HIS 102 – Western Civilization II
Lecture  1--Early Modern Europe

I.  The Wars of Religion.

• The Results of the Protestant Reformation
• Long Term
• the Protestant Reformation strongly affected the development of other movements such as capitalism, liberalism, democracy, and nationalism by the way Protestants interpreted the Bible, the role of the church in society, and the people's role in the church
• Politically, the Reformation was a victory of the state over the church, which helped lead to the separation of church and state
• Calvinism was important in this movement because it emphasized the individual’s role in salvation and in the decision-making of an institution (the church) that supposedly had authority over him, thus accustoming average people to the idea of participatory government
• Protestantism led toward democracy because the its philosophy emphasized the rights of the individual, and provided an important precedent of successful revolt against powerful authority
• On the negative side, the Reformation broke down the almost monolithic power of the Catholic church--this opened the door for the development of stronger monarchs and political absolutism
• The Wars of Religion in Europe
• One of the major results of the Reformation was the end of religious unity in Europe
• Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Ireland, southern Germany, Austria, Poland, and Hungary remained primarily Catholic
• Holland, England, Scotland, northern Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia became Protestant
• The division of Christianity led to the growth of religious intolerance during the 16th and 17th centuries
• A series of religious wars broke out, some of which we've mentioned in the course of talking about the Reformation
• the civil wars in Germany with the Lutherans
• the civil war in Switzerland with Zwingli and Calvin
• the civil war in France involving the Huguenots
• Thirty Years War
• the most famous of these religious wars was the 30 Years' War (1618-48)
• The conflict was between the Protestants (led by Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden) and the Catholics (led by the Hapsburg rulers of Austria)
• Ultimately, it became a dynastic struggle as the French (pro-Protestant) and the Spanish (pro-Catholic) got sucked into the conflict
• The battleground was the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire
• It was the most brutal and destructive war of its time and nearly caused the economic and political collapse of Germany
• The war ended with the Treaty of Westphalia which resulted in France becoming more powerful, the emergence of the Netherlands and England as international players, and the gradual decline of Spain

II.  Commercial Revolution

• European economic life changed dramatically in the 16th and 17th centuries
• From the local subsistence economy of the Middle Ages, Europe was now engaged in a dynamic worldwide capitalism similar to modern times
• The profit motive became more pronounced as more people lived off commerce and industry
• Major changes in agriculture freed up labor for the industrial revolution
• Mercantilism became the norm for many nation states
• This is an economic system by  which the government regulates the economy to increase the wealth and power of the state
• Profit for the individual is only a secondary concern
• This insistence on putting the state above personal profit created major changes in economic theory in the 18th century and set the stage for the French revolution
• Before, in the Middle Ages, towns had stimulated trade, but now nation states did, meaning those countries without a strong national government, like Italy and Germany which were not even united, or eastern European states with fragile unity, could no longer compete successfully
• Mercantilists believed the amount of wealth was fixed
• The idea was to get as much as you could, but to do so you would take yours from someone else
• Thus, mercantilists stressed the importance of collecting precious metals, much of which they took from the New World, and insisted on a favorable balance of trade
• This concept meant selling more than you imported, and it implied the use of high tariffs to keep out foreign competition and a colonial system to produce what the mother country could not
• Spain and Portugal
• Spain and Portugal got off to an early lead in exploration and exploiting New World wealth,  but neither continued into the 17th century
• The population of Portugal was simply too small, and after emigration, plague and famine reduced it further, there were simply not enough Portuguese to administer or defend a huge empire
• Spain's decay was harder to explain, for she had both the population and money
• Spain, however, had hurt her own agricultural base by allowing sheep to graze even on plowed fields in order to get more wool for her wool industry
• Two and a half million sheep engaged in 400 mile long sheep runs from the south of Spain in the winter to the mountains in the north in the summer, and they munched their way through Spain's valuable farmland in the process
• The Spanish government was also the victim of its own religious persecution whereby the Jews and Muslims who made up her middle class were expelled, taking with them their skills
• Spain lacked skilled craftsmen, so Spaniards had to use outside banks and import the things they wanted
• Money from overseas simply created inflation in Spain which she then exported to the rest of Europe
• The Netherlands
• The Dutch made a stab at becoming the best in exploration and exploitation of non-European resources
• The Dutch East India company and West India company were private companies authorized by the state to administer overseas territories, and they were successful in the short run
• The Dutch also possessed better ships and lower freight rates than almost anyone else
• The religious toleration of the Netherlands encouraged those persecuted elsewhere to settle there
• But the Dutch, like the Portuguese, were simply too small in numbers to compete
• Especially when the English ended their civil war by 1660, and turned their full attention to the upstart Dutch, the Golden Age of Holland came to an end
• England
• England, after a slow start, prevailed in the long run
• Although inferior to France in population, fertility of the soil and size, England nonetheless had some major advantages that became clearer over time
• Her geographical isolation discouraged military conquest, so she did not have to pay for a huge army as France did
• The English were among the first to achieve national unity, and so did not suffer from the infighting so characteristic of Germany and Italy, let alone Eastern Europe
• In England, the aristocracy and middle class controlled Parliament, so the government enacted laws benefiting trade and banking, unlike in France, where the Estates General met less and less frequently
• One example of such favorable laws in England was a mercantilist's dream come true; the Navigation Acts restricted trading with England to English ships
• Ships could not sail directly to Europe from English colonies without first putting into English ports where they would pay a tax before reshipping
• In fact, the American colonists objected so strongly to these laws which benefited England but not them that it is one of the root causes of the American revolution
• Likewise, like the Dutch but unlike the Spanish, the English benefited from relative religious toleration
• There were no religious wars here to kill people off nor cause the flight of skilled craftsmen like the Huguenots in France or Jews in Spain
• The English were also aided by the fact that the distance from the mother country to her colonies in the New World was considerably shorter than the distance between Spain and her colonies, allowing the English to communicate more quickly and efficiently with her colonies
• Other economic developments
• Important commercial developments occurred in the 17th century as well
• Banking and accounting
• Public banks superseded private ones like the Fugger (the people who sold indulgences) family bank in Germany and Medici family bank in Florence of the early Renaissance
• The Bank of Sweden was first, but the most famous was the Bank of England, chartered in 1694
• Bank notes issued on these public banks and their sophisticated credit systems allowed commerce to flourish
• Double entry bookkeeping, invented now, helped people know at a glance how much they were really worth, and joint stock companies were created to raise the large amounts of money needed to succeed in this worldwide trade
• The two major developments of the 17th century, however, which set the stage for the industrial revolution of the 18th were the domestic system and changes in agriculture
• The Domestic System
• The domestic system, sometimes called the cottage industry system, worked by having an entrepreneur buy raw materials, like wool, and give it to peasants who took it home where the wool would be cleaned, carded, spun and woven into cloth
• The cloth would be returned to the entrepreneur at a specified date
• The domestic or cottage system had many advantages
• It increased employment in rural areas, providing the poor with income
• It was not regulated by guilds, so people were free to experiment with new methods
• In time, people began specializing, like making only buttons or only carding wool
• The domestic system was carried out at home, in a healthier environment than the later factories provided
• The system was suitable for common items like cloth, buttons, knives and shot, but it would not work for luxury goods like tapestries or fine porcelains that required special training to do and centralized workshops with a heavy investment in plant
• In France, perennially short of money, guilds were also taxing agents, so the French government was reluctant to encourage domestic industries for fear of losing tax revenue the guilds provided
• In fact, the domestic system appeared first in England which, not surprisingly, throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, specialized in simple, common items where the profit margin was small on each item, but total sales were enormous
• Second Agricultural Revolution
• The other major development was in agriculture
• People who had made fortunes in trade began buying land to consolidate their position socially and to take advantage of rising food prices
• These capitalist estate owners forced peasants to farm more efficiently--and they had a long way to go
• In the seventeenth century, European crop yields were little better than they had been in ancient times, that is about four or five bushels of wheat for every one sown
• The Second Agricultural Revolution these new capitalist managers created solved the problem of setting the land lie fallow to avoid soil exhaustion
• As late as the Middle Ages, one third of the land was left fallow each year
• Now farmers would  alternate grain that robbed the soil of nitrogen with nitrogen storing crops like beets and turnips
• Not only could you now grow on all the land, all the time, but the nitrogen storing crops actually rejuvenated the soil
• Elaborate systems of rotation were developed, some lasting as long as ten years
• More food meant more fodder for animals that in turn led to bigger and healthier herds and more manure to enrich the soil
• To carry out the system efficiently, however, required large amounts of land
• Thus the Second Agricultural Revolution led to the enclosing of common land and pastures which in turn created a new class of tenant farmers
• The independent English farmer began to disappear
• The first steps toward this agricultural revolution were taken in the Low Countries where land was scarce and the population large
• In short order, the process spread to England which began reclaiming marshes in the Dutch fashion around Cambridge on a scale unseen since the Cistercians
• In any case, the industrial revolution of the 18th century was made possible by the developments of the 17th century, both in domestic industry and agriculture, but the industrial revolution was like a cleaver through history, creating vast social and economic changes we still deal with