CONTENTS

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44

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Introduction viii

Chapter 1: European Economy and Society, c. 1500–1648 1

The Economic Background 2Demographics 5Trade and the “Atlantic Revolution” 8Prices and Infl ation 10Landlords and Peasants 12Protoindustrialization 18Growth of Banking and Finance 21Political and Cultural Infl uences on the Economy 22Aspects of Early Modern Society 24 Malleus Malefi carum 27

Chapter 2: European Politics and Diplomacy, c. 1500–1648 32

The State of European Politics 32Discovery of the New World 33Nation-States and Dynastic Rivalries 35Turkey and Eastern Europe 38

Charles V 39Reformation and Counter-Reformation 43 Süleyman I 44 Martin Luther 46Diplomacy in the Age of the Reformation 49 Counter-Reformation 50The Wars of Religion 54

Chapter 3: The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–48 58

The Crisis in Germany 59 Holy Roman Empire 60

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The Crisis in the Habsburg Lands 65The Triumph of the Catholics, 1619–29 70The Crisis of the War, 1629–35 75The European War in Germany, 1635–45 79Making Peace, 1645–48 83Problems Not Solved by the War 86Problems Solved by the War 88

Chapter 4: European Society and Economy, c. 1648–1788 92

The Human Condition 99Climate 101War 103Health and Sickness 105Poverty 109

The Organization of Society 116Nobles and Gentlemen 120The Bourgeoisie 127

Bourgeoisie 129The Peasantry 134

The Economic Environment 140Early Capitalism 144The Old Industrial Order 147

Chapter 5: The Rise of Absolutism 152Major Forms of Absolutism 157

France 157 Louis XIV 158

The Holy Roman Empire 162 Maria Theresa 164

Prussia 167 Frederick II 168Variations on the Absolutist Theme 170

Sweden 170Denmark 172

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Spain 173Portugal 174Great Britain 174Netherlands 177Russia 179

Peter I 180

Chapter 6: The Enlightenment 188Sources of Enlightenment Thought 190The Role of Science and Mathematics 191 René Descartes 192The Influence of Locke 199The Proto-Enlightenment 201History and Social Thought 204The Language of the Enlightenment 205 Scottish Enlightenment 208The Individual and Society 211The Encyclopédie 215Rousseau and His Followers 217The Enlightenment in Germany 221The Enlightenment Throughout Europe 224Conclusion 228

Glossary 231Bibliography 234Index 236

Introduction

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7 Introduction 7

Modern Europe—the geographical, political, economic, and cultural entity we recognize

today—began to take shape between 1500 and 1788. The traditional view of the Renaissance, the European intel-lectual and cultural revival of the 1400s and 1500s, was that Europe had experienced a rebirth of reason follow-ing the thousand years of ignorance known as the “Dark Ages.” Of course, history is never that simple, and the Middle Ages, the period stretching roughly between the 5th and 15th centuries, was not truly a time of incredible ignorance and cultural backwardness. Still, if we were to travel back in time to the Europe of the Middle Ages, we would find its locally based political and socioeconomic structures largely strange to us. If we jumped ahead to the 1500s, however, we would find the “reborn” Europe increasingly recognizable in its national political orga-nization, its expanding economies and cities, and its growing understanding of itself. This was the start of early modern Europe.

If the 1500s were an exciting time of prosperity and discovery, they were also a period of disillusionment, when Europe lost forever the unity of its religious belief. If the 1600s saw a thrilling explosion of scientific discov-ery, philosophic inquiry, and the emergence of modern European values, they also witnessed horrific eruptions of religious wars that killed millions, bankrupted kingdoms, and left towns and farms in smoking ruins. While the 1700s raised up the banner of the Enlightenment, which preached the power of the human mind to liberate and improve people’s lives, that banner fell at the end of the century in a paroxysm of revolution, continent-wide war, and rabid nationalism that tore Europe apart. But as this volume will show, through the clouds of conflict and reac-tion from 1500 to 1788, the European trend toward greater economies, a greater consideration of the role of the state,

The Emergence of Modern Europe: c. 1500 to 17887 7

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greater tolerance, and greater individual freedom became increasingly clear.

Early modern Europe’s economy and society grew more firmly capitalist during the 1500s. Trade and com-merce flourished. New markets opened up, and the Continent found itself part of a world economic system. Capital now not only affected how economies organized themselves but also increasingly influenced politics and international relations.

This was a heady time for many people. After two cen-turies of decline, recession, plague, famine, and war, things were finally looking up. Overall, Europe in 1500 had only a fraction of the population it had had two centuries earlier. Since more work was available now than there were work-ers, wages increased. Fewer people meant less demand, so the prices of land, livestock, food, goods, and services fell. Cheap food meant people could afford a better diet. Falling prices also meant this was a good time to invest in new enterprises with better technology. As the population began to increase, towns grew, cities grew, and the middle class grew. With them grew banks, financial institutions, and money markets—and these became more integrated.

This kind of growth was facilitated by the early modern state, which was centralized, with an organized bureau-cracy and army, and with its authority vested in a strong executive, usually a monarch. An orderly state could pro-vide fertile ground for business and finance. Indeed, the centralized state was also a consumer, purchasing goods for its own support, as well as weapons for its military; it was also a client of banks, taking out loans and investing.

But ironically enough, all this prosperity and economic development did not take place in a context of peace and mutual understanding. It took place in the context of reli-gious division and war. Martin Luther’s criticism of some

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of the practices of the Roman Catholic Church, his call for reform, and the papacy’s violent reaction ignited a socio-political and confessional firestorm that permanently changed the cultural mentality of Europe. Religiously uni-fied Europe was fractured into a hostile hodgepodge of Protestant states and Catholic states.

While the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation unequivocally divided Europe, Europeans still yearned for religious uniformity. Although it may seem odd to us now, persecuted religious minorities in early modern Europe did not favour tolerance or free-dom of worship. Europeans believed there was only one true religion—their own. All other beliefs were danger-ously false, even evil. Thus, conformity was the only moral solution to religious differences. Using force to return people to religious truth might save their eternal lives. Moreover, unlike the empires of Islam, which allowed Muslims, Christians, and Jews to worship relatively freely, Christian Europe generally viewed diversity as a threat. Conformity, Europeans felt, meant social cohesion and prosperity.

The result of this mentality was, perhaps not surpris-ingly, religious war. The first round broke out in the Holy Roman Empire in the mid-1500s but did not last long, as no one had the military advantage. Lutheran and Catholic rulers then signed the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, whereby the necessary evil of toleration was formally instituted—but only among the various states of the empire. No toleration was expected within each state, where the offi-cial religion was determined by the religion of the ruler. Everyone believed that a country could have only un roi, une loi, une foi: one king, one law, one faith.

Soon enough, other religious wars erupted. In France, brutal civil war carried on for three dozen years. Meanwhile

7 Introduction 7

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the Netherlands and Spain fought an on-again, off-again religious war for more than 80 years. And so the yearning for order grew, especially in the Holy Roman Empire with its jigsaw puzzle of about a thousand semiautonomous political units, where any question of dynastic succession could change the balance of power between Protestants and Catholics, and where the Habsburg emperor was a fervent Roman Catholic. As far as he was concerned, the heretical Protestants within his empire constituted a source of chronic instability. They could appeal to for-eign powers for aid or influence against their emperor, and in an age when European rulers were consolidating their power through increased conformity, this was intolerable.

At the same time, other rulers in Europe—even fellow Catholics—were deeply troubled by how powerful the Habsburg dynasty had become. The tradition since the Renaissance had been for states to ally whenever necessary to maintain a balance of power, so that no state or dynasty could triumph over the rest. But now the Habsburgs had grown into a worldwide superpower: they ruled the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, much of the Netherlands, and por-tions of Italy; they also controlled Spain’s vast holdings in the Americas.

When the Holy Roman emperor tried to impose Catholicism on Bohemia, Protestant nobles rebelled, thus sparking the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), a more destruc-tive conflict than ever had been seen in Europe—one that would decimate the German heartland and kill millions. At first, it was clearly a religious war, with Protestant forces outmatched by Catholic armies, which were backed by Spanish Habsburg wealth and the power of the papacy. Then, however, more states were drawn into the conflict, as they saw opportunities for political gain and a chance to weaken the mighty Habsburgs. Soon the war

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was being fought less for religious reasons than for politi-cal ones. Finally, with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the war ended in exhaustion and desolation.

The results of the war were several: the Netherlands had gained independence from Habsburg Spain; the latter had been replaced by France as the great power of Europe; the member states of the Holy Roman Empire won com-plete sovereignty; and the emperor found himself left with little more than a symbolic role. More important, from this point on, the balance of power doctrine prevailed, for-eign policy became increasingly secular, and the essential structure of modern Europe as a community of sovereign states was established. Yet from all this fragmentation, paradoxically, a growing European identity was emerging: philosophers, scientists, and artists had begun addressing a larger European audience, not just compatriots.

Nevertheless, the attitude of the 1600s could be described as one of pessimism. In fact, doubt seemed to be the spirit of the age. After all, even as scientists dis-covered that what Europeans had traditionally believed about the nature of life and the world was quite wrong, so too philosophers now called into question the very nature of knowledge, of what could be known, and of what constituted truth. This, clearly, had implications for the reliability and authority of church teaching and religious belief. Meanwhile, daily life for people became increas-ingly difficult as the economy fell into recession and agricultural production became strained by the limits of cultivation technology. Even the century’s weather grew steadily colder.

During this time of insecurity, early modern European nation-states saw their rulers take on increasing authority to ensure the good order of the state, and many thinkers of the time agreed that this was needed. Absolutism, already

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