The Transformation of the West, 1450-1750

Chapter 14

Peasants and Population

In 1200C.E. most Europeans were peasants, bound to the land in serfdom and using inefficient agricultural practices.

Fifteen to thirty such heavily taxedfarming families supported each noble household.

Role of Women

Women labored in the fields with men but were subordinate to them.

Population

Europe’s population more than doubled between 1000 and 1445. Populationgrowth was accompanied by new agricultural technologies in northern Europe, including the three-field system and the cultivation of oats.

As population grew, people opened new land for cultivation, including land with poor soil and poor growing conditions. This caused a decline in average crop yields beginning around 1250.

Italian Renaissance

• Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince—realistic discussion of how to seize and maintain power

• Experimented with new ways to rule, not necessarily through divine right, but wanted to improve the general welfare

• Built more professional armies• 1st time diplomacy used in the West through

ambassadors

Renaissance moves North

• 1500 French & Spanish monarch invade Italy reducing political independence

• Atlantic trade routes reduce importance of the Mediterranean portshurting Italy’s economy

• $$increased ceremony with kings

• Literature—Shakespeare & Cervantes

Renaissance moves North

• Ordinary people weren’t effected much by the Renaissance

• Peasants and artisans continued on as before

The Commercial Economy and a New Family Pattern

• Improved quality of pulleys and pumps in mines

• Forge stronger iron products• Printing—German Johannes

Gutenberg invented moveable type causing literacy to gain ground

• Family pattern changed to a later marriage age and focus on nuclear family– Needed property to marry– Provided for birth control that

kept the population down

The Black Death and Social Change

The population pressure was eased by the Black Death (bubonic plague), which was brought from Kaffa to Italy and southern France in 1346. The plague ravaged Europe for two years and returned periodically in the late 1300s and 1400s, causing substantial decreases in population.

As a result of the plague:•Labor became more expensive in Western Europe. •This gave rise to a series of peasant and worker uprisings, higher wages, and the end of serfdom. •Serfdom in Eastern Europe grew extensively in the centuries after the Black Death.

So what?

Rural living standards improved, the period of apprenticeship for artisans was reduced, and per capita income rose.

Mines and Mills

Between 1200 and 1500 Europeans invented and used a variety of mechanical devices including water wheels and windmills. Mills were expensive to build, but over time they brought great profits to their owners.

Industrial enterprises, including mining, ironworking, stone quarrying, andtanning, grew during these centuries.

Therefore:

The results included both greaterproductivity and environmental damage including water pollution anddeforestation.

Urban Revival Trading Cities

Increases in trade and in manufacturing contributed to the growth of cities after 1200.

The relationship between trade, manufacturing, and urbanization isdemonstrated in the growth of the cities of northern Italy and in the urban areas of Champagne and Flanders.

The Venetian capture of Constantinople (1204), the opening of the Central Asiancaravan trade under the Mongol Empire, and the post-Mongol development of the Mediterranean galley trade with Constantinople, Beirut, and Alexandriabrought profits and growth to Venice. The increase in sea trade also brought profits to Genoa in the Mediterranean and to the cities of the Hanseatic League in the Baltic and the North Sea.

Flanders prospered from its woolen textile industries, while the towns of Champagne benefited from their position on the major land route through France and the series of trade fairs sponsored by their nobles.

Textile industries also began to develop in England and in Florence. Europeansmade extensive use of water wheels and windmills in the textile, paper, and otherindustries.

Civic Life

Some European cities were city-states, while others enjoyed autonomy from local nobles: they were thus better able to respond to changing market conditions than Chinese or Islamic cities. European cities also offered their citizens more freedom and social mobility.

Most of Europe’s Jews lived in the cities. Jews were subject to persecution everywhere but Rome; they were blamed for disasters like the Black Death and expelled from Spain.

Guilds regulated the practice of and access to trades. Women were rarelyallowed to join guilds, but they did work in unskilled non-guild jobs in the textileindustry and in the food and beverage trades.

The growth in commerce gave rise to bankers like the Medicis of Florence andthe Fuggers of Augsburg who handled financial transactions for merchants, thechurch, and the kings and princes of Europe. Because the Church prohibitedusury, many moneylenders were Jews; Christian bankers got around theprohibition through such devices as asking for “gifts” in lieu of interest.

Gothic Cathedrals

Gothic cathedrals are the masterpieces of late medieval architecture andcraftsmanship. Their distinctive features include the pointed Gothic arch, flyingbuttresses, high towers and spires, and large interiors lit by huge windows.

Guess what??

The men who designed and built the Gothic cathedrals had no formal training in design and engineering; they learned through their mistakes.

Learning, Literature, and the Renaissance

Universities and Learning

After 1100 Western Europeans got access to Greek and Arabic works on science, philosophy, and medicine. These manuscripts were translated and explicated by Jewish scholars and studied at Christian monasteries, which remained the primary centers of learning.

After 1200, colleges and universities emerged as new centers of learning. Some were established by students; most were teaching guilds established by professors in order to oversee the training, control the membership, and fight for the interests of the profession.

Universities generally specialized in a particular branch of learning; - Bologna was famous for its law faculty, others for medicine or theology. - Theology was the most prominent discipline of the period as theologians sought to synthesize the rational philosophy of the Greeks with the Christian faith in an intellectual movement known as scholasticism.

PROTESTANT REFORMATION

"When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory

springs."

Indulgence

"In the authority of all the saints, and in compassion towards thee, I absolve thee from all sins and misdeeds, and remit all punishment for ten days."

The Protestant and Catholic Reformations

• 1517—Martin Luther, German monk, nailed the 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door

• Protested– Selling indulgences, grants of

salvation– Only faith could gain salvation,

church sacraments were not the path

– Challenged the authority of the pope

– Monasticism was wrong, priests should marry

– Bible needed to be translated so ordinary people could have direct access to its teachings

The Protestant and Catholic Reformations

• Luther received wide support– German nationalist reaction because resented the

authority and taxes of the pope– German princes saw it as an opportunity because the

Holy Roman Emperor was Catholic– Princes ability to gain independence and seize church

land– Luther suggested state control of the church as an

alternative to papal authoritysounded good to the princes

– Peasants saw the attack on authority as sanctioning their own rebellions against their landlords

– If faith was the main way to salvation, they money-making was ok

The Protestant and Catholic Reformation

• Henry VIII in England– Set up the Anglican

church– Challenge the ability to

divorce in attempt to produce a male heir

– He ended up with 6 wives in all and executed 2 of themshowing the poor treatment of women in politics

The Protestant and Catholic Reformation

• Jean Calvin, French but base support in Geneva– Believe in God’s predestination of those

who would be saved– Ministers became moral guardians and

preachers of God’s word– Sought the participation of all believers in

local church administrationpromoted wider access go government

– Promoted education to read the Bible– Created a strong minority group and

Puritans will bring it to North America in the 1600s

The Protestant and Catholic Reformation

• Catholic response– Able to keep Catholicism solidly in the south

and parts of Eastern Europe– A church council met and refuted protestant

tenets– A new religious order, the Jesuits, became

active in politics, education, and missionary work especially in Asia and the Americas

The End of Christian Unity in the West

• Series of religious wars– In France—Calvinist vs Catholics

• Edict of Nantes 1598—granting tolerance

– In Germany—the Thirty Years’ War 1618• German Protestants & Swedish Lutherans vs the

holy Roman emperor backed by Spain• Devastating to Germany; 60% population died• Treaty of Westphalia 1648• Granted tolerance and gave Protestant

Netherlands independence from Spain

The End of Christian Unity in the West

• In England—English Civil War 1640-1660– Religious issues– Claims of parliament

to rights of control over royal actions

– 1688-1689 limited toleration was granted to most Protestants, but not Catholics

Oliver Cromwell

King Charles II

The End of Christian Unity in the West

• Religious wars led to limited acceptance of religious pluralism, but Christian unity could not be restored– led some people to be suspect of religion—

could there be a dominant single truth– Affected the balance of power

The End of Christian Unity in the West

• Changes in view of religion– Protestants resisted the idea of miracles– Promoted greater concentration on family life– Encouraged love between husband and wife– Protestants abolished conventsfewer

options for women other than marriage– Promoted growing literacy

The Commercial Revolution

• Massive amounts of gold and silver from Spain’s colonies

• $$ in Europe &

Americas led to increase

demandinflation (like

Mansa Musa)• $$ being worth less led to merchants taking out

loanstrading companies like the Dutch East Indies Company

The Commercial Revolution

• Colonial markets stimulated manufacturing and specialization

• Standard of living improved for almost everyone (by 1600 the average person owned 5Xs more stuff)

• Proletariat, poor in the West, were plagued by higher food prices and had to sell their landsome became paid agricultural and manufacturing labor and others wandered begging

• West developed a negative attitude about poverty that hasn’t changed

The Commercial Revolution

1600s led to popular protest and worried peasants

• Also anxiety about witches (60,000 to 100,000 were killed)– Poverty– Women– Tensions in family life

Science: The New Authority

• Copernicus—disproved Hellenistic belief that the earth was the center of the universe; that the sun was

• Johannes Kepler—planetary motion; optics;

• Vesalius—anatomy

• New technologies—microscope & telescope

Science: The New Authority

• Galileo—proved Copernicus and worked with gases

• John Harvey—circular movement of blood

• Francis Bacon—scientific method

• Rene Descartes—provided a skeptical view

• Isaac Newton—framework of natural laws; principles of motion; gravity;

Science: The New Authority

• Ideas were printed!!! and distributed!!! • Challenged witchcraft accusations• New belief that people could control their

environment• Deism—may be a divinity, but role is to set

natural laws in motion• John Locke—we learn everything we need to

know through our senses and reason (like Daoism); faith was irrelevantview that human nature was essentially good not full of sin

Absolute and Parliamentary Monarchies

• France was the model for the new monarch– Stopped convening the medieval parliament– Blew up castles of dissident nobles

(gunpowder)– Appointed a bureaucracy of merchants and

lawyers

absolute monarchy

“I am the state.” Louis XIV

Absolute and Parliamentary Monarchies

• Louis XIV of France– Decreased internal tariff to decrease barriers

to trade– Mercantilism—government should promote

the internal economy to improve tax revenues and to limit imports from other nations

– Sought guaranteed markets in their colonies

Absolute and Parliamentary Monarchies

Britain & the Netherlands stood apart from the trend of absolute monarchy

• Parliament won sovereignty over the king

• John Locke—power comes from the people, not from divine rule

The Nation State

• Shared culture and language

• Loyalty

• Rising idea that the sate should act in the peoples self-interest

The West by 1750Political Patterns

• Changes were less significant• English had a bloated parliament• Popular concern for great representation• Prussia had greater changes

– Creating a military and bureaucratic organization– Greater religious freedom– Promoted better agriculture methods and the use of

the potato

• Seven Years’ War—battle of colonial empire

The West by 1750Enlightenment Thought and Popular

Culture• Scientific revolution Enlightment• Applying scientific method to the study of

human society• Rational laws• Against cruel punishment; decent society

could rehabilitate criminals• Constitutions to curb privilege• Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations)—

economic behavior

The West by 1750Enlightenment Thought and Popular

Culture• Denis Diderot—Encyclopedie compiled

scientific and social scientific knowledge

• Human beings are good and improvable

• Blind faith and refusal to tolerate diversity is wrong

• Mary Wollstonecraft—feminism

• Reading clubs and coffee houses

The West by 1750Ongoing Change in Commerce and

Manufacturing• Began purchasing processed foods—

refined sugar and coffee• Paid professionals for entertainment—

circuses• 3-field system constrained agriculture• Fertilizers, stockbreeding, seed drills and

scythes and the spread of the potato• Capitalism—investment in hopes of bigger

profitdomestic system