In 1687, the Habsburg dynasty’s hereditary right to the Hungarian crown was acknowledged by the Hungarian diet, a parliament revived by Leopold in 1681 to gain the cooperation of Hun- garian nobles. The diet was dominated by a core of pro-Habsburg Hungarian aristocrats who would support the dynasty until it fell in 1918; Austrians and Hungarians looked down on the other ethnic groups, such as Croats and Romani- ans, who had enjoyed considerable autonomy un- der the Ottoman Turks. To root out remaining Turkish influence and assert Austrian superiority, Leopold systematically destroyed Turkish build- ings and rebuilt Catholic churches, monasteries, roadside shrines, and monuments in the flamboy- ant Austrian baroque style.

Ottoman State Authority. The Ottoman Turks also pursued state consolidation, but in a very dif- ferent fashion from Leopold I and other European rulers. The Ottoman state extended its authority through a combination of settlement and military control. Hundreds of thousands of Turkish fami- lies moved with Turkish soldiers into the Balkan peninsula in the 1400s and 1500s. As locals con-

verted to Islam, administration passed gradually into their hands. The Ottoman state would last longer than the French absolutist monarchy. Nevertheless, the seventeenth century marked a period of cultural decline in the eyes of the Turks themselves.

The Ottoman rulers, the sultans, were often challenged by mutinous army officers, but they rarely faced peasant revolts. Rather than resisting state authorities, Ottoman peasants periodically worked for the state as mercenaries. The sultans played elites off each other, absorbing some into the state bureaucracy and pitting one level of au- thority against another. Despite frequent palace coups and assassinations of sultans, the Ottoman state survived. This constantly shifting social and political system explains how the Ottoman state could appear weak in Western eyes and still pose a massive military threat on Europe’s southeastern borders.

Absolutism in Central and Ea stern Europe 4951648–1690

The Siege of Vienna, 1683 This detail from a painting by Franz Geffels shows the camp of the Ottoman Turks. The Turkish armies had surrounded Vienna since July 14, 1683. Jan Sobieski led an army of Poles who joined with Austrians and Germans to beat back the Turks on September 12, 1683. (© The Art Archive/ Corbis.)

Russia: Setting the Foundations of Bureaucratic Absolutism Seventeenth-century Russia seemed a world apart from the Europe of Leopold I and Louis XIV. Straddling Europe and Asia, the Russian lands stretched across Siberia to the Pacific Ocean. West- ern visitors either sneered or shuddered at the “barbarism” of Russian life, and Russians recipro- cated by nursing deep suspicions of everything for- eign. But under the surface, Russia was evolving as an absolutist state; the tsars wanted to claim un- limited autocratic power, but like their European counterparts they had to surmount internal disor- der and come to an accommodation with noble landlords.

Serfdom and the Code of 1649. When Tsar Alexei (r. 1645–1676) tried to extend state author- ity by imposing new administrative structures and taxes in 1648, Moscow and other cities erupted in bloody rioting. The government immediately doused the fire. In 1649, Alexei convened the As- sembly of the Land (consisting of noble delegates from the provinces) to consult on a sweeping law code to organize Russian society in a strict social hierarchy that would last for nearly two centuries. The code of 1649 assigned all subjects to a hered- itary class according to their current occupation or state needs. Slaves and free peasants were merged into a serf class. As serfs, they could not change oc- cupations or move; they were tightly tied to the

soil and to their noble masters. To prevent tax eva- sion, the code also forbade townspeople to move from the community where they resided. Nobles owed absolute obedience to the tsar and were re- quired to serve in the army, but in return no other group could own estates worked by serfs. Serfs be- came the chattel of their lord, who could sell them like horses or land. Their lives differed little from those of the slaves on the plantations in the Americas.

Some peasants resisted enserfment. In 1667, Stenka Razin, the head of a powerful band of pi- rates and outlaws in southern Russia, led a rebel- lion that promised liberation from “the traitors and bloodsuckers of the peasant communes” — the great noble landowners, local governors, and Moscow courtiers. Captured four years later by the tsar’s army, Razin was taken to Moscow, where he was dismembered in front of the public and his body thrown to the dogs (see illustration at left). Thousands of his followers also suffered grisly deaths, but his memory lived on in folk songs and legends. Landlords successfully petitioned for the abolition of the statute of limitations on runaway serfs, the use of state agents in searching for run- aways, and harsh penalties against those who har- bored runaways. The increase in Russian state authority went hand in hand with the enforcement of serfdom.

The Tsar’s Absolute Powers. To extend his power and emulate his western rivals, Tsar Alexei wanted a bigger army, exclusive control over state policy, and a greater say in religious matters. The size of the army increased dramatically from 35,000 in the 1630s to 220,000 by the end of the century. The Assembly of the Land, once an important source of noble consultation, never met again after 1653. Alexei also imposed firm control over the Russian Orthodox church. In 1666, a church council reaf- firmed the tsar’s role as God’s direct representative on earth. The state-dominated church took action against a religious group called the Old Believers, who rejected church efforts to bring Russian wor- ship in line with Byzantine tradition. Whole com- munities of Old Believers starved or burned themselves to death rather than submit. Religious schism opened a gulf between the Russian people and the crown.

496 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

Stenka Razin: The head of a powerful band of pirates and out- laws in southern Russia, who in 1667 led a rebellion that prom- ised peasants liberation from noble landowners and officials; Razin was captured by the tsar’s army in 1671 and publicly ex- ecuted in Moscow.

Stenka Razin in Captivity After leading a revolt of thousands of serfs, peasants, and members of non-Russian tribes of the middle and lower Volga region, Stenka Razin was captured by Russian forces and led off to Moscow, as shown here, where he was executed in 1671. He has been the subject of songs, legends, and poems ever since. (RIA Novosti.)

Nevertheless, modernizing trends prevailed. As the state bureaucracy expanded, adding more officials and establishing regulations and routines, the government intervened more and more in daily life. Decrees regulated tobacco smoking, card playing, and alcohol consumption and even dic- tated how people should leash and fence their pet dogs. Tsar Alexei set up the first Western-style theater in the Kremlin, and his daughter Sophia translated French plays. The most adventurous nobles began to wear German-style clothing. Some even argued that service and not just birth should determine rank. Russia’s long struggle over Western influences had begun.

Poland-Lithuania Overwhelmed Unlike Russia and the other eastern European powers, Poland-Lithuania did not follow the abso- lutist model. Decades of war weakened the monar- chy and made the great nobles into virtually autonomous warlords. The great nobles domi- nated the Sejm (parliament), and to maintain an equilibrium among themselves, they each wielded an absolute veto power. This “free veto” constitu- tional system deadlocked parliamentary govern- ment. The monarchy lost its room to maneuver, and with it much of its remaining power.

In 1648, Ukrainian Cossack warriors revolted against the king of Poland-Lithuania, inaugurat- ing two decades of tumult known as the Deluge. Cossack was the name given to runaway serfs and poor nobles who formed outlaw bands in the no-man’s-land of southern Russia and Ukraine (Stenka Razin was a Cossack). The Polish nobles who claimed this potentially rich land scorned the Cossacks as troublemakers, but to the Ukrainian peasant population they were liberators. In 1654, the Cossacks offered Ukraine to Russian rule, pro- voking a Russo-Polish war that ended in 1667 when the tsar annexed eastern Ukraine and Kiev. Neighboring powers tried to profit from the chaos in Poland-Lithuania; Sweden, Brandenburg-Prussia, and Transylvania sent armies to seize territory.

Many towns were destroyed in the fighting, and as much as a third of the Polish population perished. The once prosperous Jewish and Protes- tant minorities suffered greatly: some fifty-six thousand Jews were killed by either the Cossacks, the Polish peasants, or the Russian troops, and thou- sands more had to flee or convert to Christianity. One rabbi wrote, “We were slaughtered each day, in a more agonizing way than cattle: they are butchered quickly, while we were being executed slowly.” Surviving Jews moved from towns to

shtetls (Jewish villages), where they took up petty trading, moneylending, tax gathering, and tavern leasing — activities that fanned peasant anti-Semi- tism. Desperate for protection amid the war, most Polish Protestants backed the vio- lently anti-Catholic Swedes, and the victorious Catholic majority branded them as trai- tors. Some Protestant refugees fled to the Dutch Republic and England. In Poland-Lithuania it came to be assumed that a good Pole was a Catholic. The commonwealth had ceased to be an outpost of toleration.

The commonwealth revived briefly when a man of ability and ambition, Jan Sobieski (r. 1674–1696), was elected king. He gained a rep- utation throughout Europe when he led twenty- five thousand Polish cavalrymen into battle in the siege of Vienna in 1683. His cavalry helped rout the Turks and turned the tide against the Ottomans. Married to a politically shrewd French princess, Sobieski openly admired Louis XIV’s France. Despite his efforts to rebuild the monarchy, he could not halt Poland-Lithuania’s decline into powerlessness. The Polish version of constitution- alism fatally weakened the state and made it prey to neighboring powers.

Review: Why did absolutism flourish everywhere in eastern Europe except Poland-Lithuania?

Constitutionalism in England In the second half of the seventeenth century, west- ern and eastern European states began to move in different directions. In eastern Europe, nobles lorded over their serfs but owed almost slavish obedience in turn to their rulers. In western Europe, even in absolutist France, serfdom had al- most entirely disappeared and nobles and rulers alike faced greater challenges to their control. The greatest challenges of all would come in England.

This outcome might seem surprising, for the English monarchs enjoyed many advantages com- pared with their continental rivals: they needed less money for their armies because they had stayed out of the Thirty Years’ War, and their

Constitutionalism in Engl and 4971648–1690

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Poland-Lithuania in the Seventeenth Century

island kingdom’s population was only one-fourth the size of France’s and of relatively homogeneous ethnicity, making it, in theory at least, easier to rule. Yet the English rulers failed in their efforts to install absolutist policies. The English revolutions of 1642–1660 and 1688–1689 overturned two kings, confirmed the constitutional powers of an elected parliament, and laid the foundation for the idea that government must guarantee certain rights to the people under the law.

England Turned Upside Down, 1642–1660 Disputes about the right to levy taxes and the na- ture of authority in the Church of England had long troubled the relationship between the English crown and Parliament. For more than a hundred years, wealthy English landowners had been accus- tomed to participating in government through Parliament and expected to be consulted on royal policy. Although England had no single constitu- tional document, a variety of laws, judicial deci- sions, charters and petitions granted by the king, and customary procedures all regulated relations between king and Parliament. When Charles I tried to assert his authority over Parliament, a civil war broke out. It set in motion an unpredictable chain of events, which included an extraordinary ferment of religious and political ideas. Some his- torians view the English civil war of 1642–1646 as the last great war of religion because it pitted Pu- ritans against those trying to push the Anglican church toward Catholicism; others see in it the first modern revolution because it gave birth to dem- ocratic political and religious movements.

Charles I versus Parliament. When Charles I (r. 1625–1649) succeeded his father, James I, he faced an increasingly aggressive Parliament that resisted new taxes and resented the king’s efforts to extend his personal control. In 1628, Parliament forced Charles to agree to the Petition of Right, by which he promised not to levy taxes without its consent. Charles hoped to avoid further interfer- ence with his plans by simply refusing to call Par- liament into session between 1629 and 1640. Without it, the king’s ministers had to find every loophole possible to raise revenues. They tried to turn “ship money,” a levy on seaports in times of emergency, into an annual tax collected every- where in the country. The crown won the ensuing court case, but many subjects still refused to pay what they considered to be an illegal tax.

Religious tensions brought conflicts over the king’s authority to a head. The Puritans had long

agitated for the removal of any vestiges of Catholi- cism, but Charles, married to a French Catholic, moved Anglicanism in the opposite direction in the 1630s. With Charles’s encouragement, the arch- bishop of Canterbury, William Laud (1573–1645), imposed increasingly elaborate ceremonies on the Anglican church. Angered by these moves toward “popery,” the Puritans poured forth reproving pamphlets and sermons. In response, Laud hauled them before the feared Court of Star Chamber, which the king personally controlled. The court ordered harsh sentences for Laud’s Puritan critics; they were whipped, pilloried, branded, and even had their ears cut off and their noses split. When Laud tried to apply his policies to Scotland, how- ever, they backfired completely: the stubborn Pres- byterian Scots rioted against the imposition of the Anglican prayer book — the Book of Common Prayer — and in 1640 they invaded the north of England. To raise money to fight the war, Charles called Parliament into session and unwittingly opened the door to a constitutional and religious crisis.

The Parliament of 1640 did not intend revo- lution, but reformers in the House of Commons (the lower house of Parliament) wanted to undo what they saw as the royal tyranny of the 1630s. Parliament removed Laud from office, ordered the execution of an unpopular royal commander, abolished the Court of Star Chamber, repealed re- cently levied taxes, and provided for a parliamen- tary assembly at least once every three years, thus establishing a constitutional check on royal au- thority. Moderate reformers expected to stop there and resisted Puritan pressure to abolish bishops and eliminate the Anglican prayer book. But their hand was forced in January 1642, when Charles and his soldiers invaded Parliament and tried un- successfully to arrest those leaders who had moved to curb his power. Faced with mounting opposition within London, Charles quickly withdrew from the city and organized an army.

Civil War and the Challenge to All Authorities. The ensuing civil war between king and Parliament lasted four years (1642–1646) and divided the country. The king’s army of royalists, known as Cavaliers, enjoyed the most support in northern and western England. The parliamentary forces, called Roundheads because they cut their hair short, had their stronghold in the southeast, in- cluding London. Although Puritans dominated on the parliamentary side, they were divided among themselves about the proper form of church gov- ernment: the Presbyterians wanted a Calvinist church with some central authority, whereas the

498 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

Independents favored entirely autonomous congregations free from other church government (hence the term congregational- ism, often associated with the In- dependents). The Puritans put aside their differences for the sake of military unity and united under an obscure member of the House of Commons, the country gentleman Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), who sympathized with the Independents. After Cromwell skillfully reorganized the parliamentary troops, his New Model Army defeated the Cavaliers at the battle of Naseby in 1645. Charles surrendered in 1646.

Although the civil war be- tween king and Parliament had ended in victory for Parliament, divisions within the Puritan ranks now came to the fore: the Presbyterians dominated Parliament, but the Independents controlled the army. The disputes between the leaders drew lower-class groups into the debate. (See “Contrast- ing Views,” page 500.) When Parliament tried to disband the New Model Army in 1647, disgrun- tled soldiers protested. Called Levellers because of their insistence on leveling social differences, the soldiers took on their officers in a series of debates about the nature of political authority. The Lev- ellers demanded that Parliament meet annually, that members be paid so as to allow common people to participate,and that all male heads of house- holds be allowed to vote. Their ideal of political participation excluded servants, the propertyless, and women but offered access to artisans, shop- keepers, and modest farmers. Cromwell and other army leaders rejected the Levellers’ demands as threatening to property owners. Cromwell in- sisted, “You have no other way to deal with these men but to break them in pieces. . . . If you do not break them they will break you.”

Just as political differences between Presbyte- rians and Independents helped spark new politi- cal movements, so too their conflicts over church organization fostered the emergence of new reli- gious doctrines. The new sects had in common only their emphasis on the “inner light” of indi- vidual religious inspiration and a disdain for hier- archical authority. Their emphasis on equality

before God and greater participa- tion in church governance ap- pealed to the middle and lower classes. The Baptists, for example, insisted on adult baptism because they believed that Christians should choose their own church and that every child should not automatically become a member of the Church of England. The Quakers demonstrated their be- liefs in equality and the inner light by refusing to doff their hats to men in authority. Manifesting their religious experience by trembling, or “quaking,” the Quakers believed that anyone — man or woman — inspired by a direct experience of God could preach.

Parliamentary leaders feared that the new sects would overturn the whole social hierarchy. Ru- mors abounded, for example, of naked Quakers

Constitutionalism in Engl and 4991648–1690

Levellers: Disgruntled soldiers in Cromwell’s New Model Army who wanted to “level” social differences and extend political participation to all male property owners.

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The World Turned Upside Down The print from 1647 conveys the anxieties many people felt in the midst of religious and political upheaval. Nothing is as it should be: the feet are where the hands should be, the cart comes before the horse, a fish flies, and the wheel- barrow pushes the person. (By permission of the British Library.)

500 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

nently in street demonstrations, distributed tracts, and occasionally even dressed as men, wearing swords and joining armies. The duchess of Newcastle complained in 1650 that women were “affecting a Masculinacy . . . practicing the behav- iour . . . of men.” The outspoken women in new sects like the Quakers underscored the threat of a social order turning upside down.

Oliver Cromwell. At the heart of the continuing political struggle was the question of what to do with the king, who tried to negotiate with the Pres- byterians in Parliament. In late 1648, Independents in the army purged the Presbyterians from Parlia- ment, leaving a “rump” of about seventy members. This Rump Parliament then created a high court to try Charles I. The court found him guilty of at- tempting to establish “an unlimited and tyranni- cal power” and pronounced a death sentence. On

running through the streets waiting for “a sign.” Some sects did advocate sweeping change. The Diggers promoted rural communism — collective ownership of all property. Seekers and Ranters questioned just about everything. One notorious Ranter, John Robins, even claimed to be God. A few men advocated free love. These developments convinced the political elite that tolerating the new sects would lead to skepticism, anarchism, and debauchery.

In keeping with their notions of equality and individual inspiration, many of the new sects pro- vided opportunities for women to become preach- ers and prophets. The Quakers thought women especially capable of prophecy. One such prophet, Anna Trapnel, explained her vocation: “For in all that was said by me, I was nothing, the Lord put all in my mouth, and told me what I should say.” Women presented petitions, participated promi-

The civil war between Charles I and Parliament (1642–1646) ex- cited furious debates about the proper forms of political authority, de- bates that influenced political thought for two centuries or more. The Levellers, who served in the parliamentary army, wanted Parliament to be more accountable to ordinary men like themselves (Document 1). After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Lucy Hutchinson wrote a memoir in which she complained that Puritan had become a term of political slander. Her memoir shows how religious terms had been politicized by the upheaval (Document 2). Thomas Hobbes, in his famous political treatise Leviathan (1651), develops the consequences of the civil war for political theory (Document 3).

1. The Levellers, “The Agreement of the People, as Presented to the Council of the Army” (October 28, 1647)

Note especially two things about this document: (1) it focuses on Parliament as the chief instrument of reform, and (2) it claims that government depends on the consent of the people.

Since, therefore, our former oppressions and scarce-yet-ended troubles have been occasioned, either by want of frequent na- tional meetings in Council [Parliament], or by rendering those meetings ineffectual, we are fully agreed and resolved to provide that hereafter our representatives be neither left to an uncertainty for the time nor made useless to the ends for which they are in- tended. In order whereunto we declare: — That the people of

England, being at this day very unequally distributed by Coun- ties, Cities, and Borough for the election of their deputies in Par- liament, ought to be more indifferently [equally] proportioned according to the number of the inhabitants. . . . That the power of this, and all future Representatives of this Nation, is inferior only to theirs who choose them, and doth extend, without the consent or concurrence of any other person or persons [the king], to the enacting, altering, and repealing of laws, to the erect- ing and abolishing of offices and courts, to the appointing, re- moving, and calling to account magistrates and officers of all degrees, to the making of war and peace, to the treating with for- eign States [in other words, Parliament is the supreme power, not the king]. . . . These things we declare to be our native rights, and therefore are agreed and resolved to maintain them with our ut- most possibilities against all opposition whatsoever.

Source: Samuel Rawson Gardiner, ed., The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), 333–35.

2. Lucy Hutchinson, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (1664–1671)

Lucy Hutchinson wrote her memoir to defend her Puritan husband, who had been imprisoned upon the restoration of the monarchy.

If any were grieved at the dishonour of the kingdom, or the grip- ing of the poor, or the unjust oppressions of the subject by a

C O N T R A S T I N G V I E W S

The English Civil War

Constitutionalism in Engl and 5011648–1690

January 30, 1649, Charles was beheaded before an enormous crowd, which reportedly groaned as one when the axe fell. Although many had objected to Charles’s autocratic rule, few had wanted him killed. For royalists, Charles immediately became a martyr, and reports of miracles, such as the cur- ing of blindness by the touch of a handkerchief soaked in his blood, soon circulated.

The Rump Parliament abolished the monar- chy and the House of Lords (the upper house of

thousand ways invented to maintain the riots of the courtiers and the swarms of needy Scots the king had brought in to de- vour like locusts the plenty of this land, he was a puritan; if any showed favour to any godly, honest person, kept them company, relieved them in want, or protected them against violent and un- just oppression, he was a puritan. . . . In short, all that crossed the views of the needy courtiers, the proud encroaching priests, the thievish projectors [speculators], the lewd nobility and gentry . . . all these were puritans; and if puritans, then enemies to the king and his government, seditious, factious hypocrites, ambitious disturbers of the public peace, and finally the pest of the kingdom.

Source: Christopher Hill and Edmund Dell, eds., The Good Old Cause: The English Revolution of 1640–1660, Its Causes, Course and Consequences (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1949), 179–80.

3. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)

In this excerpt, Hobbes depicts the anarchy of a society without a strong central authority, but he leaves open the question of whether that authority should be vested in “one Man” or “one Assembly of men,” that is, a king or a parliament.

During the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man. . . . In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Nav- igation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instrument of moving, and

removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and dan- ger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short. The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of Forraigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort, as that by their owne industrie, and by the Fruites of the Earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plural- ity of voices, unto one Will. . . . This is more than Consent, or Concord; it is a reall Unitie of them all, in one and the same Per- son, made by Covenant of every man with every man. . . . This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMON-WEALTH, in latine CIVITAS. This is the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speake more reverently) of that Mortall God, to which wee owe under the Immortall God, our peace and defence.

Source: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard E. Flathman and David Johnston (New York: Norton, 1997), 70, 95.

Questions to Consider 1. Why would both the king and the parliamentary leaders find

the Levellers’ views disturbing? 2. Why did Hobbes’s arguments about political authority upset

supporters of both monarchy and Parliament?

Execution of Charles I This print of the execution of English king Charles I appeared on the first page of the fictitious confessions of his executioner, Richard Brandon, who supposedly claimed to feel pains in his own neck from the moment he cut off Charles’s head. (© British Library, London, UK/ The Bridgeman Art Library.)

Parliament) and set up a Puritan republic with Oliver Cromwell (see illustration above) as chair- man of the Council of State. Cromwell did not tol- erate dissent from his policies. He saw the hand of God in events and himself as God’s agent. Pam- phleteers and songwriters ridiculed his red nose and accused him of wanting to be king, but few challenged his leadership. When his agents discov- ered plans for mutiny within the army, they exe- cuted the perpetrators; new decrees silenced the Levellers. Although Cromwell allowed the various Puritan sects to worship rather freely and permit- ted Jews with needed skills to return to England for the first time since the thirteenth century, Catholics could not worship publicly, nor could Anglicans use the Book of Common Prayer. The elites — many of them were still Anglican — were troubled by Cromwell’s religious policies but pleased to see some social order reestablished.

The new regime aimed to extend state power just as Charles I had before. Cromwell laid the foundation for a Great Britain made up of England, Ireland, and Scotland by reconquering Scotland and subduing Ireland. Anti-English reb- els in Ireland had seized the occasion of troubles between king and Parliament to revolt in 1641. When his position was secured in 1649, Cromwell went to Ireland with a large force and easily de- feated the rebels, massacring whole garrisons and their priests. He encouraged expropriating the lands of the Irish “barbarous wretches,” and Scot- tish immigrants resettled the northern county of Ulster. This seventeenth-century English conquest left a legacy of bitterness that the Irish even today call “the curse of Cromwell.” In 1651, Parliament turned its attention overseas, putting mercantilist ideas into practice in the first Navigation Act, which allowed imports only if they were carried on English ships or came directly from the pro- ducers of goods. The Navigation Act was aimed at the Dutch, who dominated world trade; Cromwell tried to carry the policy further by waging naval war on the Dutch from 1652 to 1654.

At home, however, Cromwell faced growing resistance. His wars required a budget twice the size of Charles I’s, and his increases in property taxes and customs duties alienated landowners and merchants. The conflict reached a crisis in 1653: Parliament considered disbanding the army, whereupon Cromwell abolished the Rump Parlia- ment in a military coup and made himself Lord Protector. He now silenced his critics by banning newspapers and using networks of spies to read mail and keep tabs on his enemies. When Cromwell died in 1658, the diarist John Evelyn claimed, “There were none that cried but dogs.” Cromwell intended that his son should succeed him, but his death only revived the prospect of civil war and political chaos. In 1660, a newly elected, staunchly Anglican Parliament invited Charles II, the son of the executed king, to return from exile.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 The traditional monarchical form of government was reinstated in 1660, restoring Charles II (r. 1660–1685) to full partnership with Parliament. He promised “a liberty to tender consciences” in an attempt to extend religious toleration, espe- cially to Catholics, with whom he sympathized. His successor James II (r. 1685–1688) pursued even more aggressive pro-Catholic policies, bring- ing dissent once more to a boil. In response, Par- liament deposed James and installed his Protestant

502 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

Oliver Cromwell In this painting of 1649, Robert Walker deliberately evokes previous portraits of English kings. Cromwell is shown preparing for battle in Ireland (note the shore and sea on Cromwell’s right); he holds the baton of military command, and a young page is tying on a sash, symbol of his rank. Cromwell lived an austere life; he is depicted here without any sign of luxury. When he died, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, but in 1661 his body was exhumed and hanged in its shroud. His head was cut off and displayed outside Westminster Hall for nearly twenty years. (National Portrait Gallery, London.)

daughter, Mary, and her Dutch husband, William, as joint monarchs. This Glorious Revolution marked the final triumph of constitutionalism over absolutism in England.

The Restored Monarchy. Charles II moved quickly to reestablish royal authority. More than a thousand Puritan ministers lost their positions, and attending a service other than one conform- ing with the Anglican prayer book was illegal af- ter 1664. Natural disasters also marred the early years of his reign. The plague stalked London’s rat- infested streets in May 1665 and claimed more than thirty thousand victims by September. Then in 1666, the Great Fire (see illustration on this page) swept the city. Some in Parliament feared, not without cause, that the English government would come to resemble French absolutism. In 1670, Charles II made a secret agreement, soon leaked, with Louis XIV in which he promised to announce his conversion to Catholicism in exchange for money for a war against the Dutch. Charles never proclaimed himself a Catholic, but in his Declara-

tion of Indulgence (1673) he did suspend all laws against Catholics and Protestant dissenters. Par- liament refused to continue funding the Dutch war unless Charles rescinded his Declaration of In- dulgence. Asserting its authority further, Parlia- ment passed the Test Act in 1673, requiring all government officials to profess allegiance to the Church of England and in effect disavow Catholic doctrine. Then in 1678, Parliament precipitated the so-called Exclusion Crisis by explicitly denying the throne to a Roman Catholic. This action was aimed at the king’s brother and heir, James, an open convert to Catholicism. Charles refused to al- low it to become law.

The dynastic crisis over the succession of a Catholic gave rise to two distinct factions in Par- liament: the Tories, who supported a strong, hereditary monarchy and the restored ceremony of the Anglican church, and the Whigs, who advo- cated parliamentary supremacy and toleration of Protestant dissenters such as Presbyterians. Both labels were originally derogatory: Tory meant an Irish Catholic bandit; Whig was the Irish Catholic

Constitutionalism in Engl and 5031648–1690

Great Fire of London, 1666 This view of London shows the three-day fire at its height. The writer John Evelyn described the scene in his diary: “All the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen above 40 miles round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like an hideous storm.” Everyone in London at the time felt overwhelmed by the catastrophe, and many attributed it to God’s punishment for the upheavals of the 1640s and 1650s. (Museum of London.)

designation for a Presbyterian Scot. The Tories fa- vored James’s succession despite his Catholicism, whereas the Whigs opposed a Catholic monarch. The loose moral atmosphere of Charles’s court also offended some Whigs, who complained tongue in cheek that Charles was father of his country in much too literal a fashion (he had fa- thered more than one child by his mistresses but produced no legitimate heir).

Parliament’s Revolt against James II. When he succeeded his brother, James seemed determined to force Catholicism on his subjects. Tories and Whigs joined together when a male heir — who would take precedence over James’s two adult Protestant daughters — was born to James’s sec- ond wife, an Italian Catholic, in 1688. They invited the Dutch ruler William, prince of Orange, and his wife, James’s older daughter, Mary, to invade England. Mary was brought up as a Protestant and was willing to act with her husband against her fa- ther’s pro-Catholic policies. James fled to France, and hardly any blood was shed. Parliament offered the throne jointly to William (r. 1689–1702) and Mary (r. 1689–1694) on the condition that they accept a bill of rights guaranteeing Parliament’s full partnership in a constitutional government.

In the Bill of Rights (1689), William and Mary agreed not to raise a standing army or to levy taxes without Parliament’s consent. They also agreed to call meetings of Parliament at least every three years, to guarantee free elections to parliamentary seats, and to abide by Parliament’s decisions and not suspend duly passed laws. The agreement gave England’s constitutional government a written, legal basis by formally recognizing Parliament as a self-contained, independent body that shared power with the rulers. Victorious supporters of the coup declared it the Glorious Revolution because it was achieved with so little bloodshed (at least in England).

The propertied classes who controlled Parlia- ment prevented any resurgence of the popular tur- moil of the 1640s. The Toleration Act of 1689 granted all Protestants freedom of worship, though non-Anglicans were still excluded from the univer- sities; Catholics got no rights but were more often

left alone to worship privately. When the Catholics in Ireland rose to defend James II, William and Mary’s troops brutally suppressed them. With the Whigs in power and the Tories in opposition, wealthy landowners now controlled political life throughout the realm. The factions’ differences, however, were minor; essentially, the Tories had less access to the king’s patronage. A contemporary re- ported that King William had said “that if he had good places [honors and land] enough to bestow, he should soon unite the two parties.”

Social Contract Theory: Hobbes and Locke Out of the turmoil of the English revolutions came a major rethinking of the foundations of all polit- ical authority. Although Thomas Hobbes and John Locke wrote in response to the upheavals of their times, they offered opposing arguments that were applicable to any place and any time, not just England of the seventeenth century. Hobbes justi- fied absolute authority; Locke provided the ration- ale for constitutionalism. Yet both argued that all authority came not from divine right but from a social contract among citizens.

Hobbes. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was a royalist who sat out the English civil war of the 1640s in France, where he tutored the future king Charles II. Returning to England in 1651, he pub- lished his masterpiece, Leviathan (1651), in which he argued for unlimited authority in a ruler. Ab- solute authority could be vested in either a king or a parliament; it had to be absolute, Hobbes insisted, in order to overcome the defects of human nature. Believing that people are essentially self-centered and driven by the “right to self-preservation,” Hobbes made his case by referring to science, not religion. To Hobbes, human life in a state of nature — that is, any situation without firm authority — was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” He believed that the desire for power and natural greed would inevitably lead to unfettered competition. Only the assurance of social order could make people secure enough to act accord- ing to law; consequently, giving up personal lib- erty, he maintained, was the price of collective security. Rulers derived their power, he concluded, from a contract in which absolute authority pro- tects people’s rights.

504 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

William, prince of Orange: Dutch ruler who, with his Protestant wife, Mary (daughter of James II), ruled England after the Glo- rious Revolution of 1688.

Glorious Revolution: The events of 1688 when Tories and Whigs replaced England’s monarch James II with his Protestant daugh- ter, Mary, and her husband, Dutch ruler William of Orange; William and Mary agreed to a Bill of Rights that guaranteed rights to Parliament.

social contract: The doctrine that all political authority derives not from divine right but from an implicit contract between cit- izens and their rulers.

Hobbes’s notion of rule by an absolute author- ity left no room for political dissent or nonconfor- mity, and it infuriated both royalists and supporters of Parliament. He enraged royalists by arguing that authority came not from divine right but from the social contract. Parliamentary sup- porters resisted Hobbes’s claim that rulers must possess absolute authority to prevent the greater evil of anarchy; they believed that a constitution should guarantee shared power between king and Parliament, and protect individual rights under the law. Like Machiavelli before him, Hobbes be- came associated with a cynical, pessimistic view of human nature, and future political theorists often began their arguments by refuting Hobbes.

Locke. Rejecting both Hobbes and the more tra- ditional royalist defenses of absolute authority, John Locke (1632–1704) used the notion of a social contract to provide a foundation for consti- tutionalism. Locke experienced political life first- hand as physician, secretary, and intellectual companion to the earl of Shaftesbury, a leading English Whig. In 1683, during the Exclusion Cri- sis, Locke fled with Shaftesbury to the Dutch Republic. There he continued work on his Two Treatises of Government, which, when published in 1690, served to justify the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Locke’s position was thoroughly anti- absolutist. He denied the divine right of kings and ridiculed the common royalist idea that political power in the state mirrored the father’s authority in the family. Like Hobbes, he posited a state of nature that applied to all people. Unlike Hobbes, however, he thought people were reasonable and the state of nature peaceful.

Locke insisted that government’s only purpose was to protect life, liberty, and property, a notion that linked economic and political freedom. Ulti- mate authority rested in the will of a majority of men who owned property, and government should be limited to its basic purpose of protection. A ruler who failed to uphold his part of the social contract between the ruler and the populace could be justifiably resisted, an idea that would become crucial for the leaders of the American Revolution a century later. For England’s seventeenth-century landowners, however, Locke helped validate a rev- olution that consolidated their interests and en- sured their privileges in the social hierarchy.

Locke defended his optimistic view of human nature in the immensely influential Essay Concern- ing Human Understanding (1690). He denied the existence of any innate ideas and asserted instead that each human is born with a mind that is a

tabula rasa (blank slate). Not surprisingly, Locke devoted considerable energy to rethinking educa- tional practices; he believed that education crucially shaped the human personality by channeling all sensory experience. Everything humans know, he claimed, comes from sensory experience, not from anything inherent in human nature. Locke’s views promoted the belief that “all men are created equal,” a belief that challenged absolutist forms of rule and ultimately raised questions about women’s roles as well. Although Locke himself owned shares in the Royal African Company and justified slav- ery, his writings were later used by abolitionists in their campaign against slavery.

Review: What differences over religion and politics caused the conflict between king and Parliament in England?

Outposts of Constitutionalism When William and Mary came to the throne in England in 1689, the Dutch and the English put aside the rivalries that had brought them to war against each other in 1652–1654, 1665–1667, and 1672–1674. Under William, the Dutch and the English together led the coalition that blocked Louis XIV’s efforts to dominate continental Europe. The English and Dutch had much in com- mon: oriented toward commerce, especially over- seas, they were the successful exceptions to absolutism in Europe. Also among the few out- posts of constitutionalism in the seventeenth cen- tury were the British North American colonies, which developed representative government while the English were preoccupied with their revolu- tions at home. Constitutionalism was not the only factor shaping this Atlantic world; as constitution- alism developed in the colonies, so too did the enslavement of black Africans as a new labor force.

The Dutch Republic When the Dutch Republic gained formal inde- pendence from Spain in 1648, it had already estab- lished a decentralized, constitutional state. Rich merchants called regents effectively controlled the internal affairs of each province and through the Estates General named the stadholder, the execu- tive officer responsible for defense and for repre- senting the state at all ceremonial occasions. They

Outposts of Constitutionalism 5051648–1690

almost always chose one of the princes of the house of Orange, but the stadholder resembled a presi- dent more than a king.

The decentralized state encouraged and pro- tected trade, and the Dutch Republic soon became Europe’s financial capital. The Bank of Amsterdam offered borrowers lower interest rates than those available in England and France. Praised for their industriousness, thrift, and cleanliness — and ma- ligned as greedy, dull “butter-boxes” — the Dutch dominated overseas commerce with their shipping (Map 16.3). They imported products from all over the world: spices, tea, and silk from Asia; sugar and tobacco from the Americas; wool from England and Spain; timber and furs from Scandinavia;

grain from eastern Europe. A widely reprinted his- tory of Amsterdam that appeared in 1662 de- scribed the city as “risen through the hand of God to the peak of prosperity and greatness. . . . The whole world stands amazed at its riches and from east and west, north and south they come to be- hold it.”

The Dutch rapidly became the most prosper- ous and best-educated people in Europe. Middle- class people supported the visual arts, especially painting, to an unprecedented degree. Artists and engravers produced thousands of works, and Dutch artists were among the first to sell to a mass market. Whereas in other countries kings, nobles, and churches bought art, Dutch buyers were mer-

506 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

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MAP 16.3 Dutch Commerce in the Seventeenth Century Even before gaining formal independence from the Spanish in 1648, the Dutch had begun to compete with the Spanish and Portuguese all over the world. In 1602, a group of merchants established the Dutch East India Company, which soon offered investors an annual rate of return of 35 percent on the trade in spices with countries located on the Indian Ocean. Global commerce gave the Dutch the highest standard of living in Europe and soon attracted the envy of the French and the English.

chants, artisans, and shopkeepers. Engravings, illustrated histories, and oil paintings were all relatively inexpensive. One foreigner commented that “pictures are very common here, there being scarce an ordinary tradesman whose house is not decorated with them.” Dutch artists focused on fa- miliar daily details because for them ordinary people had religious as well as political significance; even children at play could be infused with radi- ant beauty. The family household, not the royal court, determined the moral character of this in- tensely commercial society. Relative prosperity de- creased the need for married women to work, so Dutch society developed the clear contrast be- tween middle-class male and female roles that would become prevalent elsewhere in Europe and in America more than a century later. As one con- temporary Dutch writer explained, “The husband must be on the street to practice his trade; the wife must stay at home to be in the kitchen.”

Extraordinarily high levels of urbanization and literacy created a large reading public. Dutch presses printed books censored elsewhere (print- ers or authors censored in one province simply shifted operations to another), and the University of Leiden attracted students and professors from all over Europe. Dutch tolerance extended to the works of Benedict Spinoza (1633–1677), a Jewish

philosopher and biblical scholar who was expelled by his synagogue for alleged atheism but left alone by the Dutch authorities. Spinoza strove to recon- cile religion with science and mathematics, but his work scandalized many Christians and Jews be- cause he seemed to equate God and nature. Like nature, Spinoza’s God followed unchangeable laws and could not be influenced by human actions, prayers, or faith.

Dutch learning, painting, and commerce all enjoyed wide renown in the seventeenth century, but this luster proved hard to maintain. The Dutch lived in a world of international rivalries in which strong central authority gave their enemies an ad- vantage. Though inconclusive, the naval wars with England between 1652 and 1674 drained the state’s revenues. Even more dangerous were the land wars with France, which continued into the eighteenth century. The Dutch survived these challenges but increasingly depended on alliances with other powers, especially England after the Glorious Rev- olution. At the end of the seventeenth century, the Dutch elites became more exclusive, more preoc- cupied with ostentation, and less tolerant of devi- ations from strict Calvinism. Rather than encouraging native Dutch styles, they became more concerned with imitating French ones. The Dutch “golden age” was over.

Outposts of Constitutionalism 5071648–1690

A Typical Dutch Scene from Daily Life Jan Steen painted The Baker Arent Oostward and His Wife in 1658. Steen ran a brewery and tavern in addition to painting, and he was known for his interest in the details of daily life. Dutch artists popularized this kind of “genre” painting, which showed ordinary people at work and play. (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.)

■ For more help analyzing this image, see the visual activity for this chapter in the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

Freedom and Slavery in the New World

The Dutch also lost ground to the French and Eng- lish in the New World colonies. While the Dutch concentrated on shipping, including the slave trade, the seventeenth-century French and English established settler colonies that would eventually provide fabulous revenues to the home countries. Many European governments encouraged private companies to vie for their share of the slave trade, and slavery began to take clear institutional form in the New World in this period. While whites found in the colonies greater political and religious freedom than in Europe, they subjected black Africans to the most degrading forms of bondage.

The Rise of the Slave Trade. After the Spanish and Portuguese had shown that African slaves could be transported and forced to labor in South and Central America, the English and French en- deavored to set up similar labor systems in their new Caribbean island colonies. White planters with large tracts of land bought African slaves to work fields of sugarcane; and as they gradually built up their holdings, the planters displaced most of the original white settlers, who moved to main- land North American colonies. After 1661, when Barbados instituted a slave code that stripped all Africans of rights under English law, slavery be- came codified as an inherited status that applied only to blacks. The result was a society of extremes: the very wealthy whites (about 7 percent of the population in Barbados) and the enslaved, power- less black majority. The English brought few of their religious or constitutional practices to the Caribbean.

Other Caribbean colonies followed a similar pattern of development. Louis XIV promulgated a “black code” in 1685 to regulate the legal status of slaves in the French colonies and to prevent non- Catholics from owning slaves. The code suppos- edly set limits on the violence planters could exercise and required them to house, feed, and clothe their slaves. But white planters simply ig- nored provisions of the code that did not suit them, and in any case, because the code defined slaves as property, slaves could not themselves bring suit in court to demand better treatment.

The governments of England, France, Spain, Portugal, the Dutch Republic, and Denmark all en- couraged private companies to traffic in black Africans, while the highest church and government authorities in Catholic and Protestant countries alike condoned the gradually expanding slave trade. In 1600, about 9,500 Africans were exported

from Africa to the New World every year; by 1700, this number had increased nearly fourfold to 36,000 annually. Historians advance several differ- ent ideas about which factors increased the slave trade: some claim that improvements in muskets made European slavers more effective; others cite the rising price for slaves, which made their sale more attractive for Africans; still others focus on factors internal to Africa such as the increasing size of African armies and their use of muskets in fight- ing and capturing other Africans for sale as slaves. The way had been prepared for the development of an Atlantic economy based on slavery.

Constitutional Freedoms in the English Colonies. Virtually left to themselves during the upheavals in England, the fledgling English colonies in North America developed representative government on their own. Almost every colony had a governor and a two-house legislature. The colonial legislatures constantly sought to increase their power and re- sisted the efforts of Charles II and James II to reaf- firm royal control. William and Mary reluctantly allowed emerging colonial elites more control over local affairs. The social and political elite among the settlers hoped to impose an English social hi- erarchy dominated by rich landowners. Ordinary immigrants to the colonies, however, took advan- tage of plentiful land to carve out their own farms using white servants and, later, in some colonies, African slaves.

For native Americans, the expanding Euro- pean presence meant something else altogether. They faced death through disease and warfare and the accelerating loss of their homelands. Unlike white settlers, many native Americans believed that land was a divine gift provided for their collective use and not subject to individual ownership. Eu- ropeans’ claims that they owned exclusive land rights consequently resulted in frequent skir- mishes. In 1675–1676, for instance, three tribes al- lied under Metacomet (called King Philip by the English) threatened the survival of New England settlers, who savagely repulsed the attacks and sold their captives as slaves. Whites could portray na- tive Americans as “noble savages,” but when threat- ened they often depicted them as conspiring villains and sneaky heathens who were akin to Africans in their savagery. The benefits of consti- tutionalism were reserved for Europeans.

Review: Why did constitutionalism thrive in the Dutch Republic and the British North American col- onies, even as their participation in the slave trade grew?

508 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

The Search for Order in Elite and Popular Culture

Constitutionalism’s emphasis on a social contract fostered the guarantee of individual freedoms, yet the constitutional governments pursued profits in the burgeoning slave trade just as avidly as the ab- solutist ones. Freedom did not mean liberty for everyone. One of the great debates of the time — and thereafter — concerned the meaning of free- dom: for whom, under what conditions, with what justifiable limitations could freedom be claimed? Freedom of the press found its first champion in the English poet John Milton, and freedom to choose one’s own religion began to attract adher- ents too. These freedoms posed their own dilem- mas: should publishers be allowed to print anything they wished and would religious tolera- tion undermine the state’s authority or even pro- mote skepticism about religion in general?

Poetry, painting, architecture, and even sci- ence at this time all reflected in some measure the attempts to ground authority — to define the re- lation between freedom and order — in new ways. Authority concerned not just rulers and subjects but also the hierarchy of groups in soci- ety. As European states consolidated their pow- ers, elites worked to distinguish themselves from the lower classes. They developed new codes of correct behavior for themselves and tried to teach order and discipline to their social inferiors. Their repeated efforts show, however, that popular cul- ture had its own dynamics which resisted control from above.

Freedom and Constraint in the Arts and Sciences Most Europeans feared disorder above all else. The French mathematician Blaise Pascal vividly captured their worries in his Pensées (Thoughts) of 1660: “I look on all sides, and I see only dark- ness everywhere.” Though Pascal made impor- tant contributions to the mathematical theory of probabilities, he was skeptical about the human ability to forge order out of chaos: “Nature pres- ents to me nothing which is not a matter of doubt and concern. . . . It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and incomprehensible that He should not exist.” Pascal urged his read- ers to accept the wager that God existed. Reason could not determine whether God existed or not, Pascal concluded. Poets, painters, and architects all grappled with similar issues of faith, reason,

and authority, but most of them came to more positive conclusions than Pascal about human capacities.

Milton. The English Puritan poet John Milton (1608–1674) wrestled with the inevitable limita- tions on individual liberty. In 1643, in the midst of the civil war between king and Parliament, he published writings in favor of divorce. When Par- liament enacted a censorship law aimed at such lit- erature, Milton responded in 1644 with one of the first defenses of freedom of the press, Areopagit- ica. (See Document, “John Milton, Defense of Freedom of the Press,” page 511.) In it, he argued that even controversial books about religion should be allowed because the state could not command religious belief. Milton favored limited

The Search for Order in El ite and Popul ar Culture 5091648–1690

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Teresa of Ávila (c. 1650) This ultimate statement of baroque sculpture captures all the drama and even sensationalism of a mystical religious faith. Bernini based his figures on a vision reported by St. Teresa in which she saw an angel: “In his hands I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated my entrails. When he pulled it out I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly con- sumed by the great love of God.” (Scala /Art Resource, NY.)

the power of the popes and the Catholic religion. He also sculpted tombs for the popes and a large statue of Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome — perfect examples of the marriage of power and religion.

Although France was a Catholic country, French painters, sculptors, and architects, like their patron Louis XIV, preferred the standards of clas- sicism to those of the baroque. French artists de- veloped classicism to be a French national style, distinct from the baroque style that was closely as- sociated with France’s enemies, the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs. As its name suggests, classi- cism reflected the ideals of the art of antiquity: geometric shapes, order, and harmony of lines took precedence over the sensuous, exuberant, and emotional forms of the baroque. Rather than be- ing overshadowed by the sheer power of emotional display, in classicism the individual could be found at the intersection of converging, symmetrical, straight lines (see illustration above). These in- fluences were apparent in the work of the leading French painters of the period, Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) and Claude Lorrain (1600–1682), both of whom worked in Rome and tried to re- create classical Roman values in their mythologi- cal scenes and Roman landscapes.

Art could also serve the interests of science. One of the most skilled illustrators of insects and

510 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

classicism: A style of painting and architecture that reflected the ideals of the art of antiquity; in classicism, geometric shapes, order, and harmony of lines take precedence over the sensuous, exuberant, and emotional forms of the baroque.

French Classicism This painting by Nicolas Poussin, Discovery of Achilles on Skyros (1649–1650), shows the French interest in classical themes and ideals. In the Greek story, Thetis dresses her son Achilles as a young woman and hides him on the island of Skyros so he would not have to fight in the Trojan War. When a chest of treasures is offered to the women, Achilles reveals himself (he is the figure on the far right) because he cannot resist the sword. In telling the story, Poussin emphasizes harmony and almost a sedateness of composition, avoiding the exuberance and emotionalism of the baroque style. (Photograph © 2007 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.)

religious toleration; that is, he wanted religious freedom for the many varieties of Protestants, but not for Catholics or non-Christians. Milton served as secretary to the Council of State during Cromwell’s rule and earned the enmity of Charles II by writing a justification for the execution of his father, Charles I.

Forced into retirement after the restoration of the monarchy, Milton published his epic poem Paradise Lost in 1667. He used the biblical Adam and Eve’s fall from grace to meditate on human freedom and the tragedies of rebellion. Although Milton wanted to “justify the ways of God to man,” his Satan, the proud angel who challenges God and is cast out of heaven, is so compelling as to be heroic. In the end, Adam and Eve embrace moral responsibility for their actions. Individuals learn the limits to their freedom, yet personal liberty re- mains essential to their humanity.

The Varieties of Artistic Style. The dominant artistic styles of the time — the baroque and the classical — both submerged the ordinary individ- ual in a grander design. The baroque style proved to be especially suitable for public displays of faith and power that overawed individual beholders. The combination of religious and political pur- poses in baroque art is best exemplified in the ar- chitecture and sculpture of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), the papacy’s official artist. His archi- tectural masterpiece was the gigantic square fac- ing St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Bernini’s use of freestanding colonnades and a huge open space was meant to impress the individual observer with

flowers was Maria Sibylla Merian (1646–1717), a German-born painter-scholar whose engravings were widely celebrated for their brilliant realism and microscopic clarity. Merian eventually sepa- rated from her husband and joined a sect called the Labadists (after its French founder, Jean de Labadie), whose members did not believe in for- mal marriage ties. After moving with her daugh- ters to the Labadists’ community in the northern Dutch province of Friesland, Merian went with missionaries from the sect to the Dutch colony of Surinam, in South America, and painted watercol- ors (see illustration, page 512) of the exotic flow- ers, birds, and insects she found in the jungle around the cocoa and sugarcane plantations. Many women became known for their still lifes, and es- pecially their paintings of flowers, during this time.

Public Interest in Science. Despite the initial reli- gious controversies associated with the scientific

The Search for Order in El ite and Popul ar Culture 5111648–1690

John Milton, Defense of Freedom of the Press (1644)

D O C U M E N T

In Areopagitica (1644), the English poet John Milton rebuked Parliament for passing a bill to restrict freedom of the press by re- quiring licensing of every publication. The title came from Areopagus, the name of a court in ancient Athens. Milton argued that freedom of thought was essential to human dignity.

I deny not but that it is of greatest con- cernment in the church and common- wealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors. For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose prog- eny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively and as vigorously pro- ductive as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book:

who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on pur- pose to a life beyond life. ’Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the liv- ing labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homi- cide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason it- self, slays an immortality rather than a life. But lest I should be condemned of intro- ducing license, while I oppose licensing, I refuse not the pains to be so much histor-

ical as will serve to show what hath been done by ancient and famous common- wealths against this disorder, till the very time that this project of licensing crept out of the Inquisition, was caught up by our prelates, and hath caught some of our presbyters. [. . .] As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear with- out the knowledge of evil? He that can ap- prehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet ab- stain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugi- tive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.

Source: John Milton,Milton’s Prose Writing (London: J. M. Dant, 1961), 149–50, 158.

revolution, absolutist rulers quickly saw the poten- tial of the new science for enhancing their prestige and glory. Frederick William, the Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia, for example, set up agricul- tural experiments in front of his Berlin palace, and various German princes supported the work of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), who claimed that he, and not Isaac Newton, had invented the calculus. A lawyer, diplomat, mathematician, and scholar who wrote about metaphysics, cosmol- ogy, and history, Leibniz also helped establish sci- entific societies in the German states.

Government involvement in science was greatest in France, where science became an arm of mercantilist policy; in 1666, Colbert founded the Royal Academy of Sciences, which supplied fifteen scientists with government stipends. It met in the King’s Library in Paris, where for the first years the members devoted themselves to alchemical experiments and the study of mechanical devices.

Constitutional states supported science infor- mally but provided an environment that encour- aged its spread. The Royal Society of London, the counterpart to the one in Paris, grew out of infor- mal meetings of scientists at London and Oxford rather than direct government involvement. It re- ceived a royal charter in 1662 but maintained com- plete independence. The society’s secretary described its business to be “in the first place, to scrutinize the whole of Nature and to investigate its activity and powers by means of observations and experiments; and then in course of time to hammer out a more solid philosophy and more ample amenities of civilization.” Whether the state paid for the work or not, thinkers of the day now tied science explicitly to social progress.

Because of their exclusion from most univer- sities, women only rarely participated in the new scientific discoveries. In 1667, nonetheless, the Royal Society of London invited Margaret Cavendish, a writer of poems, essays, letters, and philosophical treatises, to attend a meeting to

watch the exhibition of experiments. Labeled “mad” by her critics, she attacked the use of tele- scopes and microscopes because she detected in the new experimentalism a mechanistic view of the world that exalted masculine prowess and chal- lenged the Christian belief in freedom of the will. Yet she urged the formal education of women, complaining that “we are kept like birds in cages to hop up and down in our houses.” “Many of our Sex may have as much wit, and be capable of Learning as well as men,” she insisted, “but since they want Instructions [lack education], it is not possible they should attain to it.”

Women and Manners Although excluded from the universities and the professions, women played important roles not only in the home but also in more formal spheres of social interaction, such as the courts of rulers. Women often took the lead in teaching manners or social etiquette. Poetry and painting might imaginatively explore the place of the individual within a larger whole, but real-life individuals had to learn to navigate their own social worlds. Women’s importance in refining social relation- ships quickly became a subject of controversy.

The Cultivation of Manners. The court had long been a central arena for the development of man- ners. Under the tutelage of their mothers and wives, nobles learned to hide all that was crass and to maintain a fine sense of social distinction. In some ways, aristocratic men were expected to act more like women; just as women had long been expected to please men, now aristocratic men had to please their monarch or patron by displaying proper manners and conversing with elegance and wit. The art of pleasing included foreign languages (especially French), dance, a taste for fine music, and attention to dress.

As part of the evolution of new aristocratic ideals, nobles learned to disdain all that was lowly. The upper classes began to reject popular festi- vals and fairs in favor of private theaters, where seats were relatively expensive and behavior was formal. Clowns and buffoons now seemed vul- gar; the last king of England to keep a court fool was Charles I. Chivalric romances that had en- tranced the nobility since the time of Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605) now passed into popular lit- erature.

The greatest French playwright of the seven- teenth century, Molière (the pen name of Jean- Baptiste Poquelin, 1622–1673), wrote sparkling comedies of manners that revealed much about

512 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

European Fascination with Products of the New World In this painting of a banana plant, Maria Sibylla Merian offers a scientific study of one of the many exotic plants and animals found by Europeans who traveled to the colonies overseas. Merian was fifty-one when she traveled to the Dutch South American colony of Surinam with her daughter. (Courtesy of Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.)

the new aristocratic behavior. His play The Middle- Class Gentleman, first performed for Louis XIV in 1670, revolves around the yearning of a rich, middle-class Frenchman, Monsieur Jourdain, to learn to act like a gentilhomme (meaning both “gentleman” and “nobleman”). Monsieur Jourdain buys fancy clothes; hires private instructors in dancing, music, fencing, and philosophy; and lends money to a debt-ridden noble in hopes that the noble will marry his daughter. Only his sensible wife and his daughter’s love for a worthier com- moner stand in his way. The message for the king’s courtiers seemed to be a reassuring one: only true nobles by blood can hope to act like nobles. But the play also showed how the middle classes were learning to emulate the nobility; if one could learn to act nobly through self-discipline, could not any- one with some education and money pass himself off as noble?

As Molière’s play demonstrated, new attention to manners trickled down from the court to the middle class. A French treatise on manners writ- ten in 1672 explained proper behavior:

If everyone is eating from the same dish, you should take care not to put your hand into it before those of higher rank have done so. . . . Formerly one was permitted . . . to dip one’s bread into the sauce, provided only that one had not already bitten it. Nowadays that would be a kind of rusticity. Formerly one was allowed to take from one’s mouth what one could not eat and drop it on the floor, provided it was done skillfully. Now that would be very disgusting.

The key words rusticity and disgusting reveal the association of unacceptable social behavior with the peasantry, dirt, and repulsion. Similar rules governed spitting and blowing one’s nose in pub- lic. Once the elite had successfully distinguished it- self from the lower classes through manners, scholars became more interested in studying pop- ular expressions. They avidly collected proverbs, folktales, and songs — all of these now curiosities.

Debates about Women’s Roles. Courtly manners often permeated the upper reaches of society by means of the salon, an informal gathering held regularly in private homes and presided over by a socially eminent woman. In 1661, one French au- thor claimed to have identified 251 Parisian women as hostesses of salons. The French govern- ment occasionally worried that these gatherings might challenge its authority, but the three main

topics of conversation were love, literature, and philosophy. Hostesses often worked hard to en- courage the careers of budding authors. Before publishing a manuscript, many authors, including court favorites like Corneille and Racine, would read their compositions to a salon gathering.

Some women went beyond encouraging male authors and began to write on their own, but they faced many obstacles. Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, known as Madame de Lafayette, wrote several short novels that were published anony- mously because it was considered inappropriate for aristocratic women to appear in print. Follow- ing the publication of The Princess of Clèves in 1678, she denied having written it. Hannah Woolley, the English author of many books on domestic conduct, published under the name of her first husband. Women were known for writing wonderful letters, but the correspondence circu- lated only in handwritten form. In the 1650s, despite these limitations, French women began to turn out best sellers of a new type of literary form, the novel. Their success prompted the philosopher Pierre Bayle to remark in 1697 that “our best French novels for a long time have been written by women.”

The new importance of women in the world of manners and letters did not sit well with every- one. Although the French writer François Poulain de la Barre, in a series of works published in the 1670s, used the new science to assert the equality of women’s minds, most men resisted the idea. Clergy, lawyers, scholars, and playwrights attacked women’s growing public influence. Women, they complained, were corrupting forces and needed restraint. Only marriage,“this salutary yoke,” could control their passions and weaknesses. Women were accused of raising “the banner of prostitution in the salons, in the promenades, and in the streets.” Molière wrote plays denouncing women’s pretension to judge literary merit. English play- wrights derided learned women by creating char- acters with names such as Lady Knowall, Lady Meanwell, and Mrs. Lovewit.

A real-life target of the English playwrights was Aphra Behn (1640–1689), one of the first pro- fessional woman authors, who supported herself by journalism, wrote plays and poetry, and trans- lated scientific works. Her short novel Oroonoko (1688) told the story of an African prince mistak- enly sold into slavery. The story was so successful that it was adapted by playwrights and performed repeatedly in England and France for the next hun- dred years.

Women also played important roles in the new colonies. In order to establish more permanent

The Search for Order in El ite and Popul ar Culture 5131648–1690

salon: An informal gathering held regularly in private homes and presided over by a socially eminent woman; salons spread from France in the seventeenth century to other countries in the eighteenth century.

and settled colonies, governments promoted the emigration of women so that male colonists would set up orderly Christian white households rather than pursuing sexual relations with native or slave women.

Reforming Popular Culture Controversies over female influence had little effect on the unschooled peasants who made up most of Europe’s population. Their culture had three main elements: their religion, which shaped every aspect of life and death; the knowledge needed to work at farming or in a trade; and popular forms of enter- tainment such as village fairs and dances. What changed most noticeably in the seventeenth cen- tury was the social elites’ attitude toward lower- class culture. The division between elite and popular culture widened as elites insisted on their difference from the lower orders and tried to instill new forms of discipline in their social inferiors. These efforts did not always succeed, however, as villagers tenaciously clung to their own traditions.

Popular Religion. In the seventeenth century, Protestant and Catholic churches alike pushed hard to change popular religious practices. Their campaigns against popular “paganism” began dur- ing the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation but reached much of rural Europe only in the seventeenth cen- tury. Puritans in England tried to root out may- pole dances, Sunday village fairs, gambling, taverns, and bawdy ballads because they interfered with sober observance of the Sabbath. In Lutheran Norway, pastors denounced a widespread belief in the miracle-working powers of St. Olaf. The word superstition previously meant “false religion” (Protestantism was a superstition for Catholics, Catholicism for Protestants); in the seventeenth century, it took on its modern meaning of irra- tional fears, beliefs, and practices, which anyone educated or refined would avoid.

The Catholic campaign against superstitious practices found a ready ally in Louis XIV. While the Sun King reformed the nobles at court through etiquette and manners, Catholic bishops in the French provinces trained parish priests to reform their flocks by using catechisms in local dialects and insisting that parishioners attend Mass. The church faced a formidable challenge. One bishop in France complained in 1671,“Can you believe that there are in this diocese entire villages where no one has even heard of Jesus Christ?” In some places, be- lievers sacrificed animals to the Virgin, prayed to

the new moon, and worshipped at the sources of streams as in pre-Christian times.

Like its Protestant counterpart, the Catholic campaign against ignorance and superstition helped extend state power. Clergy, officials, and lo- cal police worked together to limit carnival cele- brations, to regulate pilgrimages to shrines, and to replace “indecent” images of saints with more re- strained and decorous ones. In Catholicism, the cult of the Virgin Mary and devotions closely con- nected with Jesus, such as the Holy Sacrament and the Sacred Heart, took precedence over the cele- bration of popular saints who seemed to have pa- gan origins or were credited with unverified miracles. Reformers everywhere tried to limit the number of feast days on the grounds that they en- couraged lewd behavior.

New Attitudes toward Poverty. The campaign for more disciplined religious practices helped gener- ate a new attitude toward the poor. Poverty previ- ously had been closely linked with charity and virtue in Christianity; it was a Christian duty to give alms to the poor, and Jesus and many of the saints had purposely chosen lives of poverty. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the upper classes, the church, and the state increasingly re- garded the poor as dangerous, deceitful, and lack- ing in character. “Criminal laziness is the source of all their vices,” wrote a Jesuit expert on the poor. The courts had previously expelled beggars from cities; now local leaders, both Catholic and Protes- tant, tried to reform their character. Municipal magistrates collected taxes for poor relief, and lo- cal notables organized charities; together they transformed hospitals into houses of confinement for beggars. In Catholic France, upper-class women’s religious associations, known as confra- ternities, set up asylums that confined prostitutes (by arrest if necessary) and rehabilitated them. Confraternities also founded hospices where or- phans learned proper behavior and respect for their betters. Such groups advocated harsh disci- pline as the cure for poverty.

As hard times increased the numbers of the poor and the rates of violent crime as well, atti- tudes toward the poor hardened. The elites tried to separate the very poor from society either to change them or to keep them from contaminating others. Hospitals became holding pens for society’s unwanted members; in them, the poor joined the disabled, the incurably diseased, and the insane. The founding of hospitals demonstrates the con- nection between elites’ attitudes and state build- ing. In 1676, Louis XIV ordered every French city

514 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

to establish a hospital, and his government took charge of the finances. Other rulers soon followed the same path.

Popular Resistance to Reform. Even as elites set themselves apart and reformers from church and state tried to regulate popular activities, villagers and townspeople pushed back with reassertions of their own values. For hundreds of years, peasants had maintained their own forms of village jus- tice — called variously “rough music,” “ride on a donkey,” “skimmington,” “charivari,” or in North America, “shivaree.” If a young man married a much older woman for her money, for example, villagers would serenade the couple by ringing bells, playing crude flutes, banging pots and pans, and shooting muskets. If a man was rumored to have been physically assaulted by his wife, a rever- sal of the usual sex roles, he (or effigies of him and his wife) might be ridden on a donkey facing back- ward (to signify the role reversal) and pelted with dung before being ducked in a nearby pond or river. Anyone who transgressed the local customs governing family life — adulterers, for example — might suffer a similar fate. Processions sometimes included the display of horned animal heads (a symbol of adultery) or obscene drawings, and people made up mocking ryhmes and songs for various occasions. Some villagers singled out re- bellious women, wife beaters, and fathers deemed excessively cruel to their children. Others directed their mockery at tax officials, gamekeepers on big estates who tried to keep villagers from hunting, or unpopular preachers.

No matter how much care went into control- ling religious festivals, such events almost invari- ably opened the door to popular reinterpretation and sometimes drunken celebration. When the Spanish introduced Corpus Christi processions to their colony in Peru in the seventeenth century, elite Incas dressed in royal costumes to carry the banners of their parishes. Their clothing and or- naments combined Christian symbols with their own indigenous ones. They thus signaled their conversion to Catholicism but also reasserted their own prior identities. The Corpus Christi festival, held in late May or early June, conveniently took place about the same time as Inca festivals from the pre-Spanish era. Carnival, the days preceding Lent on the Christian calendar (Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is the last of them), offered the occasion for public revelry of all sorts. Although Catholic clergy worked hard to clamp down on the more riotous aspects of Carnival, many towns and vil- lages still held parades, like those of modern New

Orleans or Rio de Janeiro, that included compa- nies of local men dressed in special costumes and gigantic stuffed figures, sometimes with animal skins or heads, or elaborate masks.

Review: How did elite and popular culture become more separate in the seventeenth century?

Conclusion The search for order took place on various levels, from the reform of the disorderly poor to the es- tablishment of bureaucratic routines in govern- ment. The absolutist government of Louis XIV served as a model for all those who aimed to in- crease the power of the central state. Even Louis’s rivals — such as the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I and Frederick William, the Great Elector of Bran- denburg-Prussia — followed his lead in centralizing authority and building up their armies.Whether ab- solutist or constitutionalist in form, seventeenth- century states aimed to penetrate more deeply into the lives of their subjects. They wanted more men for their armed forces; higher taxes to support their projects; and more control over foreign trade, reli- gious dissent, and society’s unwanted.

Some tears had begun to appear, however, in the seamless fabric of state power. The civil war

Conclusion 5151648–1690

Corpus Christi Procession in Peru This painting shows a Catholic procession by Incas that took place in the late 1670s in Cuzco, Peru. The Inca in front is wearing his native dress and he is followed by a float and religious figures carrying traditional Catholic imagery. (Museo del Arzobispo, Cuzco, Peru.)

between Charles I and Parliament in England in the 1640s opened the way to new demands for po- litical participation. When Parliament overthrew James II in 1688, it also insisted that the new king and queen, William and Mary, agree to a Bill of Rights. Left on their own during the turmoil in England, the English North American colonies de- veloped distinctive forms of representative govern- ment. In the eighteenth century, new levels of economic growth and the appearance of new so- cial groups would exert pressures on the European state system. The success of seventeenth-century rulers created the political and economic condi- tions in which their critics would flourish.

516 Chapter 16 ■ State Building and the Search for Order 1648–1690

For Further Exploration ■ For suggested references, including Web sites,

for topics in this chapter, see page SR-1 at the end of the book.

■ For additional primary-source material from this period, see Chapter 16 in Sources of THE MAKING OF THE WEST, Third Edition.

■ For Web sites and documents related to topics in this chapter, see Make History at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

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Europe at the End of the Seventeenth Century Size was not necessarily an advantage in the late 1600s. Poland-Lithuania, a large country on the map, had been fatally weakened by internal conflicts. In the next century it would disappear entirely. While the Ottoman Empire still controlled an extensive territory, outside of Anatolia its rule depended on intermediaries. The Austrian Habsburgs had pushed the Turks out of Hungary and back into the Balkans. The tiny Dutch Republic, meanwhile, had become very rich through international commerce and was the envy of far larger nations.

Key Terms and People Making Connections

Review Questions

1. What accounts for the success of absolutism in some parts of Europe and its failure in others?

2. How did religious differences in the late seventeenth cen- tury still cause political conflict?

3. Why was the search for order a major theme in science, pol- itics, and the arts during this period?

1. How “absolute” was the power of Louis XIV?

2. Why did absolutism flourish everywhere in eastern Europe except Poland-Lithuania?

3. What differences over religion and politics caused the conflict between king and Parliament in England?

4. Why did constitutionalism thrive in the Dutch Republic and the British North American colonies, even as their par- ticipation in the slave trade grew?

5. How did elite and popular culture become more separate in the seventeenth century?

Chapter Review

constitutionalism (484)

absolutism (484)

Louis XIV (484)

revocation of the Edict of Nantes (489)

bureaucracy (489)

mercantilism (490)

Frederick William of Hohenzollern (493)

Stenka Razin (496)

Levellers (499)

William, prince of Orange (504)

Glorious Revolution (504)

social contract (504)

classicism (510)

salon (513) For practice quizzes, a customized study plan, and other study tools, see the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

Chapter Review 5171648–1690

Important Events

1642–1646 Civil war between King Charles I and Parlia- ment in England

1648 Peace of Westphalia ends Thirty Years’ War; the Fronde revolt challenges royal authority in France; Ukrainian Cossack warriors rebel against the king of Poland-Lithuania; Spain formally recognizes independence of the Dutch Republic

1649 Execution of Charles I of England; new Russ- ian legal code assigns all to hereditary class

1651 Thomas Hobbes publishes Leviathan

1660 Monarchy restored in England

1661 Slave code set up in Barbados

1667 Louis XIV begins first of many wars that con- tinue throughout his reign

1678 Madame de Lafayette anonymously publishes her novel The Princess of Clèves

1683 Austrian Habsburgs break the Turkish siege of Vienna

1685 Louis XIV revokes toleration for French Protes- tants granted by the Edict of Nantes

1688 Parliament deposes James II and invites his daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange, to take the throne

1690 John Locke publishes Two Treatises of Government and Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), composer of mighty organfugues and church cantatas, was not above amusing his Leipzig au- diences, many of them university students. In 1732, he produced a

cantata about a young woman in love — with coffee. Her old-fashioned

father rages that he won’t find her a husband unless she gives up the

fad. She agrees, secretly vowing to admit no suitor who will not prom-

ise in the marriage contract to let her brew coffee whenever she wants.

Bach offers this conclusion:

The cat won’t give up its mouse, Girls stay faithful coffee-sisters Mother loves her coffee habit, Grandma sips it gladly too — Why then shout at the daughters?

Bach’s era might well be called the age of coffee. European travelers at

the end of the sixteenth century had noticed Middle Eastern people

drinking a “black drink,” kavah, and the Turks took coffee beans with

them on their military campaigns in eastern Europe. Few Europeans

sampled the drink at first, and the Arab monopoly on its production

kept prices high. This changed around 1700 when the Dutch East

India Company introduced coffee plants to Java and other Indonesian

islands. Coffee production then spread to the French Caribbean, where

African slaves provided the plantation labor. In Europe, imported cof-

fee spurred the development of a new kind of meeting place: the first

coffeehouse opened in London in 1652, and the idea spread quickly to

other European cities. Men gathered in coffeehouses to drink, read

newspapers, and talk politics. As a London newspaper commented in

1737, “There’s scarce an Alley in City and Suburbs but has a Coffee-

house in it, which may be called the School of Public Spirit, where every

Man over Daily and Weekly Journals, a Mug, or a Dram . . . devotes

himself to that glorious one, his Country.”

The Atlantic System and the World Economy 520 • Slavery and the Atlantic System • World Trade and Settlement • The Birth of Consumer Society

New Social and Cultural Patterns 529 • Agricultural Revolution • Social Life in the Cities • New Tastes in the Arts • Religious Revivals

Consolidation of the European State System 536 • French Ambitions Thwarted • British Rise and Dutch Decline • Russia’s Emergence as a European

Power • The Power of Diplomacy and the

Importance of Population

The Birth of the Enlightenment 545 • Popularization of Science and

Challenges to Religion • Travel Literature and the Challenge

to Custom and Tradition • Raising the Woman Question

519

The Atlantic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

C H A P T E R

17

London Coffeehouse This gouache (a variant on watercolor painting) from about 1725 depicts a scene from a London coffeehouse located in the courtyard of the Royal Exchange (merchants’ bank). Middle-class men (wearing wigs) read newspapers, drink coffee, smoke pipes, and discuss the news of the day. The coffeehouse draws them out of their homes into a new public space. (© British Museum, London/ The Bridgeman Art Library.)

European consumption of coffee, tea, choco- late, and other novelties increased dramatically as European nations forged worldwide economic links. At the center of this new global economy was the Atlantic system, the web of trade routes that bound together western Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Europeans bought slaves in western Africa, transported them to be sold in the colonies in North and South America and the Caribbean, bought raw commodities such as coffee and sugar that were produced by the new colonial planta- tions, and then sold those commodities in Euro- pean ports for refining and reshipment. This Atlantic system, which first took clear shape in the early eighteenth century, became the hub of Euro- pean expansion throughout the world.

Coffee drinking is just one example of the many new social and cultural patterns that took root between 1690 and 1740. Improvements in agricultural production at home reinforced the effects of trade overseas; Europeans now had more disposable income for extras, and they spent their money not only in the new coffeehouses and cafés that sprang up all over Europe but also on news- papers, musical concerts, paintings, and novels. A new middle-class public began to make its pres- ence felt in every domain of culture and social life.

Although the rise of the Atlantic system gave Europe new prominence in the global context, Eu- ropean rulers still focused most of their political, diplomatic, and military energies on their rivalries within Europe. A coalition of countries succeeded in containing French aggression, and a more bal- anced diplomatic system emerged. In eastern Europe, Prussia and Austria had to contend with the

rising power of Russia under Peter the Great. In western Europe, both Spain and the Dutch Repub- lic declined in influence but continued to vie with Britain and France for colonial spoils in the Atlantic. The more evenly matched competition among the great powers encouraged the development of diplo- matic skills and drew attention to public health as a way of encouraging population growth.

In the aftermath of Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, a new intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment began to germinate. An initial impetus came from French Protestant refugees who published works critical of absolutism in politics and religion. Increased prosperity, the growth of a middle-class public, and the decline in warfare after Louis XIV’s death in 1715 helped fuel this new critical spirit. Fed by the popularization of science and the growing in- terest in travel literature, the Enlightenment en- couraged greater skepticism about religious and state authority. Eventually, the movement would question almost every aspect of social and politi- cal life in Europe. The Enlightenment began in western Europe in those countries — Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic— most affected by the new Atlantic system. It too was a product of the age of coffee.

Focus Question: What were the most important consequences of the growth of the Atlantic system?

The Atlantic System and the World Economy Although their ships had been circling the globe since the early 1500s, Europeans did not draw most of the world into their economic orbit until the 1700s. Western European trading nations sent

520 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

Atlantic system: The network of trade established in the 1700s that bound together western Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Europeans sold slaves from western Africa and bought com- modities that were produced by the new colonial plantations in North and South America and the Caribbean.

1690 1700 1710

■ 1690s Development of Caribbean plantations

■ 1694 Bank of England established; Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies

■ 1697 Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary

■ 1699 Turks forced to recognize Austrian rule over Hungary, Transylvania

■ 1703 Building of St. Petersburg begins; first Russian newspaper

■ 1713–1714 Peace of Utrecht

■ 1714–1727 King George I of England

■ 1715 Death of Louis XIV

ships loaded with goods to buy slaves from local rulers on the western coast of Africa; the slaves were then transported to the colonies in North and South America and the Caribbean and sold to the owners of plantations producing coffee, sugar, cot- ton, and tobacco. Money from the slave trade was used to buy the raw commodities produced in the colonies and ship them back to Europe, where they were refined or processed and then sold within Europe and around the world. The Atlantic system and the growth of international trade thus helped create a new consumer society.

Slavery and the Atlantic System Spain and Portugal dominated Atlantic trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but in the eighteenth century European trade in the Atlantic rapidly expanded and became more systematically interconnected (Map 17.1). By 1630, Portugal had already sent sixty thousand African slaves to Brazil to work on the new plantations (large tracts of lands that produced staple crops, were farmed by slave labor, and were owned by colonial settlers from western Europe), which were producing some fifteen thousand tons of sugar a year. Real- izing that plantations producing staples for Euro- peans could bring fabulous wealth, the European powers grew less interested in the dwindling trade in precious metals and more eager to colonize. In the 1690s, large-scale planters of sugar, tobacco, and coffee began displacing small farmers who re- lied on one or two servants. Planters and their plantations won out because cheap slave labor allowed them to produce mass quantities of com- modities at low prices.

State-chartered private companies from Por- tugal, France, Britain, the Dutch Republic, Prussia, and even Denmark exploited the 3,500-mile coast- line of West Africa for slaves. Before 1675, most blacks taken from Africa had been sent to Brazil, but by 1700 half of the African slaves were land- ing in the Caribbean (Figure 17.1). Thereafter, the plantation economy began to expand on the North American mainland. The numbers stagger the imagination. Before 1650, slave traders trans- ported about seven thousand Africans each year

The Atl antic System and the World Economy 5211690–1740

1720 1730 1740

■ 1720 Last plague outbreak in western Europe

■ 1721 Treaty of Nystad; Montesquieu, Persian Letters

348,000 578,600

British North America and U.S.

Spanish America

1,891,400

Brazil

3,233,700

Caribbean

578,600

Spanish America

FIGURE 17.1 African Slaves Imported into American Territories, 1701–1810 During the eighteenth century, planters in the newly established Caribbean colonies imported millions of African slaves to work the new plantations that produced sugar, coffee, indigo, and cotton for the European market. The vast majority of African slaves transported to the Americas ended up in either the Caribbean or Brazil. Why were so many slaves transported to the Caribbean islands, which are relatively small compared to Spanish or British North America? (Adapted from Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969].)

plantation: A large tract of land that produced staple crops such as sugar, coffee, and tobacco; was farmed by slave labor; and was owned by a colonial settler.

■ 1733 War of the Polish Succession; Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation

■ 1741 Handel, Messiah■ 1719 Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

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MAP 17.1 European Trade Patterns, c. 1740 By 1740, the European powers had colonized much of North and South America and incorporated their colonies there into a worldwide system of commerce centered on the slave trade and plantation production of staple crops. Europeans still sought spices and luxury goods in China and the East Indies, but outside of Java, few Europeans had settled permanently in these areas. ■ How did control over colonies determine dominance in international trade in this period?

across the Atlantic; this rate doubled between 1650 and 1675, nearly doubled again in the next twenty- five years, and kept increasing until the 1780s (Figure 17.2, below). In all, more than eleven mil- lion Africans, not counting those who were cap- tured but died before or during the sea voyage, were transported to the Americas before the slave trade began to wind down after 1850. Many indi- vidual traders gained spectacular wealth, but com- panies did not always make profits. The English Royal African Company, for example, delivered 100,000 slaves to the Caribbean and imported thirty thousand tons of sugar to Britain yet lost money after the few profitable years following its founding in 1672.

The Life of the Slaves. The balance of white and black populations in the New World colonies was determined by the staples produced. Because they did not own plantations, New England merchants and farmers bought few slaves. Blacks — both slave and free — made up only 3 percent of the popu- lation in eighteenth-century New England, com- pared with 60 percent in South Carolina. On the whole, the British North American colonies con- tained a higher proportion of African Americans

from 1730 to 1765 than at any other time in Amer- ican history. The imbalance of whites and blacks was even more extreme in the Caribbean, where most indigenous people had already died fight- ing Europeans or the diseases brought by them. By 1713, the French Caribbean colony of St. Domingue (on the western part of Hispaniola, present-day Haiti) had four times as many black slaves as whites; by 1754, slaves there outnumbered whites more than ten to one.

Enslaved women and men suffered terribly. Most had been sold to European traders by Africans from the west coast who acquired them through warfare or kidnapping. The vast majority were between fourteen and thirty-five years old. Before they were crammed onto the ships for the three-month trip, their heads were shaved, they were stripped naked, and some were branded with red-hot irons. Men and women were separated. Men were shackled with leg irons. Sailors and of- ficers raped the women whenever they wished and beat those who refused their advances. In the cramped and appalling conditions of the voyage, as many as one-fourth of the slaves died.

Those who survived the transit were forced into degrading and oppressive conditions. Upon

The Atl antic System and the World Economy 5231690–1740

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FIGURE 17.2 Annual Imports in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1450–1870 The importation of slaves to the American territories reached its height in the second half of the eighteenth century and began to decline around 1800. Yet despite the abolition of the slave trade by the British in 1807, commerce in slaves did not seriously diminish until after the revolutions of 1848. (Adapted from Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969). Reprinted by

permission of the University of Wisconsin Press.)

purchase, masters gave slaves new names, often only first names, and in some colonies branded them as personal property. Slaves had no social identities of their own; they were expected to learn their master’s language and to do any job assigned. Slaves worked fifteen- to seventeen-hour days and were fed only enough to keep them on their feet. Brazilian slaves consumed more calories than the poorest Brazilians do today, but that hardly made them well fed. The death rate among slaves was high, especially on the sugar plantations, where slaves had to cut and haul sugarcane to the grinders and boilers before it spoiled. During the harvest, grinding and boiling went on around the clock. Because so many slaves died in the sugar-growing regions, more and more slaves, especially strong males, had to be imported. In North America, in

contrast, where sugar was a minor crop, the slave population increased tenfold by 1863 through nat- ural growth.

Not surprisingly, despite the threat of torture or death on recapture, slaves sometimes ran away. (See “New Sources, New Perspectives,” above.) In Brazil, runaways found quilombos (hideouts) in the forests or backcountry. When it was discovered and destroyed in 1695, the quilombo of Palmares had thirty thousand fugitives who had formed their own social organization, complete with elected kings and councils of elders. Outright re- volt was uncommon, especially before the nine- teenth century, but other forms of resistance included stealing food, breaking tools, and feign- ing illness or stupidity. Slaveholders’ fears about conspiracy and revolt lurked beneath the surface

524 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

Historians have found it difficult toreconstruct slave life from the pointof view of the slaves themselves, in part because slaves newly imported from Africa to the New World did not speak the language of their captors. Scholars have at- tempted to fill in this blank by using a va- riety of overlapping sources. The most interesting and controversial of these sources are oral histories taken from de- scendants of slaves. In some former slave societies, these descendants still tell stories about their ancestors’ first days under slav- ery. The controversy comes from using present-day memories to shed light on eighteenth-century lives.

One of the regions most intensively studied in this fashion is Suriname (for- merly Dutch Guiana), on the northeast coast of South America between present- day Guyana and French Guiana. This re- gion is a good source of oral histories because 10 percent of the African slaves transported there between the 1680s and the 1750s escaped from the plantations and fled into the nearby rain forests. There they set up their own societies and devel- oped their own language, in which they carried on the oral traditions of the first

runaway slaves. The descendants of the runaway slaves recounted the following details:

In slavery, there was hardly anything to eat. It was at the place called Providence Planta- tion. They whipped you there till your ass was burning. Then they would give you a bit of plain rice in a calabash [a bowl made from a hard-shelled tropical American fruit]. . . . And the gods told them that this is no way for human beings to live. They would help them. Let each person go where he could. So they ran.

From other sources, historians have learned that there was a major slave rebellion at Providence Plantation in Suriname in1693.

By comparing such oral histories to written accounts of plantation owners, missionaries, and Dutch colonial officials, historians have been able to paint a richly detailed picture not only of slavery but also of runaway slave societies, which were especially numerous in South America. At the end of the eighteenth century, a Portuguese-speaking Jew named David de Ishak Cohen Nassy wrote his own history of plantation life based on records from the local Jewish community that are now

lost. Because the Dutch, unlike most other Europeans, allowed Jews to own slaves, Portuguese-speaking Jews from Brazil owned about one-third of the plantations and slaves in Suriname. Nassy gave the following account of Suriname’s first slave revolt:

There was in the year 1690 a revolt on a plantation situated on the Cassewinica Creek, behind Jews Savannah, belonging to a Jew named Imanuël Machado, where, having killed their master, [the slaves] fled, carrying away with them everything that was there. . . . The Jews . . . in an expedition which they undertook against the rebels, killed many of them and brought back several who were punished by death on the very spot.

The oral histories told about the revolt from the runaway slaves’ perspective:

There had been a great council meeting [of runaway slaves] in the forest. . . . They de- cided to burn a different one of [Machado’s] plantations from the place where he had whipped Lanu [one of the runaway slaves] because they would find more tools there. This was the Cassewinica Plantation, which had many slaves. They knew all about this plantation from slavery times. So, they at-

N E W S O U R C E S , N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S

Oral History and the Life of Slaves

of every slave-based society. In 1710, the royal gov- ernor of Virginia reminded the colonial legislature of the need for unceasing vigilance: “We are not to Depend on Either Their Stupidity, or that Babel of Languages among ’em; freedom Wears a Cap which Can Without a Tongue, Call Togather all Those who Long to Shake off the fetters of Slav- ery.” Masters defended whipping and other forms of physical punishment as essential to maintain- ing discipline. Laws called for the castration of a slave who struck a white person.

Effects of the Slave Trade on Europe. Plantation owners often left their colonial possessions in the care of agents and merely collected the revenue so that they could live as wealthy landowners back home, where they built opulent mansions and

gained influence in local and national politics. William Beckford, for example, had been sent from Jamaica to school in England as a young boy. When he inherited sugar plantations and shipping com- panies from his father and older brother, he moved the headquarters of the family business to London in the 1730s to be close to the government and financial markets. His holdings formed the single most powerful economic interest in Jamaica, but he preferred to live in England, where he could buy works of art for his many luxurious homes, hold political office (he was lord mayor of London and a member of Parliament), and even lend money to the government.

The slave trade permanently altered consump- tion patterns for ordinary people. Sugar had been prescribed as a medicine before the end of the

Over the next decades, the runaway slaves fought a constant series of battles with plantation owners and Dutch offi- cials. Finally, in 1762, the Dutch granted the runaway slaves their freedom in a peace agreement and allowed them to trade in

the main town of the colony in exchange for agreeing to return all future runaways. The runaways had not destroyed the slave system, but they had gained their own in- dependence alongside it. From their oral histories it is possible to retrace their ef- forts to build new lives in a strange place, in which they combined African practices with New World experiences.

Source: Richard Price, Alabi’s World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 17, 9.

Questions to Consider 1. What did the runaway slaves mentioned

in these accounts aim to accomplish when they attacked plantations?

2. Why would runaway slaves make an agreement with the Dutch colonial of- ficials to return future runaways?

3. Can oral histories recorded in the twen- tieth century be considered accurate ver- sions of events that took place in the eighteenth century? How can they be tested?

Further Reading Price, Richard. Alabi’s World. 1990. Stedman, John Gabriel. Narrative of a Five

Years’ Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam. Edited, and with an introduction and notes, by Richard Price and Sally Price. 1988.

tacked. It was at night. They killed the head of the plantation, a white man. They took all the things, everything they needed.

The runaway slaves saw the attack as part of their ongoing effort to build a life in the rain forest, away from the whites.

Slaves of Suriname in the 1770s John Gabriel Stedman published an account of his participation in a five- year expedition against the runaway slaves of Suriname that took place in the 1770s. He provided drawings such as the one reproduced here, which shows Africans who have just come off a slave ship. (The New York Public Library/ Art Resource, NY.)

The Atl antic System and the World Economy 5251690–1740

sixteenth century, but the development of planta- tions in Brazil and the Caribbean made it a stan- dard food item. By 1700, the British were sending home fifty million pounds of sugar a year, a figure that doubled by 1730. During the French Revolu- tion of the 1790s, sugar shortages would become a cause for rioting in Paris. Equally pervasive was the spread of tobacco; by the 1720s, Britain was importing two hundred shiploads of tobacco from Virginia and Maryland annually, and men of every country and class smoked pipes or took snuff.

The Origins of Modern Racism. The traffic in slaves disturbed many Europeans. As a govern- ment memorandum to the Spanish king explained in 1610: “Modern theologians in published books commonly report on, and condemn as unjust, the acts of enslavement which take place in provinces of this Royal Empire.” Between 1667 and 1671, the French Dominican monk Father Du Tertre pub- lished three volumes in which he denounced the mistreatment of slaves in the French colonies.

In the 1700s, however, slaveholders began to justify their actions by demeaning the mental and spiritual qualities of the enslaved Africans. White Europeans and colonists sometimes described black slaves as animal-like, akin to apes. A leading New England Puritan asserted about the slaves: “Indeed their Stupidity is a Discouragement. It may seem, unto as little purpose, to Teach, as to wash an Aethiopian [Ethiopian].” One of the great para-

doxes of this time was that talk of liberty and self- evident rights, especially prevalent in Britain and its North American colonies, coexisted with the belief that some people were meant to be slaves. Although Christians believed in principle in a kind of spiritual equality between blacks and whites, the churches often defended or at least did not oppose the inequities of slavery.

World Trade and Settlement The Atlantic system helped extend European trade relations across the globe. The textiles that Atlantic shippers exchanged for slaves on the west coast of Africa, for example, were manufactured in India and exported by the British and French East India Companies. As much as one-quarter of the British exports to Africa in the eighteenth century were actually re-exports from India. To expand its trade in the rest of the world, Europeans seized territo- ries and tried to establish permanent settlements. The eighteenth-century extension of European power prepared the way for western global domi- nation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Americas. In contrast to the sparsely inhab- ited trading outposts in Asia and Africa, the colonies in the Americas bulged with settlers. The British North American colonies, for example, contained about 1.5 million nonnative (that is, white settler and black slave) residents by 1750.

526 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

Caribbean Sugar Mill This seventeenth-century engraving of a sugar mill or grinder makes the work seem much less difficult than it was in practice. Slaves cut the sugarcane and then hauled it from the fields to the mill, where it was crushed. Many slaves lost fingers or hands in the process. The slaves then collected the juice (bottom center) and carried it to the boilers, shown at the bottom left and right. The sap was poured into molds and dried. Then the bricks of raw sugar were exported to Europe for refining. (The Granger Collection, NY.)

While the Spanish competed with the Portuguese for control of South America, the French com- peted with the British for control of North Amer- ica. Spanish and British settlers came to blows over the boundary between the British colonies and Florida, which was held by Spain.

Local economies shaped colonial social rela- tions; men in French trapper communities in Canada, for example, had little in common with the men and women of the plantation societies in Barbados or Brazil. Racial attitudes also differed from place to place. The Spanish and Portuguese tolerated intermarriage with the native popula- tions in both America and Asia. Sexual contact, both inside and outside marriage, fostered greater racial variety in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies than in the French or the English territo- ries (though mixed-race people could be found everywhere). By 1800, mestizos, children of Span- ish men and Indian women, accounted for more than a quarter of the population in the Spanish colonies, and many of them aspired to join the lo- cal elite. However, greater racial diversity seems not to have improved the treatment of slaves.

Where intermarriage between colonizers and natives was common, conversion to Christianity proved most successful. Even while maintaining their native religious beliefs, many Indians in the Spanish colonies had come to consider themselves devout Catholics by 1700. Indian carpenters and ar- tisans in the villages produced innumerable altars, retables (painted panels), and sculpted images to adorn their local churches, and individual families put up domestic shrines. Yet the clergy remained overwhelmingly Spanish: the church hierarchy con- cluded that the Indians’ humility and innocence made them unsuitable for the priesthood.

In the early years of American colonization, many more men than women emigrated from Europe. Although the sex imbalance began to decline at the end of the seventeenth century, it remained substantial; two and a half times more men than women were among the immigrants leaving Liverpool, England, between 1697 and 1707, for example. Women who emigrated as in- dentured servants ran great risks: if they did not die of disease during the voyage, they were likely to give birth to illegitimate children (the fate of at least one in five servant women) or be virtually sold into marriage. Upper-class women were often kept in seclusion, especially in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies.

The uncertainties of life in the American colonies provided new opportunities for European women and men willing to live outside the law, however. In the 1500s and 1600s, the English and Dutch governments had routinely authorized pi- rates to prey on the ships of their rivals, the Span- ish and Portuguese. Then, in the late 1600s, English, French, and Dutch bands made up of de- serters and crews from wrecked vessels began to form their own associations of pirates, especially in the Caribbean. Called buccaneers from their custom of curing strips of beef, called boucan by the native Caribs of the islands, the pirates gov- erned themselves and preyed on everyone’s ship- ping without regard to national origin. After 1700, the colonial governments tried to stamp out piracy. As one British judge argued in 1705, “A pi- rate is in perpetual war with every individual and every state. . . . They are worse than ravenous beasts.”

Africa and Asia. White settlements in Africa and Asia remained small and almost insignificant, ex- cept for their long-term potential. Europeans had little contact with East Africa and almost none with Africa’s vast interior. A handful of Portuguese trading posts in Angola and a few Dutch farms on the Cape of Good Hope provided the only toe- holds for future expansion. In China, the emper- ors had welcomed Catholic missionaries at court in the seventeenth century, but the priests’ credi- bility diminished as they squabbled among them- selves and associated with European merchants, whom the Chinese considered pirates. “The barbarians [Europeans] are like wild beasts,” one Chinese official concluded. In 1720, only one thou- sand Europeans resided in Guangzhou (Canton), the sole place where foreigners could legally trade for spices, tea, and silk (see Map 17.1, page 522).

Europeans exercised more influence in Java (in what was then called the East Indies) and in India. Dutch coffee production in Java and nearby islands increased phenomenally in the early 1700s, and many Dutch settled there to oversee produc- tion and trade. Dutch, English, French, Por- tuguese, and Danish companies competed in India for spices, cotton, and silk; by the 1740s, the Eng- lish and French had become the leading rivals in India, just as they were in North America. Both countries extended their power as India’s Muslim rulers lost control to local Hindu princes, rebel- lious Sikhs, invading Persians, and their own

The Atl antic System and the World Economy 5271690–1740

mestizo: A person born to a Spanish father and a native Amer- ican mother.

buccaneers: Pirates of the Caribbean who governed themselves and preyed on international shipping.

provincial governors. A few thousand Europeans lived in India, though many thousand more sol- diers were stationed there to protect them. The staple of trade with India in the early 1700s was calico — lightweight, brightly colored cotton cloth that caught on as a fashion in Europe (see the im- age above).

Europeans who visited India were especially struck by what they viewed as exotic religious prac- tices. In a book published in 1696 of his travels to western India, an Anglican minister described the fakirs (religious mendicants, or beggars of alms), “some of whom show their devotion by a shame- less appearance, walking naked, without the least rag of clothes to cover them.” Such writings in- creased European interest in the outside world but also fed a European sense of superiority that helped excuse the more violent forms of colonial domination (see The Exotic as Consumer Item, page 529).

The Birth of Consumer Society As worldwide colonization produced new supplies of goods, from coffee to calico, population growth in Europe fueled demand for them. Beginning first in Britain, then in France and the Italian states, and finally in eastern Europe, population surged, grow- ing by about 20 percent between 1700 and 1750. The gap between a fast-growing northwest and a more stagnant south and central Europe now di- minished as regions that had lost population dur- ing the seventeenth-century downturn recovered. Cities, in particular, grew. Between 1600 and 1750,

London’s population more than tripled and Paris’s more than doubled.

Although contemporaries could not have re- alized it then, this was the start of the modern pop- ulation explosion. It appears that a decline in the death rate, rather than a rise in the birthrate, ex- plains the turnaround. Three main factors con- tributed to increased longevity: better weather and hence more bountiful harvests, improved agricul- tural techniques, and the plague’s disappearance after 1720.

By the early eighteenth century, the effects of economic expansion and population growth brought about a consumer revolution. For example, the British East India Company began to im- port into Britain huge quantities of calico; British imports of tobacco doubled between 1672 and 1700; and at Nantes, the center of the French sugar trade, imports quadrupled between 1698 and 1733. Tea, chocolate, and coffee became virtual ne- cessities. In the 1670s, only a trickle of tea reached London, but by 1720 the East India Company had sent nine million pounds to England — a figure that rose to thirty-seven million pounds by 1750. In 1700, England had two thousand coffeehouses; by 1740, every English country town had at least two. Paris got its first cafés at the end of the sev- enteenth century; Berlin opened its first coffee- house in 1714; and Bach’s Leipzig boasted eight by 1725.

528 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

consumer revolution: The rapid increase in consumption of new staples produced in the Atlantic system as well as of other items of daily life that were previously unavailable or beyond the reach of ordinary people.

India Cottons and Trade with the East This colored cotton cloth (now faded with age) was painted and embroidered in Madras in southern India sometime in the late 1600s. The male figure with a mustache may be a European, but the female figures are clearly Asian. Europeans—especially the British— discovered that they could make big profits on the export of Indian cotton cloth to Europe. They also traded Indian cottons in Africa for slaves and sold large quantities in the colonies. (Victoria and Albert Museum, London.)

A new economic dynamic steadily took shape that would influence all of subsequent history. More and more people escaped the confines of a subsistence economy, in which peasants produced barely enough to support themselves from year to year. As ordinary people gained more disposable income, demand for nonessential consumer goods rose (see Document, “The Social Effects of Grow- ing Consumption,” page 530). These included not only the new colonial products such as coffee and tea but also tables, chairs, sheets, chamber pots, lamps, mirrors, and for the better off still, coffee- and teapots, china, cutlery, chests of drawers, desks, clocks, and pictures for the walls. Rising de- mand created more jobs and more income and yet more purchasing power in a mutually reinforcing cycle. In the English economic literature of the 1690s, writers reacted to these developments by ex- pressing a new view of humans as consuming an- imals with boundless appetites. Many authors

attacked the new doctrine of consumerism, but they could not hold back the fast-growing market for consumption. Change did not occur all at once, however. The consumer revolution spread from the cities to the countryside, from England to the continent, and from western Europe to eastern Europe only over the long run.

Review: How was consumerism related to slavery in the early eighteenth century?

New Social and Cultural Patterns The rise of consumption was fueled in part by a revolution in agricultural techniques that made it possible to produce larger quantities of food with a smaller agricultural workforce. As population in- creased, more people moved to the cities, where they found themselves caught up in innovative ur- ban customs such as attending musical concerts and reading novels. Along with a general increase in literacy, these activities helped create a public that responded to new writers and artists. As al- ways, people’s experiences varied depending on whether they lived in wealth or poverty, in urban or rural areas, or in eastern or western Europe.

Agricultural Revolution Although Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic shared the enthusiasm for consumer goods, Britain’s domestic market grew most quickly. In Britain, as agricultural output increased 43 percent over the course of the 1700s, the population in- creased by 70 percent. The British imported grain to feed the growing population, but they also ben- efited from the development of techniques that to- gether constituted an agricultural revolution. No new machinery propelled this revolution — just increasingly aggressive attitudes toward invest- ment and management. The Dutch and the Flem- ish had pioneered many of these techniques in the 1600s, but the British took them further.

Four major changes occurred in British agri- culture that eventually spread to other countries. First, farmers increased the amount of land under cultivation by draining wetlands and by growing crops on previously uncultivated common lands

New Social and Cultural Patterns 5291690–1740

The Exotic as Consumer Item This painting by the Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera (1675–1757) is titled Africa. The young black girl wearing a turban represents the African continent. Carriera was known for her use of pastels. In 1720, she journeyed to Paris, where she became an associate of Antoine Watteau and helped inaugurate the rococo style in painting. Why might the artist have chosen to paint an African girl? (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister.)

■ For more help analyzing this image, see the visual activity for this chapter in the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

agricultural revolution: Increasingly aggressive attitudes toward investment in and management of land that increased production of food in the 1700s.

(acreage maintained by the community for graz- ing). Second, those farmers who could afford it consolidated small, scattered plots into larger, more efficient units. Third, livestock raising be- came more closely linked to crop growing, and the yields of each increased. (See “Taking Measure,” page 531.) For centuries, most farmers had rotated their fields in and out of production to replenish the soil. Now farmers planted carefully chosen fod- der crops such as clover and turnips that added nutrients to the soil, thereby eliminating the need to leave a field fallow (unplanted) every two or three years. With more fodder available, farmers could raise more livestock, which in turn produced more manure to fertilize grain fields. Fourth, se- lective breeding of animals combined with the in-

crease in fodder to improve the quality and size of herds. New crops had only a slight impact; pota- toes, for example, were introduced to Europe from South America in the 1500s, but because people feared they might cause leprosy, tuberculosis, or fevers, they were not grown in quantity until the late 1700s. By the 1730s and 1740s, agricultural output had increased dramatically, and prices for food had fallen because of these interconnected innovations.

Changes in agricultural practices did not ben- efit all landowners equally. The biggest British landowners consolidated their holdings in the “en- closure movement.” They put pressure on small farmers and villagers to sell their land or give up their common lands. The big landlords then

530 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

The Social Effects of Growing Consumption

D O C U M E N T

Daniel Defoe’s adventures in real life are matched only by those of his famous fic- tional characters Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders. Though never shipwrecked like Crusoe, Defoe spent time in bank- ruptcy, in exile, and in prison (for writing a pamphlet satirizing Anglican treatment of dissenters). He turned his hand to various forms of commerce, in hosiery, woolens, wine, and political secrets, but most of all to mad scribbling on almost any topic imaginable. He published hundreds of books and pamphlets. In the 395-page book from which this excerpt is taken, he describes the recent fabulous growth in the import and export trade of Great Britain and contrasts the wealth gained by the “industrious” classes to the contempt shown them by the aristocracy [Gentry or Gentlemen].

Our People in general being in good Cir- cumstances, I mean the middling, trading, and industrious People, living tolerably well, their well-faring gives Occasion to the vast Consumption of the foreign, as well as home Produce, the like of which is not to be equalled by any Nation in the World; the Particulars we shall enquire into in their Order.

How far the Multitudes of our Peo- ple are encreased by these very Articles, and that to such a Degree as is scarce con- ceivable, is worth our Enquiry, were it not too tedious for this Place. What populous Towns are rais’d by our Manufactures, from with few Years! How are our Towns built into Cities, and small Villages (hardly known in ancient Times) grown up into populous Towns! . . .

Well might I say, as in the foregoing Chapter, That it is a Scandal upon the Un- derstanding of the Gentry, to think con- temptibly of the trading part of the Nation; seeing however the Gentlemen may value themselves upon their Birth and Blood, the Case begins to turn against them so evidently, as to Fortune and Estate, that tho’ they say, the Tradesmen cannot be made Gentlemen; yet the Tradesmen are, at this Time, able to buy the Gentlemen almost in every part of the Kingdom. . . .

The ancient Families, who having wasted and exhausted their Estates, and being declin’d and decay’d in Fortune by Luxury and high Living, have restor’d and rais’d themselves again, by mixing Blood with the despis’d Tradesmen, marrying the Daughters of such Tradesmen. . . .

I might add here, that it would be worth the while for those Gentlemen, who talk so much of their antient Family Merit, and look so little at preserving the Stock, by encreasing their own: I say, it would be worth their while to look into the Roll of our Gentry, and enquire what is become of the Estates and those prodigious Numbers of lost and extinct Families, which now even the Heralds themselves can hardly find; let them tell us if those Estates are not now purchased by Tradesmen and Citizens, or the Posterity of such; and whether those Tradesmens Posterity do not now fill up the Vacancies, the Gaps, and Chasmes in the great Roll or Lift of Families, as well of the Gentry, as of the Nobility themselves; and whether there are many Families left, who have not been either restored as in our first Head, or supply’d, as in the second, by the Succession of Wealth, and new Branches from the growing Greatness of Trade.

Trade, in a word, raises antient Fam- ilies when sunk and decay’d: And plants new Families, where the old ones are lost and extinct.

Source: Daniel Defoe, A Plan of the English Commerce. Being a complete prospect of the trade of this nation, as well home as foreign. In three parts, 2nd ed. (London, 1737), 79–83.

fenced off (enclosed) their property. Because en- closure eliminated community grazing rights, it frequently sparked a struggle between the big land- lords and villagers, and in Britain it normally re- quired an act of Parliament. Such acts became increasingly common in the second half of the eighteenth century, and by the century’s end six million acres of common lands had been enclosed and developed. “Improvers” produced more food more efficiently than small farmers could and thus supported a growing population.

Contrary to the fears of contemporaries, small farmers and cottagers (those with little or no prop- erty) were not forced off the land all at once. But most villagers could not afford the litigation in- volved in resisting enclosure, and small landhold- ers consequently had to sell out to landlords or farmers with larger plots. Landlords with large holdings leased their estates to tenant farmers at constantly increasing rents, and the tenant farm- ers in turn employed the cottagers as salaried agri- cultural workers. In this way the English peasantry largely disappeared, replaced by a more hierarchi- cal society of big landlords, enterprising tenant farmers, and poor agricultural laborers.

The new agricultural techniques spread slowly from Britain and the Low Countries (the Dutch Republic and the Austrian Netherlands) to the rest of western Europe. Outside a few pockets in north- ern France and the western German states, how- ever, subsistence agriculture (producing just enough to get by rather than surpluses for the mar- ket) continued to dominate farming in western Europe and Scandinavia. In southwestern Germany, for example, 80 percent of the peasants produced no surplus because their plots were too small. Unlike the populations of the highly urbanized Low Countries (where half the people lived in towns and cities), most Europeans, western and eastern, eked out their existence in the countryside and could barely participate in the new markets for consumer goods.

In eastern Europe, the condition of peasants worsened in the areas where landlords tried hard- est to improve crop yields. To produce more for the Baltic grain market, aristocratic landholders in Prussia, Poland, and parts of Russia drained wet- lands, cultivated moors, and built dikes. They also forced peasants off lands that the peasants had worked for themselves, increased compulsory la- bor services (the critical element in serfdom), and began to manage their estates directly. Some east- ern landowners grew fabulously wealthy. The Potocki family in the Polish Ukraine, for example, owned three million acres of land and had 130,000

serfs. In parts of Poland and Russia, the serfs hardly differed from slaves in status, and their “masters” ran their huge estates much like American planta- tions (see the image on page 532).

Social Life in the Cities Because of emigration from the countryside, cities grew in population and consequently exercised more influence on culture and social life. Between

New Social and Cultural Patterns 5311690–1740

T A K I N G M E A S U R E

Relationship of Crop Harvested to Seed Used, 1400–1800 The impact and even the timing of the agricultural revolution can be determined by this figure, based on yield ratios (the number of grains produced for each seed planted). Britain, the Dutch Republic, and the Austrian Netherlands all experienced huge increases in crop yields after 1700. Other European regions lagged behind right into the 1800s. Why is crop yield such an important measure? (From Peter J. Hugill, World Trade since 1431: Geography, Technology, and Capi-

talism ( Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 56.)

Yield Ratios A = Britain and the Low Countries B = France, Spain, and Italy C = Central Europe and Scandinavia D = Eastern Europe

Y ie

ld R

at io

s

Years

1500 1600 1700 18001400

5

10 A

B C

D

1650 and 1750, cities with at least ten thousand in- habitants increased in population by 44 percent. From the eighteenth century onward, urban growth would be continuous. Along with the gen- eral growth of cities, an important south-to-north shift occurred in the pattern of urbanization. Around 1500, half of the people in cities of at least ten thousand residents could be found in the Ital- ian states, Spain, or Portugal; by 1700, the urban- ization of northwestern and southern Europe was roughly equal. Eastern Europe, despite the huge cities of Istanbul and Moscow, was still less urban than western Europe. London was by far the most populous European city, with 675,000 inhabitants in 1750; Berlin had 90,000 people, Warsaw only 23,000.

Urban Social Classes. Many landowners kept a residence in town, so the separation between ru- ral and city life was not as extreme as might be imagined, at least not for the very rich. At the top

of the ladder in the big cities were the landed nobles. Some of them filled their lives only with con- spicuous consumption of fine food, extravagant clothing, coaches, books, and opera; others held key political, administrative, or judicial offices. However they spent their time, these rich families employed thousands of artisans, shopkeepers, and domestic servants. Many English peers (highest- ranking nobles) had thirty or forty servants at each of their homes.

The middle classes of officials, merchants, professionals, and landowners occupied the next rung down on the social ladder. London’s popula- tion, for example, included about twenty thousand middle-class families (constituting, at most, one- sixth of the city’s population). In this period the middle classes began to develop distinctive ways of life that set them apart from both the rich noble landowners and the lower classes. Unlike the rich nobles, the middle classes lived primarily in the cities and towns, even if they owned small coun- try estates. They ate more moderately than nobles but much better than peasants or laborers. For breakfast the British middle classes ate toast and rolls and, after 1700, drank tea. Dinner, served midday, consisted of roasted or boiled beef or mut- ton, poultry or pork, and vegetables. Supper was a light meal of bread and cheese with cake or pie. Beer was the main drink in London, and many families brewed their own. Even children drank beer because of the lack of fresh water.

Below the middle classes came the artisans and shopkeepers (most of whom were organized in professional guilds), then the journeymen, ap- prentices, servants, and laborers. At the bottom of the social scale were the unemployed poor, who survived by intermittent work and charity. Women married to artisans and shopkeepers often kept the accounts, supervised employees, and ran the household as well. Every middle-class and upper- class family employed servants; artisans and shop- keepers frequently hired them too. Women from poorer families usually worked as domestic ser- vants until they married. Four out of five domes- tic servants in the city were female. In large cities such as London, the servant population grew faster than the population of the city as a whole.

Signs of Social Distinction. Social status in the cities was readily visible. Wide, spacious streets graced rich districts; the houses had gardens, and the air was relatively fresh. In poor districts, the streets were narrow, dirty, dark, humid, and smelly, and the houses were damp and crowded. The poorest people were homeless, sleeping under

532 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

Treatment of Serfs in Russia Visitors from western Europe often remarked on the cruel treatment of serfs in Russia. This drawing by one such visitor shows the punishment that could be inflicted by landowners. Serfs could be whipped for almost any reason, even for making a soup too salty or neglecting to bow when the lord’s family passed by. Their condition worsened in the 1700s, as landowners began to sell serfs much like slaves. Although life for Russian serfs was more brutal than for peasants elsewhere, upper classes in every country regarded the serfs as dirty, deceitful, and brutish. (New York Public Library/ Art Resource, NY.)

bridges or in abandoned buildings. A Neapolitan prince described his homeless neighbors as “lying like filthy animals, with no distinction of age or sex.” In some districts, rich and poor lived in the same buildings; the poor clambered up to shabby, cramped apartments on the top floors.

Like shelter, clothing was a reliable social in- dicator. The poorest workingwomen in Paris wore woolen skirts and blouses of dark colors over pet- ticoats, a bodice, and a corset. They also donned caps of various sorts, cotton stockings, and shoes (probably their only pair). Workingmen dressed even more drably. Many occupations could be rec- ognized by their dress: no one could confuse lawyers in their dark robes with masons or butch- ers in their special aprons, for example. People higher on the social ladder were more likely to sport a variety of fabrics, colors, and unusual de- signs in their clothing and to own many different outfits. Social status was not an abstract idea; it permeated every detail of daily life.

The Growth of a Literate Public. The ability to read and write also reflected social differences. People in the upper classes were more literate than those in the lower classes; city people were more literate than peasants. Protestant countries appear to have been more successful at promoting educa- tion and literacy than Catholic countries, perhaps because of the Protestant emphasis on Bible read- ing. Widespread literacy among the lower classes was first achieved in the Protestant areas of Switzerland and in Presbyterian Scotland, and rates were also very high in the New England colonies and the Scandinavian countries. In France, literacy doubled in the eighteenth century thanks to the spread of parish schools, but still only one in two men and one in four women could read and write. Most peasants remained illiterate. Al- though some Protestant German states encour- aged primary education, schooling remained woefully inadequate almost everywhere in Europe: few schools existed, teachers received low wages,

New Social and Cultural Patterns 5331690–1740

Vauxhall Gardens, London This hand-colored print from the mid-eighteenth century shows the newly refurbished gardens near the Thames River. Prosperous families show off their brightly-colored clothes and listen to a public concert by the orchestra seated just above them. These activities helped form a more self-conscious public. (© Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France/ The Bridgeman Art Library.)

and no country had yet established a national sys- tem of control or supervision.

Despite the deficiencies of primary education, a new literate public arose especially among the middle classes of the cities. More books and peri- odicals were published than ever before, another aspect of the consumer revolution. The trend be- gan in the 1690s in Britain and the Dutch Repub- lic and gradually accelerated. In 1695, the British government allowed the licensing system, through which it controlled publications, to lapse, and new newspapers and magazines appeared almost im- mediately. The first London daily newspaper came out in 1702, and in 1709 Joseph Addison and Richard Steele published the first literary maga- zine, The Spectator. They devoted their magazine to the cultural improvement of the increasingly in- fluential middle class. By the 1720s, twenty-four

provincial newspapers were published in England. In the London coffeehouses, an edition of a single newspaper might reach ten thousand male read- ers. Women did their reading at home. Except in the Dutch Republic, newspapers on the continent lagged behind and often consisted mainly of ad- vertising with little critical commentary. France, for example, had no daily paper until 1777.

New Tastes in the Arts The new literate public did not just read newspa- pers; its members now pursued an interest in painting, attended concerts, and besieged book- sellers in search of popular novels. Because in- creased trade and prosperity put money into the hands of the growing middle classes, a new urban audience began to compete with the churches, rulers, and courtiers as chief patrons for new work. As the public for the arts expanded, printed com- mentary on them emerged, setting the stage for the appearance of political and social criticism. New artistic tastes thus had effects far beyond the realm of the arts.

Rococo Painting. Developments in painting re- flected the tastes of the new public, as the rococo style challenged the hold of the baroque and clas- sical schools, especially in France. Like the baroque, the rococo emphasized irregularity and asymmetry, movement and curvature, but it did so on a much smaller, subtler scale. Many rococo paintings depicted scenes of intimate sensuality rather than the monumental, emotional grandeur favored by classical and baroque painters. Personal portraits and pastoral paintings took the place of heroic landscapes and grand, ceremonial canvases. Rococo paintings adorned homes as well as palaces and served as a form of interior decoration rather than as a statement of piety. Its decorative quality made rococo art an ideal complement to newly discovered materials such as stucco and porcelain, especially the porcelain vases now imported from China.

Rococo, like baroque, was an invented word (from the French word rocaille, meaning “shell- work”) and originally a derogatory label, meaning “frivolous decoration.” But the great French rococo painters, such as Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) and François Boucher (1703–1770), were much more than mere decorators. Although both em-

534 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

Rococo Painting The rococo emphasis on interiors, on decoration, and on intimacy rather than monumental grandeur are evident in François Boucher’s painting The Luncheon (1739). The painting also draws attention to new consumer items, from the mirror and the clock to chocolate, children’s toys, a small Buddha statue, and the intricately designed furniture. (The Art Archive/ Galleria Degli Uffizi/ Dagli Orti (A).)

rococo: A style of painting that emphasized irregularity and asymmetry, movement and curvature, but on a smaller, more intimate scale than the baroque.

phasized the erotic in their depictions, Watteau captured the melancholy side of a passing aristo- cratic style of life, and Boucher painted middle- class people at home during their daily activities. Both painters thereby contributed to the emer- gence of new sensibilities in art that increasingly attracted a middle-class public.

Music for the Public. The first public music con- certs were performed in England in the 1670s, be- coming much more regular and frequent in the 1690s. City concert halls typically seated about two hundred, but the relatively high price of tickets limited attendance to the better-off. Music clubs provided entertainment in smaller towns and vil- lages. On the continent, Frankfurt organized the first regular public concerts in 1712; Hamburg and Paris began holding them within a few years. Opera continued to spread in the eighteenth cen- tury; Venice had sixteen public opera houses by 1700, and the Covent Garden opera house opened in London in 1732.

The growth of a public that appreciated and supported music had much the same effect as the extension of the reading public: like authors, com- posers could now begin to liberate themselves from court patronage and work for a paying au- dience. This development took time to solidify, however, and court or church patrons still com- missioned much eighteenth-century music. Bach, a German Lutheran, wrote his St. Matthew Passion for Good Friday services in 1729 while he was or- ganist and choirmaster for the leading church in Leipzig. He composed secular works (like the “Cof- fee Cantata”) for the public and a variety of pri- vate patrons.

The composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) was among the first to grasp the new directions in music. A German by birth, he wrote operas in Italy and then moved in 1710 to Britain, where he wrote music for the court and began composing oratorios. The oratorio, a form Handel introduced in Britain, combined the drama of opera with the majesty of religious and ceremo- nial music and featured the chorus over the soloists. The “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s oratorio Messiah (1741) is perhaps the single best- known piece of Western classical music. It reflected the composer’s personal, deeply felt piety but also his willingness to combine musical materials into a dramatic form that captured the enthusiasm of the new public. In 1740, a poem about Handel published in the Gentleman’s Magazine exulted: “His art so modulates the sounds in all, / Our pas- sions, as he pleases, rise and fall.” Music had be-

come an integral part of the new middle-class pub- lic’s culture.

Novels. Nothing captured the imagination of the new public more than the novel, the literary genre whose very name underscored the eighteenth- century taste for novelty. More than three hundred French novels appeared between 1700 and 1730. During this unprecedented explosion, the novel took on its modern form and became more con- cerned with individual psychology and social de- scription than with the adventure tales popular earlier (such as Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote). The novel’s popularity was closely tied to the expansion of the reading public, and novels were available in serial form in periodicals or from the many booksellers who served the new market.

Women figured prominently in novels as characters, and women writers abounded. The English novel Love in Excess (1719) quickly reached a sixth printing, and its author, Eliza Haywood (1693?–1756), earned her living turning out a stream of novels with titles such as Persecuted Virtue, Constancy Rewarded, and The History of Betsy Thoughtless — all showing a concern for the proper place of women as models of virtue in a changing world. When her husband deserted her and her two children, Haywood first worked as an actress but soon turned to writing plays and nov- els. In the 1740s, she began publishing a magazine, The Female Spectator, which argued in favor of higher education for women.

Haywood’s male counterpart was Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), a merchant’s son who had a diverse and colorful career as a manufacturer, political spy, novelist, and social commentator (see Document, “The Social Effects of Growing Con- sumption,” page 530). Defoe wrote about schemes for national improvement, the state of English trade, the economic condition of the countryside, the effects of the plague, and the history of pirates; he is most well known, however, for his novels Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722). The story of the adventures of a shipwrecked sailor, Robinson Crusoe portrayed the new values of the time: to survive, Crusoe had to employ fear- less entrepreneurial ingenuity. He had to be ready for the unexpected and be able to improvise in every situation. He was, in short, the model for the new man in an expanding economy. Crusoe’s pa- tronizing attitude toward the black man Friday now draws much critical attention, but his discov- ery of Friday shows how the fate of blacks and whites had become intertwined in the new colo- nial environment.

New Social and Cultural Patterns 5351690–1740

Religious Revivals Despite the novel’s growing popularity, religious books and pamphlets still sold in huge numbers, and most Europeans remained devout, even as their religions were changing. In this period, a Protestant revivalist movement known as Pietism rocked the complacency of the established churches in the German Lutheran states, the Dutch Republic, and Scandinavia. Pietists believed in a mystical religion of the heart; they wanted a deeply emotional, even ecstatic religion. They urged in- tense Bible study, which in turn promoted popu- lar education and contributed to the increase in literacy. Many Pietists attended catechism instruc- tion every day and also went to morning and evening prayer meetings in addition to regular Sunday services. Although Pietism appealed to both Lutherans and Calvinists, it had the greatest impact in Lutheran Prussia, where it taught the virtues of hard work, obedience, and devotion to duty.

Catholicism also had its versions of religious revival, especially in France. A Frenchwoman, Jeanne Marie Guyon (1648–1717), attracted many noblewomen and a few leading clergymen to her own Catholic brand of Pietism, known as Quietism. Claiming miraculous visions and as- tounding prophecies, she urged a mystical union with God through prayer and simple devotion. De- spite papal condemnation and intense controversy within Catholic circles in France, Guyon had fol- lowers all over Europe.

Even more influential were the Jansenists, who gained many new adherents to their austere form of Catholicism despite Louis XIV’s harassment and repeated condemnation by the papacy. Under the pressure of religious and political persecution, Jansenism took a revivalist turn in the 1720s. At the funeral of a Jansenist priest in Paris in 1727, the crowd who flocked to the grave claimed to wit- ness a series of miraculous healings. Within a few years, a cult formed around the priest’s tomb and clandestine Jansenist presses were reporting new miracles to the reading public. When the French government tried to suppress the cult, one enraged wit placed a sign at the tomb that read, “By order of the king, God is forbidden to work miracles here.” Some believers fell into frenzied convul- sions, claiming to be inspired by the Holy Spirit through the intercession of the dead priest. After

midcentury, Jansenism became even more politi- cally active as its adherents joined in opposition to the crown’s policies on religion.

Review: How were new social trends reflected in cultural life in the late 1600s and early 1700s?

Consolidation of the European State System The spread of Pietism and Jansenism reflected the emergence of a middle-class public that now par- ticipated in every new development, including religion. The middle classes could pursue these interests because the European state system grad- ually stabilized despite the increasing competition for wealth in the Atlantic system. Warfare settled three main issues between 1690 and 1740: a coali- tion of powers held Louis XIV’s France in check on the continent, Great Britain emerged from the wars against Louis as the preeminent maritime power, and Russia defeated Sweden in the contest for supremacy in the Baltic. After Louis XIV’s death in 1715, Europe enjoyed the fruits of a more balanced diplomatic system, in which warfare be- came less frequent and less widespread. States could then spend their resources establishing and expanding control over their own populations, both at home and in their colonies.

French Ambitions Thwarted Lying on his deathbed in 1715, the seventy-six- year-old Louis XIV watched helplessly as his ac- complishments began to unravel. Not only had his plans for territorial expansion been frustrated, but his incessant wars had exhausted the treasury, de- spite new taxes. In 1689, Louis’s rival, William III, prince of Orange and king of England and Scot- land (r. 1689–1702), had set out to forge a Euro- pean alliance that eventually included Britain, the Dutch Republic, Sweden, Austria, and Spain. The allies fought Louis to a stalemate in the War of the League of Augsburg, sometimes called the Nine Years’ War (1689–1697), and when hostilities resumed four years later, they finally put an end to Louis’s expansionist ambitions.

The War of the Spanish Succession, 1701–1713. When the mentally and physically feeble Charles II (r. 1665–1700) of Spain died without a direct heir, all of Europe poised for a fight over the spoils.

536 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

Pietism: A Protestant revivalist movement of the early eigh- teenth century that emphasized deeply emotional individual religious experience.

Consolidation of the European State System 5371690–1740

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MAP 17.2 Europe, c. 1715 Although Louis XIV succeeded in putting his grandson Philip on the Spanish throne, France emerged considerably weakened from the War of Spanish Succession. France ceded large territories in Canada to Britain, which also gained key Mediterranean outposts from Spain as well as a monopoly on providing slaves to the Spanish colonies. Spanish losses were catastrophic. Philip had to renounce any future claim to the French crown and give up considerable territories in the Netherlands and Italy to the Austrians. ■ How did the competing English and French claims in North America around 1715 create potential conflicts for the future?

The Spanish succession could not help but be a burning issue. Even though Spanish power had de- clined since Spain’s golden age in the sixteenth cen- tury, Spain still had extensive territories in Italy and the Netherlands as well as colonies overseas. Before Charles died, he named Louis XIV’s second grandson, Philip, duke of Anjou, as his heir, but the Austrian emperor Leopold I refused to accept Charles’s deathbed will.

In the ensuing war, the French lost several ma- jor battles and had to accept disadvantageous terms in the Peace of Utrecht of 1713–1714 (Map 17.2). Although Philip was recognized as king of Spain, he had to renounce any future claim to the French crown, thus barring unification of the two kingdoms. Spain surrendered its territories in Italy and the Netherlands to the Austrians and Gibral- tar to the British; France ceded possessions in North America (Newfoundland, the Hudson Bay area, and most of Nova Scotia) to Britain. France no longer threatened to dominate European power politics.

The Death of Louis XIV and the Regency. At home, Louis’s policy of absolutism had fomented bitter hostility. Nobles fiercely resented his promo- tions of commoners to high office. The duke of Saint-Simon complained that “falseness, servility, admiring glances, combined with a dependent and cringing attitude, above all, an appearance of be- ing nothing without him, were the only ways of pleasing him.” Archbishop Fénelon, who tutored the king’s grandson, called for reform. An admirer of Guyon’s Quietism, Fénelon severely criticized the “steady stream of extravagant adulation, which reaches the point of idolatry”; the constant, bloody wars; and the misery of the people.

On his deathbed, Louis XIV offered sound ad- vice to his five-year-old great-grandson and suc- cessor, Louis XV (r. 1715–1774): “Do not imitate my love of building nor my liking for war.” After being named regent, the duke of Orléans (1674–1723), nephew of the dead king, revived some of the parlements’ powers and tried to give leading nobles a greater say in political affairs. To raise much-needed funds, in 1719 the regent en- couraged the Scottish financier John Law to set up an official trading company for North America and a state bank that issued paper money and stock (without them, trade depended on the available supply of gold and silver). The bank was supposed to offer lower interest rates to the state, thus cut-

ting the cost of financing the government’s debts. The value of the stock rose rapidly in a frenzy of speculation, only to crash a few months later. With it vanished any hope of establishing a state bank or issuing paper money for nearly a century.

France finally achieved a measure of financial stability under the leadership of Cardinal Hercule de Fleury (1653–1743), the most powerful mem- ber of the government after the death of the re- gent. Fleury aimed to avoid adventure abroad and keep social peace at home; he balanced the budget and carried out a large project for road and canal construction. Colonial trade boomed. Peace and the acceptance of limits on territorial expansion inaugurated a century of French prosperity.

British Rise and Dutch Decline The British and the Dutch had formed a coalition against Louis XIV under their joint ruler William III, who was simultaneously stadholder (elected head) of the Dutch Republic and, with his English wife, Mary (d. 1694), ruler of England, Wales, and Scotland. After William’s death in 1702, the British and Dutch went their separate ways. Over the next decades, England incorporated Scotland and sub- jugated Ireland, becoming “Great Britain.” At the same time, Dutch imperial power declined; by 1700, Great Britain dominated the seas and the Dutch, with their small population of less than two million, came to depend on alliances with bigger powers.

From England to Great Britain. English relations with Scotland and Ireland were complicated by the problem of succession: William and Mary had no children. To ensure a Protestant succession, Parlia- ment ruled that Mary’s sister, Anne, would succeed William and Mary and that the Protestant House of Hanover in Germany would succeed Anne if she had no surviving heirs. Catholics were excluded. When Queen Anne (r. 1702–1714) died leaving no children, the elector of Hanover, a Protestant great-grandson of James I, consequently became King George I (r. 1714–1727). The House of Hanover — renamed the House of Windsor dur- ing World War I — still occupies the British throne.

Support from the Scots and Irish for this so- lution did not come easily, because many in Scot- land and Ireland supported the claims to the throne of the deposed Catholic king, James II, and, after his death in 1701, his son James Edward. Out of fear of this Jacobitism (from the Latin Jacobus for “James”), Scottish Protestant leaders agreed to the Act of Union of 1707, which abolished the

538 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

Peace of Utrecht: Treaties drawn up in 1713–1714 that ended the War of the Spanish Succession.

Scottish Parliament and affirmed the Scots’ recog- nition of the Protestant Hanoverian succession. The Scots agreed to obey the Parliament of Great Britain, which would include Scottish members in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. A Jacobite rebellion in Scotland in 1715, aiming to restore the Stuart line, was suppressed. The threat of Jacobitism nonetheless continued into the 1740s (see Map 17.2, page 537).

The Irish — 90 percent of whom were Catholic — proved even more difficult to subdue. When James II had gone to Ireland in 1689 to raise a Catholic rebellion against the new monarchs of England, William III responded by taking com- mand of the joint English and Dutch forces and defeating James’s Irish supporters. James fled to France, and the Catholics in Ireland faced yet more confiscation and legal restrictions. By 1700, Irish Catholics, who in 1640 had owned 60 percent of the land in Ireland, owned just 14 percent. The Protestant-controlled Irish Parliament passed a se- ries of laws limiting the rights of the Catholic ma- jority: Catholics could not bear arms, send their children abroad for education, establish Catholic schools at home, or marry Protestants. Catholics could not sit in Parliament, nor could they vote for its members unless they took an oath renouncing

Catholic doctrine. These and a host of other laws reduced Catholic Ireland to the status of a colony; one English official commented in 1745, “The poor people of Ireland are used worse than ne- groes.” Most of the Irish were peasants who lived in primitive housing and subsisted on a meager diet that included no meat.

The Parliament of Great Britain was soon dominated by the Whigs. In Britain’s constitu- tional system, the monarch ruled with Parliament. The crown chose the ministers, directed policy, and supervised administration, while Parliament raised revenue, passed laws, and represented the interests of the people to the crown. The powers of Parliament were reaffirmed by the Triennial Act in 1694, which provided that Parliaments meet at least once every three years (this was extended to seven years in 1716, after the Whigs had established their ascendancy). Only 200,000 propertied men could vote, out of a population of more than five million, and, not surprisingly, most members of Parliament came from the landed gentry. In fact, a few hundred families controlled all the impor- tant political offices.

George I and George II (r. 1727–1760) relied on one man, Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745), to help them manage their relations with Parliament.

Consolidation of the European State System 5391690–1740

Robert Walpole: The first, or “prime,” minister of the House of Commons of Great Britain’s Parliament. Al- though appointed initially by the king, through his long period of leadership (1721–1742) he effectively estab- lished the modern pattern of parliamentary government.

Sir Robert Walpole at a Cabinet Meeting Sir Robert Walpole and George II developed the institution of a cabinet, which brought together the important heads of departments. Their cabinet was the ancestor of modern cabinets in both Great Britain and the United States. Because of its modest size, its similarities to modern forms should not be overstated, however. How would discussions in the new coffeehouses (shown in the opening illustration to this chapter) influence the kinds of decisions made by Walpole and his cabinet? (© The Fotomas Index, U.K./ The Bridgeman Art Library.)

From his position as First Lord of the Treasury, Walpole made himself into the first, or “prime,” minister, leading the House of Commons from 1721 to 1742 (see illustration, page 539). Although appointed initially by the king, Walpole established an enduring pattern of parliamentary government in which a prime minister from the leading party guided legislation through the House of Com- mons. Walpole also built a vast patronage machine that dispensed government jobs to win support for the crown’s policies. Walpole’s successors relied more and more on the patronage system and even- tually alienated not only the Tories but also the middle classes in London and even the North American colonies.

The partisan division between the Whigs, who supported the Hanoverian succession and the rights of dissenting Protestants, and the Tories, who had backed the Stuart line and the Anglican church, did not hamper Great Britain’s pursuit of economic, military, and colonial power. In this pe- riod, Great Britain became a great power on the world stage by virtue of its navy and its ability to finance major military involvement in the wars against Louis XIV. The founding in 1694 of the Bank of England — which, unlike the French bank, endured — enabled the government to raise money at low interest for foreign wars. By the 1740s, the government could borrow more than four times what it could in the 1690s.

The Dutch Eclipse. When William of Orange (William III of England) died in 1702, he left no heirs, and for forty-five years the Dutch lived with- out a stadholder. The merchant ruling class of some two thousand families dominated the Dutch Republic more than ever, but they presided over a country that counted for less in international power politics. In some areas, Dutch decline was only relative: the Dutch population was not grow- ing as fast as others, for example, and the Dutch share of the Baltic trade decreased from 50 percent in 1720 to less than 30 percent by the 1770s. After 1720, the Baltic countries — Prussia, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden — began to ban im- ports of manufactured goods to protect their own industries, and Dutch trade in particular suffered. The output of Leiden textiles dropped to one-third of its 1700 level by 1740. Shipbuilding, paper man- ufacturing, tobacco processing, salt refining, and pottery production all dwindled as well. The Dutch East India Company saw its political and military grip loosened in India, Ceylon, and Java.

The biggest exception to the downward trend was trade with the New World, which increased

with escalating demands for sugar and tobacco. The Dutch shifted their interest away from great power rivalries toward those areas of international trade and finance where they could establish an enduring presence.

Russia’s Emergence as a European Power The commerce and shipbuilding of the Dutch and British so impressed Russian tsar Peter I (r. 1689–1725) that he traveled incognito to their shipyards in 1697 to learn their methods firsthand. Known to history as Peter the Great, he dragged Russia kicking and screaming all the way to great- power status. Although he came to the throne while still a minor (on the eve of his tenth birth- day), grew up under the threat of a palace coup, and enjoyed little formal education, his accom- plishments soon matched his seven-foot-tall stature. Peter transformed public life in Russia and established an absolutist state on the Western model. His attempts to create a society patterned after western Europe, known as Westernization, ignited an enduring controversy: Did Peter set Russia on a course of inevitable Westernization re- quired to compete with the West? Or did he for- ever and fatally disrupt Russia’s natural evolution into a distinctive Slavic society?

Westernization. To pursue his goal of Western- izing Russian culture, Peter set up the first green- houses, laboratories, and technical schools and founded the Russian Academy of Sciences. He or- dered translations of Western classics and hired a German theater company to perform the French plays of Molière. He replaced the traditional Russ- ian calendar with the Western one,1 introduced Arabic numerals, and brought out the first public newspaper. He ordered his officials and the nobles to shave their beards (see the illustration on page 541) and dress in Western fashion, and he even

540 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

Peter the Great: Russian tsar Peter I (r. 1689–1725), who un- dertook the Westernization of Russia and built a new capital city named after himself, St. Petersburg.

Westernization: The effort, especially in Peter the Great’s Rus- sia, to make society and social customs resemble counterparts in western Europe, especially France, Britain, and the Dutch Republic.

1 Peter introduced the Julian calendar, then still used in Protes- tant but not Catholic countries. Later in the eighteenth century, Protestant Europe abandoned the Julian for the Gregorian calen- dar. Not until 1918 was the Gregorian calendar adopted in Rus- sia, at which point Russia’s calendar had fallen thirteen days behind Europe’s.

issued precise regulations about the suitable style of jacket, boots, and cap (generally French or German).

Peter encouraged foreigners to move to Russia to offer their advice and skills, especially for build- ing the capital city. Named St. Petersburg after the tsar, the new capital symbolized Russia’s opening to the West. Construction began in 1703 in a Baltic province that had been recently conquered from Sweden. By the end of 1709, forty thousand recruits a year found themselves assigned to the work. Peter ordered skilled workers to move to the new city and commanded all landowners possessing more than forty serf households to build houses there. In the 1720s, a German minister described St. Petersburg “as a wonder of the world, consider- ing its magnificent palaces, . . . and the short time that was employed in the building of it.” By 1710, the permanent population of the capital reached eight thousand. At Peter’s death in 1725, it had forty thousand residents.

As a new city far from the Russian heartland around Moscow, St. Petersburg represented a de- cisive break with Russia’s past. Peter widened that gap by every means possible. At his new capital he tried to improve the traditionally denigrated, se- cluded status of women by ordering them to dress in European styles and appear publicly at his din- ners for diplomatic representatives. Imitating French manners, he decreed that women attend his

new social salons of officials, officers, and mer- chants for conversation and dancing. A foreigner headed every one of Peter’s new technical and vocational schools, and for its first eight years the new Academy of Sciences included no Russians. Every ministry was assigned a foreign adviser. Upper-class Russians learned French or German, which they spoke even at home. Such changes af- fected only the very top of Russian society, how- ever; the mass of the population had no contact with the new ideas and ended up paying for the innovations either in ruinous new taxation or by building St. Petersburg, a project that cost the lives of thousands of workers. Serfs remained tied to the land, completely dominated by their noble lords.

Peter the Great’s Brand of Absolutism. Peter also reorganized government and finance on Western models and, like other absolute rulers, strength- ened his army. With ruthless recruiting methods, which included branding a cross on every recruit’s left hand to prevent desertion, he forged an army of 200,000 men and equipped it with modern weapons. He created schools for artillery, engi- neering, and military medicine and built the first navy in Russian history. Not surprisingly, taxes tripled.

The tsar allowed nothing to stand in his way. He did not hesitate to use torture, and he executed thousands. He allowed a special guard regiment

Consolidation of the European State System 5411690–1740

Peter the Great Modernizes Russia In this popular print, a barber forces a protesting noble to conform to western fashions. Peter the Great ordered all nobles, merchants, and middle- class professionals to cut off their beards or pay a huge tax to keep them. An early biographer of Peter claimed that those who lost their beards saved them to put in their coffins, in fear that they would not enter heaven without them. Most western Europeans applauded these attempts to modernize Russia, but many Russians deeply resented the attack on traditional ways. Why was everyday appearance such a contested issue in Russia? (The Visual Connection.)

unprecedented power to expedite cases against those suspected of rebellion, espionage, preten- sions to the throne, or just “unseemly utterances” against him. Opposition to his policies reached into his own family: because his only son, Alexei, had allied himself with Peter’s critics, the tsar threw him into prison, where the young man mys- teriously died.

To control the often restive nobility, Peter in- sisted that all noblemen engage in state service. A Table of Ranks (1722) classified them into mili- tary, administrative, and court categories, a codi- fication of social and legal relationships in Russia that would last for nearly two centuries. All social and material advantages now depended on serv- ing the crown. Because the nobles lacked a secure independent status, Peter could command them to a degree that was unimaginable in western Europe. State service was not only compulsory but also permanent. Moreover, the male children of those in service had to be registered by the age of ten and begin serving at fifteen. To increase his author- ity over the Russian Orthodox church, Peter al- lowed the office of patriarch (supreme head) to remain vacant, and in 1721 he replaced it with the

Holy Synod, a bureaucracy of laymen under his supervision. To many Russians, Peter was the devil incarnate.

Changes in the Balance of Power in the East. Peter the Great’s success in building up state power changed the balance of power in eastern Europe. Overcoming initial military setbacks, Russia even- tually defeated Sweden and took its place as the leading power in the Baltic region. Russia could then compete with Prussia, Austria, and France in the rivalries between great powers.

Sweden had dominated the Baltic region since the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), and though the monarchy lost some of its power under Queen Christina (r. 1632–1654), the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedish kings quickly recovered their position. When Peter the Great joined an anti-Swedish coalition in 1700 with Denmark, Saxony, and Poland, Sweden’s Charles XII (r. 1697–1718) stood up to the test. Still in his teens at the beginning of the Great Northern War, Charles first defeated Denmark, then destroyed the new Russian army, and quickly marched into Poland and Saxony. After defeating the Poles and

542 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

Peter the Great In this painting by Gottfried Danhauer (1680–1733/7), the Russian tsar appears against the background of his most famous battle, Poltava. The angel holds a laurel wreath, symbol of victory, over his head. (© Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia/ The Bridgeman Art Library.)

occupying Saxony, Charles invaded Russia. Here Peter’s rebuilt army finally defeated the Swedish king at the battle of Poltava (1709).

The Russian victory resounded everywhere. The Russian ambassador to Vienna reported, “It is commonly said that the tsar will be formidable to all Europe, that he will be a kind of northern Turk.” Prussia and other German states joined the anti- Swedish alliance, and when Charles XII died in battle in 1718, negotiations finally ended the Great Northern War. By the terms of the Treaty of Nystad (1721), Sweden ceded its eastern Baltic provinces — Livonia, Estonia, Ingria, and southern Karelia — to Russia. Sweden also lost territories on the north German coast to Prussia and the other allied German states (Map 17.3). An aristocratic reaction against Charles XII’s incessant demands for war supplies swept away Sweden’s absolutist regime, essentially removing Sweden from great power competition.

Prussia had to make the most of every mili- tary opportunity, as it did in the Great Northern War, because it was much smaller in size and pop- ulation than Russia, Austria, or France. King Frederick William I (r. 1713–1740) doubled the size of the Prussian army; though still smaller than those of his rivals, it was the best-trained and most up-to-date force in Europe. By 1740, Prussia had Europe’s highest proportion of men at arms (1 of every 28 people, versus 1 in 157 in France and 1 in 64 in Russia) and the highest proportion of

nobles in the military (1 in 7 noblemen, as com- pared with 1 in 33 in France and 1 in 50 in Russia).

The army so dominated life in Prussia that the country earned the label “a large army with a small state attached.” Frederick William, known as the “Sergeant King,” was one of the first rulers to wear a military uniform as his everyday dress. He sub- ordinated the entire domestic administration to the army’s needs. He also installed a system for re- cruiting soldiers by local district quotas. He financed the army’s growth by subjecting all the provinces to an excise tax on food, drink, and man- ufactured goods and by increasing rents on crown lands. Prussia was now poised to become one of the major players on the continent, but it could not enter into military engagements foolishly given the size of its forces and chose to sit on the sidelines during the next conflict.

War broke out in 1733 when the king of Poland-Lithuania died. France, Spain, and Sardinia joined in the War of Polish Succession (1733–1735) against Austria and Russia, each side supporting rival claimants to the Polish throne. Although Peter the Great had been followed by a series of weak rulers, Russian forces were still strong enough to drive the French candidate out of Poland-Lithuania, prompting France to accept the Austrian candidate. In exchange, Austria gave the province of Lorraine to the French candidate, the father-in-law of Louis XV, with the promise that the province would pass to France on his death.

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MAP 17.3 Russia and Sweden after the Great Northern War, 1721 After the Great Northern War, Russia supplanted Sweden as the major power in the north. Although Russia had a much larger population from which to draw its armies, Sweden made the most of its advantages and gave way only after a great military struggle.

France and Britain went back to pursuing their colonial rivalries. Prussia and Russia concentrated on shoring up their influence within Poland- Lithuania.

Austria did not want to become mired in a long struggle in Poland-Lithuania because its armies still faced the Turks on its southeastern

border. Even though the Aus- trians had forced the Turks to recognize their rule over all of Hungary and Transylvania in 1699 and occupied Belgrade in 1717, the Turks did not stop fighting. In the 1730s, the Turks retook Belgrade, and Russia now claimed a role in the struggle against the Turks. Moreover, Hungary, though “liberated” from Turkish rule, proved less than enthusiastic about submitting to Austria. In 1703, the wealthiest Hungarian noble landlord, Ferenc Rákóczi (1676–1735), raised an army of seventy thousand men who fought for “God, Fatherland, and Liberty” until 1711. They

forced the Austrians to recognize local Hungarian institutions, grant amnesty, and restore confiscated estates in exchange for confirming hereditary Aus- trian rule.

The Power of Diplomacy and the Importance of Population No single power emerged from the wars of the first half of the eighteenth century clearly superior to the others, and the Peace of Utrecht explicitly de- clared that maintaining a balance of power was crucial to maintaining peace in Europe. In 1720 a British pamphleteer wrote, “There is not, I believe, any doctrine in the law of nations, of more certain truth . . . than this of the balance of power.” Diplo- macy helped maintain the balance, but in the end this system of equilibrium often rested on military force, such as the leagues formed against Louis XIV or the coalition against Sweden. In the search for ever larger armies, states could not afford to ignore the general health of their populations.

Diplomatic Services. To meet the new demands placed on it, the diplomatic service, like the mili- tary and financial bureaucracies before it, had to develop regular procedures. The French set a pat- tern that the other European states soon imitated.

By 1685, France had embassies in all the impor- tant capitals. Nobles of ancient families served as ambassadors to Rome, Madrid, Vienna, and London, whereas royal officials were chosen for Switzerland, the Dutch Republic, and Venice. The ambassador selected and paid for his own staff. This practice could make the journey to a new post cumbersome, because the staff might be as large as eighty people, and they brought along all their own furniture, pictures, silverware, and tapestries. It took one French ambassador ten weeks to get from Paris to Stockholm.

Despite a new emphasis on honest and in- formed negotiation, rulers still employed secret agents and often sent covert instructions that negated the official ones sent by their own foreign offices. This behind-the-scenes diplomacy had some advantages because it allowed rulers to break with past alliances, but it also led to confusion and sometimes scandal, for the rulers often engaged unreliable adventurers as their confidential agents. Still, the diplomatic system in the early eighteenth century proved successful enough to ensure a continuation of the principles of the Peace of Westphalia (1648); in the midst of every crisis and war, the great powers would convene and hammer out a written agreement detailing the requirements for peace.

Public Health. Adroit diplomacy could smooth the road toward peace, but success in war still de- pended on sheer numbers — of men and of mus- kets. Because each state’s strength depended largely on the size of its army, the growth and health of the population increasingly entered into govern- ment calculations. The publication in 1690 of the Englishman William Petty’s Political Arithmetick quickened the interest of government officials everywhere. Petty offered statistical estimates of human capital — that is, of population and wages — to determine Britain’s national wealth. A large, growing population could be as vital to a state’s future as access to silver mines or overseas trade, so government officials devoted increased effort to the statistical estimation of total popula- tion and rates of births, deaths, and marriages. In 1727, Frederick William I of Prussia founded two university chairs to encourage population studies, and textbooks and handbooks advocated state in- tervention to improve the population’s health and welfare.

Physicians used the new population statistics to explain the environmental causes of disease, an- other new preoccupation in this period. Petty de- vised a quantitative scale that distinguished

544 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

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healthy from unhealthy places largely on the basis of air quality, an early precursor of modern envi- ronmental studies. Cities were the unhealthiest places because excrement (animal and human) and garbage accumulated where people lived densely packed together. Medical geographers gathered and analyzed data on climate, disease, and population, searching for correlations to help direct policy. As a result of these efforts, local gov- ernments undertook such measures as draining low-lying areas, burying refuse, and cleaning wells, all of which eventually helped lower the death rates from epidemic diseases.

Not all changes came from direct government intervention. Hospitals, founded originally as charities concerned foremost with the moral wor- thiness of the poor, gradually evolved into medical institutions that defined patients by their diseases. The process of diagnosis changed as physicians be- gan to use specialized Latin terms for illnesses. The gap between medical experts and their patients in- creased, as physicians now also relied on post- mortem dissections in the hospital to gain better knowledge, a practice most patients’ families re- sented. Press reports of body snatching and grave robbing by surgeons and their apprentices out- raged the public well into the 1800s.

Despite the change in hospitals, individual health care remained something of a free-for-all in which physicians competed with bloodletters, itinerant venereal-disease doctors, bonesetters, druggists, midwives, and “cunning women,” who specialized in home remedies. The medical profes- sion, with nationwide organizations and licensing, had not yet emerged, and no clear line separated trained physicians from quacks. In any case, trained physicians were few in number and almost nonexistent outside cities. Patients were as likely to catch a deadly disease in the hospital as to be cured there. Antiseptics were virtually unknown. Because doctors believed most insanity was caused by disorders in the system of bodily “humors,” their prescribed treatments included blood trans- fusions; ingestion of bitter substances such as cof- fee, quinine, and even soap; immersion in water; various forms of exercise; and burning or cauter- izing the body to allow black vapors to escape.

Hardly any infectious diseases could be cured, though inoculation against smallpox spread from the Middle East to Europe in the early eighteenth century, thanks largely to the efforts of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762). In 1716, Montagu accompanied her husband to Constantinople, where he took up a post as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. She returned in 1718, after

witnessing firsthand the Turkish use of inocula- tion. When a new smallpox epidemic threatened England in 1721, she called on her physician to in- oculate her daughter. Two patients died after in- oculation in the following months, prompting clergymen and physicians to attack the practice, which remained in dispute for decades. Inocula- tion against smallpox began to spread more widely after 1796, when the English physician Edward Jenner developed a serum based on cowpox, a milder disease. Many other diseases spread quickly in the unsanitary conditions of urban life. Ordi- nary people washed or changed clothes rarely, lived in overcrowded housing with poor ventilation, and got their water from contaminated sources such as refuse-filled rivers.

Public bathhouses had disappeared from cities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries because they seemed a source of disorderly behavior and epidemic illness. In the eighteenth century, even private bathing came into disfavor because people feared the effects of contact with water. Fewer than one in ten newly built private mansions in Paris had baths. Bathing was hazardous, physicians in- sisted, because it opened the body to disease. One manners manual of 1736 admonished, “It is cor- rect to clean the face every morning by using a white cloth to cleanse it. It is less good to wash with water, because it renders the face susceptible to cold in winter and sun in summer.” The upper classes associated cleanliness not with baths but with frequently changed linens, powdered hair, and perfume, which was thought to strengthen the body and refresh the brain by counteracting cor- rupt and foul air.

Review: What events and developments led to greater stability and less warfare in the European state system?

The Birth of the Enlightenment Economic expansion, the emergence of a new con- sumer society, and the stabilization of the Euro- pean state system all generated optimism about the future. The intellectual corollary was the Enlight- enment, a term used later in the eighteenth cen- tury to describe the loosely knit group of writers

The Birth of the Enlightenment 5451690–1740

Enlightenment: The eighteenth-century intellectual movement whose proponents believed that human beings could apply a critical, reasoning spirit to every problem.

and scholars who believed that human beings could apply a critical, reasoning spirit to every problem they encountered in this world. The new secular, scientific, and critical attitude first emerged in the 1690s, scrutinizing everything from the absolutism of Louis XIV to the tradi- tional role of women in society. After 1740, criti- cism took a more systematic turn as writers provided new theories for the organization of so- ciety and politics; but as early as the 1720s, estab- lished authorities realized they faced a new set of challenges. Even while slavery expanded in the Atlantic system, Enlightenment writers began to insist on the need for new freedoms in Europe.

Popularization of Science and Challenges to Religion The writers of the Enlightenment glorified the ge- niuses of the new science and championed the sci- entific method as the solution for all social problems. (See “Terms of History,” page 547.) One of the most influential popularizations was the French writer Bernard de Fontenelle’s Conversa- tions on the Plurality of Worlds (1686). Presented as a dialogue between an aristocratic woman and a man of the world, the book made the Coperni-

can, heliocentric view of the universe available to the literate public. By 1700, mathematics and sci- ence had become fashionable pastimes in high so- ciety, and the public flocked to lectures explaining scientific discoveries. Journals complained that scientific learning had become the passport to fe- male affection: “There were two young ladies in Paris whose heads had been so turned by this branch of learning that one of them declined to listen to a proposal of marriage unless the candi- date for her hand undertook to learn how to make telescopes.” Such writings poked fun at women with intellectual interests, but they also demon- strated that women now participated in discus- sions of science.

The New Skepticism. Interest in science spread in literate circles because it offered a model for all forms of knowledge. As the prestige of science in- creased, some developed a skeptical attitude to- ward attempts to enforce religious conformity. A French Huguenot refugee from Louis XIV’s perse- cutions, Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), launched an internationally influential campaign against reli- gious intolerance from his safe haven in the Dutch Republic. His News from the Republic of Letters (first published in 1684) bitterly criticized the poli-

546 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

A Budding Scientist In this engraving, Astrologia, by the Dutch artist Jacob Gole (c. 1660–1723), an upper-class woman looks through a telescope to do her own astronomical investigations. Women with intellectual interests were often disparaged by men, and women were not allowed to attend university classes in any European country. Yet because many astronomical observatories were set up in private homes rather than public buildings or universities, wives and daughters of scientists could make observations and even publish their own findings. (Bibliothèque nationale de France.)

cies of Louis XIV and was quickly banned in Paris and condemned in Rome. After attacking Louis XIV’s anti-Protestant policies, Bayle took a more general stand in favor of religious toleration. No state in Europe officially offered complete toler- ance, though the Dutch Republic came closest with its tacit acceptance of Catholics, dissident Protes- tant groups, and open Jewish communities. In 1697, Bayle published the Historical and Critical Dictionary, which cited all the errors and delusions that he could find in past and present writers of all religions. Even religion must meet the test of reasonableness: “Any particular dogma, whatever it may be, whether it is advanced on the authority of the Scriptures, or whatever else may be its ori- gins, is to be regarded as false if it clashes with the clear and definite conclusions of the natural un- derstanding [reason].”

Although Bayle claimed to be a believer him- self, his insistence on rational investigation seemed to challenge the authority of faith. As one critic complained, “It is notorious that the works of M. Bayle have unsettled a large number of readers, and cast doubt on some of the most widely ac- cepted principles of morality and religion.” Bayle asserted, for example, that atheists might possess moral codes as effective as those of the devout. Bayle’s Dictionary became a model of critical thought in the West.

Other scholars challenged the authority of the Bible by subjecting it to historical criticism. Dis- coveries in geology in the early eighteenth century showed that marine fossils dated immensely fur- ther back than the biblical flood. Investigations of miracles, comets, and oracles, like the growing lit- erature against belief in witchcraft, urged the use of reason to combat superstition and prejudice. Comets, for example, should not be considered evil omens just because earlier generations had passed down such a belief. Defenders of church and state published books warning of the new skepticism’s dangers. The spokesman for Louis XIV’s abso- lutism, Bishop Bossuet, warned that “reason is the guide of their choice, but reason only brings them face to face with vague conjectures and baffling perplexities.” Human beings, the traditionalists held, were simply incapable of subjecting every- thing to reason, especially in the realm of religion.

State authorities found religious skepticism particularly unsettling because it threatened to un- dermine state power too. The extensive literature of criticism was not limited to France, but much of it was published in French, and the French gov- ernment took the lead in suppressing the more outspoken works. Forbidden books were then

The Birth of the Enlightenment 5471690–1740

Progress

T E R M S O F H I S T O R Y

Believing as they did in the possibilities of improvement, manyEnlightenment writers preached a new doctrine about themeaning of human history. They challenged the traditional Christian belief that the original sin of Adam and Eve condemned hu- man beings to unhappiness in this world and offered instead an op- timistic vision: human nature, they claimed, was inherently good, and progress would be continuous if education developed human capac- ities to the utmost. Science and reason could bring happiness in this world. The idea of novelty or newness itself now seemed positive rather than threatening. Europeans began to imagine that they could surpass all those who preceded them in history, and they began to think of themselves as more “advanced” than the “backward” cultures they encountered in other parts of the world.

More than an intellectual concept, the idea of progress included a new conception of historical time and of Europeans’ place within world history. Europeans stopped looking back, whether to a lost Gar- den of Eden or to the writings of Greek and Roman antiquity. Grow- ing prosperity, European dominance overseas, and the scientific revolution oriented them toward the future. Europeans began to apply the word modern to their epoch, to distinguish it from the Middle Ages (a new term), and they considered their modern period superior in achievement. Consequently, Europeans took it as their mis- sion to bring their modern, enlightened ways of progress to the areas they colonized.

The economic and ecological catastrophes, destructive wars, and genocides of the twentieth century cast much doubt on this rosy vi- sion of continuing progress. As the philosopher George Santayana (1863–1952) complained, “The cry was for vacant freedom and inde- terminate progress: Vorwarts! Avanti! Onward! Full Speed Ahead!, with- out asking whether directly before you was a bottomless pit.” Historians are now chastened in their claims about progress. They would no longer side with the German philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel, who proclaimed in 1832, “The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.” They worry about the nationalistic claims inherent, for example, in the English historian Thomas Babington Macaulay’s insistence that “the history of England is emphatically the history of progress” (1843). As with many other historical questions, the final word is not yet in: Is there a direction in human history that can correctly be called progress? Or is history, as many in ancient times thought, a set of repeating cycles?

often published in the Dutch Republic, Britain, or Switzerland and smuggled back across the border to a public whose appetite was only whetted by censorship.

The Young Voltaire. The most influential writer of the early Enlightenment was a Frenchman born into the upper middle class, François-Marie Arouet, known by his pen name, Voltaire (1694–1778). Voltaire took inspiration from Bayle, noting: “He gives facts with such odious fidelity, he exposes the arguments for and against with such dastardly impartiality, he is so intolerably in- telligible, that he leads people of only ordinary common sense to judge and even to doubt.” In his early years, Voltaire suffered arrest, imprisonment, and exile, but he eventually achieved wealth and acclaim. His tangles with church and state began in the early 1730s, when he published his Letters Concerning the English Nation (the English version appeared in 1733), in which he devoted several

chapters to Newton and Locke and used the virtues of the British as a way to attack Catholic bigotry and government rigidity in France (see Document, “Letters Concerning the English Nation,” on this page). Impressed by British toleration of religious dissent (at least among Protestants), Voltaire spent two years in exile in Britain when the French state responded to his book with yet another order for his arrest.

Voltaire also popularized Newton’s scientific discoveries in his Elements of the Philosophy of Newton (1738). The French state and many European theologians considered Newtonianism threatening because it glorified the human mind and seemed to reduce God to an abstract, exter- nal, rationalistic force. So sensational was the suc- cess of Voltaire’s book on Newton that a hostile Jesuit reported, “The great Newton, was, it is said, buried in the abyss, in the shop of the first pub- lisher who dared to print him. . . . M. de Voltaire finally appeared, and at once Newton is under- stood or is in the process of being understood; all Paris resounds with Newton, all Paris stammers Newton, all Paris studies and learns Newton.” The

548 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733)

D O C U M E N T

In the 1720s, Voltaire (1694–1778) visited both the Dutch Republic and England. He learned English and came to admire English political institutions and customs, using comparison with them to criticize religious intolerance and Catholic censorship in France. In this selection from a letter on Locke, Voltaire develops the argument that religion should be considered a matter of faith and conscience and be separated from arguments concerning philosophy. He also shows his disdain for the common people.

We must not be apprehensive that any philosophical opinion will ever prejudice the religion of a country. Though our demonstrations clash directly with our mysteries, that’s nothing to the purpose, for the latter are not less revered upon that

account by our Christian philosophers, who know very well that objects of reason and those of faith are of a very different nature. Philosophers will never form a re- ligious sect, the reason of which is, their writings are not calculated for the vulgar, and they themselves are free from enthu- siasm. If we divide mankind into twenty parts, it will be found that nineteen of these consist of persons employed in man- ual labour, who will never know that such a man as Mr. Locke existed. In the remain- ing twentieth part how few are readers? And among such as are so, twenty amuse themselves with romances to one who studies philosophy. The thinking part of mankind are confined to a very small number, and these will never disturb the peace and tranquillity of the world.

Neither Montaigne, Locke, Bayle, Spinoza, Hobbes, Lord Shaftesbury, Collins nor Toland lightened up the fire- brand of discord in their countries; this has generally been the work of divines, who, being at first puffed up with the am- bition of becoming chiefs of a sect, soon grew very desirous of being at the head of a party. But what do I say? All the works of the modern philosophers put together will never make so much noise as even the dispute which arose among the Francis- cans [a Catholic religious order] merely about the fashion of their sleeves and of their cowls.

Source: Peter Gay, ed., The Enlightenment: A Comprehensive Anthology (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973), 166.

Voltaire: The pen name of François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), who was the most influential writer of the early Enlightenment.

success was international, too. Before long, Voltaire was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in London and in Edinburgh, as well as to twenty other scientific academies. Voltaire’s fame contin- ued to grow, reaching truly astounding propor- tions in the 1750s and 1760s (see Chapter 18).

Travel Literature and the Challenge to Custom and Tradition Just as scientific method could be used to question religious and even state authority, a more general skepticism also emerged from the expanding knowledge about the world outside of Europe. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the number of travel accounts dramatically in- creased as travel writers used the contrast between their home societies and other cultures to criticize the customs of European society.

Visitors to the new colonies sought something resembling “the state of nature,” that is, ways of life that preceded sophisticated social and political or- ganization — although they often misinterpreted different forms of society and politics as having no organization at all. Travelers to the Americas found “noble savages” (native peoples) who appeared to live in conditions of great freedom and equality; they were “naturally good” and “happy” without taxes, lawsuits, or much organized government. In China, in contrast, travelers found a people who enjoyed prosperity and an ancient civilization. Christian missionaries made little headway in China, and visitors had to admit that China’s reli- gious systems had flourished for four or five thou- sand years with no input from Europe or from Christianity. The basic lesson of travel literature in the 1700s, then, was that customs varied: justice, freedom, property, good government, religion, and morality all were relative to the place. One critic complained that travel encouraged free thinking and the destruction of religion: “Some complete their demoralization by extensive travel, and lose whatever shreds of religion remained to them. Every day they see a new religion, new customs, new rites.”

Travel literature turned explicitly political in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721). Charles- Louis de Secondat, baron of Montesquieu (1689–1755), the son of an eminent judicial fam- ily, was a high-ranking judge in a French court. He published Persian Letters anonymously in the Dutch Republic, and the book went into ten print- ings in just one year — a best seller for the times. Montesquieu tells the story of two Persians, Rica and Usbek, who leave their country “for love of

knowledge” and travel to Europe. They visit France in the last years of Louis XIV’s reign, writing of the king: “He has a minister who is only eighteen years old, and a mistress of eighty. . . . Although he avoids the bustle of towns, and is rarely seen in company, his one concern, from morning till night, is to get himself talked about.” Other pas- sages ridicule the pope. Beneath the satire, how- ever, was a serious investigation into the foundation of good government and morality. Montesquieu chose Persians for his travelers because they came from what was widely considered the most despotic of all governments, in which rulers had life-and-death powers over their subjects. In the book, the Persians constantly compare France to Persia, suggesting that the French monarchy might verge on despotism.

The paradox of a judge publishing an anony- mous work attacking the regime that employed him demonstrates the complications of the intel- lectual scene in this period. Montesquieu’s anonymity did not last long, and soon Parisian so- ciety lionized him. In the late 1720s, he sold his judgeship and traveled extensively in Europe, stay- ing eighteen months in Britain. In 1748, he pub- lished a widely influential work on comparative government, The Spirit of Laws. The Vatican soon listed both Persian Letters and The Spirit of Laws on its Index of forbidden books.

Raising the Woman Question Many of the letters exchanged in Persian Letters fo- cused on women, marriage, and the family because Montesquieu considered the position of women a sure indicator of the nature of government and morality. Although Montesquieu was not a femi- nist, his depiction of Roxana, the favorite wife in Usbek’s harem, struck a chord with many women. Roxana revolts against the authority of Usbek’s eu- nuchs and writes a final letter to her husband an- nouncing her impending suicide: “I may have lived in servitude, but I have always been free, I have amended your laws according to the laws of na- ture, and my mind has always remained independ- ent.” Women writers used the same language of tyranny and freedom to argue for concrete changes in their status. Feminist ideas were not entirely new, but they were presented systematically for the first time during the Enlightenment and repre- sented a fundamental challenge to the ways of tra- ditional societies.

The most systematic of these women writers was the English author Mary Astell (1666–1731), the daughter of a businessman and herself a

The Birth of the Enlightenment 5491690–1740

supporter of the Tory party and the Anglican reli- gious establishment. In 1694, she published A Seri- ous Proposal to the Ladies, in which she advocated founding a private women’s college to remedy women’s lack of education. Addressing women, she asked, “How can you be content to be in the World like Tulips in a Garden, to make a fine shew [show] and be good for nothing?”Astell argued for intellectual training based on Descartes’s prin- ciples, in which reason, debate, and careful consid- eration of the issues took priority over custom or tradition. Her book was an immediate success: five printings appeared by 1701. In later works such as Reflections upon Marriage (1706), Astell criticized the relationship between the sexes within mar- riage: “If absolute sovereignty be not necessary in a state, how comes it to be so in a family? . . . If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?” Her critics accused her of promoting sub- versive ideas and of contradicting the Bible.

Astell’s work inspired other women to write in a similar vein. The anonymous Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696) attacked “the Usurpation of Men; and the Tyranny of Custom,” which pre- vented women from getting an education. In the introduction to the work of one of the best-known female poets, Elizabeth Singer Rowe, a friend of the author complained of the “notorious Violations on the Liberties of Freeborn English Women” that came from “a plain and an open design to render us meer [mere] Slaves, perfect Turkish Wives.”

Most male writers unequivocally stuck to the traditional view of women, which held that women were less capable of reasoning than men and therefore did not need systematic education. Such opinions often rested on biological supposi- tions. The long-dominant Aristotelian view of re- production held that only the male seed carried spirit and individuality. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, scientists began to undermine this belief. Physicians and surgeons be- gan to champion the doctrine of ovism — that the female egg was essential in making new humans. During the decades that followed, male Enlighten- ment writers would continue to debate women’s nature and appropriate social roles.

Review: What were the major issues in the early decades of the Enlightenment?

Conclusion Europeans crossed a major threshold in the first half of the eighteenth century. They moved silently but nonetheless momentously from an economy governed by scarcity and the threat of famine to one of ever-increasing growth and the prospect of continuing improvement. Expansion of colonies overseas and economic development at home cre- ated greater wealth, longer life spans, and higher expectations for the future. In these better times for many, a spirit of optimism prevailed. People could now spend money on newspapers, novels, and travel literature as well as on coffee, tea, and cotton cloth. The growing literate public avidly fol- lowed the latest trends in religious debates, art, and music. Not everyone shared equally in the bene- fits, however: slaves toiled in misery for their mas- ters in the Americas, eastern European serfs found themselves ever more closely bound to their noble lords, and rural folk almost everywhere tasted few fruits of consumer society.

Politics changed too as population and pro- duction increased and cities grew. Experts urged government intervention to improve public health, and states found it in their interest to set- tle many international disputes by diplomacy, which itself became more regular and routine. The consolidation of the European state system al- lowed a tide of criticism and new thinking about society to swell in Great Britain and France and begin to spill throughout Europe. Ultimately, the combination of the Atlantic system and the En- lightenment would give rise to a series of Atlantic revolutions.

550 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

For Further Exploration ■ For suggested references, including Web sites,

for topics in this chapter, see page SR-1 at the end of the book.

■ For additional primary-source material from this period, see Chapter 17 in Sources of THE MAKING OF THE WEST, Third Edition.

■ For Web sites and documents related to topics in this chapter, see Make History at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

Conclusion 5511690–1740

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Europe in 1740 By 1740, Europe had achieved a kind of diplomatic equilibrium in which no one power predominated. But the relative balance should not deflect attention from important underlying changes: Spain, the Dutch Republic, Poland-Lithuania, and Sweden had all declined in power and influence while Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria had solidified their positions, each in a different way. France’s ambitions had been thwarted, but its combination of a big army and rich overseas possessions made it a major player for a long time to come.

552 Chapter 17 ■ The Atl antic System and Its Consequences 1690–1740

Key Terms and People Making Connections

Review Questions

1. How did the rise of slavery and the plantation system change European politics and society?

2. Why was the Enlightenment born just at the moment that the Atlantic system took shape?

3. What were the major differences between the wars of the first half of the eighteenth century and those of the seven- teenth century? (Refer to Chapters 15 and 16.)

1. How was consumerism related to slavery in the early eighteenth century?

2. How were new social trends reflected in cultural life in the late 1600s and early 1700s?

3. What events and developments led to greater stability and less warfare in the European state system?

4. What were the major issues in the early decades of the Enlightenment?

Chapter Review

Atlantic system (520)

plantation (521)

mestizo (527)

buccaneers (527)

consumer revolution (528)

agricultural revolution (529)

rococo (534)

Pietism (536)

Peace of Utrecht (538)

Robert Walpole (539)

Peter the Great (540)

Westernization (540)

Enlightenment (545)

Voltaire (548)

For practice quizzes, a customized study plan, and other study tools, see the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

Important Events

1690s Beginning of rapid development of plantations in Caribbean

1694 Bank of England established; Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies argues for the founding of a private women’s college

1697 Pierre Bayle publishes Historical and Critical Dictionary, detailing errors of religious writers

1699 Turks forced to recognize Habsburg rule over Hungary and Transylvania

1703 Peter the Great begins construction of St. Petersburg, founds first Russian newspaper

1713–1714 Peace of Utrecht

1714 Elector of Hanover becomes King George I of England

1715 Death of Louis XIV

1719 Daniel Defoe publishes Robinson Crusoe

1720 Last outbreak of bubonic plague in western Europe

1721 Treaty of Nystad; Montesquieu publishes Persian Letters anonymously in the Dutch Republic

1733 War of the Polish Succession; Voltaire’s Letters Concerning the English Nation attacks French intolerance and narrow-mindedness

1741 George Frideric Handel composes Messiah

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In the summer of 1766, Empress Catherine II (“the Great”) ofRussia wrote to Voltaire, one of the leaders of the Enlightenment: It is a way of immortalizing oneself to be the advocate of humanity, the defender of oppressed innocence. . . . You have entered into combat against the enemies of mankind: superstition, fanaticism, ignorance, quibbling, evil judges, and the powers that rest in their hands. Great virtues and qualities are needed to surmount these obstacles. You have shown that you have them: you have triumphed.

Over a fifteen-year period, Catherine corresponded regularly with

Voltaire, a writer who, at home in France, found himself in constant

conflict with authorities of church and state. Her admiring letter shows

how influential Enlightenment ideals had become by the middle of the

eighteenth century. Even an absolutist ruler such as Catherine endorsed

many aspects of the Enlightenment call for reform; she too wanted to

be an “advocate of humanity.”

Catherine’s letter aptly summed up Enlightenment ideals: progress

for humanity could be achieved only by rooting out the wrongs left by

superstition, religious fanaticism, ignorance, and outmoded forms of

justice. Enlightenment writers used every means at their disposal — from

encyclopedias to novels to personal interaction with rulers — to argue

for reform. Everything had to be examined in the cold light of reason,

and anything that did not promote the improvement of humanity was

to be jettisoned. As a result, Enlightenment writers attacked the legal use

of torture to extract confessions, supported religious toleration, favored

the spread of education to eliminate ignorance, and criticized censor-

ship by state or church. The book trade and new places for urban

The Enlightenment at Its Height 556 • Men and Women of the Republic

of Letters • Conflicts with Church and State • The Individual and Society • Spreading the Enlightenment • The Limits of Reason: Roots of

Romanticism and Religious Revival

Society and Culture in an Age of Enlightenment 567 • The Nobility’s Reassertion of

Privilege • The Middle Class and the Making

of a New Elite • Life on the Margins

State Power in an Era of Reform 573 • War and Diplomacy • State-Sponsored Reform • Limits of Reform

Rebellions against State Power 578 • Food Riots and Peasant Uprisings • Public Opinion and Political

Opposition • Revolution in North America

555

The Promise of Enlightenment 1740—1789

C H A P T E R

18

Catherine the Great In this portrait by the Danish painter Vigilius Eriksen, the Russian empress Catherine the Great is shown on horseback (c. 1752), much like any male ruler of the time. Born Sophia Augusta Frederika of Anhalt-Zerbst in 1729, Catherine was the daughter of a minor German prince. When she married the future tsar Peter III in 1745, she promptly learned Russian and adopted Russian Orthodoxy. Peter, physically and mentally frail, proved no match for her; in 1762 she staged a coup against him and took his place when he was killed. (Erich Lessing/ Art Resource, NY.)

socializing, such as coffeehouses and learned so- cieties, spread these ideas within a new elite of middle- and upper-class men and women.

The lower classes had little contact with En- lightenment ideas. Their lives were shaped more profoundly by an increasing population, rising food prices, and ongoing wars among the great powers. States had to balance conflicting social pressures: rulers pursued Enlightenment reforms that they believed might enhance state power, but they feared changes that might unleash popular discontent. For example, Catherine aimed to bring Western ideas, culture, and reforms to Russia, but when faced with a massive uprising of the serfs, she not only suppressed the revolt but also in- creased the powers of the nobles over their serfs. All reform-minded rulers faced similar potential challenges to their authority.

Even if the movement for reform had its lim- its, governments now needed to respond to a new force: “public opinion.” Rulers wanted to portray themselves as modern, open to change, and re- sponsive to the segment of the public that was reading newspapers and closely following politi- cal developments. Enlightenment writers ap- pealed to public opinion, but they still looked to rulers to effect reform. Writers such as Voltaire expressed little interest in the future of peasants or the lower classes; they favored neither revolu- tion nor political upheaval. Yet their ideas paved the way for something much more radical and unexpected. The American Declaration of Inde- pendence in 1776 showed how Enlightenment ideals could be translated into democratic polit- ical practice. After 1789, democracy would come to Europe as well.

Focus Question: How did the Enlightenment influ- ence Western politics, culture, and society?

The Enlightenment at Its Height The Enlightenment emerged as an intellectual movement before 1740 but reached its peak in the second half of the eighteenth century. (See “Terms of History,” page 565.) The writers of the Enlight- enment called themselves philosophes (French for “philosophers”), but that term is somewhat mis- leading. Whereas philosophers concern themselves with abstract theories, the philosophes were pub- lic intellectuals dedicated to solving the real prob- lems of the world. They wrote on subjects ranging from current affairs to art criticism, and they wrote in every conceivable format. The Swiss philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, wrote a po- litical tract, a treatise on education, a constitution for Poland, an analysis of the effects of the theater on public morals, a best-selling novel, an opera, and a notorious autobiography. The philosophes wrote for a broad educated public of readers who snatched up every Enlightenment book they could find at their local booksellers, even when rulers or churches tried to forbid such works. Between 1740 and 1789, the Enlightenment acquired its name and, despite heated conflicts between the philosophes and state and religious authorities, gained support in the highest reaches of government.

Men and Women of the Republic of Letters Although philosophe is a French word, the Enlight- enment was distinctly cosmopolitan; philosophes could be found from Philadelphia to St. Petersburg.

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philosophes (fee luh SAWF): Public intellectuals of the Enlight- enment who wrote on subjects ranging from current affairs to art criticism with the goal of furthering reform in society. (The word in French means “philosophers.”)

1740 1750 1760

■ 1740–1748 War of the Austrian Succession

■ 1751–1772 Enlightenment writers publish Encyclopedia

■ 1756–1763 Seven Years’ War

■ 1762 Rousseau, The Social Contract, Émile

The philosophes considered themselves part of a grand “republic of letters” that transcended national political bound- aries. They were not republicans in the usual sense, that is, people who supported representative government and opposed monarchy. What united them were the ideals of reason, reform, and freedom. In 1784, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant summed up the program of the En- lightenment in two Latin words: sapere aude, “dare to know” — have the courage to think for yourself.

The philosophes used reason to at- tack superstition, bigotry, and religious fanaticism, which they considered the chief obstacles to free thought and social reform.Voltaire took religious fanaticism as his chief target: “Once fanaticism has corrupted a mind, the malady is almost incurable. . . . The only remedy for this epidemic malady is the philosophical spirit.” Enlightenment writers did not necessarily oppose organized religion, but they strenuously objected to reli- gious intolerance. They believed that the systematic application of reason could do what religious belief could not: improve the hu- man condition by pointing to needed reforms. Reason meant critical, informed, scientific think- ing about social issues and problems. Many En- lightenment writers collaborated on a new multivolume Encyclopedia (published 1751–1772) that aimed to gather together knowledge about sci- ence, religion, industry, and society (see illustra- tion at right). The chief editor of the Encyclopedia, Denis Diderot (1713–1784), explained the goal: “All things must be examined, debated, investi- gated without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings.” (See Document, “Denis Diderot, ‘Encyclopedia,’” page 559.)

The philosophes believed that the spread of knowledge would encourage reform in every as- pect of life, from the grain trade to the penal sys- tem. Chief among their desired reforms was intellectual freedom — the freedom to use one’s own reason and to publish the results. The philosophes wanted freedom of the press and free- dom of religion, which they considered “natural rights” guaranteed by “natural law.” In their view, progress depended on these freedoms.

Most philosophes, like Voltaire, came from the upper classes, yet Rousseau’s father was a modest watchmaker in Geneva, and Diderot was the son of a cutlery maker. Although it was a rare

The Enlightenment at Its Height 5571740–1789

1770 1780 1790

■ 1772 First Partition of Poland

■ 1773 Pugachev rebellion

■ 1764 Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary

■ 1780 Joseph II’s reforms

■ 1781 Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason

Bookbinding In this plate from the Encyclopedia, the various stages in bookbinding are laid out from left to right. Binding was not included in the sale of books; owners had to order leather bindings from a special shop. The man at (a) is pounding the pages to be bound on a marble block. The woman at (b) is stitching the pages with a special frame. The worker at (c) cuts the pages, and the one at (d) presses the volumes to prevent warping. In what ways is this illustration representative of the aims of the Encyclopedia?

■ 1771 Louis XV attempts major court reform

■ 1787 U.S. Constitution

■ 1785 Charter of the Nobility

■ 1776 American Declaration of Independence; Smith, Wealth of Nations

phenomenon, some women were philosophes, such as the French noblewoman Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749), who wrote extensively about the mathematics and physics of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Isaac Newton. (Her lover Voltaire learned much of his science from her.) Few of the leading writers held university positions, except those who were German or Scottish. Universities in France were dominated by the Catholic clergy and unreceptive to Enlightenment ideals.

Enlightenment ideas developed instead through printed books and pamphlets; through letters that were hand-copied, circulated, and sometimes pub- lished; and through informal readings of manu- scripts. Salons — informal gatherings, usually sponsored by middle-class or aristocratic women — gave intellectual life an anchor outside the royal court and the church-controlled universities. Seventeenth-century salons had been tame affairs. In the Parisian salons of the eighteenth century, in contrast, the philosophes could discuss ideas they might hesitate to put into print, testing public opinion and even pushing it in new directions. Best known was the Parisian salon of Madame Marie- Thérèse Geoffrin (1699–1777), a wealthy middle- class widow who had been raised by her grandmother and married off at fourteen to a much older man (see Madame Geoffrin’s Salon, above). She brought together the most exciting thinkers and artists of the time and provided a fo- rum for new ideas and an opportunity to establish new intellectual contacts. Madame Geoffrin corre- sponded extensively with influential people across

Europe, including Catherine the Great. One Italian visitor commented, “There is no way to make Naples resemble Paris unless we find a woman to guide us, organize us, Geoffrinize us.”

Women’s salons provoked criticism from men who resented their power. (See “Contrasting Views,” page 562.) Nevertheless, the gatherings helped galvanize intellectual life and reform move- ments all over Europe. Wealthy Jewish women cre- ated nine of the fourteen salons in Berlin at the end of the eighteenth century, and Princess Zofia Czartoryska gathered around her in Warsaw the reform leaders of Poland-Lithuania. Some of the aristocratic women in Madrid who held salons had lived in France, and they combined an interest in French culture and ideas with their efforts to pro- mote the new ideas in Spain. Middle-class women in London used their salons to raise money to pub- lish women’s writings. Salons could be tied closely to the circles of power: in France, for example, Louis XV’s mistress, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, first made her reputation as hostess of a salon fre- quented by Voltaire and Montesquieu. When she became Louis XV’s mistress in 1745, she gained the title Marquise de Pompadour and turned her at- tention to influencing artistic styles by patroniz- ing architects and painters.

Conflicts with Church and State Madame Geoffrin did not approve of discussions that attacked the Catholic church, but elsewhere voices against organized religion could be heard.

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Madame Geoffrin’s Salon in 1755 This 1812 painting by Anicet Charles Lemonnier claims to depict the best-known Parisian salon of the 1750s. Lemonnier was only twelve years old in 1755 and so could not have based his rendition on firsthand knowledge. Madame Geoffrin is the figure in blue on the right facing the viewer. The bust is of Voltaire. Rousseau is the fifth person to the left of the bust (facing right) and behind him (facing left) is Raynal. (Bridgeman–Giraudon/ Art Resource, NY.)

Criticisms of religion required daring because the church, whatever its denomination, wielded enor- mous power in society, and most influential people considered religion an essential foundation of good society and government. Defying such opinion, the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) boldly argued in The Natural History of Religion (1755) that belief in God rested on su- perstition and fear rather than on reason. Hume soon met kindred spirits while visiting Paris; he at- tended a dinner party consisting of “fifteen athe- ists, and three who had not quite made up their minds.”

In the eighteenth century, most Europeans be- lieved in God. After Newton, however, and despite Newton’s own deep religiosity, people could conceive of the universe as an eternally existing, self-perpetuating machine, in which God’s inter- vention was unnecessary. In short, such people could become either atheists, people who do not believe in God, or deists, people who believe in God but give him no active role in earthly affairs. For the first time, writers claimed the label atheist and disputed the common view that atheism led in- evitably to immorality.

Deists continued to believe in a benevolent, all-knowing God who had designed the universe and set it in motion. But they usually rejected the idea that God directly intercedes in the function- ing of the universe, and they often criticized the churches for their dogmatic intolerance of dis- senters. Voltaire was a deist, and in his influential Philosophical Dictionary (1764) he attacked most of the claims of organized Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant. Christianity, he argued, had been the prime source of fanaticism and bru- tality among humans. Throughout his life, Voltaire’s motto was Écrasez l’infâme — “Crush the infamous thing” (the “thing” being bigotry and in- tolerance). French authorities publicly burned his Philosophical Dictionary.

Criticism of religious intolerance involved more than simply attacking the churches. Critics also had to confront the states to which churches were closely tied. In 1762, a judicial case in

The Enlightenment at Its Height 5591740–1789

deists: Those who believe in God but give him no active role in human affairs. Deists of the Enlightenment believed that God had designed the universe and set it in motion but no longer intervened in its functioning.

Denis Diderot, “Encyclopedia” (1755)

D O C U M E N T

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) led the multi- national team that produced the Encyclo- pedia, a work much more radical in its aims than its bland name suggests. Seventeen vol- umes of text and eleven volumes of illustra- tive plates were published between 1751 and 1772, despite the efforts of French authori- ties to censor it. The volumes covered every branch of human knowledge from the tools of artisans to the finest points of theology. Diderot and his collaborators used the occa- sion to lay out the principles of the Enlight- enment as an intellectual movement and to challenge the authority, in particular, of the Catholic church. The article “Encyclopedia” summarized the goals of the project.

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Philosophy). This word means the interrelation of all knowledge; it is made up of the Greek prefix en, in, and the nouns kyklos, circle, and paideia,

instruction, science, knowledge. In truth, the aim of an encyclopedia is to collect all the knowledge scattered over the face of the earth, to present its general outlines and structure to the men with whom we live, and transmit this to those who will come after us, so that the work of the past centuries may be useful to the following centuries, that our children, by becoming more educated, may at the same time be- come more virtuous and happier, and that we may not die without having deserved well of the human race. . . .

We have seen that our Encyclopedia could only have been the endeavor of a philosophical century; that this age has dawned, and that fame, while raising to immortality the names of those who will perfect man’s knowledge in the future, will perhaps not disdain to remember our own names. . . .

I have said that it could only belong to a philosophical age to attempt an ency- clopedia; and I have said this because such a work constantly demands more intellec- tual daring than is commonly found in ages of pusillanimous [timid] taste. All things must be examined, debated, inves- tigated without exception and without re- gard for anyone’s feelings. . . . We must ride roughshod over all these ancient puerilities, overturn the barriers that rea- son never erected, give back to the arts and sciences the liberty that is so precious to them. . . . We have for quite some time needed a reasoning age when men would no longer seek the rules in classical au- thors but in nature.

Source: Margaret C. Jacob, The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2001), 157–158.

Toulouse provoked an outcry throughout France that Voltaire soon joined. When the son of a local Calvinist was found hanged (he had probably committed suicide), magistrates accused the fa- ther, Jean Calas, of murdering him to prevent his conversion to Catholicism. (Since Louis XIV’s rev- ocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, it had been illegal to practice Calvinism publicly in France.) The all-Catholic parlement of Toulouse tried to ex- tract the names of accomplices through torture — using a rope to pull up Calas’s arm while weighing down his feet and then pouring water down his throat — and then executed him by breaking every bone in his body with an iron rod. Calas refused to confess. Voltaire launched a successful crusade to rehabilitate Calas’s good name and to restore the family’s properties, which had been confiscated after his death. Voltaire’s efforts eventually helped bring about the extension of civil rights to French Protestants and encouraged campaigns to abolish the judicial use of torture.

Critics also assailed state and church support for European colonization and slavery. One of the most popular books of the time was the Philosoph- ical and Political History of European Colonies and Commerce in the Two Indies, published in 1770 by Abbé Guillaume Raynal (1713–1796), a French Catholic clergyman. Raynal and his collaborators described in excruciating detail the destruction of native populations by Europeans and denounced the slave trade. Despite the criticism, the slave trade continued. So did European exploration. British explorer James Cook (1728–1779) charted the coasts of New Zealand and Australia, discov- ered New Caledonia, and visited the ice fields of Antarctica.

Cook’s adventures captivated European read- ers. When he arrived on the Kona coast of Hawaii in 1779, Cook thought that the natives considered him godlike, but in a confrontation he fired and killed a man, provoking an attack that led to his death and those of some of his men. Like Cook, many Enlightenment writers held conflicting views of natives: to some, they were innocent be- cause primitive, but to others they seemed untrust- worthy because savage. Views of Africans could be especially negative. David Hume, for example, judged blacks to be “naturally inferior to the whites,” concluding, “There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white.”

Nevertheless, the Enlightenment belief in nat- ural rights helped fuel the antislavery movement, which began to organize political campaigns against slavery in Britain, France, and the new United States in the 1780s. Advocates of the abo-

lition of slavery encouraged freed slaves to write the story of their enslavement. One such freed slave, Olaudah Equiano, wrote of his kidnapping and enslavement in Africa and his long effort to free himself. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, published in 1788, became an international best seller; it had appeared in Eng- lish, Dutch, Russian, and French by the time Equiano died in 1797. Armed with such firsthand accounts of slavery, abolitionists began to petition their governments for the abolition of the slave trade and then of slavery itself.

Enlightenment critics of church and state usu- ally advocated reform, not revolution. For ex- ample, though he resided near the French-Swiss border in case he had to flee, Voltaire made a for- tune in financial speculations and ended up being celebrated in his last years as a national hero even by many former foes. Other philosophes also be- lieved that published criticism, rather than violent action, would bring about necessary reforms. As Diderot said, “We will speak against senseless laws until they are reformed; and, while we wait, we will abide by them.” The philosophes generally re- garded the lower classes — “the people” — as igno- rant, violent, and prone to superstition; as a result, they pinned their hopes on educated elites and en- lightened rulers.

Despite the philosophes’ preference for re- form, in the long run their books often had a rev- olutionary impact. For example, Montesquieu’s widely reprinted Spirit of the Laws (1748) warned against the dangers of despotism, opposed the di- vine right of kings, and favored constitutional gov- ernment. His analysis of British constitutionalism inspired French critics of absolutism and would greatly influence the American revolutionaries.

The Individual and Society The controversy created by the conflicts between the philosophes and the various churches and states of Europe drew attention away from a subtle but profound transformation in worldviews. In previous centuries, questions of theological doc- trine and church organization had been the main focus of intellectual and even political interest. The Enlightenment writers shifted attention away from religious questions and toward the secular study of society and the individual’s role in it. Religion did not drop out of sight, but the philosophes tended to make religion a private affair of individ-

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abolitionists: Advocates of the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery.

ual conscience, even while rulers and churches still considered religion very much a public concern.

The Enlightenment interest in secular society produced two major results: it advanced the secu- larization of European political life that had begun after the Wars of Religion of the sixteenth and sev- enteenth centuries, and it laid the foundations for the social sciences of the modern era. Not surpris- ingly, then, many historians and philosophers con- sider the Enlightenment to be the origin of modernity, which they define as the belief that hu- man reason, rather than theological doctrine, should set the patterns of social and political life. This belief in reason as the sole foundation for sec- ular authority has often been contested, but it has also proved to be a powerful force for change.

Although most of the philosophes believed that human reason could understand and even re- make society and politics, they disagreed about what reason revealed. Among the many different approaches were two that proved enduringly in- fluential, those of the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith and the Swiss writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Smith provided a theory of modern capitalist so- ciety and devoted much of his energy to defend- ing free markets as the best way to make the most of individual efforts. The modern discipline of economics took shape around the questions raised by Smith. Rousseau, by contrast, emphasized the needs of the community over those of the individ- ual. His work, which led both toward democracy and toward communism, continues to inspire heated debate in political science and sociology.

Adam Smith. Adam Smith (1723–1790) opti- mistically believed that individual interests natu- rally harmonized with those of the whole society. To explain how this natural harmonization worked, he published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. Smith insisted that individual self-interest, even greed, was quite compatible with society’s best interest: the laws of supply and demand served as an “in- visible hand” ensuring that individual interests would be synchronized with those of the whole so- ciety. Market forces — “the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another” — naturally brought individual and social interests in line.

Smith rejected the prevailing mercantilist views that the general welfare would be served by accumulating national wealth through agriculture or the hoarding of gold and silver. Instead, he ar- gued that the division of labor in manufacturing increased productivity and generated more wealth

for society and well-being for the individual. In his much-cited example of the manufacture of pins, Smith showed that when the manufacturing process was broken down into separate operations — one man to draw out the wire, another to straighten it, a third to cut it, a fourth to point it, and so on — workers who could make only one pin a day on their own could make thousands by pooling their labor.

To maximize the effects of market forces and the division of labor, Smith endorsed a concept called laissez-faire (that is, “to leave alone”) to free the economy from government intervention and control. He insisted that governments eliminate all restrictions on the sale of land, remove restraints on the grain trade, and abandon duties on imports. Free international trade, he argued, would stimu- late production everywhere and thus ensure the growth of national wealth: “The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and with- out any assistance, not only capable of carrying the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmount- ing a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encum- bers its operations.” Governments should restrict themselves to providing “security,” that is, national defense, internal order, and public works. Smith recognized that government had an important role in providing a secure framework for market activ- ity, but he placed most emphasis on freeing indi- vidual endeavor from what he saw as excessive government interference.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Much more pessimistic about the relation between individual self-interest and the good of society was Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). In Rousseau’s view, soci- ety itself threatened natural rights or freedoms: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Rousseau first gained fame by writing a prize- winning essay in 1749 in which he argued that the revival of science and the arts had corrupted social morals, not improved them. This startling conclusion seemed to oppose some of the En- lightenment’s most cherished beliefs. Rather than

The Enlightenment at Its Height 5611740–1789

laissez-faire (LEH say FEHR): An economic doctrine devel- oped by Adam Smith that advocated freeing the economy from government intervention and control. (The term is French for “to leave alone.”)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (zhahn zhahk roo SOH): One of the most important philosophes (1712–1778); he argued that only a government based on a social contract among the citizens could make people truly moral and free.

improving society, he claimed, science and art raised artificial barriers between people and their natu- ral state. Rousseau’s works extolled the simplicity of rural life over urban society. Although he par- ticipated in the salons, Rousseau always felt ill at ease in high society, and he periodically withdrew to live in solitude far from Paris. Paradoxically, his solitude was often paid for by wealthy upper-class patrons who lodged him on their estates, even as his writings decried the upper-class privilege that made his efforts possible.

Rousseau explored the tension between the in- dividual and society in a best-selling novel (The New Heloise, 1761); in an influential work on education (Émile, 1762); and in a treatise on

political theory (The Social Contract, 1762). He wrote Émile in the form of a novel in order to make his educational theories easily comprehensible. Free from the supervision of the clergy, who con- trolled most schools, the boy Émile works alone with his tutor to develop practical skills and inde- pendent ways of thinking. After developing his in- dividuality, Émile joins society through marriage to Sophie, who received the education Rousseau thought appropriate for women. (See “Contrast- ing Views,” above.)

Whereas earlier Rousseau had argued that so- ciety corrupted the individual by taking him out of nature, in The Social Contract he aimed to show that the right kind of political order could make

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During the Enlightenment, women’s roles in society became the sub- ject of heated debates. Some men resented what they saw as the growing power of women, especially in the salons. Rousseau railed against their corrupting influence: “Every woman at Paris gathers in her apartment a harem of men more womanish than she.” Rousseau’s Émile (Document 1) offered his own influential answer to the question of how women should be educated. The Encyclo- pedia ignored the contributions of salon women and praised women who stayed at home; in the words of one typical contributor, women “constitute the principal ornament of the world. . . . May they, through submissive discretion and through simple, adroit, artless cleverness, spur us [men] on to virtue.” Many women objected to these characterizations. The editor of a prominent newspaper for women, Madame de Beaumer, wrote editorials blasting the mascu- line sense of superiority (Document 2). Many prominent women writers specifically targeted Rousseau’s book because it proved to be the most influential educational treatise of the time (Document 3). Their ideas formed the core of nineteenth-century feminism.

1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile (1762)

Rousseau used the character of Émile’s wife-to-be, Sophie, to dis- cuss his ideas about women’s education. Sophie is educated for a domestic role as wife and mother, and she is taught to be obedient, always helpful to her husband and family, and removed from any participation in the public world. Despite his insistence on the dif- ferences between men’s and women’s roles, many women enthusi- astically embraced Rousseau’s ideas, for he placed great emphasis on maternal affections, breast-feeding, and child rearing. Rousseau’s own children, however, suffered the contradictions that character- ized his life. By his own admission, he abandoned to a foundling hospital all the children he had by his lower-class common-law wife

because he did not think he could support them properly; if their fate was like that of most abandoned children of the day, they met an early death.

There is no parity between man and woman as to the impor- tance of sex. The male is only a male at certain moments; the fe- male all her life, or at least throughout her youth, is incessantly reminded of her sex and in order to carry out its functions she needs a corresponding constitution. She needs to be careful dur- ing pregnancy; she needs rest after childbirth; she needs a quiet and sedentary life while she nurses her children; she needs pa- tience and gentleness in order to raise them; a zeal and affection that nothing can discourage. . . .

On the good constitution of mothers depends primarily that of the children; on the care of women depends the early educa- tion of men; and on women, again, depend their morals, their passions, their tastes, their pleasures, and even their happiness. Thus the whole education of women ought to be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to make themselves loved and honored by them, to educate them when young, to care for them when grown, to counsel them, to console them, and to make life agreeable and sweet to them — these are the duties of women at all times, and should be taught them from their infancy.

Source: Susan Groag Bell and Karen M. Offen, Women, the Family, and Freedom: The Debate in Documents, vol. 1, 1750–1880 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983), 46–49.

2. Madame de Beaumer, Editorial in Le Journal des Dames (1762)

Madame de Beaumer (d. 1766) was the first of three women edi- tors of Le Journal des Dames (The Ladies’ Journal). She ran it for

C O N T R A S T I N G V I E W S

Women and the Enlightenment

people truly moral and free. Individual moral free- dom could be achieved only by learning to subject one’s individual interests to “the general will,” that is, the good of the community. Individuals did this by entering into a social contract not with their rulers, but with one another. If everyone followed the general will, then all would be equally free and equally moral because they lived under a law to which they had all consented.

These arguments threatened the legitimacy of eighteenth-century governments. Rousseau de- rived his social contract from human nature, not from history, tradition, or the Bible. He implied that people would be most free and moral under a republican form of government with direct

democracy, and his abstract model included no reference to differences in social status. He roundly condemned slavery: “To decide that the son of a slave is born a slave is to decide that he is not born a man.” Not surprisingly, authorities in both Geneva and Paris banned The Social Contract for undermining political authority. Rousseau’s works would become a kind of political bible for the French revolutionaries of 1789, and his attacks on private property inspired the communists of the nineteenth century such as Karl Marx. Rousseau’s rather mystical concept of the general will remains controversial. The “greatest good of all,” according to Rousseau, was liberty combined with equality, but he also insisted that the individual could be

The Enlightenment at Its Height 5631740–1789

two years and published many editorials defending women against their male critics.

The success of the Journal des Dames allows us to triumph over those frivolous persons who have regarded this periodical as a petty work containing only a few bagatelles suited to help them kill time. In truth, Gentlemen, you do us much honor to think that we could not provide things that unite the useful to the agreeable. To rid you of your error, we have made our Journal historical, with a view to putting before the eyes of youth strik- ing images that will guide them toward virtue. . . . An historical Journal des Dames! these Gentlemen reasoners reply. How ridicu- lous! How out of character with the nature of this work, which calls only for little pieces to amuse [ladies] during their toi- lette. . . . Please, Gentlemen beaux esprits [wits], mind your own business and let us write in a manner worthy of our sex; I love this sex, I am jealous to uphold its honor and its rights. If we have not been raised up in the sciences as you have, it is you who are the guilty ones.

Source: Bell and Offen, 27–28.

3. Catharine Macaulay, Letters on Education (1787)

Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay-Graham (1731–1791) was one of the best-known English writers of the 1700s. She wrote immensely popular histories of England and also joined in the debate provoked by Rousseau’s Émile.

There is another prejudice . . . which affects yet more deeply female happiness, and female importance; a prejudice, which ought ever to have been confined to the regions of the east, be- cause [of the] state of slavery to which female nature in that part of the world has been ever subjected, and can only suit with the notion of a positive inferiority in the intellectual powers of the

female mind. You will soon perceive, that the prejudice which I mean, is that degrading difference in the culture of the under- standing, which has prevailed for several centuries in all Euro- pean societies. . . .

Among the most strenuous asserters of a sexual difference in character, Rousseau is the most conspicuous, both on account of that warmth of sentiment which distinguishes all his writing, and the eloquence of his compositions: but never did enthusi- asm and the love of paradox, those enemies of philosophical dis- quisition, appear in more strong opposition to plain sense than in Rousseau’s definition of this difference. He sets out with a sup- position, that Nature intended the subjection of the one sex to the other; that consequently there must be an inferiority of in- tellect in the subjected party; but as man is a very imperfect be- ing, and apt to play the capricious tyrant, Nature, to bring things nearer to an equality, bestowed on the woman such attractive graces, and such an insinuating address, as to turn the balance on the other scale. . . .

The situation and education of women . . . is precisely that which must necessarily tend to corrupt and debilitate both the powers of mind and body. From a false notion of beauty and del- icacy, their system of nerves is depraved before they come out of the nursery; and this kind of depravity has more influence over the mind, and consequently over morals, than is commonly ap- prehended.

Source: Bell and Offen, 54–55.

Questions to Consider 1. Why would women in the eighteenth century read Rousseau

with such interest and even enthusiasm? 2. Why does Madame de Beaumer address herself to male read-

ers if the Journal des Dames is intended for women? 3. Why would Macaulay focus so much of her analysis on

Rousseau? Why does she not just ignore him? 4. Was the Enlightenment intended only for men?

“forced to be free” by the terms of the social con- tract. He provided no legal protections for indi- vidual rights. In other words, Rousseau’s version of democracy did not preserve the individual free- doms so important to Adam Smith.

Spreading the Enlightenment The Enlightenment flourished in places where an educated middle class provided an eager audience for ideas of constitutionalism and reform. It there- fore found its epicenter in the triangle formed by London, Amsterdam, and Paris and diffused out- ward to eastern and southern Europe and North America. Where constitutionalism and the guar- antee of individual freedoms were most advanced, as in Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, the movement had less of an edge because there was, in a sense, less need for it. John Locke had already written extensively about constitutionalism in the 1690s. As a result, Scottish and English writers con- centrated on economics, philosophy, and history rather than on politics or social relations. The English historian Edward Gibbon, for example, published an immensely influential History of

the Decline and Fall of the Ro- man Empire (1776–1788), in which he portrayed Chris- tianity in a negative light, but when he served as a Member of Parliament he never even gave a speech. At the other extreme, in places with small middle classes, such as Spain and Russia, Enlightenment ideas did not get much trac- tion because governments successfully suppressed writ- ings they did not like. France was the Enlightenment hot spot because the French monarchy alternated be- tween encouraging ideas for reform and harshly censur- ing criticisms it found too threatening.

The French Enlightenment. French writers published the most daring critiques of church and state and often suffered harassment and perse- cution as a result. Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau all faced arrest, exile, or even

imprisonment. The Catholic church and royal au- thorities routinely forbade the publication of their books, and the police arrested booksellers who ig- nored the warnings. Yet the French monarchy was far from the most autocratic in Europe, and Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau all ended their lives as cultural heroes. France seems to have been curiously caught in the middle during the Enlight- enment: with fewer constitutional guarantees of individual freedom than Great Britain, it still en- joyed much higher levels of prosperity and cultural development than most other European countries. In short, French elites had reason to complain, the means to make their complaints known, and a gov- ernment torn between the desires to censor dissi- dent ideas and to appear open to modernity and progress. The French government controlled pub- lishing — all books had to get official permis- sions — but not as tightly as in Spain, where the Catholic Inquisition made up its own list of banned books, or in Russia, where Catherine the Great allowed no opposition.

By the 1760s, the French government regularly ignored the publication of many works once thought offensive or subversive. In addition, a

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau This eighteenth-century engraving of Rousseau shows him in his favorite place, outside in nature, where he walks, reads, and in this case collects plants. Rousseau claimed that he came to his most important insights while taking long walks, and in Émile he underlines the importance of physical activity for children. (© Private Collection/ The Bridgeman Art Library.)

growing flood of works printed abroad poured into France and circulated underground. Private companies in Dutch and Swiss cities made for- tunes smuggling illegal books into France over mountain passes and back roads. Foreign printers provided secret catalogs of their offerings and sold their products through booksellers who were will- ing to market forbidden books for a high price — among them not only philosophical treatises of the Enlightenment but also pornographic books and pamphlets (some by Diderot) lampooning the Catholic clergy and leading members of the royal court. In the 1770s and 1780s, lurid descriptions of sexual promiscuity at the French court helped undermine the popularity of the throne.

The German Enlightenment. Whereas the French philosophes often took a violently anticlerical and combative tone, their German counterparts avoided direct political confrontations with au- thorities. Gotthold Lessing (1729–1781) com- plained in 1769 that Prussia was still “the most slavish society in Europe” in its lack of freedom to criticize government policies. As a playwright, lit- erary critic, and philosopher, Lessing promoted re- ligious toleration for the Jews and spiritual emancipation of Germans from foreign, especially French, models of culture, which still dominated. Lessing also introduced the German Jewish writer Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) into Berlin salon society. Mendelssohn labored to build bridges be- tween German and Jewish culture by arguing that Judaism was a rational and undogmatic religion. He believed that persecution and discrimination against the Jews would end as reason triumphed.

Reason was also the chief focus of the most influential German thinker of the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). A university profes- sor who lectured on everything from economics to astronomy, Kant wrote one of the most impor- tant works in the history of Western philosophy, The Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Kant admired Adam Smith and especially Rousseau, whose por- trait he displayed proudly in his lodgings. Just as Smith founded modern economics and Rousseau modern political theory, Kant in The Critique of Pure Reason set the foundations for modern phi- losophy. In this complex book, Kant established the doctrine of idealism, the belief that true un- derstanding can come only from examining the ways in which ideas are formed in the mind. Ideas are shaped, Kant argued, not just by sensory infor- mation (a position central to empiricism, a phi- losophy based on John Locke’s writings) but also by the operation on that information of mental

categories such as space and time. In Kant’s phi- losophy, these “categories of understanding” were neither sensory nor supernatural; they were entirely ideal and abstract and located in the human mind. For Kant, the supreme philosophi- cal questions — Does God exist? Is personal im- mortality possible? Do humans have free will? — were unanswerable by reason alone. But like

The Enlightenment at Its Height 5651740–1789

Enlightenment

T E R M S O F H I S T O R Y

In 1784, in an essay titled “What Is Enlightenment?” the Germanphilosopher Immanuel Kant gave widespread currency to a termthat had been in the making for several decades. The term enlight- ened century had become common in the 1760s. The Enlightenment thus gave itself its own name, and the name clearly had propaganda value. The philosophes associated Enlightenment with philosophy, reason, and humanity; religious tolerance; natural rights; and criti- cism of outmoded customs and prejudices. They tied Enlightenment to “progress” and to the “modern,” and it came into question, just as these other terms did, when events cast doubt on the benefits of progress and the virtues of modernity. Although some opposed the Enlightenment from the very beginning as antireligious, undermin- ing of authority, and even atheistic and immoral, the French Revolu- tion of 1789 galvanized the critics of Enlightenment who blamed every excess of revolution on Enlightenment principles.

For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, condemna- tion of the Enlightenment came from right-wing sources. Some of the more extreme of these critics denounced a supposed “Jewish-Masonic conspiracy,” believing that Jews and Freemasons benefited most from the spread of Enlightenment principles and worked in secret to jointly undermine Christianity and established monarchical authorities. Adolf Hitler and his followers shared these suspicions, and during World War II the Germans confiscated the records of Masonic lodges in every country they occupied. They sent the documents back to Berlin so that a special office could trace the links of this supposed conspiracy. They found nothing.

After the catastrophes of World War II, the Enlightenment came under attack from left-wing critics. They denounced the Enlighten- ment as “self-destructive” and even “totalitarian” because its belief in reason led not to freedom but to greater bureaucratic control. They asked why mankind was sinking into “a new kind of barbarism,” and they answered, “Because we have trusted too much in the Enlighten- ment and its belief in reason and science.” Reason provided the tech- nology to transport millions of Jews to their deaths in scientifically sound gas chambers. Reason invented the atomic bomb and gave us the factories that pollute the atmosphere. These criticisms of the En- lightenment show how central the Enlightenment remains to the very definition of modern history.

Rousseau, Kant insisted that true moral freedom could be achieved only by living in society and obeying its laws.

The Limits of Reason: Roots of Romanticism and Religious Revival As Kant showed, reason had its limits: it could not answer all of life’s pressing questions. In reaction to what some saw as the Enlightenment’s excessive reliance on the authority of human reason, a new artistic movement called romanticism took root. Although it would not fully flower until the early nineteenth century, romanticism traced its empha- sis on individual genius, deep emotion, and the joys of nature to thinkers like Rousseau who had scolded the philosophes for ignoring those aspects of life that escaped and even conflicted with the power of reason. Rousseau’s autobiographical Confessions, published posthumously in 1782, caused an immediate sensation because it revealed so much about his inner emotional life, including his sexual longings and his almost paranoid dis- trust of other Enlightenment figures.

A novel by the young German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) captured the early romantic spirit with its glorification of emo- tion. The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) told of a young man who loves nature and rural life and is unhappy in love. When the woman he loves mar- ries someone else, he falls into deep melancholy and eventually kills himself. Reason cannot save him. The book spurred a veritable Werther craze: in addition to Werther costumes, engravings, em-

broidery, and medallions, there was even a per- fume called Eau de Werther. The young Napoleon Bonaparte, who was to build an empire for France, claimed to have read Goethe’s novel seven times.

Religious revivals underlined the limits of rea- son in a different way. Much of the Protestant world experienced an “awakening” in the 1740s. In the German states, Pietist groups founded new communities; and in the British North American colonies, revivalist Protestant preachers drew thousands of fervent believers in a movement called the Great Awakening. In North America, bit- ter conflicts between revivalists and their oppo- nents in the established churches prompted the leaders on both sides to set up new colleges to sup- port their beliefs. These included Princeton, Columbia, Brown, and Dartmouth, all founded between 1746 and 1769.

Revivalism also stirred eastern European Jews at about the same time. Israel ben Eliezer (1698–1760) laid the foundation for Hasidism in the 1740s and 1750s. He traveled the Polish coun- tryside offering miraculous cures and became known as the Ba’al Shem Tov (meaning “Master of the Good Name”) because he used divine names to effect healing and bring believers into closer personal contact with God. He emphasized mysti- cal contemplation of the divine, rather than study of Jewish law, and his followers, the Hasidim (Hebrew for “most pious” Jews), often expressed their devotion through music, dance, and fervent prayer. Their practices soon spread all over Poland- Lithuania.

Most of the waves of Protestant revivalism ebbed after the 1750s, but in Great Britain one movement continued to grow through the end of the century. John Wesley (1703–1791), the Oxford-educated son of an Anglican cleric, founded Methodism, a term evoked by Wesley’s insistence on strict self-discipline and a methodi- cal approach to religious study and observance. In 1738, Wesley began preaching a new brand of Protestantism that emphasized an intense per- sonal experience of salvation and a life of thrift, abstinence, and hard work. Traveling all over the British Isles, Wesley would mount a table or a box to speak to the ordinary people of the village or town. He slept in his followers’ homes, ate their food, and treated their illnesses with various remedies, including small electric shocks for nerv- ous diseases (Wesley eagerly followed Benjamin

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Methodism: A religious movement founded by John Wesley (1703–1791) that broke with the Anglican church in Great Britain and insisted on strict self-discipline and a “methodical” approach to religious study and observance.

romanticism: An artistic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that glorified nature, emotion, genius, and imagination.

M A J O R W O R K S O F T H E E N L I G H T E N M E N T

1748 Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron of Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws

1751 Beginning of publication of the French Encyclopedia

1755 David Hume, The Natural History of Religion

1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Émile

1764 Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary

1770 Abbé Guillaume Raynal, Philosophical and Political History of European Colonies and Commerce in the Two Indies

1776 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

1781 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason

Franklin’s experiments with electricity). In fifty years, Wesley preached forty thousand sermons, an average of fifteen a week. Not surprisingly, his preaching disturbed the Anglican authorities, who refused to let him preach in the churches. In re- sponse, Wesley began to ordain his own clergy. While radical in religious views, the Methodist leadership remained politically conservative dur- ing Wesley’s lifetime; Wesley himself wrote many pamphlets urging order, loyalty, and submission to higher authorities.

Review: What were the major differences between the Enlightenment in France, Great Britain, and the German states?

Society and Culture in an Age of Enlightenment Religious revivals and the first stirrings of roman- ticism show that not all intellectual currents of the eighteenth century were flowing in the same chan- nel. Some social and cultural developments, too, manifested the influence of Enlightenment ideas, but others did not. The traditional leaders of European societies — the nobles — responded to Enlightenment ideals in contradictory fashion: many simply reasserted their privileges and resis-

ted the influence of the Enlightenment, but an im- portant minority embraced change and actively participated in reform efforts. The expanding mid- dle classes saw in the Enlightenment a chance to make their claim for joining society’s governing elite. They bought Enlightenment books, joined Masonic lodges, and patronized new styles in art, music, and literature. The lower classes were more affected by economic growth than by ideas. Trade boomed and the population grew, but people did not benefit equally. The ranks of the poor swelled, too, and with greater mobility, births to unmar- ried mothers also increased.

The Nobility’s Reassertion of Privilege Nobles made up about 3 percent of the European population, but their numbers and ways of life var- ied greatly from country to country. At least 10 percent of the population in Poland and 7 to 8 per- cent in Spain was noble, in contrast to only 2 per- cent in Russia and between 1 and 2 percent in the rest of western Europe. Many Polish and Spanish nobles lived in poverty; titles did not guarantee wealth. Still, the wealthiest European nobles luxu- riated in almost unimaginable opulence. Many of the English peers, for example, owned more than ten thousand acres of land; invested widely in gov- ernment bonds and trading companies; kept sev- eral country residences with scores of servants as well as houses in London; and occasionally even

Society and Culture in an Age of Enlightenment 5671740–1789

George Whitefield One of the most prominent preachers of the Great Awakening in the British North American colonies was the English Methodist George Whitefield, painted here by John Wollaston in 1742. Whitefield visited the North American colonies seven times, sometimes for long periods, and drew tens of thousands of people to his dramatic and emotional open-air sermons, which moved many listeners to tears of repentance. Whitefield was a celebrity in his time and is considered by many to be the founder of the Evangelical movement. (National Portrait Gallery, London.)

had their own private orchestras to complement libraries of expensive books, greenhouses for exotic plants, kennels of pedigreed dogs, and collections of antiques, firearms, and scientific instruments.

To support an increasingly expensive lifestyle in a period of inflation, European aristocrats sought to cash in on their remaining legal rights (called seigneurial dues, from the French seigneur, for “lord”). Peasants felt the squeeze as a result. French landlords required their peasants to pay dues to grind grain at the lord’s mill, bake bread in his oven, press grapes at his winepress, or even pass on their own land as inheritance. In addition, peasants had to work without compensation for a specified number of days every year on the public roads. They also paid taxes to the government on salt, an essential preservative, and on the value of their land; customs duties if they sold produce or wine in town; and the tithe on their grain (one- tenth of the crop) to the church.

In Britain, the landed gentry could not claim these same onerous dues from their tenants, but they tenaciously defended their exclusive right to hunt game. The game laws kept the poor from eat- ing meat and helped protect the social status of the rich. The gentry enforced the game laws them- selves by hiring gamekeepers who hunted down poachers and even set traps for them in the forests. According to the law, anyone who poached deer or rabbits while armed or disguised could be sen- tenced to death. After 1760, the number of arrests for breaking the game laws increased dramatically. In most other countries, too, hunting was the spe- cial right of the nobility, a cause of deep popular resentment.

Even though Enlightenment writers sharply criticized nobles’ insistence on special privileges, most aristocrats maintained their marks of dis- tinction. The male court nobility continued to sport swords, plumed hats, makeup, and elaborate wigs, while middle-class men wore simpler and more somber clothing. Aristocrats had their own seats in church and their own quarters in the universities. Frederick II (“the Great”) of Prussia (r. 1740–1786) made sure that nobles dominated both the army officer corps and the civil bureau- cracy. Catherine II of Russia (r. 1762–1796) granted the nobility vast tracts of land, the exclu- sive right to own serfs, and exemption from per- sonal taxes and corporal punishment. Her Charter of the Nobility of 1785 codified these privileges in exchange for the nobles’ political subservience to the state. In Austria, Spain, the Italian states, Poland-Lithuania, and Russia, most nobles conse- quently cared little about Enlightenment ideas;

they did not read the books of the philosophes and feared reforms that might challenge their domi- nance of rural society.

In France, Britain, and the western German states, however, the nobility proved more open to the new ideas. Among those who personally cor- responded with Rousseau, for example, half were nobles, as were 20 percent of the 160 contributors to the Encyclopedia. It had not escaped their no- tice that Rousseau had denounced inequality. In his view, it was “manifestly contrary to the law of nature . . . that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry multitude goes in want of necessities.” The nobles of western Europe sometimes married into middle- class families and formed with them a new mixed elite, united by common interests in reform and new cultural tastes.

The Middle Class and the Making of a New Elite The Enlightenment offered middle-class people an intellectual and cultural route to social im- provement. The term middle class referred to the middle position on the social ladder; middle-class families did not have legal titles like the nobility above them, but neither did they work with their hands like the peasants, artisans, or workers below them. Most middle-class people lived in towns or cities and earned their living in the professions — as doctors, lawyers, or lower-level officials — or through investment in land, trade, or manufactur- ing. In the eighteenth century, the ranks of the middle class — also known as the bourgeoisie af- ter bourgeois, the French word for “city dweller” — grew steadily in western Europe as a result of economic expansion. In France, for example, the overall population grew by about one-third in the 1700s, but the bourgeoisie nearly tripled in size. Although middle-class people had many reasons to resent the nobles, they also aspired to be like them.

Lodges and Learned Societies. Nobles and middle-class professionals mingled in Enlighten- ment salons and joined the new Masonic lodges and local learned societies. The Masonic lodges began as social clubs organized around elaborate secret rituals of stonemasons’ guilds. They called their members Freemasons because that was the term given to apprentice masons when they were

568 Chapter 18 ■ The Promise of Enlightenment 1740–1789

Freemasons: Members of Masonic lodges, where nobles and middle-class professionals (and even some artisans) shared interest in the Enlightenment and reform.

deemed “free” to practice as masters of their guild. Although not explicitly political in aim, the lodges encouraged equality among members, and both aristocrats and middle-class men could join. Mem- bers wrote constitutions for their lodges and elected their own officers, thus promoting a direct experience of constitutional government.

Freemasonry arose in Great Britain and spread eastward: the first French and Italian lodges opened in 1726; Frederick II of Prussia founded a lodge in 1740; and after 1750, Freemasonry spread in Poland, Russia, and British North America. In France, women set up their own Masonic lodges. Despite the papacy’s condemnation of Freema- sonry in 1738 as subversive of religious and civil authority, lodges continued to multiply through- out the eighteenth century because they offered a place for socializing outside of the traditional channels and a way of declaring one’s interest in the Enlightenment and reform. In short, Freema- sonry offered a kind of secular religion. After 1789 and the outbreak of the French Revolution, con- servatives would blame the lodges for every kind of political upheaval, but in the 1700s many high- ranking nobles became active members and saw no conflict with their privileged status.

Nobles and middle-class professionals also met in local learned societies, which greatly in- creased in number in this period. They gathered to discuss such practical issues as new scientific in- novations or methods to eliminate poverty. The

societies, sometimes called academies, brought the Enlightenment down from the realm of books and ideas to the level of concrete reforms. They spon- sored essay contests, such as the one won by Rousseau in 1749, or the one set by the society in Metz in 1785 on the question “Are there means for making the Jews happier and more useful in France?” The Metz society approved essays that ar- gued for granting civil rights to Jews.

New Cultural Styles. Shared tastes in travel, ar- chitecture, the arts, and even reading helped strengthen the links between nobles and members of the middle class. “Grand tours” of Europe often led upper-class youths to recently discovered Greek and Roman ruins at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Paestum in Italy. These excavations aroused enthusiasm for the neoclassical style in architec- ture and painting, which began pushing aside the rococo and the long dominant baroque. Urban res- idences, government buildings, furniture, fabrics, wallpaper, and even pottery soon reflected the neo- classical emphasis on purity and clarity of forms. As one German writer noted, with considerable ex- aggeration, “Everything in Paris is in the Greek style.” Employing neoclassical motifs, the English potter Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) almost single-handedly created a mass market for domes- tic crockery and appealed to middle-class desires to emulate the rich and royal. His designs of spe- cial tea sets for the British queen, for Catherine the

Society and Culture in an Age of Enlightenment 5691740–1789

Neoclassical Style In this Georgian interior of Syon House on the outskirts of London, various neoclassical motifs are readily apparent: Greek columns, Greek-style statuary on top of the columns, and Roman-style mosaics in the floor. The Scottish architect Robert Adam created this room for the duke of Northumberland in the 1760s. Adam had spent four years in Italy and returned in 1758 to London to decorate homes in the “Adam style,” meaning the neoclassical manner. (© The Fotomas Index, U.K. / The Bridgeman Art

Library.)

Great of Russia, and for leading aristocrats allowed him to advertise his wares as fashionable. By 1767, he claimed that his Queensware pottery had “spread over the whole Globe,” and indeed by then his pottery was being marketed in France, Russia, Venice, the Ottoman Empire, and British North America.

This period also supported artistic styles other than neoclassicism. Frederick II of Prussia built himself a palace outside of Berlin in the earlier rococo style, gave it the French name of Sanssouci (“worry-free”), and filled it with the works of French masters of the rococo. A growing taste for moralistic family scenes in painting reflected the same middle-class preoccupation with the emo- tions of ordinary private life that could be seen in novels. The middle-class public now attended the official painting exhibitions in France that were held regularly every other year after 1737. Court painting nonetheless remained much in demand. Marie-Louise-Élizabeth Vigée-Lebrun (1755–1842), who painted portraits at the French court, re- ported that in the 1780s “it was difficult to get a place on my waiting list. . . . I was the fashion.”

Although wealthy nobles still patronized Europe’s leading musicians, music, too, began to reflect the broadening of the elite and the spread of Enlightenment ideals as classical forms replaced the baroque style. Complex polyphony gave way to melody, which made the music more ac- cessible to ordinary listeners. Large sections of string instru- ments became the backbone of professional orchestras, which now played to large audiences of well-to-do listeners in sizable concert halls. The public concert gradually displaced the private recital, and a new attitude to- ward “the classics” developed: for the first time in the 1770s and 1780s, concert groups began to play older music rather than simply playing the latest com- missioned works.

This laid the foundation for what we still call classical music today — that is, a repertory of the greatest music of the eigh- teenth and early nineteenth cen- turies. Because composers now created works that would be per- formed over and over again as

part of a classical repertory, rather than occasional pieces for the court or noble patrons, they delib- erately attempted to write lasting works. As a re- sult, the major composers began to produce fewer symphonies: the Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) wrote more than one hun- dred symphonies, but his successor Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) would create only nine.

The two supreme masters of the new musical style of the eighteenth century show that the tran- sition from noble patronage to classical concerts was far from complete. Haydn and his fellow Austrian Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) both wrote for noble patrons, but by the early 1800s their compositions had been incorporated into the canon of concert classics all over Europe. Incredibly prolific, both excelled in combining lightness, clarity, and profound emotion. Both also wrote numerous Italian operas, a genre whose popularity continued to grow: in the 1780s, the Papal States alone boasted forty opera houses. Haydn spent most of his career working for a Hungarian noble family, the Eszterházys. Asked once why he had written no string quintets (at

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Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Broken Eggs (1756) Greuze made his reputation as a painter of moralistic family scenes. In this one, an old woman (perhaps the mother) confronts the lover of a young girl and points to the eggs that have fallen out of a basket, a symbol of lost virginity. Diderot praised Greuze’s work as “morality in paint,” but the paintings often had an erotic subtext. (© Francis G. Mayer/ Corbis.)

■ For more help analyzing this image, see the visual activity for this chapter in the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

which Mozart excelled), he responded simply: “No one has ordered any.”

Interest in reading, like attending public con- certs, took hold of the middle classes and fed a frenzied increase in publication. By the end of the eighteenth century, six times as many books were being published in the German states, for instance, as at the beginning. One Parisian author com- mented that “people are certainly reading ten times as much in Paris as they did a hundred years ago.” Provincial towns in western Europe published their own newspapers; by 1780, thirty-seven English towns had local newspapers. Lending libraries and book clubs multiplied. Despite the limitations of women’s education, which empha- sized domestic skills, women benefited as much as men from the spread of print. As one Englishman observed, “By far the greatest part of ladies now have a taste for books.” Women also wrote them. Catherine Macaulay (1731–1791) published best- selling histories of Britain, and in France Stéphanie de Genlis (1746–1830) wrote children’s books — a genre that was growing in importance as middle- class parents became more interested in education. The universities had little impact on these new tastes. An Austrian reformer complained about the universities in his country: “Critical history, natu- ral sciences — which are supposed to make en- lightenment general and combat prejudice — were neglected or wholly unknown.”

Life on the Margins Booming foreign trade fueled a dramatic eco- nomic expansion — French colonial trade in- creased tenfold in the 1700s — but the results did not necessarily trickle all the way down the social scale. The population of Europe grew by nearly 30 percent, with especially striking gains in England, Ireland, Prussia, and Hungary. (See “Taking Mea- sure” on this page.) Even though food production increased, shortages and crises still occurred periodically. Prices went up in many countries af- ter the 1730s and continued to rise gradually un- til the early nineteenth century; wages in many trades rose as well, but less quickly than prices. Some people prospered — for example, peasants who produced surpluses to sell in local markets and shopkeepers and artisans who could increase their sales to meet growing demand. But those at the bottom of the social ladder — day laborers in the cities and peasants with small holdings — lived on the edge of dire poverty, and when they lost their land or work, they either migrated to the cities or wandered the roads in search of food and work. In France alone, 200,000 workers left their

homes every year in search of seasonal employ- ment elsewhere. At least 10 percent of Europe’s ur- ban population depended on some form of charity.

The growing numbers of poor overwhelmed local governments. In some countries, beggars and vagabonds had been locked up in workhouses since the mid-1600s. The expenses for running these overcrowded institutions increased by 60 percent in England between 1760 and 1785. After 1740, most German towns created workhouses that were part workshop, part hospital, and part prison. Such institutions also appeared for the first time in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. To

Society and Culture in an Age of Enlightenment 5711740–1789

T A K I N G M E A S U R E

Year

Po pu

la ti

on (

in m

ill io

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r ou

n de

d) 0 1700 1750 1800

200 250 300

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50 100 150

400 450 500 550 600

650 700 750 800

850 900

Americas

Africa

Europe

Asia

World

World Population Growth, 1700–1800 This graph gives a very crude comparison of regional population growth in the 1700s. Precise statistical data are impossible to develop for this period on a world- wide scale. Asia had many more people than Europe, and both Asia and Europe were growing much more rapidly in the 1700s than Africa or the Americas. The population stagnation in Africa has been the subject of much scholarly controversy; it seems likely that it was the result of the slave trade, which transported millions across the ocean to the Americas. The native popula- tion in the Americas died because of disease and was only partially replaced by the import of African slaves. What are the advantages of a growing population? What are the disadvantages? (Adapted from Andre Gundar Frank, Reorient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University

of California Press), 1998.)

supplement the inadequate system of religious charity, offices for the poor, public workshops, and workhouse hospitals, the French government cre- ated dépôts de mendicité, or beggar houses, in 1767. The government sent people to these new work- houses to labor in manufacturing, but most were too weak or sick to work, and 20 percent of them died within a few months of incarceration. The ballooning number of poor people created fears about rising crime. To officials, beggars seemed more aggressive than ever. The handful of police assigned to keep order in each town or district found themselves confronted with increasing inci- dents of rural banditry and crimes against property.

The Persistence of Popular Culture. Those who were able to work or keep their land fared better: an increase in literacy, especially in the cities, allowed some lower-class people to participate in new tastes and ideas. One French observer insisted, “These days, you see a waiting-maid in her back- room, a lackey in an ante-room reading pam- phlets. People can read in almost all classes of society.” In France, only 50 percent of men and 27 percent of women could read and write in the 1780s, but that was twice the rate of a century ear- lier. Literacy rates were higher in England and the Dutch Republic, much lower in eastern Europe. About one in four Parisians owned books, but the lower classes overwhelmingly read religious books, as they had in the past.

Whereas the new elite might attend salons, concerts, or art exhibitions, peasants enjoyed their traditional forms of popular entertainment, such as fairs and festivals, and the urban lower classes relaxed in cabarets and taverns. Sometimes pleas- ures were cruel. In Britain, bullbaiting, bearbait- ing, dogfighting, and cockfighting were all common forms of entertainment that provided opportunities for organized gambling. “Gentle” sports frequented by the upper classes had their violent side too, showing that the upper classes had not become as different as they sometimes thought. Cricket matches, whose rules were first laid down in 1744, were often accompanied by brawls among fans (not unlike soccer matches today, though on a much smaller scale). Many Englishmen enjoyed what one observer called a “battle royal with sticks, pebbles and hog’s dung.”

Changes in Sexual Behavior. As population in- creased and villagers began to move to cities to bet- ter their prospects, sexual behavior changed too. The rates of births out of wedlock soared, from less than 5 percent of all births in the seventeenth century to nearly 20 percent at the end of the eigh-

teenth. Historians have disagreed about the causes and meanings of this change. Some detect in this pattern a sign of sexual liberation and the begin- nings of a modern sexual revolution: as women moved out of the control of their families, they be- gan to seek their own sexual fulfillment. Others view this change more bleakly, as a story of seduc- tion and betrayal: family and community pressure had once forced a man to marry a woman preg- nant with his child, but now a man could aban- don a pregnant lover by simply moving away.

Increased mobility brought freedom for some women, but it also aggravated the vulnerability of those newly arrived in cities from the countryside. Desperation, not reason, often ruled their choices. Women who came to the city as domestic servants had little recourse against masters or fellow ser- vants who seduced or raped them. The result was a startling rise in abandoned babies. Most European cities established foundling hospitals in the 1700s, but infant and child mortality was 50 percent higher in such institutions than for children brought up at home. Some women tried herbs, lax- atives, or crude surgical means of abortion; a few, usually servants who would lose their jobs if their employers discovered they had borne a child, re- sorted to infanticide.

European states had long tried to regulate sex- ual behavior; every country had laws against pros- titution, adultery, fornication, sodomy, and infanticide. Reformers criticized the harshness of laws against infanticide, but they showed no mercy for “sodomites” (as male homosexuals were called), who in some places, in particular the Dutch Republic, were systematically persecuted and imprisoned or even executed. Male homosex- uals attracted the attention of authorities because they had begun to develop networks and special meeting places. The stereotype of the effeminate, exclusively homosexual male seems to have ap- peared for the first time in the eighteenth century, perhaps as part of a growing emphasis on separate roles for men and women.

The Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason, self- control, and childhood innocence made parents in- creasingly anxious about their children’s sexuality. Moralists and physicians wrote books about the evils of masturbation, “proving” that it led to phys- ical and mental degeneration and even madness.

While the Enlightenment thus encouraged ex- cessive concern about children being left to their own devices, it nevertheless taught the middle and upper classes to value their children and to expect their improvement through education. Writers such as de Genlis and Rousseau drew attention to children, who were no longer viewed only as little

572 Chapter 18 ■ The Promise of Enlightenment 1740–1789

sinners in need of harsh discipline. Paintings now showed individual children playing at their fa- vorite activities rather than formally posed with their families. Books about and for children be- came popular. The Newtonian System of the Uni- verse Digested for Young Minds, by “Tom Telescope,” was published in Britain in 1761 and reprinted many times. Toys, jigsaw puzzles, and clothing designed for children all appeared for the first time in the 1700s. Children were no longer considered miniature adults.

Review: What were the major differences in the impact of the Enlightenment on nobles, middle classes, and lower classes?

State Power in an Era of Reform Rulers turned to Enlightenment-inspired reforms to improve life for their subjects and to gain com- mercial or military advantage over rival states. His- torians label many of the sovereigns of this time enlightened despots or enlightened absolutists, for they aimed to promote Enlightenment reforms without giving up their absolutist powers. Cather- ine the Great’s admiring relationship with Voltaire showed how even the most absolutist rulers cham- pioned reform when it suited their own goals. Foremost among those goals was the expansion of a ruler’s territory.

War and Diplomacy Europeans no longer fought devastating wars over religion that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians; instead, professional armies and navies battled for control of overseas empires and for dominance on the European continent. Rulers continued to expand their armies: the Prussian army, for example, nearly tripled in size between 1740 and 1789. Widespread use of flintlock mus- kets required deployment in long lines, usually three men deep, with each line in turn loading and firing on command. Military strategy became cau- tious and calculating, but this did not prevent the outbreak of hostilities. Between 1740 and 1775, the instability of the European balance of power re-

sulted in two major wars, a diplomatic reversal of alliances, and the partition of Poland-Lithuania among Russia, Austria, and Prussia.

War of the Austrian Succession, 1740–1748. The difficulties over the succession to the Austrian throne typified the dynastic complications that re- peatedly threatened the European balance of power. In 1740, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI died without a male heir. Most European rulers recognized the emperor’s chosen heiress, his daughter Maria Theresa, because Charles’s Prag- matic Sanction of 1713 had given a woman the right to inherit the Habsburg crown lands. The new king of Prussia, Frederick II, who had just suc- ceeded his father a few months earlier in 1740, saw his chance to grab territory and immediately in- vaded the rich Austrian province of Silesia. France joined Prussia in an attempt to further humiliate its traditional enemy Austria, and Great Britain

State Power in an Era of Reform 5731740–1789

enlightened despots: Rulers—such as Catherine the Great of Russia, Frederick the Great of Prussia, and Joseph II of Austria—who tried to promote reform without giving up their own supreme political power; also called enlightened abso- lutists.

Maria Theresa and Her Family In this portrait by Martin van Meytens (1695–1770), Austrian empress Maria Theresa is shown with her husband, Francis I, and twelve of their sixteen children. Their eldest son eventually succeeded to the Austrian throne as Joseph II, and their youngest daughter, Maria Antonia, or Marie-Antoinette, became the queen of France. (Bridgeman–Giraudon/ Art Resource, NY.)

allied with Austria to prevent the French from tak- ing the Austrian Netherlands (Map 18.1). The War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748) soon expanded to the overseas colonies of Great Britain and France. French and British colonials in North America fought each other all along their bound- aries, enlisting native American auxiliaries. Britain tried but failed to isolate the French Caribbean colonies during the war, and hostilities broke out in India, too.

Maria Theresa (r. 1740–1780) survived only by conceding Silesia to Prussia in order to split the Prussians off from France. The Peace of Aix-la- Chapelle of 1748 recognized Maria Theresa as the heiress to the Austrian lands, and her husband, Francis I, became Holy Roman Emperor, thus re- asserting the integrity of the Austrian Empire. The peace of 1748 failed to resolve the colonial con- flicts between Britain and France, however, and fighting for domination continued unofficially.

Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763. In 1756, a major reversal of alliances — what historians call the Dip- lomatic Revolution — reshaped relations among the great powers. Prussia and Great Britain signed a de- fensive alliance, prompting Austria to overlook two centuries of hostility and ally with France. Russia

and Sweden soon joined the Franco-Austrian alliance. When Frederick II invaded Saxony, an ally of Austria, with his bigger and better dis- ciplined army, the long-simmering hostilities be- tween Great Britain and France over colonial boundaries flared into a general war that became known as the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763).

Fighting soon raged around the world (Map 18.2). The French and British battled on land and sea in North America (where the conflict was called the French and Indian War), the West Indies, and India. The two coalitions also fought each other in central Europe. At first, in 1757, Frederick the Great surprised Europe with a spectacular victory at Rossbach in Saxony over a much larger Franco- Austrian army. But in time, Russian and Austrian armies encircled his troops. Frederick despaired: “I believe all is lost. I will not survive the ruin of my country.” A fluke of history saved him. Empress Elizabeth of Russia (r. 1741–1762) died and was succeeded by the mentally unstable Peter III, a fanatical admirer of Frederick and things Prussian. Peter withdrew Russia from the war. (This was

574 Chapter 18 ■ The Promise of Enlightenment 1740–1789

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MAP 18.1 War of the Austrian Succession, 1740–1748 The accession of a twenty-three-year-old woman, Maria Theresa, to the Austrian throne gave the new king of Prussia, Frederick II, an opportunity to invade the province of Silesia. France joined on Prussia’s side, Great Britain on Austria’s. In 1745, the French defeated the British in the Austrian Netherlands and helped instigate an uprising in Scotland. The rebellion failed and British attacks on French overseas shipping forced the French to negotiate. The peace treaties guaranteed Frederick’s conquest of Silesia, which soon became the wealthiest province of Prussia. France came to terms with Great Britain to protect its overseas possessions; Austria had to accept the peace settlement after a formal public protest.

Seven Years’ War: A worldwide series of battles (1756–1763) between Austria, France, Russia, and Sweden on one side and Prussia and Great Britain on the other.

practically his only accomplishment as tsar. He was soon mysteriously murdered, probably at the instigation of his wife, Catherine the Great.) In a separate peace treaty Frederick kept all his terri- tory, including Silesia.

The Anglo-French overseas conflicts ended more decisively than the continental land wars. British naval superiority, fully achieved only in the 1750s, enabled Great Britain to rout the French in North America, India, and the West Indies. In the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France ceded Canada to Great Britain and agreed to remove its armies from India, in exchange for keeping its rich West Indian islands. Eagerness to avenge this defeat would motivate France to support the British North American colonists in their War of Independence just fifteen years later.

Prussia’s Rise and the First Partition of Poland. Although Prussia suffered great losses in the Seven Years’ War — some 160,000 Prussian soldiers died either in action or of disease — the army helped vault Prussia to the rank of leading powers. In 1733, Frederick II’s father, Frederick William I, had instituted the “canton system,” which enrolled peasant youths in each canton (or district) in the army, gave them two or three months of training annually, and allowed them to return to their fam- ily farms the rest of the year. They remained “can- tonists” (reservists) as long as they were able- bodied. In this fashion, the Prussian military stead- ily grew in size; by 1740, Prussia had the third or fourth largest army in Europe even though it was tenth in population and thirteenth in land area. Under Frederick II, Prussia’s military expenditures

State Power in an Era of Reform 5751740–1789

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MAP 18.2 The Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763 In what might justly be called the first worldwide war, the French and British fought each other in Europe, the West Indies, North America, and India. Skirmishing in North America helped precipitate the war, which became more general when Austria, France, and Russia allied to check Prussian influence in central Europe. The treaty between Austria and Prussia simply restored the status quo in Europe, but the changes overseas were much more dramatic. Britain gained control over Canada and India but gave back to France the West Indian islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Britain was now the dominant power of the seas.

rose to two-thirds of the state’s revenue. Virtually every nobleman served in the army, paying for his own support as officer and buying a position as company commander. Once retired, the officers returned to their estates, coordinated the canton system, and served as local officials. In this way, the military permeated every aspect of rural soci- ety, fusing army and agrarian organization. The army gave the state great power, but the militariza- tion of Prussian society also had a profoundly conservative effect: it kept the peasants enserfed to their lords and blocked the middle classes from access to estates or high government positions.

Prussia’s power grew so dra- matically that in 1772 Frederick the Great proposed that large chunks of Polish-Lithuanian ter- ritory be divided among Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Despite the protests of the Austrian empress Maria Theresa that the partition

would spread “a stain over my whole reign,” she agreed to the first partition of Poland, splitting one-third of Poland-Lithuania’s territory and half of its people among the three powers. Austria feared growing Russian influence in Poland and in the Balkans, where Russia had been successfully battling the Ottoman Empire. Conflicts between Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians in Poland were used to justify this cynical move. Russia took over most of Lithuania, effectively ending the large but weak Polish-Lithuanian com- monwealth.

State-Sponsored Reform

In the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, all the belligerents faced pressing needs for more money to fund their growing armies, to organize navies to wage overseas conflicts, and to counter the impact of inflation. To make tax increases more palatable to public opinion, rulers appointed reform-minded ministers and gave them a man- date to modernize government. As one adviser to the Austrian ruler Joseph II put it,“A properly con- stituted state must be exactly analogous to a machine . . . and the ruler must be the foreman, the mainspring . . . which sets everything else in motion.” Such reforms always threatened the in- terests of traditional groups, however, and the spread of Enlightenment ideas aroused sometimes unpredictable desires for more change.

Administrative and Legal Reforms. Reforming monarchs did not invent government bureaucracy, but they did insist on greater attention to merit, hard work, and professionalism, which made bu- reaucrats more like modern civil servants. In this view, the ruler should be a benevolent, enlightened administrator who worked for the general well- being of his or her people. Frederick II of Prussia, who drove himself as hard as he drove his officials, boasted, “I am the first servant of the state.”

A freemason and supporter of religious toleration, Frederick abolished torture, reorganized taxation, and hosted leading French philosophes at his court. The Prussian king also composed more than a hundred original pieces of music.

Legal reform, both of the ju- dicial system and of the often

576 Chapter 18 ■ The Promise of Enlightenment 1740–1789

Dividing Poland, 1772 In this contemporary depiction, Catherine the Great, Joseph II, and Frederick II point on the map to the portion of Poland-Lithuania each plans to take. The artist makes it clear that Poland’s fate rested in the hands of neighboring rulers, not its own people. Can you infer the sentiments of the artist from the content of this engraving? (Mansell / Time Life Pictures / Getty Images.)

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partition of Poland: Division of one-third of Poland-Lithuania’s territory between Prussia, Russia, and Austria in 1772.

disorganized and irregular law codes, was central to the work of many reform-minded monarchs. Like Frederick II, Joseph II of Austria (r. 1780–1790) ordered the compilation of a unified law code, a project that required many years for completion. Catherine II of Russia began such an undertaking even more ambitiously. In 1767, she called together a legislative commission of 564 deputies and asked them to consider a long doc- ument called the Instruction, which represented her hopes for legal reform based on the ideas of Montesquieu and the Italian jurist Cesare Becca- ria. Montesquieu had insisted that punishment should fit the crime; he criticized the use of tor- ture and brutal corporal punishment. In his in- fluential book On Crimes and Punishments (1764), Beccaria argued that justice should be adminis- tered in public, that judicial torture should be abolished as inhumane, and that the accused should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. He also advocated eliminating the death penalty. Despite much discussion and hundreds of peti- tions and documents about local problems, little came of Catherine’s commission because the monarch herself — despite her regard for Voltaire and his fellow philosophes — proved ultimately unwilling to see through far-reaching legal re- form.

The Church, Education, and Religious Toleration. Rulers everywhere wanted more control over church affairs, and they used Enlightenment crit- icisms of the organized churches to get their way. In Catholic countries, many government officials resented the influence of the Jesuits, the major Catholic teaching order. The Jesuits trained the Catholic intellectual elite, ran a worldwide mis- sionary network, enjoyed close ties to the papacy, and amassed great wealth. Critics mounted cam- paigns against the Jesuits in many countries, and by the early 1770s the Society of Jesus had been dissolved in Portugal, France, and Spain. In 1773, Pope Clement XIV (r. 1769–1774) agreed under pressure to disband the order, an edict that held until a reinvigorated papacy restored the society in 1814. Joseph II of Austria not only applauded the suppression of the Jesuits but also required Austrian bishops to swear fidelity and submission to him. Joseph had become Holy Roman Emperor and co-regent with his mother, Maria Theresa, in 1765. After her death in 1780, he initiated a wide- ranging program of reform. Under him, the Austrian state supervised Catholic seminaries, abolished contemplative monastic orders, and confiscated monastic property to pay for educa- tion and poor relief.

Joseph II launched the most ambitious edu- cational reforms of the period. In 1774, once the Jesuits had been disbanded, a General School Ordinance in Austria ordered state subsidies for local schools, which the state would regulate. By 1789, one quarter of the school-age children at- tended school. In Prussia, the school code of 1763 required all children between the ages of five and thirteen to attend school. Although not enforced uniformly, the Prussian law demonstrated Frederick II’s belief that modernization depended on educa- tion. Catherine II of Russia also tried to expand elementary education — and the education of women in particular — and founded engineering schools.

No ruler pushed the principle of religious tol- eration as far as Joseph II of Austria, who in 1781 granted freedom of religious worship to Protes- tants, Orthodox Christians, and Jews. For the first time, these groups were allowed to own property, build schools, enter the professions, and hold po- litical and military offices. The efforts of other rulers to extend religious toleration proved more limited. Louis XVI signed an edict in 1787 restor- ing French Protestants’ civil rights — but still, Protestants could not hold political office. Great Britain continued to deny Catholics freedom of open worship and the right to sit in Parliament. Most European states limited the rights and op- portunities available to Jews. In Russia, only wealthy Jews could hold municipal office, and in the Papal States, the pope encouraged forced bap- tism. Even in Austria, where Joseph encouraged toleration, the laws forced Jews to take German- sounding names. The leading philosophes op- posed persecution of the Jews in theory but often treated them with undisguised contempt. Di- derot’s comment was all too typical: the Jews, he said, bore “all the defects peculiar to an ignorant and superstitious nation.”

Limits of Reform When enlightened absolutist leaders introduced reforms, they often ran into resistance from groups threatened by the proposed changes. The most contentious area of reform was agricultural policy. Whereas Catherine II reinforced the authority of nobles over their serfs, Joseph II tried to remove the burdens of serfdom in the Habsburg lands. In 1781, he abolished the personal aspects of serf- dom: serfs could now move freely, enter trades, or marry without their lords’ permission. Joseph abolished the tithe to the church, shifted more of the tax burden to the nobility, and converted peas- ants’ labor services into cash payments.

State Power in an Era of Reform 5771740–1789

The Austrian nobility furiously resisted these far-reaching reforms. When Joseph died in 1790, his brother Leopold II had to revoke most reforms to appease the nobles. Prussia’s Frederick II, like Joseph, encouraged such agricultural innovations as planting potatoes and turnips (new crops that could help feed a growing population), experi- menting with cattle breeding, draining swamp- lands, and clearing forests. But Prussia’s noble landlords, the Junkers, continued to expand their estates at the expense of poorer peasants and thwarted Frederick’s attempts to improve the sta- tus of serfs.

Reforming ministers also tried to stimulate agricultural improvement in France. Unlike most other western European countries, France still had about a hundred thousand serfs; though their bur- dens weighed less heavily than those in eastern Europe, serfdom did not entirely disappear until 1789. A group of economists called the physiocrats urged the French government to deregulate the grain trade and make the tax system more equi- table to encourage agricultural productivity. In the interest of establishing a free market, they also in- sisted that urban guilds be abolished because the guilds prevented free entry into the trades. Their proposed reforms applied the Enlightenment em- phasis on individual liberties to the economy; Adam Smith took up many of the physiocrats’ ideas in his writing in favor of free markets. The French government heeded some of this advice and gave up its system of price controls on grain in 1763, but it had to reverse the decision in 1770 when grain shortages caused a famine.

A conflict with the parlements, the thirteen high courts of law, prompted Louis XV to go even further in 1771. He replaced the parlements with courts in which the judges no longer owned their offices and thus could not sell them or pass them on as an inheritance. Justice would then presum- ably be more impartial. The displaced judges of the parlements succeeded in arousing widespread opposition to what they portrayed as tyrannical royal policy. The furor calmed down only when Louis XV died in 1774 and his successor, Louis XVI (r. 1774–1792), yielded to aristocratic demands and restored the old parlements.

Louis XVI tried to carry out part of the pro- gram suggested by the physiocrats, and he chose one of their disciples, Jacques Turgot (1727–1781), as his chief minister. A contributor to the Encyclo- pedia, Turgot pushed through several edicts that again freed the grain trade, suppressed guilds, con- verted the peasants’ forced labor on roads into a money tax payable by all landowners, and reduced court expenses. He also began making plans to in-

troduce a system of elected local assemblies, which would have made government much more repre- sentative. Faced with broad-based resistance led by the parlements and his own courtiers, as well as with riots against rising grain prices, Louis XVI dismissed Turgot, and one of the last possibilities to overhaul France’s government collapsed.

The failure of reform in France paradoxically reflected the power of Enlightenment thinkers; everyone now endorsed Enlightenment ideas but used them for different ends. The nobles in the parlements blocked the French monarchy’s reform efforts using the very same Enlightenment lan- guage spoken by the crown’s ministers. France’s large and growing middle-class public felt increas- ingly frustrated by the failure to institute social change, a failure that ultimately helped undermine the monarchy itself. Where Frederick II, Catherine II, and even Joseph II used reform to bolster the efficiency of absolutist government, attempts at change in France backfired. French kings found that their ambitious programs for reform suc- ceeded only in arousing unrealistic hopes.

Review: What prompted enlightened absolutists to undertake reforms in the second half of the eighteenth century?

Rebellions against State Power Although traditional forms of popular discontent had not disappeared, Enlightenment ideals and re- forms changed the rules of the game in politics. Governments had become accountable for their actions to a much wider range of people than ever before. In Britain and France, ordinary people ri- oted when they perceived government as failing to protect them against food shortages. The growth of informed public opinion had its most dramatic consequences in the North American colonies, where a struggle over the British Parliament’s right to tax turned into a full-scale war for independ- ence. The American War of Independence showed that once put into practice, Enlightenment ideals could have revolutionary implications.

Food Riots and Peasant Uprisings Population growth, inflation, and the extension of the market system put added pressure on the already beleaguered poor. Seventeenth-century peasants and townspeople had rioted to protest new taxes. In the last half of the eighteenth cen-

578 Chapter 18 ■ The Promise of Enlightenment 1740–1789

tury, the food supply became the focus of political and social con- flict. Poor people in the villages and the towns believed that it was the government’s responsibility to ensure they had enough food, and many governments did stockpile grain to make up for the occasional bad harvest. At the same time, in keeping with Adam Smith’s and the French phys- iocrats’ free-market proposals, governments wanted to allow grain prices to rise with market demand, because higher profits would motivate producers to in- crease the overall supply of food.

Free trade in grain meant selling to the high- est bidder even if that bidder was a foreign mer- chant. In the short run, in times of scarcity, big landowners and farmers could make huge profits by selling grain outside their hometowns or vil- lages. This practice enraged poor farmers, agricul- tural workers, and city wage workers, who could not afford the higher prices. Lacking the political means to affect policy, they could enforce their de- sire for old-fashioned price regulation only by ri- oting. Most did not pillage or steal grain but rather forced the sale of grain or flour at a “just” price and blocked the shipment of grain out of their vil- lages to other markets. Women often led these “popular price fixings,” as they were called in France, in desperate attempts to protect the food supply for their children.

Such food riots occurred regularly in Britain and France in the last half of the eighteenth cen- tury. One of the most turbulent was the so-called Flour War in France in 1775. Turgot’s deregulation of the grain trade in 1774 caused prices to rise in several provincial cities. Rioting spread from there to the Paris region, where villagers attacked grain convoys heading to the capital city. Local officials often ordered merchants and bakers to sell at the price the rioters demanded, only to find them- selves arrested by the central government for over- riding free trade. The government brought in troops to restore order and introduced the death penalty for rioting.

Frustrations with serfdom and hopes for a miraculous transformation provoked the Pugachev rebellion in Russia beginning in 1773. An army

deserter from the southeast fron- tier region, Emelian Pugachev (1742–1775) claimed to be Tsar Peter III, the dead husband of Catherine II. Pugachev’s appear- ance seemed to confirm peasant hopes for a “redeemer tsar” who would save the people from op- pression. He rallied around him Cossacks like himself who re- sented the loss of their old tribal independence. Now increasingly enserfed or forced to pay taxes and endure army service, these nomadic bands joined with other serfs, rebellious mine workers, and Muslim minorities. Cather-

ine dispatched a large army to squelch the upris- ing, but Pugachev eluded them and the fighting spread. Nearly three million people eventually par- ticipated, making this the largest single rebellion in the history of tsarist Russia. When Pugachev

Rebellions against State Power 5791740–1789

Pugachev (poo guh CHAWF) rebellion: A massive revolt of Rus- sian Cossacks and serfs in 1773 against local nobles and the armies of Catherine the Great; its leader, Emelian Pugachev, was eventually captured and executed.

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A Cossack Pugachev and many of his followers were Cossacks, Ukrainians who set up nomadic communities of horsemen to resist outside control, whether from Turks, Poles, or Russians. This eighteenth- century painting captures the common view of Cossacks as horsemen always ready for battle but with a fondness for music too. (© The Bridgeman Art Library.)

urged the peasants to attack the nobility and seize their estates, hundreds of noble families perished. Foreign newspapers called it “the revolution in southern Russia” and offered fantastic stories about Pugachev’s life history. Finally, the army cap- tured the rebel leader and brought him in an iron cage to Moscow, where he was tortured and exe- cuted. In the aftermath, Catherine tightened the nobles’ control over their serfs with the Charter of the Nobility and harshly punished those who dared to criticize serfdom.

Public Opinion and Political Opposition Peasant uprisings might briefly shake even a pow- erful monarchy, but the rise of public opinion as a force independent of court society caused more enduring changes in European politics. Across much of Europe and in the North American colonies, demands for broader political participa- tion reflected Enlightenment notions about indi- vidual rights. Aristocratic bodies such as the French parlements, which had no legislative role like that of the British Parliament, insisted that the monarch consult them on the nation’s affairs, and the new educated elite wanted more influence too. Newspapers began to cover daily political affairs, and the public learned the basics of political life, despite the strict limits on political participation in most countries. Monarchs turned to public opinion to seek support against aristocratic groups that opposed reform. Gustavus III of Sweden (r. 1771–1792) called himself “the first citizen of a free people” and promised to deliver the country from “insufferable aristocratic despotism.” Shortly after coming to the throne, Gustavus proclaimed a new constitution that divided power between the king and the legislature, abolished the use of tor- ture in the judicial process, and assured some free- dom of the press.

The Wilkes affair in Great Britain showed that public opinion could be mobilized to challenge a government. In 1763, during the reign of George III (r. 1760–1820), John Wilkes, a member of Par- liament, attacked the government in his newspa- per, North Briton, and sued the crown when he was arrested. He won his release as well as damages. When he was reelected, Parliament denied him his seat, not once but three times.

The Wilkes episode soon escalated into a ma- jor campaign against the corruption and social ex- clusiveness of Parliament, complaints the Levellers had first raised during the English Revolution of the late 1640s. Newspapers, magazines, pamphlets,

handbills, and cheap editions of Wilkes’s collected works all helped promote his cause. Those who could not vote demonstrated for Wilkes. In one in- cident eleven people died when soldiers broke up a huge gathering of his supporters. The slogan “Wilkes and Liberty” appeared on walls all over London. Middle-class voters formed a Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights, which circulated petitions for Wilkes; they gained the support of about one-fourth of all the voters. The more de- termined Wilkesites proposed sweeping reforms of Parliament, including more frequent elections, more representation for the counties, elimination of “rotten boroughs” (election districts so small that they could be controlled by one big patron), and restrictions of pensions used by the crown to gain support. These demands would be at the heart of agitation for parliamentary reform in Britain for decades to come.

Popular demonstrations did not always sup- port reforms. In 1780, the Gordon riots devastated London. They were named after the fanatical anti- Catholic crusader Lord George Gordon, who helped organize huge marches and petition cam- paigns against a bill the House of Commons passed to grant limited toleration to Catholics. The demonstrations culminated in a seven-day riot that left fifty buildings destroyed and three hun- dred people dead. Despite the continuing limita- tion on voting rights in Great Britain, British politicians were learning that they could ignore public opinion only at their peril.

Political opposition also took artistic forms, particularly in countries where governments re- stricted organized political activity. A striking ex- ample of a play with a political message was The Marriage of Figaro (1784) by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732–1799), who at one time or another worked as a watchmaker, a judge, a gunrunner in the American War of Independ- ence, and a French spy in Britain. The Marriage of Figaro was first a hit at court, when Queen Marie-Antoinette had it read for her friends. But when her husband, Louis XVI, read it, he forbade its production on the grounds that “this man mocks at everything that should be respected in government.”When finally performed publicly, the play caused a sensation. The chief character, Figaro, is a clever servant who gets the better of his noble employer. When speaking of the count, he cries, “What have you done to deserve so many re- wards? You went to the trouble of being born, and nothing more.” Two years later, Mozart based an equally famous but somewhat tamer opera on Beaumarchais’s story.

580 Chapter 18 ■ The Promise of Enlightenment 1740–1789

Revolution in North America

Oppositional forms of public opinion came to a head in Great Britain’s North American colonies, where the result was American independence and the establishment of a republican constitution that stood in stark contrast to most European regimes. Many Europeans saw the American War of Inde- pendence, or the American Revolution, as a tri- umph for Enlightenment ideas. As one German writer exclaimed in 1777, American victory would give “greater scope to the Enlightenment, new keenness to the thinking of peoples and new life to the spirit of liberty.”

The American revolutionary leaders had been influenced by a common Atlantic civilization; they participated in the Enlightenment and shared po- litical ideas with the opposition Whigs in Britain. Supporters demonstrated for Wilkes in South Carolina and Boston, and the South Carolina legislature donated a substantial sum to the Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights. In the 1760s and 1770s, both British and American opposition

leaders became convinced that the British govern- ment was growing increasingly corrupt and despotic. British radicals wanted to reform Parlia- ment so that the voices of a broader, more repre- sentative segment of the population would be heard. The colonies had no representatives in Par- liament, and colonists claimed that “no taxation without representation” should be allowed. In- deed, they denied that Parliament had any juris- diction over the colonies, insisting that the king govern them through colonial legislatures and rec- ognize their traditional British liberties. The fail- ure of the “Wilkes and Liberty” campaign to produce concrete results convinced many Ameri- cans that Parliament was hopelessly tainted and that they would have to stand up for their rights as British subjects.

The British colonies remained loyal to the crown until Parliament’s encroachment on their autonomy and the elimination of the French threat at the end of the Seven Years’ War transformed colonial attitudes. Unconsciously, perhaps, the colonies had begun to form a separate nation; their economies generally flourished in the eighteenth

Rebellions against State Power 5811740–1789

Overthrowing British Authority The uncompromising attitude of the British government went a long way toward dissolving long-standing loyalties to the home country. During the American War of Independence, residents of New York City pulled down the statue of the hated George III. (Lafayette College Art Collection, Easton, PA.)

century, and between 1750 and 1776 their popu- lation almost doubled. With the British clamoring for lower taxes and the colonists paying only a frac- tion of the tax rate paid by the Britons at home, Parliament passed new taxes, including the Stamp Act in 1765, which required a special tax stamp on all legal documents and publications. After violent rioting in the colonies, the tax was repealed, but in 1773 a new Tea Act revived colonial resistance, which culminated in the so-called Boston Tea Party of 1773. Colonists dressed as Indians boarded British ships and dumped the imported tea (by this time an enormously popular beverage) into Boston’s harbor.

Political opposition in the American colonies turned belligerent when Britain threatened to use force to maintain control. In 1774, the First Con- tinental Congress convened, composed of delegates from the colonies, and unsuccessfully petitioned the crown for redress. The next year the Second Continental Congress organized an army with George Washington in command. After actual fighting had begun, in 1776, the congress issued

the Declaration of Independence. An eloquent statement of the American cause written by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independ- ence was couched in the language of universal human rights, which enlightened Europeans could be expected to understand. (See Document, “Dec- laration of Independence,” above.) George III de- nounced the American “traitors and rebels.” But European newspapers enthusiastically reported on every American response to “the cruel acts of op- pression they have been made to suffer.” In 1778, France boosted the American cause by entering on the colonists’ side. Spain, too, saw an opportunity to check the growing power of Britain, though without actually endorsing American independ- ence out of fear of the response of its Latin Amer- ican colonies. Spain declared war on Britain in 1779; in 1780, Great Britain declared war on the Dutch Republic in retaliation for Dutch support of the rebels. The worldwide conflict that resulted was more than Britain could handle. The Ameri- can colonies achieved their independence in the peace treaty of 1783.

582 Chapter 18 ■ The Promise of Enlightenment 1740–1789

Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence ( July 4, 1776)

D O C U M E N T

Although others helped revise the Declara- tion of Independence of the thirteen North American colonies from Great Britain, Jefferson wrote the original draft himself. A Virginia planter and lawyer, Jefferson went on to become governor of Virginia, minister to France, secretary of state, vice president and president of the United States (1801–1809). The Declaration begins with a stirring expression of the belief in natural or human rights.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dis- solve the political bands which have con- nected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the sepa- rate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abol- ish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to ef- fect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and ac- cordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer,

while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Govern- ment, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which con- strains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the pres- ent King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

Source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

The newly independent states still faced the challenge of republican self-government. The Ar- ticles of Confederation, drawn up in 1777 as a pro- visional constitution, proved weak because they gave the central government few powers. In 1787, a constitutional convention met in Philadelphia to draft a new constitution. It established a two-house legislature, an indirectly elected president, and an independent judiciary. The U.S. Constitution’s preamble insisted explicitly, for the first time in history, that government derived its power solely from the people and did not depend on divine right or on the tradition of royalty or aristocracy. The new educated elite of the eighteenth century had now created government based on a “social contract” among male, property-owning, white citizens. It was by no means a complete democ- racy (women and slaves were excluded from polit- ical participation), but the new government represented a radical departure from European models. In 1791, the Bill of Rights was appended to the Constitution outlining the essential rights (such as freedom of speech) that the government could never overturn. Although slavery continued in the American republic, the new emphasis on

rights helped fuel the movement for its abolition in both Britain and the United States.

Interest in the new republic was greatest in France. The U.S. Constitution and various state constitutions were published in French with com- mentary by leading thinkers. Even more important in the long run were the effects of the American war. Dutch losses to Great Britain aroused a wide- spread movement for political reform in the Dutch Republic, and debts incurred by France in sup- porting the American colonies would soon force the French monarchy to the edge of bankruptcy and then to revolution. Ultimately, the entire Eu- ropean system of royal rule would be challenged.

Review: Why did public opinion become a new factor in politics in the second half of the eighteenth century?

Conclusion When Thomas Jefferson looked back many years later on the Declaration of Independence, he said he hoped it would be “the signal of arousing men

Conclusion 5831740–1789

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Europe and the World, c. 1780 Although Great Britain lost control over part of its North American colonies, which became the new United States, European influence on the rest of the world grew dramatically in the eighteenth century. The slave trade linked European ports to African slave-trading outposts and to plantations in the Caribbean, South America, and North America. The European countries on the Atlantic Ocean benefited most from this trade. Yet almost all of Africa, China, Japan, and large parts of India still resisted European incursion, and the Ottoman Empire, with its massive territories, still presented Europe with a formidable military challenge.

to burst the chains under which monkish igno- rance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves.” What began as a cosmopolitan movement of a few intellectuals in the first half of the eighteenth century had reached a relatively wide audience among the educated elite of men and women by the 1770s and 1780s. The spirit of Enlightenment swept from the salons, coffee- houses, and Masonic lodges into the halls of gov- ernment from Philadelphia to Vienna. Scientific inquiry into the causes of social misery and laws defending individual rights and freedoms gained adherents even among the rulers and ministers re- sponsible for censoring Enlightenment works.

For most Europeans, however, the promise of the Enlightenment did not become a reality. Rulers such as Catherine the Great had every intention of retaining their full, often unchecked, powers, even as they corresponded with leading philosophes and entertained them at their courts. Moreover, would-be reformers often found themselves blocked by the resistance of nobles, by the priori- ties rulers gave to waging wars, or by popular re- sistance to deregulation of trade that increased the uncertainties of the market. Yet even the failure of

reform contributed to the ferment in Europe after 1770. Peasant rebellions in eastern Europe, the “Wilkes and Liberty” campaign in Great Britain, the struggle over reform in France, and the revo- lution in America all occurred around the same time, and their conjunction convinced many Eu- ropeans that change was brewing. Just how much could change, and whether change made life bet- ter or worse, would come into question in the next ten years.

584 Chapter 18 ■ The Promise of Enlightenment 1740–1789

For Further Exploration ■ For suggested references, including Web sites,

for topics in this chapter, see page SR-1 at the end of the book.

■ For additional primary-source material from this period, see Chapter 18 in Sources of THE MAKING OF THE WEST, Third Edition.

■ For Web sites and documents related to topics in this chapter, see Make History at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

Chapter Review 5851740–1789

Key Terms and People Making Connections

Review Questions

1. Why would rulers feel ambivalent about the Enlighten- ment, supporting reform on the one hand, while clamp- ing down on political dissidents on the other hand?

2. Which major developments in this period ran counter to the influence of the Enlightenment?

3. In what ways had politics changed, and in what ways did they remain the same during the Enlightenment?

1. What were the major differences between the Enlighten- ment in France, Great Britain, and the German states?

2. What were the major differences in the impact of the En- lightenment on nobles, middle classes, and lower classes?

3. What prompted enlightened absolutists to undertake reforms in the second half of the eighteenth century?

4. Why did public opinion become a new factor in politics in the second half of the eighteenth century?

Chapter Review

philosophes (556)

deists (559)

abolitionists (560)

laissez-faire (561)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (561)

romanticism (566)

Methodism (566)

Freemasons (568)

enlightened despots (573)

Seven Years’ War (574)

partition of Poland (576)

Pugachev rebellion (579)

For practice quizzes, a customized study plan, and other study tools, see the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

Important Events

1740–1748 War of the Austrian Succession: France, Spain, and Prussia versus Austria and Great Britain

1751–1772 Encyclopedia published in France

1756–1763 Seven Years’ War fought in Europe, India, and the American colonies

1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Émile

1764 Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary

1771 Louis XV of France fails to break the power of the French law courts

1772 First partition of Poland

1773 Pugachev rebellion of Russian peasants

1776 American Declaration of Independence from Great Britain; Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

1780 Joseph II of Austria undertakes a wide-reaching reform program

1781 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason

1785 Catherine the Great’s Charter of the Nobility grants nobles exclusive control over their serfs in exchange for subservience to the state

1787 Delegates from the states draft the U.S. Constitution

On October 5, 1789, a crowd of several thousand womenmarched in a drenching rain twelve miles from the center ofParis to Versailles. They demanded the king’s help in securing more grain for the hungry and his reassurance that he did not intend

to resist the emerging revolutionary movement. Joined the next morn-

ing by thousands of men who came from Paris to reinforce them, they

broke into the royal family’s private apartments, killing two of the royal

bodyguards. To prevent further bloodshed, the king agreed to move his

family and his government to Paris. A dramatic procession of the royal

family guarded by throngs of ordinary men and women made its slow

way back to the capital. The people’s proud display of cannons and

pikes underlined the fundamental transformation that was occurring.

Ordinary people had forced the king of France to respond to their griev-

ances. The French monarchy was in danger, and if such a powerful and

long-lasting institution could come under fire, then could any monarch

of Europe rest easy?

Although even the keenest political observer did not predict its

eruption in 1789, the French Revolution had its immediate origins in

a constitutional crisis provoked by a growing government deficit, trace-

able to French involvement in the American War of Independence. The

constitutional crisis came to a head on July 14, 1789, when armed

Parisians captured the Bastille, a royal fortress and symbol of monar-

chical authority in the center of the capital. The fall of the Bastille, like

the women’s march to Versailles three months later, showed the deter-

mination of the common people to put their mark on events.

The French Revolution first grabbed the attention of the entire

world because it seemed to promise universal human rights, constitu-

tional government, and broad-based political participation. Its most

The Revolutionary Wave, 1787–1789 588 • Protesters in the Low Countries

and Poland • Origins of the French Revolution,

1787–1789

From Monarchy to Republic, 1789–1793 594 • The Revolution of Rights and Reason • The End of Monarchy

Terror and Resistance 600 • Robespierre and the Committee

of Public Safety • The Republic of Virtue, 1793–1794 • Resisting the Revolution • The Fall of Robespierre and the

End of the Terror

Revolution on the March 607 • Arms and Conquests • European Reactions to

Revolutionary Change • Poland Extinguished, 1793–1795 • Revolution in the Colonies

587

The Cataclysm of Revolution 1789–1799

C H A P T E R

19

Women’s March to Versailles Thousands of prints broadcast the events of the French Revolution to the public in France and elsewhere. They varied from fine-art engravings signed by the artist to anonymous simple woodcuts. This colored engraving shows a crowd of armed women marching to Versailles on October 5, 1789, to confront the king. The sight of armed women frightened many observers and demonstrated that the Revolution was not only a men’s affair. (The Granger Collection, New York.)

famous slogan pledged “Liberty, Equality, and Fra- ternity” for all. An enthusiastic German wrote, “One of the greatest nations in the world, the greatest in general culture, has at last thrown off the yoke of tyranny.” The revolutionaries used a blueprint based on the Enlightenment idea of rea- son to remake all of society and politics: they ex- ecuted the king and queen, established a republic for the first time in French history, abolished no- bility, and gave the vote to all adult men.

Even as the Revolution promised democracy, however, it also inaugurated a cycle of violence and intimidation. When the revolutionaries en- countered resistance to their programs, they set up a government of terror to compel obedience. Some historians therefore see in the French Rev- olution the origins of modern totalitarianism — that is, governments that try to control every aspect of life, including daily activities, while lim- iting all forms of political dissent. As events un- folded after 1789, the French Revolution became the model of modern revolution; republicanism, democracy, terrorism, nationalism, and military dictatorship all took their modern forms during the French Revolution.

The Revolution might have remained a strictly French affair if war had not involved the rest of Europe. After 1792, huge French republican armies, fueled by patriotic nationalism, marched across Europe, promising liberation from traditional monarchies but often delivering old-fashioned conquest and annexation. French victories spread revolutionary ideas far and wide, from Poland to the colonies in the Caribbean, where the first successful slave revolt established the republic of Haiti.

The breathtaking succession of regimes in France between 1789 and 1799 and the failure of the republican experiment after ten years of upheaval raised disturbing questions about the

relationship between rapid political change and violence. Do all revolutions inevitably degenerate into terror or wars of conquest? Is a regime dem- ocratic if it does not allow poor men, women, or blacks to vote? The French Revolution raised these questions and many more. The questions res- onated in many countries because the French Rev- olution seemed to be only the most extreme example of a much broader political and social movement at the end of the eighteenth century.

Focus Question: What was so revolutionary about the French Revolution?

The Revolutionary Wave, 1787–1789 Between 1787 and 1789, revolts in the name of liberty broke out in the Dutch Republic, the Austrian Netherlands (present-day Belgium and Luxembourg), and Poland, as well as in France. At the same time, the newly independent United States of America prepared a new federal consti- tution. Historians have sometimes referred to these revolts as the Atlantic revolutions because so many protest movements arose in countries on both shores of the North Atlantic. These revolu- tions were the product of long-term prosperity and high expectations, created in part by the spread of the Enlightenment. Europeans in gen- eral were wealthier, healthier, more numerous, and better educated than they had ever been be- fore; and the Dutch, Belgian, and French societies were among the wealthiest and best educated within Europe. The French Revolution nonethe- less differed greatly from the others. Not only was France the richest, most powerful, and most

588 Chapter 19 ■ The C ataclysm of Revolution 1789–1799

1787 1789 1791

■ 1787 Dutch Patriot revolt stifled

■ 1788–1790 Austrian Netherlands’ resistance

■ 1789 French Revolution begins ■ 1791 St. Domingue slave revolt

■ 1792 France and rest of Europe at war; second revolution of August 10

1793 1795 1797

populous state in western Europe, but its revolu- tion was also more violent, more long-lasting, and ultimately more influential. (See “Terms of History,” page 590.)

Protesters in the Low Countries and Poland Political protests in the Dutch Republic attracted European attention because Dutch banks still con- trolled a hefty portion of the world’s capital at the end of the eighteenth century, even though the Dutch Republic’s role in international politics had diminished. Revolts also broke out in the neigh- boring Austrian Netherlands and Poland. Al- though none of these movements ultimately succeeded, they showed how quickly political dis- content could boil over in this era of rising eco- nomic and political expectations.

The Dutch Patriot Revolt, 1787. The Dutch Pa- triots, as they chose to call themselves, wanted to reduce the powers of the prince of Orange, the kinglike stadholder who favored close ties with Great Britain. Government-sponsored Dutch banks owned 40 percent of the British national debt, and by 1796 they held the entire foreign debt of the United States. Relations with the British deterio- rated during the American War of Independence, however, and by the middle of the 1780s, agitation in favor of the Americans had boiled over into an attack on the stadholder.

Building on support among middle-class bankers and merchants, the Patriots soon gained a more popular audience by demanding political reforms and organizing armed citizen militias of men, called Free Corps. Town by town the Patri- ots forced local officials to set up new elections to replace councils that had been packed with Orangist supporters through patronage or family

connections. Before long, the Free Corps took on the troops of the prince of Orange and got the upper hand. In response, Frederick William II of Prussia, whose sister had married the stadholder, intervened in 1787 with tacit British support. Thousands of Prussian troops soon occupied Utrecht and Amsterdam, and the house of Orange regained its former po- sition.

Social divisions among the rebels paved the way for the success of this outside intervention. Many of the Patriots from the rich- est merchant families feared the growing power of the Free Corps. The Free Corps wanted a more democratic form of government, and to get it they encouraged the publication of pamphlets and car- toons attacking the prince and his wife, promoted the rapid spread of clubs and societies made up of common people, and organized crowd-pleasing public ceremonies, such as parades and bonfires, that sometimes turned into riots. In the aftermath of the Prussian invasion in September 1787, the Orangists got their revenge: lower-class mobs pil- laged the houses of prosperous Patriot leaders, forcing many to flee to the United States, France, or the Austrian Netherlands. Those Patriots who remained nursed their grievances until the French republican armies invaded in 1795.

The Belgian Independence Movement. If Aus- trian emperor Joseph II had not tried to introduce Enlightenment-inspired reforms, the Belgians of the ten provinces of the Austrian Netherlands might have remained tranquil. Just as he had done previously in his own crown lands (see Chapter 18), Joseph abolished torture, decreed toleration

The Revolutionary Wave, 1787–1789 5891789–1799

■ 1794 French abolish slavery; Robespierre falls

■ 1795 Third partition of Poland; France annexes Austrian Netherlands

■ 1797–1798 “Sister” republics established in Italian states and Switzerland

■ 1793 Second partition of Poland; Louis XVI executed

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for Jews and Protestants (in this resolutely Catholic area), and suppressed monasteries. His reorgani- zation of the administrative and judicial systems eliminated many offices that belonged to nobles and lawyers, sparking resistance among the upper classes in 1788.

Upper-class protesters intended only to defend historic local liberties against an overbearing gov- ernment. Nonetheless, their resistance galvanized democrats, who wanted a more representative gov-

ernment and organized clubs to give voice to their demands.At the end of 1788, a secret society formed armed companies to prepare an uprising. By late 1789, each province had separately declared its in- dependence, and the Austrian administration had collapsed. Delegates from the various provinces de- clared themselves the United States of Belgium, a clear reference to the American precedent.

Once again, however, social divisions doomed the rebels. When the democrats began to challenge noble authority, aristocratic leaders drew to their side the Catholic clergy and peasants, who had little sympathy for the democrats of the cities. Every Sunday in May and June 1790, thousands of peas- ant men and women, led by their priests, streamed into Brussels carrying crucifixes, nooses, and pitch- forks to intimidate the democrats and defend the church. Faced with the choice between the Austrian emperor and “our current tyrants,” the democrats chose to support the return of the Austrians under Emperor Leopold II (r. 1790–1792), who had suc- ceeded his brother.

Polish Patriots. A reform party calling itself the Patriots also emerged in Poland, which had been shocked by the loss of a third of its territory in the first partition of 1772. The Patriots sought to over- haul the weak commonwealth along modern west- ern European lines and looked to King Stanislaw August Poniatowski (r. 1764–1795) to lead them. A nobleman who owed his crown solely to the du- bious honor of being Catherine the Great’s discarded lover but who was also a favorite correspondent of the Parisian salon hostess Madame Geoffrin, Poni- atowski saw in moderate reform the only chance for his country to escape the consequences of a century’s misgovernment and cultural decline. Ranged against the Patriots stood most of the aris- tocrats and the formidable Catherine the Great, determined to uphold imperial Russian influence.

Pleased to see Russian influence waning in Poland, Austria and Prussia allowed the reform movement to proceed. In 1788, the Patriots got their golden chance. Bogged down in war with the Ottoman Turks, Catherine could not block the sum- moning of a reform-minded parliament, which eventually enacted the constitution of May 3, 1791. It established a hereditary monarchy with some- what strengthened authority, ended the veto power that each aristocrat had over legislation, granted townspeople limited political rights, and vaguely promised future Jewish emancipation. Abolishing serfdom was hardly mentioned. Within a year, how- ever, Catherine II had turned her attention to Poland and engineered the downfall of the Patriots.

590 Chapter 19 ■ The C ataclysm of Revolution 1789–1799

Revolution

T E R M S O F H I S T O R Y

Revolution had previously meant cyclical change that brought lifeback to a starting point, as a planet makes a revolution aroundthe sun. Revolutions could come and go, by this definition, and change nothing fundamental in the structure of society. After 1789, revolution came to mean a self-conscious attempt to leap into the fu- ture by reshaping society and politics and even the human personal- ity. A revolutionary official analyzed the meaning of the word in 1793: “A revolution is never made by halves; it must either be total or it will abort. . . . Revolutionary means outside of all forms and all rules.” In short, revolution soon had an all-or-nothing meaning; you were either for the revolution or against it. There could be no in between.

Revolution still has the same meaning given it by the French rev- olutionaries, but it is now an even more contested term because of its association with communist theory. In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx incorporated the French Revolution into his new doctrine of communism. In his view, the middle-class French revolutionaries had overthrown the monarchy and the “feudal” aristocracy to pave the way for capitalist development. In the future, the proletariat (industrial workers) would overthrow the capitalist middle class to install a com- munist government that would abolish private property. Since Marx- ists claimed the French Revolution as the forerunner of the communist revolution in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was perhaps inevitable that those who opposed communism would also criticize the French Revolution.

The most influential example of this view is that of the French scholar François Furet. An ex-communist, Furet argued that the French Revolution can be seen as the origin of totalitarianism because it incarnated what Furet calls “the illusion of politics,” that is, the be- lief that people can transform social and economic relationships through political revolution. The French revolutionaries became to- talitarian, in Furet’s view, because they wanted to establish a kind of political and social utopia (a perfect society), in which reason alone determined the shape of political and social life. Because this dream is impossible given human resistance to rapid change, the revolution- aries had to use force to achieve their goals. In other words, revolu- tion itself was a problematic idea, according to Furet. Revolution as a term remains as contested as the events that gave rise to it.

Origins of the French Revolution, 1787–1789

Many French enthusiastically greeted the Ameri- can experiment in republican government and supported the Dutch, Belgian, and Polish patriots. But they did not expect the United States and the Dutch Republic to provide them a model. Mon- tesquieu and Rousseau, the leading political theo- rists of the Enlightenment, taught that republics suited only small countries, not big ones like France. After suffering humiliation at the hands of the British in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), the French had regained international prestige by supporting the victorious Americans, and the monarchy had shown its eagerness to promote re- forms. In 1787, for example, the French crown granted civil rights to Protestants. Yet by the late 1780s, the French monarchy faced a serious fiscal crisis caused by a mounting deficit. It soon pro- voked a constitutional crisis of epic proportions.

Fiscal Crisis. France’s fiscal problems stemmed from its support of the Americans against the British in the American War of Independence. About half of the French national budget went to paying interest on the debt that had accumulated. In contrast to Great Britain, which had a national bank to help raise loans for the government, the French government lived off relatively short-term, high-interest loans from private sources including Swiss banks, government annuities, and advances from tax collectors.

For years the French government had been trying unsuccessfully to modernize the tax system to make it more equitable. The peasants bore the greatest burden of taxes, whereas the nobles and clergy were largely exempt from them. Tax collec- tion was also far from systematic: private contrac- tors collected many taxes and pocketed a large share of the proceeds. With the growing support of public opinion, the bond and annuity holders from the middle and upper classes now demanded a clearer system of fiscal accountability.

In a monarchy, the ruler’s character is al- ways crucial. Many complained that Louis XVI (r. 1774–1792) showed more interest in hunting or in his hobby of making locks than in the prob- lems of government. His wife, Marie-Antoinette, was blond, beautiful, and much criticized for her

extravagant taste in clothes, elaborate hairdos, and supposed indifference to popular misery. When confronted by the inability of the poor to buy bread, she was reported to have replied, “Let them eat cake.” “The Austrian bitch,” as underground writers called her, had been the target of an increas- ingly nasty pamphlet campaign in the 1780s. By 1789, the queen had become an object of popular hatred. The king’s ineffectiveness and the queen’s growing unpopularity helped undermine the monarchy as an institution.

Faced with a mounting deficit, in 1787 Louis submitted a package of reforms to the Assembly of Notables, a group of handpicked nobles, cler- gymen, and officials. When this group refused to

The Revolutionary Wave, 1787–1789 5911789–1799

Louis XVI: French King (r. 1774–1792) who was tried and found guilty of treason; he was executed on January 21, 1793.

Marie-Antoinette: Wife of Louis XVI and queen of France who was tried and executed in October 1793.

Queen Marie-Antoinette (detail) Marie-Louise-Élizabeth Vigée-Lebrun painted this portrait of the French queen Marie-Antoinette and her children in 1788. The eldest son, Louis (not shown in this detail), died in 1789. When he died, her second son (on her lap here), also called Louis, became heir to the throne. Known to supporters of the monarch as Louis XVII, he died in prison in 1795 and never ruled. Vigée- Lebrun fled France in 1789 and returned only in 1805. (© Chateau de Versailles, France/ The Bridgeman Art Library.)

endorse his program, the king presented his pro- posals for a more uniform land tax to his old rival the parlement of Paris. When it too refused, he ordered the parlement judges into exile in the provinces. Overnight, the judges (members of the nobility because of the offices they held) be- came popular heroes for resisting the king’s “tyranny”; in reality, however, the judges, like the notables, wanted reform only on their own terms. Louis finally gave in to demands that he call a meeting of the Estates General, which had last met 175 years before.

The Estates General. The calling of the Estates General electrified public opinion. Who would de- termine the fate of the nation? The Estates Gen- eral was a body of deputies from the three estates, or orders, of France. The deputies in the First Es- tate represented some 100,000 clergy of the Catholic church, which owned about 10 percent of the land and collected a 10 percent tax (the tithe) on peasants. The deputies of the Second Estate rep- resented the nobility, about 400,000 men and women who owned about 25 percent of the land, enjoyed many tax exemptions, and collected seigneurial dues and rents from their peasant ten- ants. The deputies of the Third Estate represented everyone else, at least 95 percent of the nation. In 1614, at the last meeting of the Estates General, each order had deliberated and voted separately. Before the elections to the Estates General in 1789, the king agreed to double the number of deputies for the Third Estate (making them equal in num- ber to the other two combined), but he refused to mandate voting by individual head rather than by order. Voting by order (each order would have one vote) would conserve the traditional powers of the clergy and nobility; voting by head (each deputy would have one vote) would give the Third Estate an advantage since many clergymen and even some nobles sympathized with the Third Estate.

As the state’s censorship apparatus broke down, pamphleteers by the hundreds denounced the traditional privileges of the nobility and clergy and called for voting by head rather than by or- der. In the most vitriolic of all the pamphlets, What Is the Third Estate?, the middle-class clergyman Abbé (Abbot) Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès charged that the nobility contributed nothing at all to the nation’s well-being; they were “a malignant disease which preys upon and tortures the body of a sick man.” In the winter and spring of 1789, villagers

and townspeople alike held meetings to elect deputies and write down their grievances. The ef- fect was immediate. Although educated men dom- inated the meetings at the regional level, the humblest peasants voted in their villages and burst forth with complaints, especially about taxes. As one villager lamented, “The last crust of bread has been taken from us.” The long series of meetings raised expectations that the Estates General would help the king solve all the nation’s ills.

These new hopes soared just at the moment France experienced an increasingly rare but always dangerous food shortage. Bad weather had dam- aged the harvest of 1788, causing bread prices to soar in many places in the spring and summer of 1789 and threatening starvation for the poorest people. In addition, a serious slump in textile pro- duction had been causing massive unemployment since 1786. Hundreds of thousands of textile work- ers were out of work and hungry, adding another volatile element to an already tense situation.

When some twelve hundred deputies jour- neyed to the king’s palace of Versailles for the opening of the Estates General in May 1789, many readers avidly followed the developments in news- papers that sprouted overnight. Although most nobles insisted on voting by order, the deputies of the Third Estate refused to proceed on that basis. After six weeks of stalemate, on June 17, 1789, the deputies of the Third Estate took unilateral action and declared themselves and whoever would join them the National Assembly, in which each deputy would vote as an individual. Two days later, the clergy voted by a narrow margin to join them. Sud- denly denied access to their meeting hall on June 20, the deputies met on a nearby tennis court and swore an oath not to disband until they had given France a constitution that reflected their newly de- clared authority. This “tennis court oath” ex- pressed the determination of the Third Estate to carry through a constitutional revolution. A few days later, the nobles had no choice but to join too.

July 14, 1789: The Fall of the Bastille. At first, Louis appeared to agree to the new National Assembly, but he also ordered thousands of sol- diers to march to Paris. The deputies who sup- ported the Assembly feared a plot by the king and high-ranking nobles to arrest them and disperse the Assembly. “Everyone is convinced that the ap- proach of the troops covers some violent design,” one deputy wrote home. Their fears were con- firmed when, on July 11, the king fired Jacques Necker, the Swiss Protestant finance minister and the one high official regarded as sympathetic to the deputies’ cause.

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Estates General: A body of deputies from the three estates, or orders, of France: the clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate), and everyone else (Third Estate).

The popular reaction in Paris to Necker’s dis- missal and the threat of military force changed the course of the French Revolution. When the news spread, the common people in Paris began to arm themselves and attack places where either grain or arms were thought to be stored (Map 19.1). A deputy in Versailles reported home: “Today all of the evils overwhelm France, and we are between despotism, carnage, and famine.” On July 14, 1789, an armed crowd marched on the Bastille, a forti- fied prison that symbolized royal authority. After a chaotic battle in which a hundred armed citizens died, the prison officials surrendered.

The fall of the Bastille (an event now com- memorated as the French national holiday) set an important precedent. The common people showed themselves willing to intervene violently at a cru- cial political moment (see The Third Estate Awak- ens, at right). All over France, food riots turned into local revolts. The officials in one city wrote of their plight: “Yesterday afternoon [July 19] more than seven or eight thousand people, men and women, assembled in front of the two gates to the city hall. . . . We were forced to negotiate with them and to promise to give them wheat . . . and to reduce the price of bread.” Local governments were forced out of power and replaced by commit- tees of “patriots” loyal to the revolutionary cause. The king’s government began to crumble. To re- store order, the patriots relied on newly formed National Guard units composed of civilians. In

The Revolutionary Wave, 1787–1789 5931789–1799

Fall of the Bastille The Bastille prison is shown here in all its imposing grandeur. When the fortress’s governor Bernard René de Launay sur- rendered on July 14, 1789, he was marched off to city hall. The gathering crowd taunted and spat at him, and after he lashed out at one of the men nearest him, he was stabbed, shot, and then beheaded. The head was displayed as a trophy on a pike held high above the crowd. Royal authority had been successfully challenged and even humiliated. (The Granger Collection, New York.)

The Third Estate Awakens This print, produced after the fall of the Bastille (note the heads on pikes outside the prison), shows a clergyman (First Estate) and a noble (Second Estate) alarmed by the awakening of the commoners (Third Estate). The Third Estate breaks the chains of oppression and arms itself. In what ways does this print draw attention to the social conflicts that lay behind the political struggles in the Estates General? (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/ Art Resource, NY.)

■ For more help analyzing this image, see the visual activity for this chapter in the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

Paris, the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the Amer- ican War of Independence and a noble deputy in the National Assembly, became commander of the new National Guard. One of Louis XVI’s brothers and many other leading aristocrats fled into exile. The Revolution thus had its first heroes, its first victims, and its first enemies.

Review: How did the beginning of the French Revolu- tion resemble the other revolutions of 1787–1789?

From Monarchy to Republic, 1789–1793 Until July 1789, the French Revolution followed a course much like that of the protest movements in the Low Countries. Unlike the Dutch and Belgian uprisings, however, the French Revolution did not

come to a quick end. The French revolutionaries first tried to establish a constitutional monarchy based on the Enlightenment principles of human rights and rational government. This effort failed when the king attempted to raise a counterrevolu- tionary army. When war broke out in 1792, new tensions culminated in a second revolution on August 10, 1792, that deposed the king and estab- lished a republic in which all power rested in an elected legislature.

The Revolution of Rights and Reason Before drafting a constitution, the deputies of the National Assembly had to confront growing vio- lence in the countryside. Peasants made up 80 per- cent of the French population but owned only about 50 percent of the land. Most could barely make ends meet but still had to pay taxes to the state, the tithe to the Catholic church, and a host of seigneurial dues to their lords, whether for us-

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MAP 19.1 Revolutionary Paris, 1789 The French Revolution began with the fall of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789. The huge fortified prison was located on the eastern side of the city in a neighborhood of working people. Before attacking the Bastille, crowds had torn down many of the customs booths located in the wall of the Farmers General (the private company in charge of tax collection), and taken the arms stored in the Hôtel des Invalides, a veterans’ hospital on the western side of the city where the upper classes lived. During the Revolution, executions took place on the square or Place de la Révolution, now called Place de la Concorde.

ing the lords’ mills to grind wheat or to ensure their ability to give their land as inheritance to their children. Peasants greeted the news of events in 1789 with a mixture of hope and anxiety. As food shortages spread, they feared that the beggars and vagrants crowding the roads might be part of an aristocratic plot to starve the people by burning crops or barns. In many places, the Great Fear (the term used by historians to describe this rural panic) turned into peasant attacks on aristocrats or on the records of peasants’ dues kept in the lord’s château. Peasants now refused to pay dues to their lords, and the per- sistence of peasant violence raised alarms about the potential for a general peasant insurrection.

The End of Feudalism. Alarmed by peasant un- rest, the National Assembly decided to make sweeping changes. On the night of August 4, 1789, noble deputies announced their willingness to give up their tax exemptions and seigneurial dues. By the end of the night, amid wild enthusiasm, dozens of deputies had come to the podium to relinquish the tax exemptions of their own professional groups, towns, or provinces. The National Assem- bly decreed the abolition of what it called “the feu- dal regime” — that is, it freed the remaining serfs and eliminated all special privileges in matters of taxation, including all seigneurial dues on land. (A few days later the deputies insisted on financial compensation for some of these dues, but most peasants refused to pay.) Peasants had achieved their goals. The Assembly also mandated equality of opportunity in access to government positions. Talent, rather than birth, was to be the key to suc- cess. Enlightenment principles were beginning to become law.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Three weeks later, the deputies drew up the Dec- laration of the Rights of Man and Citizen as the preamble to a new constitution. In words reminis- cent of the American Declaration of Indepen- dence, whose author, Thomas Jefferson, was in Paris at the time, it proclaimed,“Men are born and

remain free and equal in rights.” The Declaration granted freedom of religion, freedom of the press, equality of taxation, and equality before the law. It established the principle of national sovereignty: since “all sovereignty rests essen- tially in the nation,” it said, the king derived his authority hence- forth from the nation rather than from tradition or divine right.

By pronouncing all men free and equal, the Declaration imme- diately created new dilemmas. Did women have equal rights with men? What about free blacks

in the colonies? How could slavery be justified if all men were born free? Did religious toleration of Protestants and Jews include equal political rights? Women never received the right to vote during the French Revolution, though Protestant and Jewish men did. Women were theoretically citizens under civil law but without the right to full political par- ticipation. (See Document,“The Rights of Minori- ties,” page 597.)

Some women did not accept their exclusion, viewing it as a betrayal of the promised new or- der. In addition to joining demonstrations, such as the march to Versailles in October 1789, women wrote petitions, published tracts, and organized political clubs to demand more participation (see A Women’s Club, below). In her Declaration of the

From Monarchy to Republic , 1789–1793 5951789–1799

Great Fear: The term used by historians to describe the French rural panic of 1789, which led to peasant attacks on aristocrats or on seigneurial records of peasants’ dues.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen: The preamble to the French constitution drafted in August 1789; it established the sovereignty of the nation and equal rights for citizens.

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A Women’s Club In this gouache by the Lesueur brothers, The Patriotic Women’s Club, the club president urges the members to contribute funds for poor patriot families. Women’s clubs focused on philanthropic work but also discussed revolutionary legislation. The colorful but sober dress indi- cates that the women are middle class. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/ Art Resource, NY.)

Rights of Women of 1791, Olympe de Gouges (1748–1793) played on the language of the official Declaration to make the point that women should also be included. She announced in Article I, “Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights.” She also insisted that since “woman has the right to mount the scaffold,” she must “equally have the right to mount the rostrum.” De Gouges linked her complaints to a program of social re- form in which women would have equal rights to property and public office and equal responsibili- ties in taxes and criminal punishment.

The Constitution and the Church. Unresponsive to calls for women’s equality, the National Assem- bly turned to preparing France’s first written con- stitution. The deputies gave voting rights only to white men who passed a test of wealth. Despite

these limitations, France became a constitutional monarchy in which the king served as the leading state functionary. A one-house legislature was re- sponsible for making laws. The king could post- pone enactment of laws but not veto them. The deputies abolished all the old administrative divi- sions of the provinces and replaced them with a national system of eighty-three departments with identical administrative and legal structures (Map 19.2). All officials were elected; no offices could be bought or sold. The deputies also abolished the old taxes and replaced them with new ones that were supposed to be uniformly levied. The National As- sembly had difficulty collecting taxes, however, be- cause many people had expected a substantial cut in the tax rate. The new administrative system sur- vived, nonetheless, and the departments are still the basic units of the French state today.

596 Chapter 19 ■ The C ataclysm of Revolution 1789–1799

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MAP 19.2 Redrawing the Map of France, 1789–1791 Before 1789, France had been divided into provinces named after the territories owned by dukes and counts in the Middle Ages. Many provinces had their own law codes and separate systems of taxation. As it began its deliberations, the new National Assembly determined to install uniform administrations and laws for the entire country. Discussion of the administrative reforms began in October 1789 and became law on February 15, 1790, when the Assembly voted to divide the provinces into eighty-three departments, with names based on their geographical characteristics: Basses-Pyrénées for the Pyrénées mountains, Haute-Marne for the Marne River, and so on. ■ How did this redrawing of the administrative map reflect the deputies’ emphasis on reason over history?

When the deputies turned to reforming the Catholic church, they created enduring conflicts. Convinced that monastic life encouraged idleness and a decline in the nation’s population, the deputies outlawed any future monastic vows and encouraged monks and nuns to return to private life by offering state pensions. Motivated partly by the ongoing financial crisis, the National Assem- bly confiscated all the church’s property and prom- ised to pay clerical salaries in return. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed in July 1790, set pay scales for the clergy and provided that the vot- ers elect their own parish priests and bishops just as they elected other officials. The impounded property served as a guarantee for the new paper money, called assignats, issued by the government. The assignats soon became subject to inflation be- cause the government began to sell the church lands to the highest bidders in state auctions. The

sales increased the landholdings of wealthy city dwellers and prosperous peasants but cut the value of the paper money.

Faced with resistance to these changes, in November 1790, the National Assembly required all clergy to swear an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Pope Pius VI in Rome condemned the constitution, and half of the French clergy refused to take the oath. The oath of allegiance permanently divided the Catholic pop- ulation, which had to choose between loyalty to the old church and commitment to the Revolution with its “constitutional” church. The revolutionary government lost many supporters by passing laws against the clergy who refused the oath and by forcing them into exile, deporting them forcibly, or executing them as traitors. Riots and demon- strations led by women greeted many of the oath- taking priests who replaced those who refused.

From Monarchy to Republic , 1789–1793 5971789–1799

The Rights of Minorities

D O C U M E N T

When the National Assembly passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen on August 26, 1789, it opened the way to discussion of the rights of various groups, from actors (considered ineligible for voting under the monarchy because they imperson- ated other people as part of their profession) to women, free blacks, mulattoes, and slaves. A nobleman, Count Stanislas de Clermont Tonnerre, gave a speech on December 23, 1789, in which he advocated ending exclu- sions based on profession or religion, though not gender or race.

Sirs, in the declaration that you believed you should put at the head of the French constitution you have established, conse- crated, the rights of man and citizen. In the constitutional work that you have decreed relative to the organization of the munici- palities, a work accepted by the King, you have fixed the conditions of eligibility that can be required of citizens. It would seem, Sirs, that there is nothing else left to do and that prejudices should be silent in the face of the language of the law; but an honor- able member has explained to us that the

non-Catholics of some provinces still expe- rience harassment based on former laws, and seeing them excluded from the elec- tions and public posts, another honorable member has protested against the effect of prejudice that persecutes some professions. This prejudice, these laws, force you to make your position clear. I have the honor to present you with the draft of a decree, and it is this draft that I defend here. I es- tablish in it the principle that professions and religious creed can never become rea- sons for ineligibility. . . .

Every creed has only one test to pass in regard to the social body: it has only one examination to which it must submit, that of its morals. It is here that the adver- saries of the Jewish people attack me. This people, they say, is not sociable. They are commanded to loan at usurious rates; they cannot be joined with us either in mar- riage or by the bonds of social interchange; our food is forbidden to them; our tables prohibited; our armies will never have Jews serving in the defense of the fatherland. The worst of these reproaches is unjust; the others are only specious. Usury is not

commanded by their laws; loans at inter- est are forbidden between them and per- mitted with foreigners. . . .

But, they say to me, the Jews have their own judges and laws. I respond that is your fault and you should not allow it. We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individ- uals. We must withdraw recognition from their judges; they should only have our judges. We must refuse legal protection to the maintenance of the so-called laws of their Judaic organization; they should not be allowed to form in the state either a po- litical body or an order. They must be cit- izens individually. But, some will say to me, they do not want to be citizens. Well then! If they do not want to be citizens, they should say so, and then, we should banish them. It is repugnant to have in the state an association of non-citizens, and a na- tion within the nation. . . . In short, Sirs, the presumed status of every man resident in a country is to be a citizen.

Source: Archives parlementaires, 10 (Paris, 1878): 754–57. Translation by Lynn Hunt.

The End of Monarchy The reorganization of the Catholic church of- fended Louis XVI, who was reluctant to recognize the new limits on his powers. On June 20, 1791, the royal family escaped in disguise from Paris and fled to the eastern border of France, where they hoped to gather support from Austrian emperor Leopold II, the brother of Marie-Antoinette. The plans went awry when a postmaster recognized the king from his portrait on the new French money, and the royal family was arrested at Varennes, forty miles from the Austrian Netherlands border. The National Assembly tried to depict the departure as a kidnapping, but the “flight to Varennes” touched off demonstrations in Paris against the royal fam- ily, whom some now regarded as traitors. Cartoons circulated depicting the royal family as animals be- ing returned “to the stable.”

War with Austria and Prussia. The constitution, finally completed in 1791, provided for the imme- diate election of the new Legislative Assembly. In a rare act of self-denial, the deputies of the Na- tional Assembly declared themselves ineligible for the new Assembly. Those who had experienced the Revolution firsthand now departed from the scene, opening the door to men with little previous ex- perience in national politics. The status of the king might have remained uncertain if war had not in- tervened, but by early 1792 everyone seemed intent on war with Austria. Louis and Marie-Antoinette hoped that such a war would lead to the defeat of the Revolution, whereas the deputies who favored a republic believed that war would lead to the

king’s downfall. On April 21, 1792, Louis declared war on Austria. Prussia immediately entered on the Austrian side. Thousands of French aristocrats, in- cluding two-thirds of the army officer corps, had already emigrated, including both the king’s broth- ers, and they were gathering along France’s eastern border in expectation of joining a counterrevolu- tionary army.

When fighting broke out in 1792, all the pow- ers expected a brief and relatively contained war. Instead, it would continue despite brief interrup- tions for the next twenty-three years. War had an immediate radicalizing effect on French politics. When the French armies proved woefully unpre- pared for battle, the authority of the Legislative As- sembly came under fire. In June 1792, an angry crowd invaded the hall of the Assembly in Paris and threatened the royal family. The Prussian com- mander, the duke of Brunswick, issued a manifesto announcing that Paris would be totally destroyed if the royal family suffered any violence.

The Second Revolution of August 10, 1792. The ordinary people of Paris did not passively await their fate. Known as sans-culottes (literally, “with- out breeches”) — because men who worked with their hands wore long trousers rather than the knee breeches of the upper classes — they had fol- lowed every twist and turn in revolutionary for- tunes. Faced with the threat of military retaliation and frustrated with the inaction of the Legislative Assembly, on August 10, 1792, the sans-culottes or- ganized an insurrection and attacked the Tuileries palace, the residence of the king. The king and his

598 Chapter 19 ■ The C ataclysm of Revolution 1789–1799

The King as a Farmyard Animal This simple print makes a powerful point: King Louis XVI has lost not only his authority but also the respect of his subjects. Engravings and etchings like this one appeared in reaction to the attempted flight of the king and queen in June 1791. (The Granger Collection, New York.)

Jacobin Club: A French political club formed in 1789 that in- spired the formation of a national network whose members dominated the revolutionary government during the Terror.

family had to seek refuge in the meeting room of the Legislative Assembly, where the frightened deputies ordered elections for a new legislature. By abolishing the property qualifications for voting, the deputies instituted universal male suffrage for the first time.

When it met, the National Convention abol- ished the monarchy and on September 22, 1792, established the first republic in French history. The republic would answer only to the people, not to any royal authority. Many of the deputies in the Convention belonged to the devotedly republican Jacobin Club, named after the former monastery in Paris where the club first met. The Jacobin Club in Paris headed a national political network of clubs that linked all the major towns and cities. Lafayette and other liberal aristocrats who had supported the constitutional monarchy fled into exile.

Violence soon exploded again when early in September 1792 the Prussians approached Paris. Hastily gathered mobs stormed the overflowing prisons to seek out traitors who might help the en- emy. In an atmosphere of near hysteria, eleven

hundred inmates were killed, including many ordi- nary and completely innocent people. The princess of Lamballe, one of the queen’s favorites, was hacked to pieces and her mutilated body displayed beneath the windows where the royal family was kept under guard. These “September massacres” showed the dark side of popular revolution, in which the com- mon people demanded instant revenge on sup- posed enemies and conspirators.

The Execution of the King. The National Con- vention faced a dire situation. It needed to write a new constitution for the republic while fighting a war with external enemies and confronting in- creasing resistance at home. Many thought the Revolution had gone too far when it confiscated the properties of the church, eliminated titles of nobility, and deposed the king. The French people had never known any government other than monarchy. Only half the population could read and write at even a basic level. In this situation, symbolic actions became very important. Any public sign of monarchy was at risk, and revolu- tionaries soon pulled down statues of kings and burned reminders of the former regime.

The fate of Louis XVI and the future direction of the republic divided the deputies elected to the

From Monarchy to Republic , 1789–1793 5991789–1799

The Execution of King Louis XVI Louis XVI was executed by order of the National Convention on January 21, 1793. In this print, the executioner shows the severed head to the national guards standing in orderly silence around the scaffold. (Mary Evans Picture Library.)

National Convention. Most of the deputies were middle-class lawyers and professionals who had developed their ardent republican beliefs in the network of Jacobin Clubs. After the fall of the monarchy in August 1792, however, the Jacobins divided into two factions. The Girondins (named after a department in southwestern France, the Gironde, which provided some of its leading ora- tors) met regularly at the salon of Jeanne Roland, the wife of a minister. They resented the growing power of Parisian militants and tried to appeal to the departments outside of Paris. The Mountain (so called because its deputies sat in the highest seats of the National Convention), in contrast, was closely allied with the Paris militants.

The first showdown between the Girondins and the Mountain occurred during the trial of the king in December 1792. Although the Girondins agreed that the king was guilty of treason, many of them argued for clemency, exile, or a popular referendum on his fate. After a long and difficult debate, the National Convention supported the Mountain and voted by a very narrow majority to execute the king. Louis XVI went to the guillotine on January 21, 1793, sharing the fate of Charles I of England in 1649. “We have just convinced our- selves that a king is only a man,” wrote one news- paper, “and that no man is above the law.”

Review: Why did the French Revolution turn in an in- creasingly radical direction after 1789?

Terror and Resistance The execution of the king did not solve the new regime’s problems. The continuing war required even more men and money, and the introduction of a national draft provoked massive resistance in some parts of France. In response to growing pressures, the National Convention named the Committee of Public Safety to supervise food dis- tribution, direct the war effort, and root out coun- terrevolutionaries. The leader of the committee, Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), wanted to go beyond these stopgap measures and create a “republic of virtue,” in which the government would teach, or force, citizens to become virtuous republicans through a massive program of politi-

cal reeducation. Thus began the Terror, in which the guillotine became the most terrifying instru- ment of a government that suppressed almost every form of dissent (see The Guillotine, page 601). These policies only increased divisions, which ultimately led to Robespierre’s fall from power and to a dismantling of government by terror.

Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety The conflict between the more moderate Girondins and the more radical Mountain came to a head in spring 1793. Militants in Paris agitated for the re- moval of the deputies who had proposed a refer- endum on the king, and in retaliation the Girondins engineered the arrest of Jean-Paul Marat, a deputy allied with the Mountain who in his newspaper had been calling for more and more executions. Marat was acquitted, and Parisian mil- itants marched into the National Convention on June 2, 1793, forcing the deputies to decree the arrest of their twenty-nine Girondin colleagues. The Convention consented to the establishment of paramilitary bands called “revolutionary armies” to hunt down political suspects and hoarders of grain. The deputies also agreed to speed up the operation of special revolutionary courts.

Setting the course for government and the war increasingly fell to the twelve-member Committee of Public Safety, set up by the National Conven- tion on April 6, 1793. When Robespierre was elected to the committee three months later, he be- came in effect its guiding spirit and the chief spokesman of the Revolution. A lawyer from north- ern France known as “the incorruptible” for his stern honesty and fierce dedication to democratic ideals, Robespierre remains one of the most con- troversial figures in world history because of his association with the Terror. Although he originally opposed the death penalty and the war, he was convinced that the emergency situation of 1793 required severe measures, including death for those, such as the Girondins, who opposed the committee’s policies.

Like many other educated eighteenth-century men, Robespierre had read the classics of republi- canism from the ancient Roman writers Tacitus and Plutarch to the Enlightenment thinkers Mon-

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Maximilien Robespierre (roh behs PYEHR): A lawyer from northern France who laid out the principles of a republic of virtue and of the Terror; his arrest and execution in July 1794 brought an end to the Terror.

Terror: The policy established under the direction of the Com- mittee of Public Safety during the French Revolution to arrest dissidents and execute opponents in order to protect the re- public from its enemies.

tesquieu and Rousseau. But he took them a step further. He defined “the theory of revolutionary government” as “the war of liberty against its en- emies.” He defended the people’s right to demo- cratic government, while in practice he supported many emergency measures that restricted their liberties. He personally favored a free-market economy, as did almost all middle-class deputies, but in this time of crisis he was will- ing to enact price controls and requisitioning. In an effort to stabilize prices, the National Convention established the General Maximum on September 29, 1793, which set limits on the prices of thirty-nine essential commodities and on wages. In a speech to the Convention, Robes- pierre explained the necessity of government by terror: “The first maxim of your policies must be to lead the people by reason and the people’s ene- mies by terror. . . . Without virtue, terror is deadly; without terror, virtue is impotent.” Terror was not an idle term; it seemed to imply that the goal of democracy justified what we now call totalitarian means, that is, the suppression of all dissent.

Through a series of desperate measures, the Committee of Public Safety set the machinery of the Terror in motion. It sent deputies out “on mis- sion” to purge unreliable officials and organize the war effort. Revolutionary tribunals set up in Paris and provincial centers tried political suspects. In October 1793, the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris convicted Marie-Antoinette of treason and sent her to the guillotine. The Girondin leaders and Madame Roland were also guillotined, as was Olympe de Gouges. The government confiscated all the property of convicted traitors.

The new republic won its greatest success on the battlefield. As of April 1793, France faced war with Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Spain, Sar- dinia, and the Dutch Republic — all fearful of the impact of revolutionary ideals on their own pop- ulations. The execution of Louis XVI, in particu- lar, galvanized European governments; according to William Pitt, the British prime minister, it was “the foulest and most atrocious act the world has ever seen.” To face this daunting coalition of forces, the French republic ordered the first universal draft of men in history. Every unmarried man and childless widower between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five was declared eligible for conscription. The government also tapped a new and potent source of power — nationalist pride — in decrees mobilizing young and old alike:

The young men will go to battle; married men will forge arms and transport provisions; women will make tents and clothing and serve in hospitals; children will

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The Guillotine Before 1789, only nobles were decapitated if condemned to death; commoners were usually hanged. Equalization of the death penalty was first proposed by J. I. Guillotin, a professor of anatomy and a deputy in the National Assembly. He also suggested that a mechanical device be constructed for decapitation, leading to the instrument’s association with his name. The Assembly decreed decapitation as the death penalty in June 1791 and another physician, A. Louis, actually invented the guillotine. The exe- cutioner pulled up the blade by a cord and then released it. Use of the guillotine began in April 1792 and did not end until 1981, when the French government abolished the death penalty. The guillotine fascinated as much as it repelled. Reproduced in miniature, painted onto snuffboxes and china, worn as jewelry, and even serving as a toy, the guillotine became a part of popular culture. How could the guillotine be simultaneously celebrated as the people’s avenger by supporters of the Revolution and vilified as the preeminent symbol of the Terror by opponents? (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/ Art Resource, NY.)

make bandages; old men will get themselves carried to public places to arouse the courage of warriors and preach hatred of kings and unity of the republic.

Forges were set up in the parks and gardens of Paris to produce thousands of guns, and citizens everywhere helped collect saltpeter to make gun- powder. By the end of 1793, the French nation in arms had stopped the advance of the allied pow- ers, and in the summer of 1794 it invaded the Aus- trian Netherlands and crossed the Rhine River. The army was ready to carry the gospel of revolution and republicanism to the rest of Europe.

The Republic of Virtue, 1793–1794 The program of the Terror went beyond pragmatic measures to fight the war and internal enemies to include efforts to “republicanize everything” — in other words, to effect a cultural revolution. While censoring writings deemed counterrevolutionary, the government encouraged republican art, set up civic festivals, and in some places directly at- tacked the churches in a campaign known as de- Christianization. In addition to drawing up plans

for a new program of elementary education, the republic set about politicizing aspects of daily life, including even the measurement of space and time.

Republican Culture. Refusing to tolerate opposi- tion, the republic left no stone unturned in its en- deavor to get its message across. Songs — especially the new national anthem, “La Marseillaise” — and placards, posters, pamphlets, books, engravings, paintings, sculpture, even everyday crockery, chamberpots, and playing cards conveyed revolu- tionary slogans and symbols. Foremost among them was the figure of Liberty, which appeared on coins and bills, on letterheads and seals, and as statues in festivals. Hundreds of new plays were produced and old classics revised. To encourage the production of patriotic and republican works, the government sponsored state competitions for artists. Works of art were supposed to “awaken the public spirit and make clear how atrocious and ridiculous were the enemies of liberty and of the Republic.”

At the center of this elaborate cultural cam- paign were the revolutionary festivals modeled on Rousseau’s plans for a civic religion. The festivals

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Representing Liberty Liberty was represented by a female figure because in French the noun is feminine (la liberté). This painting from 1793–1794, by Jeanne-Louise Vallain, captures the usual attributes of Liberty: she is soberly seated, wearing a Roman-style toga and holding a pike with a Roman liberty cap on top. Her Roman appearance signals that she represents an abstract quality. The fact that she holds an instrument of battle suggests that women might be active participants. The Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, given by the French to the United States, is a late-nineteenth-century version of the same figure, but without any suggestion of battle. (Musée de la Révolution française, Vizille; 1857#44.)

de-Christianization: During the French Revolution, the cam- paign of extremist republicans against organized churches and in favor of a belief system based on reason.

first emerged in 1789 with the spontaneous plant- ing of liberty trees in villages and towns. The Fes- tival of Federation on July 14, 1790, marked the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. Under the National Convention, the well-known painter Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), who was a deputy and an associate of Robespierre, took over festival planning. David aimed to destroy the mys- tique of monarchy and to make the republic sa- cred. His Festival of Unity on August 10, 1793, for example, celebrated the first anniversary of the overthrow of the monarchy. In front of the statue of Liberty built for the occasion, a bonfire con- sumed crowns and scepters symbolizing royalty while a cloud of three thousand white doves rose into the sky. This was all part of preaching the “moral order of the Republic . . . that will make us a people of brothers, a people of philosophers.”

De-Christianization. Some revolutionaries hoped the festival system would replace the Catholic church altogether. They initiated a campaign of de-Christianization that included closing churches (Protestant as well as Catholic), selling many church buildings to the highest bidder, and trying to force even those clergy who had taken the oath of loyalty to abandon their clerical voca- tions and marry. Great churches became store- houses for arms or grain, or their stones were sold off to contractors. The medieval statues of kings on the facade of Notre Dame cathedral were be- headed. Church bells were dismantled and church treasures melted down for government use.

In the ultimate step in de-Christianization, ex- tremists tried to establish what they called the Cult of Reason to supplant Christianity. In Paris in the fall of 1793, a goddess of Liberty, played by an ac- tress, presided over the Festival of Reason in Notre Dame cathedral. Local militants in other cities staged similar festivals, which alarmed deputies in the National Convention, who were wary of turn- ing rural, devout populations against the republic. Robespierre objected to the de-Christianization campaign’s atheism; he favored a Rousseau-inspired deistic religion without the supposedly supersti- tious trappings of Catholicism. The Committee of Public Safety halted the de-Christianization cam- paign, and Robespierre, with David’s help, tried to institute an alternative, the Cult of the Supreme Being, in June 1794. Neither the Cult of Reason nor the Cult of the Supreme Being attracted many followers, but both show the depth of the commit-

ment to overturning the old order and all its tra- ditional institutions.

Politicizing Daily Life. In principle, the best way to ensure the future of the republic was through the education of the young. The deputy Georges- Jacques Danton (1759–1794), Robespierre’s main competitor as theorist of the Revolution, main- tained that “after bread, the first need of the peo- ple is education.” The National Convention voted to make primary schooling free and compulsory for both boys and girls. It took control of educa- tion away from the Catholic church and tried to set up a system of state schools at both the pri- mary and secondary levels, but it lacked trained teachers to replace those the Catholic religious or- ders had provided. As a result, opportunities for learning how to read and write may have dimin- ished. In 1799, only one-fifth as many boys en- rolled in the state secondary schools as had studied in church schools ten years earlier.

Although many of the ambitious republican programs failed, colors, clothing, and daily speech were all politicized. The tricolor — the combina- tion of red, white, and blue that was to become the flag of France — was devised in July 1789, and by 1793 everyone had to wear a cockade (a badge made of ribbons) with the colors. Using the for- mal forms of speech — vous for “you” — or the title monsieur or madame might identify someone as an aristocrat; true patriots used the informal tu and citoyen or citoyenne (“citizen”) instead. Some people changed their names or gave their children new kinds of names. Biblical and saints’ names such as John, Peter, Joseph, and Mary gave way to names recalling heroes of the ancient Roman re- public (Brutus, Gracchus, Cornelia), revolutionary heroes, or flowers and plants. Such changes sym- bolized adherence to the republic and to Enlight- enment ideals rather than to Catholicism.

Even the measures of time and space were rev- olutionized. In October 1793, the National Con- vention introduced a new calendar to replace the Christian one. Its bases were reason and republi- can principles. Year I dated from the beginning of the republic on September 22, 1792. Twelve months of exactly thirty days each received new names derived from nature — for example, Pluviôse (roughly equivalent to February) recalled the rain (la pluie) of late winter. Instead of seven-day weeks, ten-day décades provided only one day of rest every ten days and pointedly eliminated the Sunday of the Christian calendar. The five days left at the end of the calendar year were devoted to special festivals called sans-culottides. The calendar remained in force for twelve years despite contin-

Terror and Resistance 6031789–1799

uing resistance to it. More enduring was the new metric system based on units of ten that was in- vented to replace the hundreds of local variations in weights and measures. Other countries in Europe and throughout the world eventually adopted the metric system.

Revolutionary laws also changed the rules of family life. The state took responsibility for all fam- ily matters away from the Catholic church: people now registered births, deaths, and marriages at city hall, not the parish church. Marriage became a civil contract and as such could be broken and thereby nullified. The new divorce law of September 1792 was the most far-reaching in Europe: a couple could divorce by mutual consent or for reasons such as insanity, abandonment, battering, or crim- inal conviction. Thousands of men and women took advantage of the law to dissolve unhappy marriages, even though the pope had condemned the measure. (In 1816, the government revoked the right to divorce, and not until the 1970s did French divorce laws return to the principles of the 1792 legislation.) In one of its most influential actions, the National Convention passed a series of laws that created equal inheritance among all children in the family, including girls. The father’s right to favor one child, especially the oldest male, was con- sidered aristocratic and hence antirepublican.

Resisting the Revolution By intruding into religion, culture, and daily life, the republic inevitably provoked resistance. Shout- ing curses against the republic, uprooting liberty trees, carrying statues of the Virgin Mary in pro- cession, hiding a priest who would not take the oath, singing a royalist song — all these expressed dissent with the new symbols, rituals, and policies. Resistance also took more violent forms, from ri- ots over food shortages or reli- gious policies to assassination and full-scale civil war.

Women’s Resistance. Many women, in particular, suffered from the hard conditions of life that persisted in this time of war, and they had their own ways of voicing discontent. Long bread lines in the cities exhausted the patience of women, and police spies reported their constant grumbling, which occasionally turned into spontaneous demon- strations or riots over high prices

or food shortages. Women also organized their fel- low parishioners to refuse to hear Mass offered by the “constitutional” priests, and they protected the priests who would not sign the oath of loyalty.

Other forms of resistance were more individ- ual. One young woman, Charlotte Corday, assas- sinated the outspoken deputy Jean-Paul Marat in July 1793. Corday fervently supported the Girondins, and she considered it her patriotic duty to kill the deputy who, in the columns of his pa- per, had constantly demanded more heads and more blood. Marat was immediately eulogized as a great martyr, and Corday went to the guillotine vilified as a monster but confident that she had “avenged many innocent victims.”

Rebellion and Civil War. Organized resistance broke out in many parts of France. The arrest of the Girondin deputies in June 1793 sparked insur- rections in several departments. After the govern- ment retook the city of Lyon, one of the centers of the revolt, the deputy on mission ordered sixteen hundred houses demolished and the name of the city changed to Liberated City. Special courts sen- tenced almost two thousand people to death.

In the Vendée region of western France, re- sistance turned into a bloody and prolonged civil war. Between March and December 1793, peas- ants, artisans, and weavers joined under noble leadership to form a “Catholic and Royal Army.” One rebel group explained its motives: “They [the republicans] have killed our king, chased away our priests, sold the goods of our church, eaten everything we have and now they want to take our bodies [in the draft].” The uprising took two different forms: in the Vendée itself, a counter- revolutionary army organized to fight the repub- lic; in nearby Brittany, resistance took the form of guerrilla bands, which united to attack a tar-

get and then quickly melted into the countryside. Great Britain provided money and under- ground contacts for these at- tacks, which were almost always aimed at towns. In many ways this was a civil war between town and country, for the towns- people were the ones who sup- ported the Revolution and bought church lands for themselves. The peasants had gained most of what they wanted in 1789 with the abolition of seigneurial dues, and they resented the govern- ment’s demands for money and

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The Vendée Rebellion

Areas of insurrection

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The Vendée Rebellion, 1793

manpower and actions taken against their local clergy.

For several months in 1793, the Vendée rebels stormed the largest towns in the region. Both sides committed horrible atrocities. At the small town of Machecoul, for example, the rebels massacred five hundred republicans, including administra- tors and National Guard members; many were tied together, shoved into freshly dug graves, and shot. By the fall, however, republican soldiers had turned back the rebels. A republican general wrote to the Committee of Public Safety claiming, “There is no more Vendée, citizens, it has perished under our free sword along with its women and children. . . . Following the orders that you gave me I have crushed children under the feet of horses, massacred women who at least . . . will en- gender no more brigands.” His claims of complete victory turned hollow soon afterward, as fighting continued.

“Infernal columns” of republican troops marched through the region to restore control, military courts ordered thousands executed, and republican soldiers massacred thousands of others. In one especially gruesome incident, the deputy Jean-Baptiste Carrier supervised the drowning of some two thousand Vendée rebels, including a number of priests. Barges loaded with prisoners were floated into the Loire River near Nantes and then sunk. Controversy still rages about the rebel- lion’s death toll because no accurate count could be taken. Estimates of rebel deaths alone range from about 20,000 to 250,000 and higher. Many thousands of republican soldiers and civilians also lost their lives in fighting that continued on and off for years. Even the low estimates reveal the car- nage of this catastrophic confrontation between the republic and its opponents.

The Fall of Robespierre and the End of the Terror In an atmosphere of fear of conspiracy that these outbreaks fueled, Robespierre tried simultaneously to exert the National Convention’s control over popular political activities and to weed out opposi- tion among the deputies. As a result, the Terror in- tensified until July 1794, when a group of deputies joined within the Convention to order the arrest and execution of Robespierre and his followers. The Convention then ordered elections and drew up a new republican constitution that gave executive power to five directors. This “Directory govern- ment” maintained power during four years of see- saw battles between royalists and former Jacobins.

The Revolution Devours Its Own. In the fall of 1793, the National Convention cracked down on popular clubs and societies. First to be suppressed were women’s political clubs. Founded in early 1793, the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women played a very active part in sans-culottes politics. The society urged harsher measures against the republic’s enemies and insisted that women have a voice in politics even if they did not have the vote. Women had set up their own clubs in many provincial towns and also attended the meetings of local men’s organizations. Using tra- ditional arguments about women’s inherent un- suitability for politics, the deputies abolished women’s political clubs. The closing of women’s clubs marked an important turning point in the Revolution. From then on, the sans-culottes and their political organizations came increasingly under the thumb of the Jacobin deputies in the National Convention.

In the spring of 1794, the Committee of Pub- lic Safety moved against its critics among leaders in Paris and deputies in the National Convention itself. First, a handful of “ultrarevolutionaries” — a collection of local Parisian politicians — were ar- rested and executed. Next came the other side, the “indulgents,” so called because they favored a moderation of the Terror. Included among them was the deputy Danton, himself once a member of the Committee of Public Safety and a friend of Robespierre. Danton was the Revolution’s most flamboyant orator and, unlike Robespierre, a high- living, high-spending, excitable politician. At every critical turning point in national politics, his booming voice had swayed opinion in the National Convention. Now, under pressure from the Com- mittee of Public Safety, the Revolutionary Tribunal convicted him and his friends of treason and sen- tenced them to death.

“The Revolution,” as one of the Girondin vic- tims of 1793 had remarked, “was devouring its own children.” Even after the major threats to the Com- mittee of Public Safety’s power had been eliminated, the Terror continued and even worsened. A law passed in June 1794 denied the accused the right of legal counsel, reduced the number of jurors neces- sary for conviction, and allowed only two judg- ments: acquittal or death. The category of political crimes expanded to include “slandering patriotism” and “seeking to inspire discouragement.” Ordinary people risked the guillotine if they expressed any discontent. The rate of executions in Paris rose from five a day in the spring of 1794 to twenty-six a day in the summer. The political atmosphere darkened even though the military situation improved. At the

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end of June, the French armies decisively defeated the main Austrian army and advanced through the Austrian Netherlands to Brussels and Antwerp. The emergency measures for fighting the war were working, yet Robespierre and his inner circle had

made so many enemies that they could not afford to loosen the grip of the Terror.

The Terror hardly touched many parts of France, but overall the experience was undeniably traumatic. Across the country, the official Terror cost the lives of at least 40,000 French people, most of them living in the regions of major insurrections or near the borders with foreign en- emies, where suspicion of collaboration ran high. As many as 300,000 people — one out of every fifty French people — went to prison as suspects be- tween March 1793 and August 1794. The toll for the aristocracy and the clergy was especially high. Many leading nobles perished under the guillotine, and thousands emigrated. Thirty thousand to forty thousand clergy who refused the oath left the coun- try, at least two thousand (including many nuns) were executed, and thousands were imprisoned. The clergy were singled out in particular in the civil war zones: 135 priests were massacred at Lyon in November 1793, and 83 were shot in one day dur- ing the Vendée revolt. Yet many victims of the Ter- ror were peasants or ordinary working people.

The final crisis of the Terror came in July 1794. Conflicts within the Committee of Public Safety and the National Convention left Robespierre isolated. On July 27, 1794 (the ninth of Thermidor, Year II, according to the revolutionary calendar), Robespierre appeared before the Convention with yet another list of deputies to be arrested. Many feared they would be named, and they shouted him down and ordered him arrested along with his fol- lowers on the committee, the president of the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, and the com- mander of the Parisian National Guard. An armed uprising led by the Paris city government failed to save Robespierre when most of the National Guard took the side of the Convention. Robespierre tried to kill himself with a pistol but only broke his jaw. The next day he and scores of followers went to the guillotine.

The Thermidorian Reaction and the Directory, 1794–1799. The men who led the attack on Robespierre in Thermidor (July 1794) did not in- tend to reverse all his policies, but that happened nonetheless because of a violent backlash known as the Thermidorian Reaction. As most of the instru- ments of terror were dismantled, newspapers at- tacked the Robespierrists as “tigers thirsting for human blood.” The new government released hun- dreds of suspects and arranged a temporary truce

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Thermidorian Reaction: The violent backlash against the rule of Robespierre that dismantled the Terror and punished Jacobins and their supporters.

M A J O R E V E N T S O F T H E F R E N C H R E V O L U T I O N

May 5, 1789 The Estates General opens at Versailles

June 17, 1789 The Third Estate decides to call itself the National Assembly

June 20, 1789 “Tennis court oath” shows determination of deputies to carry out a constitutional revolution

July 14, 1789 Fall of the Bastille

August 4, 1789 National Assembly abolishes “feudalism”

August 26, 1789 National Assembly passes Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

October 5–6, 1789 Women march to Versailles and are joined by men in bringing the royal family back to Paris

July 12, 1790 Civil Constitution of the Clergy

June 20, 1791 Louis and Marie-Antoinette attempt to flee in disguise and are captured at Varennes

April 20, 1792 Declaration of war on Austria

August 10, 1792 Insurrection in Paris and attack on Tuileries palace lead to removal of king’s authority

September 2–6, Murder of prisoners in “September massacres” 1792 in Paris

September 22, 1792 Establishment of the republic

January 21, 1793 Execution of Louis XVI

March 11, 1793 Beginning of uprising in the Vendée

May 31–June 2, 1793 Insurrection leading to arrest of the Girondins

July 27, 1793 Robespierre named to the Committee of Public Safety

September 29, 1793 Convention establishes General Maximum on prices and wages

October 16, 1793 Execution of Marie-Antoinette

February 4, 1794 Slavery abolished in the French colonies

March 13–24, 1794 Arrest, trial, and executions of so-called ultra- revolutionaries

March 30–April 5, Arrest, trial, and executions of Danton and his 1794 followers

July 27, 1794 Arrest of Robespierre and his supporters (exe- cuted July 28–29); beginning of end of the Terror

October 26, 1795 Directory government takes office

April 1796– Succession of Italian victories by Bonaparte October 1797, 1795

in the Vendée. It purged Jacobins from local bodies and replaced them with their opponents. It arrested some of the most notorious “terrorists” in the Na- tional Convention, such as Carrier, and put them to death. Within the year, the new leaders abolished the Revolutionary Tribunal and closed the Jacobin Club in Paris. Popular demonstrations met severe repression. In southeastern France, in particular, the “White Terror” replaced the Jacobins’ “Red Terror.” Former officials and local Jacobin leaders were ha- rassed, beaten, and often murdered by paramilitary bands who had tacit support from the new author- ities. Those who remained in the National Conven- tion prepared yet another constitution in 1795, setting up a two-house legislature and an executive body — the Directory, headed by five directors.

The Directory regime tenuously held on to power for four years, all the while trying to fend off challenges from the remaining Jacobins and the resurgent royalists. The puritanical atmosphere of the Terror gave way to the pursuit of pleasure — low-cut dresses of transparent materials, the reap- pearance of prostitutes in the streets, fancy dinner parties, and “victims’ balls” where guests wore red ribbons around their necks as reminders of the guillotine. Bands of young men dressed in knee breeches and rich fabrics picked fights with known Jacobins and disrupted theater performances with loud antirevolutionary songs. All over France, people petitioned to reopen churches closed during the Terror. If necessary, they broke into a church to hold services with a priest who had been in hiding or a lay schoolteacher who was willing to say Mass.

Although the Terror had ended, the revolution had not. In 1794, the most democratic and most repressive phases of the Revolution both ended at once. Between 1795 and 1799, the republic en- dured in France, but it directed a war effort abroad that would ultimately bring to power the man who would dismantle the republic itself.

Review: What factors can explain the Terror? To what extent was it simply a response to a national emergency or a reflection of deeper problems within the French Revolution?

Revolution on the March War raged almost constantly from 1792 to 1815. At one time or another, and sometimes all at once, France faced every principal power in Europe. The French republic — and later the French Empire un- der its supreme commander, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte — proved an even more formidable op-

ponent than the France of Louis XIV. New means of mobilizing and organizing soldiers enabled the French to dominate Europe for a generation. The influence of the Revolution as a political model and the threat of French military conquest com- bined to challenge the traditional order in Europe.

Arms and Conquests The powers allied against France squandered their best chance to triumph in early 1793, when the French armies verged on chaos because of the em- igration of noble army officers and the problems of integrating new draftees. By the end of 1793, the French had a huge and powerful fighting force of 700,000 men. But the army still faced many problems in the field. As many as a third of the re- cent draftees deserted before or during battle. At times the soldiers were fed only moldy bread, and if their pay was late, they sometimes resorted to pillaging and looting. Generals might pay with their lives if they lost a key battle and their loyalty to the Revolution came under suspicion.

France nevertheless had one overwhelming advantage: those soldiers who agreed to serve fought for a revolution that they and their broth- ers and sisters had helped make. The republic was their government, and the army was in large meas- ure theirs too; many officers had risen through the ranks by skill and talent rather than by inheriting or purchasing their positions. One young peasant boy wrote to his parents, “Either you will see me return bathed in glory, or you will have a son who is a worthy citizen of France who knows how to die for the defense of his country.”

When the French armies invaded the Austrian Netherlands and crossed the Rhine in the summer of 1794, they proclaimed a war of liberation. Middle-class people near the northern and eastern borders of France reacted most positively to the French invasion (Map 19.3). In the Austrian Netherlands, Mainz, Savoy, and Nice, French offi- cers organized Jacobin Clubs that attracted locals. The clubs petitioned for annexation to France, and French legislation was then introduced, including the abolition of seigneurial dues. As the French an- nexed more and more territory, however, “liber- ated” people in many places began to view them as an army of occupation. Despite resistance, es- pecially in the Austrian Netherlands, these areas remained part of France until 1815, and the legal changes were permanent.

The Directory government that came to power in 1795 launched an even more aggressive policy of creating semi-independent “sister republics” wherever the armies succeeded. When Prussia

Revolution on the March 6071789–1799

declared neutrality in 1795, the French armies swarmed into the Dutch Republic, abolished the stadholderate, and — with the revolutionary pen- chant for renaming — created the new Batavian Republic, a satellite of France. The brilliant young general Napoleon Bonaparte gained a reputation by defeating the Austrian armies in northern Italy in 1797 and then created the Cisalpine Republic. Next he overwhelmed Venice and then handed it over to the Austrians in exchange for a peace agree- ment that lasted less than two years. After the French attacked the Swiss cantons in 1798, they set up the Helvetic Republic and curtailed many of the Catholic church’s privileges. They conquered the Papal States in 1798 and installed a Roman Repub- lic, forcing the pope to flee to Siena.

The revolutionary wars had an immediate im- pact on European life at all levels of society. Thou- sands of men died in every country involved, with perhaps as many as 200,000 casualties in the French armies alone in 1794 and 1795. More soldiers died in hospitals as a result of their wounds than on the battlefields. Constant warfare hampered world

commerce and especially disrupted French over- seas shipping. Times were now hard almost every- where, because the dislocations of internal and external commerce provoked constant shortages.

European Reactions to Revolutionary Change The French Revolution profoundly transformed European politics and social relations. (See “Con- trasting Views,” page 610.) Many had greeted the events of 1789 with unabashed enthusiasm. The English Unitarian minister Richard Price had ex- ulted,“Behold, the light . . . after setting AMERICA free, reflected to FRANCE, and there kindled into a blaze that lays despotism in ashes, and warms and illuminates EUROPE.” Democrats and re- formers from many countries flooded to Paris to witness events firsthand. Supporters of the French Revolution in Great Britain joined constitutional and reform societies that sprang up in many cities. The most important of these societies, the London Corresponding Society, founded in 1792, corre-

608 Chapter 19 ■ The C ataclysm of Revolution 1789–1799

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MAP 19.3 French Expansion, 1791–1799 The influence of the French Revolution on neighboring territories is dramatically evident in this map. The French directly annexed the papal territories in southern France in 1791, Nice and Savoy in 1792, and the Austrian Netherlands in 1795. They set up a series of sister republics in the former Dutch Republic and in various Italian states. Local people did not always welcome these changes. For example, the French made the Dutch pay a huge war indemnity, support a French occupying army of 25,000 soldiers, and give up some southern territories. The sister republics faced a future of subordination to French national interests.

sponded with the Paris Jacobin Club and served as a center for reform agitation in England. Pro-French feeling ran even stronger in Ireland. Catholics and Presbyterians, both excluded from the vote, came together in 1791 in the Society of United Irish- men, which eventually pressed for secession from England.

European elites became alarmed when the French abolished monarchy and nobility and en- couraged popular participation in politics. The British government, for example, quickly sup- pressed the corresponding societies and harassed their leaders, charging that their ideas and their contacts with the French were seditious (see the cartoon above for a negative English view). When the Society of United Irishmen timed a rebellion to coincide with an attempted French invasion in 1798, the British mercilessly repressed them, killing thirty thousand rebels. Twice as many reg- ular British troops (seventy thousand) as fought in any of the major continental battles were re- quired to put down the rebellion. Spain’s royal gov-

ernment suppressed all news from France, fearing that it might ignite the spirit of revolt.

Elites sometimes found allies in opposing the French. Peasants in the German and Italian states fiercely resisted French occupation, often in the form of banditry. Because the French offered the Jews religious toleration and civil and political rights wherever they conquered, anti-French groups sometimes attacked Jews. One German traveler reported, “It is characteristic of the re- gion in which the bandits are based that these two nations [the French and the Jews] are hated. So crimes against them are motivated not just by a wish to rob them but also by a variety of fanati- cism which is partly political and partly reli- gious.”

Many leading intellectuals in the German states, including the philosopher Immanuel Kant, initially supported the revolutionary cause, but af- ter 1793 most of them turned against the popular violence and military aggressiveness of the Revo- lution. One of the greatest writers of the age,

Revolution on the March 6091789–1799

The English Rebuttal In this caricature, James Gillray satirizes the French version of liberty. Gillray produced thousands of political caricatures. How would you interpret the message of this print? (© Copyright The Trustees of the British Museum.)

610 Chapter 19 ■ The C ataclysm of Revolution 1789–1799

Contemporaries instantly grasped the cataclysmic significance of the French Revolution and began to argue about its lessons for their own countries. A member of the British Parliament, Edmund Burke, ignited a firestorm of controversy with his Reflections on the Rev- olution in France (Document 1). He condemned the French revo- lutionaries for attempting to build a government on abstract reasoning rather than taking historical traditions and customs into account; his book provided a foundation for the doctrine known as conservatism, which argued for “conserving” the traditional foun- dations of society and avoiding the pitfalls of radical or revolution- ary change. Burke’s views provoked a strong response from the English political agitator Thomas Paine. Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense (1776) had helped inspire the British North American colonies to demand independence from Great Britain. In The Rights of Man (Document 2), written fifteen years later, Paine attacked the tradi- tional order as fundamentally unjust and defended the idea of a rev- olution to uphold rights. Joseph de Maistre, an aristocratic opponent of both the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, put the conservative attack on the French Revolution into a deeply religious and absolutist framework (Document 3). In contrast, Anne-Louise- Germaine de Staël, an opponent of Napoleon and one of the most influential intellectuals of the early nineteenth century, took the view that the violence of the Revolution had been the product of genera- tions of superstition and arbitrary rule, that is, rule by an absolutist Catholic church and monarchical government (Document 4).

1. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

An Irish-born supporter of the American colonists in their opposi- tion to the British Parliament, Edmund Burke (1729–1797) op- posed the French Revolution. He argued the case for tradition, continuity, and gradual reform based on practical experience— what he called “a sure principle of conservation.”

Can I now congratulate the same nation [France] upon its free- dom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a mad- man, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and whole- some darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate an highwayman and mur- derer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? . . .

Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it; and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract per- fection: but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to every thing they want every thing. . . . The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori [based on theory rather than on experience]. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practi- cal science; because the real effects of moral causes are not al- ways immediate; but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation; and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. . . .

In the groves of their academy, at the end of every visto [vista], you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. . . . To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

Source: Two Classics of the French Revolution: Reflections on the Revolution in France (Edmund Burke) and The Rights of Man (Thomas Paine) (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1973), 19, 71–74, 90–91.

2. Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)

In his reply to Burke, The Rights of Man, which sold 200,000 copies in two years, Thomas Paine (1737–1809) defended the idea of re- form based on reason, advocated a concept of universal human rights, and attacked the excesses of privilege and tradition in Great Britain. Elected as a deputy to the French National Convention in 1793 in recognition of his writings in favor of the French Revolution, Paine narrowly escaped condemnation as an associate of the Girondins.

Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts, principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, ad- mitted, or denied. Mr. Burke, with his usual outrage, abuses the Declaration of the Rights of Man, published by the National As- sembly of France, as the basis on which the Constitution of France is built. This he calls “paltry and blurred sheets of paper about the rights of man.”

Does Mr. Burke mean to deny that man has any rights? If he does, then he must mean that there are no such things as rights

C O N T R A S T I N G V I E W S

Perspectives on the French Revolution

any where, and that he has none himself; for who is there in the world but man? . . .

Hitherto we have spoken only (and that but in part) of the natural rights of man. We have now to consider the civil rights of man, and to show how the one originates from the other. Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. His natural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights. . . .

A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be pro- duced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the crea- ture of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting a government. . . .

Can then Mr. Burke produce the English Constitution? If he cannot, we may fairly conclude, that though it has been so much talked about, no such thing as a constitution exists, or ever did exist, and consequently that the people have yet a constitution to form.

Source: Two Classics of the French Revolution: Reflections on the Revolution in France (Edmund Burke) and The Rights of Man (Thomas Paine) (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1973), 302, 305–306, 309.

3. Joseph De Maistre, Considerations on France (1797)

An aristocrat born in Savoy, Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) be- lieved in reform but he passionately opposed both the Enlighten- ment and the French Revolution as destructive to good order. He believed that Protestants, Jews, lawyers, journalists, and scientists all threatened the social order because they questioned the need for absolute obedience to authority in matters both religious and po- litical. De Maistre set the foundations for reactionary conservatism, a conservatism that defended throne and altar.

This consideration especially makes me think that the French Revolution is a great epoch and that its consequences, in all kinds of ways, will be felt far beyond the time of its explosion and the limits of its birthplace. . . .

There is a satanic quality to the French Revolution that dis- tinguishes it from everything we have ever seen or anything we are ever likely to see in the future. Recall the great assemblies, Robespierre’s speech against the priesthood, the solemn apostasy [renunciation of vows] of the clergy, the desecration of objects of worship, the installation of the goddess of reason, and that multitude of extraordinary actions by which the provinces

sought to outdo Paris. All this goes beyond the ordinary circle of crime and seems to belong to another world.

Source: Joseph de Maistre, Considerations on France, trans. Richard A. Lebrun (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 21, 41.

4. Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël, Considerations on the Main Events of the French Revolution (1818)

De Staël published her views long after the Revolution was over, but she had lived through the events herself. She was the daugh- ter of Jacques Necker, Louis XVI’s Swiss Protestant finance minis- ter. Necker’s dismissal in July 1789 had sparked the attack on the Bastille. De Staël published novels, literary tracts, and memoirs and became one of the best-known writers of the nineteenth cen- tury. In her writings she defended the Enlightenment; though she opposed the violence unleashed by the Revolution, she traced it back to the excesses of monarchical government. (See her portrait on page 627.)

Once the people were freed from their harness there is no doubt that they were in a position to commit any kind of crime. But how can we explain their depravity? The government we are now supposed to miss so sorely [the former monarchy] had had plenty of time to form this guilty nation. The priests whose teaching, example, and wealth were supposed to be so good for us had supervised the childhood of the generation that broke out against them. The class that revolted in 1789 must have been accustomed to the privileges of feudal nobility which, as we are also assured, are so peculiarly agreeable to those on whom they weigh [the peasants]. How does it happen, then, that the seed of so many vices was sown under the ancient in- stitutions? . . . What can we conclude from this, then? — That no people had been as unhappy for the preceding century as the French. If the Negroes of Saint-Domingue have committed even greater atrocities, it is because they had been even more greatly oppressed.

Source: Vivian Folkenflik, ed., An Extraordinary Woman: Selected Writings of Germaine de Staël (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 365–66.

Questions to Consider 1. Which aspect of the French Revolution most disturbed these

commentators? 2. How would you align each of these writers on a spectrum run-

ning from extreme right to extreme left in politics? 3. How would each of these writers judge the Enlightenment that

preceded the French Revolution?

Revolution on the March 6111789–1799

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), typified the turn in sentiment against revolutionary politics:

Freedom is only in the realm of dreams And the beautiful blooms only in song.

The German states, still run by many separate rulers, experienced a profound artistic and intel- lectual revival, which eventually connected with anti-French nationalism. This renaissance included a resurgence of intellectual life in the universities, a thriving press (1225 journals were launched in the 1780s alone), and the multiplication of Masonic lodges and literary clubs.

Even far from France, echoes of revolutionary upheaval could be heard. In the United States, for example, opinion fiercely divided on the virtues of the French Revolution. In Sweden, King Gustavus III (r. 1771–1792) was assassinated by a nobleman who claimed that “the king has violated his oath . . . and declared himself an enemy of the realm.” The king’s son Gustavus IV (r. 1792–1809) was con- vinced that the French Jacobins had sanctioned his father’s assassination, and he insisted on avoiding “licentious liberty.” Despite government controls on news, 278 outbreaks of peasant unrest occurred in Russia between 1796 and 1798. One Russian land- lord complained, “This is the self-same . . . spirit of insubordination and independence, which has spread through all Europe.”

Poland Extinguished, 1793–1795 The spirit of independence made the Poles and Lithuanians especially discontent, for they had already suffered a significant loss of territory and

population. Fearing French influence, Prussia joined Russia in dividing up generous new slices of Polish territory in the second partition of 1793 (Map 19.4). As might be expected, Poland’s reform movement became even more pro-French. Some leaders fled abroad, including Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746–1817), an officer who had been a foreign volunteer in the War of American Independence and who now escaped to Paris. In the spring of 1794, Kościuszko returned from France to lead a nationalist revolt.

Cracow, Warsaw, and the old Lithuanian cap- ital, Vilnius, responded with uprisings. Kościuszko faced an immediate, insoluble dilemma. He could win only if the peasants joined the struggle — highly unlikely unless villagers could be convinced that serfdom would end. But such a drastic step risked alienating the nobles who had started the revolt. So Kościuszko compromised. He promised the serfs a reduction of their obligations, but not freedom itself. A few peasant bands joined the in- surrection, but most let their lords fight it out alone. Urban workers displayed more enthusiasm; at Warsaw, for example, a mob hanged several Russian collaborators, including an archbishop in his full regalia.

The uprising failed. Kościuszko won a few vic- tories, but when the Russian empress Catherine the Great’s forces regrouped, they routed the Poles and Lithuanians. Kościuszko and other Polish Patriot leaders languished for years in Russian and Austrian prisons. Taking no further chances, Russia, Prussia, and Austria wiped Poland completely from the map in the third partition of 1795. “The Polish question” would plague international rela-

612 Chapter 19 ■ The C ataclysm of Revolution 1789–1799

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MAP 19.4 The Second and Third Partitions of Poland, 1793 and 1795 In 1793, Prussia took over territory that included 1.1 million Poles while Russia gained 3 million new inhabitants. Austria gave up any claims to Poland in exchange for help from Russia and Prussia in acquiring Bavaria. In the final division of 1795, Prussia absorbed an additional 900,000 Polish subjects, including those in Warsaw; Austria incorporated 1 million Poles and the city of Cracow; Russia gained another 2 million Poles. The three powers determined never to use the term Kingdom of Poland again. ■ How had Poland become such a prey to the other powers?

tions for more than a century as Polish rebels flocked to any international upheaval that might undo the partitions. Beyond all this maneuvering lay the unsolved problem of Polish serfdom, which isolated the nation’s gentry and townspeople from the rural masses.

Revolution in the Colonies The revolution that produced so much upheaval in continental Europe had repercussions in France’s Caribbean colonies. These colonies were

crucial to the French economy. Twice the size in land area of the neighboring British colonies, they also produced nearly twice as much revenue in exports. The slave population had doubled in the French colonies in the twenty years before 1789. St. Domingue (present-day Haiti) was the most important French colony. Occupying the western half of the island of Hispaniola, it was inhabited by 465,000 slaves, 30,000 whites, and 28,000 free people of color, whose primary job was to apprehend runaway slaves and ensure plantation security.

Revolution on the March 6131789–1799

Address on Abolishing the Slave Trade (February 5, 1790)

D O C U M E N T

Founded in 1788, the Society of the Friends of Blacks agitated for the abolition of the slave trade. Among its members were many who became leaders of the French Revolu- tion. In a pamphlet, titled Address to the National Assembly in Favor of the Abo- lition of the Slave Trade, the Friends of Blacks denied that they wanted to abolish slavery altogether and argued only for the abolition of the slave trade. The pamphlet raised the prospect of a slave revolt, which in fact broke out in St. Domingue in 1791. As a consequence, many planters and their allies accused the society of fomenting the revolt.

You have declared them, these rights; you have engraved on an immortal monu- ment that all men are born and remain free and equal in rights; you have re- stored to the French people these rights that despotism had for so long de- spoiled; . . . you have broken the chains of feudalism that still degraded a good number of our fellow citizens; you have announced the destruction of all the stigmatizing distinctions that religious or political prejudices introduced into the great family of humankind. . . .

We are not asking you to restore to French blacks those political rights which alone, nevertheless, attest to and maintain

the dignity of man; we are not even ask- ing for their liberty. No; slander, bought no doubt with the greed of the shipown- ers, ascribes that scheme to us and spreads it everywhere; they want to stir up every- one against us, provoke the planters and their numerous creditors, who take alarm even at gradual emancipation. They want to alarm all the French, to whom they de- pict the prosperity of the colonies as in- separable from the slave trade and the perpetuity of slavery.

. . . The immediate emancipation of the blacks would not only be a fatal oper- ation for the colonies; it would even be a deadly gift for the blacks, in the state of abjection and incompetence to which cu- pidity has reduced them. It would be to abandon to themselves and without assis- tance children in the cradle or mutilated and impotent beings.

It is therefore not yet time to demand that liberty; we ask only that one cease butchering thousands of blacks regularly every year in order to take hundreds of captives; we ask that henceforth cease the prostitution, the profaning of the French name, used to authorize these thefts, these atrocious murders; we demand in a word the abolition of the slave trade. . . .

In regard to the colonists, we will demonstrate to you that if they need to re-

cruit blacks in Africa to sustain the popu- lation of the colonies at the same level, it is because they wear out the blacks with work, whippings, and starvation; that, if they treated them with kindness and as good fathers of families, these blacks would multiply and that this population, always growing, would increase cultiva- tion and prosperity. . . .

If some motive might on the contrary push them [the blacks] to insurrection, might it not be the indifference of the Na- tional Assembly about their lot? Might it not be the insistence on weighing them down with chains, when one consecrates everywhere this eternal axiom: that all men are born free and equal in rights. So then therefore there would only be fetters and gallows for the blacks while good for- tune glimmers only for the whites? Have no doubt, our happy revolution must re- electrify the blacks whom vengeance and resentment have electrified for so long, and it is not with punishments that the ef- fect of this upheaval will be repressed. From one insurrection badly pacified will twenty others be born, of which one alone can ruin the colonists forever.

Source: Adresse à l’Assemblée Nationale, pour l’abolition de la traite des noirs. Par la Société des Amis des Noirs de Paris (Paris, February 1790), 1–4, 10–11, 17, 19–22. Translation by Lynn Hunt.

Despite the efforts of a Paris club called the Friends of Blacks, most French revolutionaries did not consider slavery a pressing problem. As one deputy ex- plained, “This regime [in the colonies] is oppressive, but it gives a livelihood to several mil- lion Frenchmen. This regime is barbarous but a still greater bar- barity will result if you interfere with it without the necessary knowledge.” (See Document, “Address on Abolish- ing the Slave Trade,” page 613.)

In August 1791, however, the slaves in north- ern St. Domingue, inspired by the slogan “Listen to the voice of Liberty which speaks in the hearts of all,” organized a large-scale revolt. To restore au- thority over the slaves, the Legislative Assembly in Paris granted civil and political rights to the free

blacks. This action infuriated white planters and merchants, who in 1793 signed an agreement with Great Britain, now France’s enemy in war, declaring British sovereignty over St. Domingue. To complicate matters further, Spain, which controlled the rest of the island and had entered on Great Britain’s side in the war with France, offered freedom to individual slave rebels who

joined the Spanish armies as long as they agreed to maintain the slave regime for the other blacks.

The few thousand French republican troops on St. Domingue were outnumbered, and to pre- vent complete military disaster, the French com- missioner freed all the slaves in his jurisdiction in August 1793 without permission from the govern- ment in Paris. In February 1794, the National Con-

614 Chapter 19 ■ The C ataclysm of Revolution 1789–1799

Toussaint L’Ouverture The leader of the St. Domingue slave uprising appears in his general’s uniform, sword in hand. This portrait appeared in one of the earliest histories of the revolt, Marcus Rainsford’s Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti (London, 1805). Toussaint, a former slave who educated himself, fascinated many of his contemporaries in Europe as well as the New World by turning a chaotic slave rebellion into an organized and ultimately successful independence movement. (North Wind Picture Archives.)

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vention formally abolished slavery and granted full rights to all black men in the colonies. These actions had the desired effect. One of the ablest black gen- erals allied with the Spanish, the ex-slave François Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture (1743–1803), changed sides and committed his troops to the French (see the illustration on page 614). The French eventually appointed Toussaint governor of St. Domingue as a reward for his efforts.

The vicious fighting and the flight of whites left St. Domingue’s economy in ruins. In 1800, the plantations produced one-fifth of what they had in 1789. In the zones Toussaint controlled, army officers or government officials took over the great estates and kept all those working in agriculture under military discipline. The former slaves were bound to their estates like serfs and forced to work the plantations in exchange for an autonomous family life and the right to maintain personal gar- den plots.

Toussaint remained in charge until 1802, when Napoleon sent French armies to regain con- trol of the island. They arrested Toussaint and transported him to France, where he died in prison. His arrest prompted the English poet William Wordsworth to write of him:

There’s not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee; thou hast great allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.

Toussaint became a hero to abolitionists every- where, a potent symbol of black struggles to win freedom. Napoleon attempted to restore slavery, as he had in the other French Caribbean colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique, but the remaining black generals defeated his armies and in 1804 pro- claimed the Republic of Haiti.

Review: Why did some groups outside of France em- brace the French Revolution while others resisted it?

Conclusion Growing out of aspirations for freedom that also inspired the Dutch, Belgians, and Poles, the revo- lution that shook France permanently altered the political landscape of the Western world. Between

1789 and 1799, monarchy as a form of government had given way in France to a republic whose lead- ers were elected. Aristocracy based on rank and birth had been undermined in favor of civil equal- ity and the promotion of merit. The people who marched in demonstrations, met in clubs, and, in the case of men, voted in national elections for the first time had insisted that government respond to them. Thousands of men had held elective office. A revolutionary government had tried to teach new values with a refashioned calendar, state fes- tivals, and a civic religion. Its example inspired would-be revolutionaries everywhere, including in France’s own colonies.

But the French Revolution also had its darker side. The divisions created by the Revolution within France endured in many cases until after World War II. Even now, French public-opinion surveys ask if it was right to execute the king in 1793 (most believe Louis XVI was guilty of treason but should not have been executed). The revolutionaries pro- claimed human rights and democratic government as a universal goal, but they also explicitly excluded women, even though they admitted Protestant, Jewish, and eventually black men. They used the new spirit of national pride to inspire armies and then used them to conquer other peoples. Their ideals of universal education, religious toleration, and democratic participation could not prevent the institution of new forms of government terror to persecute, imprison, and kill dissidents. These paradoxes created an opening for Napoleon Bona- parte, who rushed in with his remarkable military and political skills to push France — and with it all of Europe — in new directions.

Conclusion 6151789–1799

For Further Exploration ■ For suggested references, including Web sites,

for topics in this chapter, see page SR-1 at the end of the book.

■ For additional primary-source material from this period, see Chapter 19 in Sources of THE MAKING OF THE WEST, Third Edition.

■ For Web sites and documents related to topics in this chapter, see Make History at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

616 Chapter 19 ■ The C ataclysm of Revolution 1789–1799

States established by revolutionary France

Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire

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Corsica

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IRELAND

SCOTLAND

ENGLAND

NORTH AFRICA

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MAPP ING THE W E ST

Europe in 1799 France’s expansion during the revolutionary wars threatened to upset the balance of power in Europe. A century earlier, the English and Dutch had allied and formed a Europe-wide coalition to check the territorial ambitions of Louis XIV. Thwarting French ambitions after 1799 would prove to be even more of a challenge to the other European powers. The Dutch had been reduced to satellite status, as had most of the Italian states. Even Austria and Prussia would suffer devastating losses to the French on the battlefield. Only a new coalition of European powers could stop France in the future.

Chapter Review 6171789–1799

Key Terms and People Making Connections

Review Questions

1. Should the French Revolution be viewed as the origin of democracy or the origin of totalitarianism (a government in which no dissent is allowed)? Explain.

2. Why did other European rulers find the French Revolution so threatening?

1. How did the beginning of the French Revolution re- semble the other revolutions of 1787–1789?

2. Why did the French Revolution turn in an increasingly rad- ical direction after 1789?

3. What factors can explain the Terror? To what extent was it simply a response to a national emergency or a reflection of deeper problems within the French Revolution?

4. Why did some groups outside of France embrace the French Revolution while others resisted it?

Chapter Review

Louis XVI (591)

Marie-Antoinette (591)

Estates General (592)

Great Fear (595)

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (595)

Jacobin Club (599)

Maximilien Robespierre (600)

Terror (600)

de-Christianization (603)

Thermidorian Reaction (606)

For practice quizzes, a customized study plan, and other study tools, see the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/hunt.

Important Events

1787 Dutch Patriot revolt is stifled by Prussian invasion

1788 Beginning of resistance of Austrian Netherlands against reforms of Joseph II; opening of reform parliament in Poland

1789 French Revolution begins

1790 Internal divisions lead to collapse of resistance in Austrian Netherlands

1791 Beginning of slave revolt in St. Domingue (Haiti)

1792 Beginning of war between France and the rest of Europe; second revolution of August 10 overthrows monarchy

1793 Second partition of Poland by Austria and Russia; Louis XVI of France executed for treason

1794 Abolition of slavery in French colonies; Robes- pierre’s government by terror falls

1795 Third (final) partition of Poland; France annexes the Austrian Netherlands

1797–1798 Creation of “sister republics” in Italian states and Switzerland

In her novel Frankenstein (1818), the prototype for modern thrillers,Mary Shelley tells the story of a Swiss technological genius who cre-ates a humanlike monster in his pursuit of scientific knowledge. The monster, “so scaring and unearthly in his ugliness,” terrifies all who en-

counter him and ends by destroying Dr. Frankenstein’s own loved ones.

Despite desperate chases across deserts and frozen landscapes, Franken-

stein never manages to trap the monster, who is last seen hunched over

his creator’s deathbed.

Frankenstein’s monster can be taken as a particularly horrifying in-

carnation of the fears of the postrevolutionary era, but which fears did

Shelley have in mind? Did the monster represent the French Revolu-

tion, which had devoured its own children in the Terror? Shelley was

the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, an English feminist who had de-

fended the French Revolution and died in childbirth when Mary was

born. Mary Shelley was also the wife of the romantic poet Percy Bysshe

Shelley, who often wrote against the ugliness of contemporary life and

in opposition to the conservative politics that had triumphed in Great

Britain after Napoleon’s fall. Whatever the meaning — and Mary Shelley

may well have intended more than one — Frankenstein makes the

forceful point that humans cannot always control their own creations.

The Enlightenment and the French Revolution had celebrated the

virtues of human creativity, but Shelley shows that innovation often

has a dark and uncontrollable side.

Those who witnessed Napoleon Bonaparte’s stunning rise to

European dominance might have cast him as either Frankenstein or his

monster. Like the scientist Frankenstein, Bonaparte created something

The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte 620 • A General Takes Over • From Republic to Empire • The New Paternalism:

The Civil Code • Patronage of Science and

Intellectual Life

“Europe Was at My Feet”: Napoleon’s Conquests 628 • The Grand Army and Its Victories,

1800–1807 • The Impact of French Victories • From Russian Winter to Final

Defeat, 1812–1815

The “Restoration” of Europe 636 • The Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815 • The Emergence of Conservatism • The Revival of Religion

Challenges to the Conservative Order 640 • Romanticism • Political Revolts in the 1820s • Revolution and Reform, 1830–1832

619

Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy 1800–1830

C H A P T E R

20

Napoleon as Military Hero In this painting from 1800–1801, Napoleon Crossing the Alps at St. Bernard, Jacques- Louis David reminds the French of Napoleon’s heroic military exploits. Napoleon is a picture of calm and composure while his horse shows the fright and energy of the moment. David painted this propagandistic image shortly after one of his former students went to the guillotine on a trumped-up charge of plotting to assassinate the new French leader. The former organizer of republican festivals during the Terror had become a kind of court painter for the new regime. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/ Art Resource, NY.)

dramatically new: the French Empire with himself as emperor. Like the former kings of France, he ruled under his first name. This Corsican artillery officer who spoke French with an Italian accent ended the French Revolution even while maintain- ing some of its most important innovations. Bona- parte transformed France from a republic with democratically elected leaders to an empire with a new aristocracy based on military service. But he kept the revolutionary administration and most of the laws that ensured equal treatment of citizens. Although he tolerated no opposition at home, he prided himself on bringing French-style changes to peoples elsewhere.

Bonaparte continued his revolutionary policy of conquest and annexation until it reached grotesque dimensions. His foreign policies made many see him as a monster hungry for dominion; he turned the sister republics of the revolutionary era into kingdoms personally ruled by his relatives, and he exacted tribute wherever he triumphed. Eventually, resistance to the French armies and the ever-mounting costs of military glory toppled Napoleon. The powers allied against him met and agreed to restore the monarchical governments that had been overthrown by the French, shrink France back to its prerevolutionary boundaries, and maintain this settlement against future de- mands for change.

Although the people of Europe longed for peace and stability in the aftermath of the Napoleonic whirlwind, they lived in a deeply un- settled world. Profoundly affected by French mil- itary occupation, many groups of people organized to demand ethnic and cultural autonomy, first from Napoleon and then from the restored governments after 1815. In 1830, a new round of revolutions broke out in France, Belgium, Poland, and some of the Italian states. The revolutionary legacy was far from exhausted.

Focus Question: How did Napoleon Bonaparte’s actions force other European rulers to change their policies?

The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte In 1799, a charismatic young general took over the French republic and set France on a new course. Within a year, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) had effectively ended the French Revolution and steered France toward an authoritarian state. As emperor after 1804, he dreamed of European in- tegration in the tradition of Augustus and Charle- magne, but he also mastered the details of practical administration. To achieve his goals, he compro- mised with the Catholic church and with exiled aristocrats willing to return to France. His most enduring accomplishment, the new Civil Code, tempered the principles of the Enlightenment and the Revolution with an insistence on the powers of fathers over children, husbands over wives, and employers over workers. His influence spread into many spheres as he personally patronized scien- tific inquiry and encouraged artistic styles in line with his vision of imperial greatness.

A General Takes Over It would have seemed astonishing in 1795 that the twenty-six-year-old son of a noble family from the island of Corsica off the Italian coast would within four years become the supreme ruler of France and

620 Chapter 20 ■ Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy 1800–1830

Napoleon Bonaparte: The French general who became First Consul in 1799 and emperor in 1804; after losing the battle of Waterloo in 1815, he was exiled to the island of St. Helena.

1800 1805 1810 1815

■ 1799 Coup against Directory; Napoleon named First Consul

■ 1801 Napoleon signs concordat with pope

■ 1804 Napoleon crowned emperor; issues Civil Code

■ 1805 Battle of Trafalgar; battle of Austerlitz

■ 1812 Napoleon invades Russia

■ 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna

■ 1815 Napoleon defeated at Waterloo, exiled to St. Helena

1820 1825 1830 1835

one of the greatest military leaders in world his- tory. That year, Bonaparte was a penniless artillery officer, only recently released from prison as a pre- sumed Robespierrist. Thanks to some early mili- tary successes and links to Parisian politicians, however, he was named commander of the French army in Italy in 1796.

Bonaparte’s astounding success in the Italian campaigns of 1796–1797 launched his meteoric career. With an army of fewer than fifty thousand men, he defeated the Piedmontese and the Austrians. In quick order, he established client republics dependent on his own authority, negotiated with the Austrians himself, and molded the army into his personal force by paying the soldiers in cash taken as tribute from the newly conquered terri- tories. He mollified the Directory government by sending home wagonloads of Italian masterpieces of art, which were added to Parisian museum col- lections (most are still there) after being paraded in victory festivals.

In 1798, the Directory set aside its plans to in- vade England, gave Bonaparte command of the army raised for that purpose, and sent him across the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt. The Directory government hoped that French occupation of Egypt would strike a blow at British trade by cut- ting the route to India. Although the French im- mediately defeated a much larger Egyptian army, the British admiral Lord Horatio Nelson destroyed the French fleet while it was anchored in Aboukir Bay, cutting the French off from home. In the face of determined resistance and an outbreak of the bubonic plague, Bonaparte’s armies retreated from a further expedition in Syria. But the French oc- cupation of Egypt lasted long enough for that largely Muslim country to experience the same kinds of Enlightenment-inspired legal reforms that had been introduced in Europe: the French abolished torture, introduced equality before the

law, eliminated religious taxes, and proclaimed re- ligious toleration.

Even the failures of the Egyptian campaign did not dull Bonaparte’s luster. Bonaparte had taken France’s leading scientists with him on the expe- dition, and his soldiers had discovered a slab of black basalt dating from 196 B.C.E. written in both hieroglyphic and Greek. Called the Rosetta stone after a nearby town, it enabled scholars to finally decipher the hieroglyphs used by the ancient Egyptians. With his army pinned down by Nelson’s victory at sea, Bonaparte slipped out of Egypt and made his way secretly to southern France.

In October 1799, Bonaparte arrived home at just the right moment. The war in Europe was go- ing badly. The territories of the former Austrian Netherlands had revolted against French conscrip- tion laws, and deserters swelled the ranks of rebels in western France. Amid increasing political insta- bility, generals in the field had become virtually independent, and the troops felt more loyal to their units and generals than to the republic. Disillusioned members of the government saw in Bonaparte’s return an occasion to overturn the constitution of 1795.

On November 9, 1799, the conspirators per- suaded the legislature to move out of Paris to avoid an imaginary Jacobin plot. But when Bonaparte stomped into the new meeting hall the next day and demanded immediate changes in the consti- tution, he was greeted by cries of “Down with the dictator!” His quick-thinking brother Lucien, pres- ident of the Council of Five Hundred (the lower house), saved Bonaparte’s coup by summoning troops guarding the hall and claiming that some deputies had tried to assassinate the popular general. The soldiers ejected those who opposed Bonaparte and left the remaining ones to vote to abolish the Directory and establish a new three- man executive called the consulate.

The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte 6211800–1830

■ 1818 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

■ 1820 Revolt against Spanish crown

■ 1824 Beethoven, Ninth Symphony

■ 1825 Decembrist Revolt in Russia

■ 1830 Greece gains independence; Charles X overthrown; Louis-Phillipe installed; Polish revolt fails

■ 1832 English Reform Bill; Goethe, Faust

Bonaparte became First Consul, a title revived from the ancient Roman republic. He promised to be a man above party and to restore order to the republic. A new constitution was submitted to the voters. Millions abstained from voting, and the government falsified the results to give an appearance of even greater support to the new regime. Inside France, political apathy had over- taken the original enthusiasm for revolutionary ideals. Altogether it was an unpromising begin- ning; yet within five years, Bonaparte would crown himself Napoleon I, emperor of the French. The French armies would recover from their reverses of 1799 to push the frontiers of French influence even farther eastward.

From Republic to Empire

Napoleon had no long-range plans to estab- lish himself as emperor and conquer most of Europe. The deputies of the legislature who engineered the coup d’état of November 1799 picked him as one of three provisional consuls only because he was a famous gen- eral. Napoleon immediately asserted his leadership over the other two consuls in the process of drafting another constitution — the fourth since 1789. He then set about put- ting his stamp on every aspect of French life, building monuments and institutions that in some cases have endured to the present day.

The End of the Republic. The constitution of 1799 made Napoleon the First Consul with the right to pick the Council of State, which drew up all laws. He exerted control by choosing men loyal to him. Government was no longer representative in any real sense: the new constitution eliminated direct elections for deputies and granted no inde- pendent powers to the three houses of the legislature. Napoleon and his advisers chose the legislature’s members out of a small pool of “notables.” Almost all men over twenty- one could vote in the plebiscite (referendum) to approve the constitution, but their only option was to choose yes or no.

Napoleon’s most urgent task was to rec- oncile to his regime Catholics who had been alienated by revolutionary policies. Although nominally Catholic, Napoleon held no deep religious convictions. “How can there be or-

der in the state without religion?” he asked cyni- cally. “When a man is dying of hunger beside another who is stuffing himself, he cannot accept this difference if there is not an authority who tells him: ‘God wishes it so.’ ” In 1801, a concordat with Pope Pius VII (r. 1800–1823) ended a decade of church-state conflict in France. The pope validated all sales of church lands, and the government agreed to pay the salaries of bishops and priests who would swear loyalty to the state. Catholicism was officially recognized as the religion of “the great majority of French citizens.” (The state also paid Protestant pastors’ salaries.) Thus, the pope brought the huge French Catholic population back into the fold and Napoleon gained the pope’s sup- port for his regime.

Napoleon continued the centralization of state power that had begun under the absolutist monarchy of Louis XIV and resumed under the

622 Chapter 20 ■ Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy 1800–1830

First Consul: The most important of the three consuls estab- lished by the French Constitution of 1800; the title, given to Napoleon Bonaparte, was taken from ancient Rome.

Francisco de Goya, The Colossus (1808–1812) The Spanish painter Goya might be imagined as portraying Frankenstein’s monster or Napoleon himself as the new giant overwhelming much of Europe. Goya painted for the Spanish court before Napoleon invaded and occupied Spain; after an illness left him deaf, he turned toward darkly imaginative works such as this one. (All rights reserved © Museo Nacional del Prado–Madrid.)

Terror. As First Consul, he appointed prefects who directly supervised local affairs in every de- partment in the country. He created the Bank of France to facilitate government borrowing and relied on gold and silver coinage rather than pa- per money. He made good use of budgets and im- proved tax collection, but he also frequently made ends meet by exacting tribute from the territories he conquered.

Napoleon promised order and an end to the upheavals of ten years of revolutionary turmoil, but his regime severely limited political expression. He never relied on mass executions to achieve con- trol, but he refused to allow those who opposed him to meet in clubs, influence elections, or pub- lish newspapers. A decree reduced the number of newspapers in Paris from seventy-three to thirteen (and then finally to four), and the newspapers that remained became government organs. Govern- ment censors had to approve all operas and plays, and they banned “offensive” artistic works even more frequently than their royal predecessors had. The minister of police, Joseph Fouché, once a lead- ing figure in the Terror of 1793–1794, could im- pose house arrest, arbitrary imprisonment, and surveillance of political dissidents. Political contest and debate shriveled to almost nothing. When a bomb attack on Napoleon’s carriage failed in 1800, Fouché suppressed the evidence of a royalist plot and instead arrested hundreds of former Jacobins. More than one hundred of them were deported and seven hundred imprisoned.

When it suited him, Napoleon also struck against royalist conspirators. In 1804, he ordered his police to kidnap from his residence in Germany Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Condé, duc d’Enghien. Napoleon had intelligence, which proved to be false, that d’Enghien had joined a plot in Paris against him. Even when he learned the truth, he insisted that a military tribunal try d’Enghien, a close relative of the dead king Louis XVI. D’Enghien was shot on the spot after a sum- mary trial. By then, Napoleon’s political intentions had become clear. He had named himself First Consul for life in 1802, and in 1804, with the pope’s blessing, he crowned himself emperor. Once again, plebiscites approved his decisions, but no alterna- tives were offered. The democratic political aims of the French Revolution had been trampled, but some aspects of daily life continued to be affected by those egalitarian ideals (see “Seeing History,” page 624).

Imperial Rule. Napoleon’s outsized personality dominated the new regime. His face and name

adorned coins, engravings, histories, paintings, and public monuments. His favorite painters em- bellished his legend by depicting him as a warrior- hero of mythic proportions even though he was short and physically unimpressive in person. Be- lieving that “what is big is always beautiful,” Napoleon embarked on ostentatious building projects that would outshine even those of Louis XIV. Government-commissioned architects built the Arc de Triomphe, the Stock Exchange, foun- tains, and even slaughterhouses. Most of his new construction reflected his neoclassical taste for monumental buildings set in vast empty spaces.

Napoleon worked hard at establishing his rep- utation as an efficient administrator with broad intellectual interests: he met frequently with scien- tists, jurists, and artists, and stories abounded of his unflagging energy. When not on military cam- paigns, he worked on state affairs, usually until 10:00 p.m., taking only a few minutes for each meal. “Authority,” declared his adviser Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, “must come from above and confidence from below.” To establish his au- thority, Napoleon relied on men who had served with him in the army. His chief of staff Alexandre Berthier, for example, became minister of war, and the chemist Claude Berthollet, who had organized the scientific part of the expedition to Egypt, became vice president of the Senate in 1804. Napoleon’s bureaucracy was based on a patron- client relationship, with Napoleon as the ultimate patron. Some of Napoleon’s closest associates mar- ried into his family.

Combining aristocratic and revolutionary val- ues in a new social hierarchy that rewarded merit and talent, Napoleon personally chose as senators the nation’s most illustrious generals, ministers, prefects, scientists, rich men, and former nobles. Intending to replace both the old nobility of birth and the republic’s strict emphasis on equality, in 1802 he took the first step toward creating a new nobility by founding the Legion of Honor. (Mem- bers of the legion received lifetime pensions along with their titles.) Napoleon usually equated honor with military success. By 1814, the legion had thirty-two thousand members, only 5 percent of them civilians.

In 1808, Napoleon introduced a complete hi- erarchy of noble titles, ranging from princes down to barons and chevaliers. All Napoleonic nobles had served the state. Titles could be inherited but had to be supported by wealth — a man could not be a duke without a fortune of 200,000 francs or a chevalier without 3,000 francs. To go along with their new titles, Napoleon gave his favorite gener-

The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte 6231800–1830

624 Chapter 20 ■ Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy 1800–1830

Some revolutions take place in therealm of social life and culturerather than politics. One of the most striking of these social and cultural revo- lutions was the wearing of trousers. Before the French Revolution of 1789, men of the middle classes and nobility wore knee breeches, stockings, and buckled shoes, as can be seen in the colored engraving from 1778. Trousers (long pants) were worn only by working-class men, who needed them to protect themselves on the job and from the mud in the streets.

From Napoleon onward, a shift to- ward trousers took place across Europe, not all at once but slowly and surely.

Napoleon himself wore close-fitting pan- taloons (from which the word pants is de- rived) until he became too fat and reverted back to knee breeches. The colored en- graving of a middle-class couple in 1830 shows how long pants had become the fashion for men. In line with political changes that installed equality under the law and careers open to merit rather than birth, men began to dress more alike; all men wore trousers. Taking a closer look at the men in both pictures, do you see any other changes in style and accessories that might reflect a less class-conscious society?

Women’s dress, in contrast, main- tained and even underlined social distinc-

tions after the Revolution. In the nineteenth century, middle- and upper-class women continued to wear dresses with such long and full skirts that they could not possibly be imagined working. Working women wore simpler blouses and skirts that al- lowed the movements necessary to labor at home or in manufacturing. Compare the pre-Revolution fashion shown with that of the woman in the 1830 engraving. Does one outfit look more comfortable than the other? Why or why not? What other differ- ences (or similarities) do you notice? Why do you think women’s fashion failed to be- come more uniform the way men’s did in