The Transformation of the West

1450 – 1750

What changes?

• “Science came to form the center of Western intellectual life for the first time in the history of any society” (363).

• Key terms/phases: Renaissance and Enlightenment

• “Europe’s transformation centered on commerce, the state, and culture, with some support from technology” (363).

Culture & Commerce

• Renaissance: first developed in _______ in the 14th & 15th centuries; challenged medieval intellectual values & styles, like what???

• Religion declined as a central focus• Realism and humanism appeared in Western

art, literature, and philosophy• Leaders emphasized their governing skills

rather than heredity or divine right, and experimented with new political forms

Maesta (1308)

Virgin of the Rocks by da Vinci (1503)

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli (1486)

• Northern Renaissance: Italy declines as center of Renaissance, spreads to France, Germany, England, Low Countries by 1450

• Religion more important in the North, usually mixed with Renaissance ideals

• Shakespeare becomes big in England• Thoughts on power politics expand; Nicolo

Machiavelli writes The Prince• Example: Francis I allies with Muslim sultan against

Austria & Spain

• “kings still confined by feudal landlords...A new political form had yet to emerge...ordinary people little touched by Renaissance...” (365).

• Tech improved in mining and agriculture• Johannes Gutenberg introduces movable type,

increase in distribution of books & literacy• European-style family: emphasis on late

marriage (20s) & nuclear families

Protestant & Catholic Reformation

• Martin Luther proposes famous 95 theses in 1517 in Wittenberg, Germany

• Luther protests against the Catholic Church’s selling of indulgences, but he also believes in “faith alone” for salvation

• Luther argued that monasticism & cleric celibacy was wrong, and that the Bible should be translated & read in the vernacular

• Luther did not want a break-up of the church, but pursued the “true faith”

• German princes were attracted to Protestantism. Why? Peasants were attracted as well bc they saw Luther’s attack on authority as a social rebellion

• Others liked Luther’s message bc, since salvation was gained by faith, work & money-making could now be sanctioned

• Henry VIII establishes Anglican Church soon after Luther, breaking England from Papal authority

• Jean Calvin founds Calvinism in Switzerland• Calvinism: believed in predestination,

participation of all believers, and popular education and literacy of the Bible

• Catholic Reformation: Church’s response; confirmed basic doctrines, attacked superstitions, & founded Jesuits

Religious Strife & Warfare

• Protestants & Catholics warred for two centuries after Luther’s reformation

• Thirty Year’s War: 1618-1648, took place mostly in Germany, destroyed economy & population (as much as 60% in some cases)

• Treaty of Westphalia ended war, agreed that individual govs could choose & enforce religion

• English Civil War also addressed religious conflicts; religious issues dominate Europe in 1600s

• Changes in religion promoted changes in family• Religious leaders promoted love between husband

& wife; women’s role in marriage emphasized, but destruction of monasteries led to decrease in opportunity

• Literacy: due to emphasis on Bible reading, doubled in some areas

Commercial Revolution

• Influx of gold & silver from the Americas led to inflation & increase in prices

• Exploration & colonization increased trade & manufacturing• Beginnings of consumerism & mass production; more

ordinary people amassed “things” or products in household• Not all good: pop growth & rising prices led the poor to sell

land, move into cities, increased overcrowding & poverty• Adverse economic changes led to popular protests &

rebellions

Science & Politics

• Copernicus: Polish clergyman who proved the Earth was not center of universe, but revolved around the sun

• Johannes Kepler: studied laws of planetary motion

• Galileo: studied & improved upon ideas of planetary motion, condemned by Church

• John Harvey: Englishman, demonstrated blood circulation in humans & animals

• Isaac Newton: defined basic principles of all motion & gravity in mathematical detail

• These discoveries challenged many long-held beliefs

• Europeans began to believe that one could control and calculate their environment

• Belief in miracles, magic, faith, witchcraft, etc., began to decline

• Europe becomes most vibrant center for science

Government

• Feudalism further declined after the religious wars of the 1600s

• Absolute monarchies expanded throughout most of the continent

• France: the strongest example of absolutism; the king held almost total power and had a strong bureaucracy; feudal lords given no power in government

• Spain, Prussia, & Austria also moved towards absolute monarchies

• Often quoted as saying “L'État, c'est moi” or “I am the state”

• Used his court at Versailles to keep nobles entertained and unconcerned with state affairs

• Mercantilism: economic practice in which governments controlled economy to increase revenues & limited imports

• Strong military, expansion of territory (Canada & Louisiana)

• Britain & the Netherlands were the exceptions to absolute monarchy at this time

• Parliaments held much more power, esp in England; after 1689, no longer needed king’s permission to convene

• John Locke: popularized theory that state power originated from the people instead of a king

• Rise of distinct nation-states

The Enlightenment

• Centered in France, argued that rational thought could improve society

• Belief that humans were not inherently evil, and could at least be improved

• Attacked blind faith of some religions, particularly Catholic Church

• Encouraged publishing and reading of Encyclopedias• Affected family life – love between man & wife, and

parents & children encouraged

Europe by 1750

• Better ag techniques plus new crops from the Americas (esp the potato) led to a greater food supply

• Larger food supplies increased population, but also caused a decrease for the need for ag workers

• Former farmers flocked to cities to fill manufacturing jobs

The West and the World

Chapter 17

Exploration

• Europeans developed new sailing technology in the 1400s, and adopted the compass, mapmaking, and gunpowder technologies

• Portugal was first to venture out, exploring Africa & bringing back slaves & spices; set up colonies in the Pacific & Brazil in the 1500s

• Spain soon followed, claiming much of the Americas & the Philippines

• After 1588, Northern countries of Britain, France, & Holland dominated new exploration and colonization

• Northern countries improved on sailing technology, while Spain & Portugal were busy governing colonies already won

• Economic motives for exploration• Britain & France competed for lands in North

America

• Santa Maria, Columbus’s largest ship

• Crew of 40• Not designed for trans-

Atlantic travel• 97 feet long

Toward a World Economy

• Columbian Exchange: dispersal of goods & diseases between the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia

• European diseases decimate Americas & parts of Asia; estimated at 50-80%

• New American crops adopted: tobacco, sugar, corn, potato, coffee

• More food led to pop increases, & emptying of native pops spurred Euro migration

• Europeans – first the Spanish, later Britain, France, & Holland – came to dominate international trade

• Better weapons, ships, & influx of silver and gold helped cause this domination over Arab & Asian traders

• Euro nations continued economic practice of m_______ism

• Africa drawn into world market mainly through slave trade

• China, Japan, India, & parts of Africa remained unwilling and/or unable to participate in the emerging world market

• China’s tradition of C______ism encouraged suspicion of foreigners, rebuffed European trade proposals

• Japan interested only in gunmaking tech• India focused on internal matters, not world

trade

European Colonies

• Spain conquered Incas & Aztecs in 1500s, set up colonies to exploit resources & Christianize natives

• Colonies were initially loosely run & exacted tribute from natives; gradually became more formally administered & governed

• Spanish colonizers were mostly adventurers hunting for wealth

• English settlers in N. America were initially religious refugees, while French settlers were sent directly by the government

• Anglo-French colonies developed differently than Iberian colonies in the Americas

• Most colonies still loosely run by 1750; small enclave ports in Africa & Asia set-up for trade

• Britain & France engaged in Seven Year’s War in mid-1700s to fight for control over important colonial possessions

The Rise of Russia

Chapter 18

Expansion 1450-1650

• Ivan III, the Grand Prince of Moscow, overthrows Mongols in 1462

• Russia retained culture during Mongol rule, but economy & society lagged behind; Russia was a purely ag society wholly dependent on peasant labor

• Ivan III and his son Ivan IV consolidated power and expanded Russian territory

• Early tsars recruited peasant-adventurers called Cossacks to explore & settle new lands

• Cossacks conquered Caspian Sea area and Siberia

• Nobles rewarded with new tracts of land• Expansion created a multicultural, multi-

ethnic Russian empire• Large Muslim minority in central Russia

• Ivan III & IV realized Russia had much to learn from Western Europe, commercially, technologically, militarily

• Set-up formal contact with British merchants & Italian artists

• Ivan IV dies w/o an heir in 1604, leading to internal strife known as Time of Troubles

• Romanov dynasty takes over in 1613; exerts greater control over Russian church & abolishes assembly of nobles

Ivan IV (the terrible) & Michael Romanov

Russia’s First Westernization, 1690-1790

• Russia becomes a great land empire, but was not industrial

• Peter the Great: very interested in imitating West; very intelligent, physically huge (6’8); traveled W. Europe in secret, worked as a shipping carpenter in Holland; recruited Westerners to come back to Russia

• Peter rejected parliamentary gov., embracing autocracy instead; limited Russian nobles

• Peter imitated Western military organization, but also created a secret police

• Attacked Ottomans, defeated Sweden to gain Baltic ports

• Peter truly brought Russia into European affairs in the early 1700s

• Capitol shifted west from Moscow to St. Petersburg

• First Russian navy is created, institutes for training government ministers created

• Built mining industries to take advantages of Russia’s mineral wealth

• Forced nobles to shave beards (gasp!) & stop wearing Mongol-style clothing

• Education in math & science imported from West, as well as ballet

• Status for upper-class women improve

Peter the Great

Effects of Westernization

• Selective changes: peasants were not involved, only the elites

• Labor mostly coerced instead of wage labor• Economic development sought to increase

power of Tsar rather than improve the state as a whole

• Western science adopted, ideas were not• Some nobles & peasants resisted

Catherine the Great

• Peter died in 1724, weak rulers followed• Mentally disabled Peter III becomes tsar in

1761, marries Prussian princess Catherine• Catherine most likely assassinated Peter III and

becomes Empress of Russia in 1762• She continued tradition of Peter the Great,

consolidating tsarist power while experimenting with Western ideas

• Continued to imprison & censor liberals who argued for smaller government control

• Pursued expansion against the Ottomans, and into Siberia, Alaska, even California

• Expanded into Europe for the first time, with the partitions of Poland in the 1790s

• Catherine dies in 1796

Themes in Russian History

• Russian peasants mostly free farmers under Mongols, but serfdom developed & encouraged by Tsars after 16th century

• Serfs became close to slaves, one born a serf could never legally escape their status

• Serfs could be bought, sold, gambled away, and were subject to high taxes

• Poor farmers forced to produce grain to sell to the West, but profits used to buy luxury items for landlords

• 95% of Russia remained rural• Only two main classes: serfs & landlords; no

merchant class developed• Population doubled to 36 million in 1700s• Due to harsh serfdom, rebellions against

landlords crop up in late 1700s• Most famous was Pugachev rebellion in 1770s