16th-19th Century
Chapter 1
Europe, Africa and the Americas
Legacy of Renaissance Humanism
Humanism combated the sovereignty of tyrant, feudal lord, class, corporation, and tradition, has, for better or worse, had a tremendous influence upon the subsequent history of Europe. The spirit of individualism to a certain degree incited the Protestant revolt, which, in theory at least, embodied a thorough application of the principle of individualism in religion. It need not be supposed that the emancipation of the ego was wholly beneficial to the human race.
The mid-to-late 15th century has quite rightly been called the "Age of Exploration" and Discovery. It was an age in which European sailors and ships left the coastal waters of the Old World and embarked on their adventure on the vast "green sea of darkness." First, Portuguese ships, then Spanish and finally, in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, British, French and Dutch ships set out to discover a world, a world they originally called the Other World, but eventually called the Mundus Novus -- the New World. If the Age of Discovery did anything, it restored the self-confidence of Europe, and in turn, Europe rediscovered itself.
Since the barbarian invasions the Church had effected a complete transformation and revival of the races of Western Europe, and a glorious development of religious and intellectual life. The papacy had become the powerful centre of the family of Christian nations, and as such had for centuries, in union with the episcopate and the clergy, displayed a most beneficent activity. With the ecclesiastical organization fully developed, it came to pass that the activities of the governing ecclesiastical bodies were no longer confined to the ecclesiastical domain, but affected almost every sphere of popular life.Gradually a regrettable worldliness manifested itself in many high ecclesiastics. Their chief object -- to guide man to his eternal goal -- claimed too seldom their attention, and worldly activities became in too many cases the chief interest. Political power, material possessions, privileged position in public life earthly interests of various kinds were only too often the chief aim of many of the higher clergy. A dedication to the simple life of a clergymen fell largely into the background.
The 16th century in Europe was a great century of change on many fronts. The humanists and artists of the Renaissance would help characterize the age as one of individualism and self-creativity, the Renaissance helped to secularize European society. Man was now the creator of his own destiny -- in a word, the Renaissance unleashed the very powerful notion that man makes his own history. The most revolutionary event of the 16th century- was the Protestant Reformation. It was the Reformation that forced people to make a choice -- to be Catholic or Protestant. This was an important choice, and a choice had to be made. There was no real alternative. In the context of the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, one could live or die based on such a choice.
The Impact of Luther and the Radical Reformation
By the early 1520s, Luther had attracted a vast following while the printing presses spread his message and reputation across Germany. The major question we must ask remains this: why did Lutheranism cut across class lines and appeal to so many people? What was so passionate about Luther's message that made people turn their back on the Roman Church? The explanations for Luther's success may be endlessly debated by scholars but for the most part, and leaving theological opinion aside, we can say that the people were prepared for the message Luther delivered. Is it simply a matter of Luther appearing at the right time and in the right place?
16th Century Religious Wars in France
With the Reformation, what
had been Christianity divided into kingdoms was, in some instances, becoming
kingdoms divided by religion.
In 1540, twenty years after Martin Luther started printing his pamphlets, Protestantism
was spreading in France - among lawyers, the nobility and others. It spread
also to those fervent enough to commit violent attacks against the Catholic
church. The Church and fervent laymen moved to defend clergymen from attack
and to defend the Church's predominance. It was in 1541 that the Protestant
John Calvin, founder Calvinism, was driven from France - to Geneva. In 1542,
Pope Paul III launched an Inquisition.
In 1523 a forty-five year-old became pope, and he took the name Clement VII - the second pope from Florence's most wealthy and powerful Medici family. Looking after the interests of the papacy and the Medici he aligned himself with the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles the Fifth.Pope Clement was also having problems with King Henry VIII of England, seemingly a lesser problem than he had been having with Charles, but in consequence it was to prove greater. Henry had heaped scorn upon Luther and his theology, seeing Luther as creating subversion of the structure of Christendom, winning for himself the title of "Defender of the Faith."
Chapter
2
Mid-East and India to the 1700s
The Safavids and the Ottoman Empire
The Safavids, who came to power in 1501, were leaders of a militant Sufi order. The rise of the Safavids marks the reemergence in Iran of a powerful central authority within geographical boundaries attained by former Iranian empires. The Safavids declared Shia Islam the state religion and used proselytizing and force to convert the large majority of Muslims in Iran to the Shia sect. Under the early Safavids, Iran was a theocracy in which state and religion were closely intertwined. The Safavid Empire received a blow that was to prove fatal in 1524, when the Ottoman sultan Selim I defeated the Safavid forces at Chaldiran and occupied the Safavid capital, Tabriz.
The Mughal Dynasty in India 1526-1858
The Mughals were the last powerful descendants of the Mongols; descended from Mongol stock in Turkestan, in the early 1500's they engaged in the last series of conquests to bear the Mongol name. The Mughals had become Islamic. They had also thoroughly absorbed Middle Eastern culture, especially Persian culture and their wars of invasion spread Persian culture throughout India. Western historians have dubbed the Mughal Empire, the first gunpowder empire.
Sikhs and the Mughal Empire 17th Century
The Sikhs are one of the most prosperous and politically important religious minorities in India. Since its inception, the Sikh community has been one of the major factors in Indian history. The Mughals understood that Sikhism was a separatist movement, and by the eighteenth century, the Sikhs had established a separate kingdom with its capital in Lahore. The Sikhs were a major force in the British Allied army as the British gradually annexed the whole of India in the 1850's, and after Indian Independence, the Sikh community, half of which had to flee Muslim Pakistan after partition, became economically and politically the most significant and successful minority community in India.
The Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Empire
The Ottomans are one of the greatest and most powerful civilizations of the modern period. Their moment of glory in the sixteenth century represents one of the heights of human creativity, optimism, and artistry. The empire they built was the largest and most influential of the Muslim empires of the modern period, and their culture and military expansion crossed over into Europe. Not since the expansion of Islam into Spain in the eighth century had Islam seemed poised to establish a European presence as it did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Like that earlier expansion, the Ottomans established an empire over European territory and established Islamic traditions and culture that last to the current day (the Muslims in Bosnia are the last descendants of the Ottoman presence in Europe).
Chapter
3
The Far East to 1700
The Ming dynasty was the
last native imperial dynasty in Chinese history. Sandwiched between two foreign
dynasties, the Ming stand as one last attempt to hold Chinese government in
native hands. Humiliated and oppressed by the foreign rule of the Mongols, the
Ming dynasty rises up out of a peasant rebellion to preside over the greatest
economic and social revolution in China before the modern period. The Ming are
also the first to deal with Europeans arriving in ever increasing numbers; as
a pre-modern period, many of the issues and contentions of the modern period
will have their precursors in the Ming dynasty.
The Tokugawa shogunate was the longest period of uninterrupted peace Japan ever enjoyed. The brilliant and ruthless administration of the Tokugawa military administration combined with the rigid seclusion of the country allowed for the flowering of Japanese culture in an unprecedented way. We are going to take a short tour through the history and culture of early modern Japan, from the bloodshed of the Onin War to the forbidden pleasures of the floating world; these two and a half centuries of seclusion that we are going to tour are the crucible in which the modern Japanese temper was formed.
The Meiji Restoration was a chain of events that led to enormous changes in Japan's political and social structure. It occurred in the later half of the 19th century, a period that traverses both the late Edo period (often called Late Tokugawa shogunate) and the beginning of the Meiji Era.. The restoration was a direct response to the opening of Japan by the arrival of the Black Ships of Commodore Matthew Perry. This restoration made Imperial Japan a great power.
Chapter
4
The Americas, Europe and Africa to 1700
The Thirty Years War 1618-1648
The first half of the seventeenth century is shaped by the last of the great wars of religion, The Thirty Years War (1618-1648). More than a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics, it was also a power struggle within and between kingdoms. France under its new, Bourbon dynasty became the most powerful state in Europe replacing the Habsburgs in both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire (Germany). Any hope of centralizing Germany under their rule was lost. Germany was divided on the basis of religion into Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists. The religion of the ruler determined the religion of the people. Catholic Austria and Lutheran Prussia emerged as the two most important states within the loose Confederation called the Holy Roman Empire. England experienced the rise and fall of militant Calvinistic Puritanism. Despite internal conflict, it kept building up its naval power and started on the road toward overseas empire. It gradually replaced Spain and the Netherlands as the greatest sea power. The Glorious Revolution of 1689 set England on the path of limited, constitutional, and, ultimately, democratic government. It became the most liberal country in Europe and the model for Enlightenment thinkers on the Continent to imitate in the eighteenth century.
The Intellectual Revolution 17th Century
From the 4th to the 16th century C.E. in Europe, philosophy and science were in the service of Christianity. The view of the world to which thinkers subscribed was a theological version of the views of the pagan philosophers Plato and Aristotle. In the 16th century, modern physical science made its first appearances. Then in the 17th century, in the monumental achievement of Isaac Newton, modern science fully arrived.The arrival of modern physical science, and with it the transition from faith alone as a source of authority to faith together with secular reason as dual sources of authority, was the most momentous intellectual change in the history of Western civilization. But the change was not just intellectual. As the philosopher Francis Bacon perceptively observed, knowledge is power. Although the full significance of Bacon’s observation would not become apparent for hundreds of years, he was right. Ultimately science spawned an awesome technology. And importantly because it did, it became a technique for both understanding and controlling the world, and even ourselves.
Chapter
5
War and Revolution in Europe and America
The European Enlightenment 18th Century
The Enlightenment is often closely linked with the Scientific Revolution, for both movements emphasized reason, science, and rationality, while the former also sought their application in comprehension of divine or natural law. Inspired by the revolution of knowledge commenced by Galileo and Newton, and in a climate of increasing disaffection with repressive rule, Enlightenment thinkers believed that systematic thinking might be applied to all areas of human activity, carried into the governmental sphere in their explorations of the individual, society and the state. Its leaders believed they could lead their states to progress after a long period of tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny which they imputed to the Middle Ages. The movement helped create the intellectual framework for the American and French Revolutions, Poland's Constitution of May 3, 1791, the Latin American independence movement, the Greek national independence movement and the later Balkan independence movements against the Ottoman Empire, and led to the rise of classical liberalism, democracy, and capitalism.
Thomas Hobbes: Political Philosopher
The first major thinker of
the seventeenth century to apply new methods to the human sciences was Thomas
Hobbes (1588-1679) whose book Leviathan is one of the most revolutionary and
influential works on political theory in European history. Hobbes was greatly
interested in the new sciences; he spent some time in Italy with Galileo and
eagerly read the work of William Harvey, who was applying the new physical science
methods to human physiology. After
the English Civil War, Hobbes determined that political philosophy had to be
seriously revised.
The old political philosophy, which relied on religion, ethics, and interpretation,
had produced what he felt was a singular disaster in English history. He proposed
that political philosophy should be based on the same methods of exposition
and explanation as were being applied to the physical sciences. Generally regarded
as one of the most prominent "natural law" philosophers of the 17th
Century, Hobbes had an enormous impact on subsequent British political, social
and economic theory. The counterpoint to Hobbes was John Locke.
John Locke, an English philosopher, is considered the first of the British Empiricists, but is equally important to social contract theory. His ideas had enormous influence on the development of political philosophy and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and contributors to liberal theory. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. This influence is reflected in the American Declaration of Independence. Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin for modern conceptions of identity and "the self", figuring prominently in the later works of philosophers such as David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first philosopher to define the self through a continuity of "consciousness." He also postulated that the mind was a "blank slate" or "tabula rasa"; that is, contrary to Cartesian or Christian philosophy, Locke maintained that people are born without innate ideas.
:
Enlightenment and the Philosophes
Throughout the eighteenth century, this vision of natural law and the power of human reason spilled over from science and technology to philosophy and political theory.In the century between the Glorious Revolution in England and the American and French revolutions, a movement in philosophic thought emerged call the Enlightenment. It ’s intellectual center was in France, although key participants lived in America, Scotland, England, Prussia, Russia, and elsewhere. The French leaders of the Enlightenment were called philosophes and their philosophy helped inspire the American and French revolutions.The authors of the American Declaration of Independence and of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen drew much of their inspiration from the philosophes. Following the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century the philosophes believed in a world of rationality, in which collected human knowledge and systematic thought could serve as powerful tools for finding order in the universe and for solving key problems in political, economic, social, and religious life.
The revolution in France has captivated
the imaginations of historians since it exploded the European landscape two
hundred years ago.
There are few if any events in European history that are regarded as fundamental
to the character of the European world as the giddy, frightening, farcical,
and overwhelmingly tragic events during and after the French Revolution.It was,
after all, a complete failure; it ended the monarchy in France, but it ended
in a different monarchy so repugnant and violent that the sloppy laziness of
the eighteenth century monarchy simply palled in relation to the calculated
violence of the years of Napoleon's emperorship. The ideas of the revolution
were not new; in fact, the revolution itself was simply a gathering point, a
boiling pot in which ideas of the Enlightenment and the philosophes erupted
into a single action.
Part II
We now come to the
Revolution itself. We have already outlined some of the basic causes of the
French Revolution as well as the general features of the ancien regime. It seems
fairly clear that the closed social structure of 18th century France, administrative
inefficiency, bankruptcy and the example of the American Revolution as well
as Enlightenment thought all had their effect on what would indeed occur in
the last decade of the 18th century. Above all, a revolutionary mentality had
been created and this alone, perhaps, is what drove the revolutionaries forward.
Our discussion will suggest that there were actually two revolutions, or two
distinct stages within the Revolution: the moderate stage of 1789-1792, followed
by the radical stage of 1792-1794.
Part III
By September, Paris
was in turmoil. Fearing counter-revolution, the sans-culottes destroyed prisons
because they believed they were secretly sheltering conspirators. More than
one thousand people were killed. Street fights broke out everywhere and barricades
were set up in various quarters of the city. All this was done in order to consolidate
the Revolution – to keep it moving forward. On September 21st and 22nd,
1792, the monarchy was officially abolished and a republic established. The
22nd of September, 1792 was now known as day one of the year one.
In December, Louis XVI was placed on TRIAL for violating the liberty of his
subjects and on January 21, 1793, Louis was executed like an ordinary criminal.
From this time on, the Revolution had no recourse but to move forward.
Chapter
6
Napoleonic Era in Europe and America to 1815
Napoleonic Era to 1815
The French Revolution like the First World War got swallowed up in an ocean of blood and a flood of terror. While no event in European history is more important in the eventual formation of the modern state, the Revolutionaries and Napoleon to follow also gave birth to modern mass destruction of human life. In sheer volume of lives lost, they are on a par with the violence of the Third Reich in the twentieth century. The Revolution ends with Napoleon, brilliant, visionary, cruel, and ultimately a figure of farce, if only he hadn't flooded Europe with the blood of so many people. It was the birth of the nineteenth century, the unambiguous start of a modern era, in which the French, alternatively majestic and vile at the same time, stepped away from the past without looking back.
The Domestic Policies of Napoleon: The Building of the Modern State
Like most men of stature and power,
Napoleon's was a complex personality. Wenaturally think of Alexander, Augustus,
Charlemagne, Peter the Great, Hitler and Stalin. His intellectual ability was
clearly impressive. He had grandiose ideas. Living in a revolutionary age, Napoleon
observed firsthand the precariousness of power.He knew what happened to Louis
XVI. He knew that the Girondins had been executed and that Robespierre had fallen
victim to the Reign of Terror. Napoleon assumed that he would not make the same
mistakes. He knew that he must become both a statesman and a tyrant. He had
to consolidate the Revolution and bind together the different social classes
of the French nation. His domestic policy then, is crucial to our overall understanding
of Napoleonic France. Here, he was clearly influenced by the Revolution. He
was also affected by the ideas of the philosophes. He considered himself "enlightened."
There are five areas of domestic policy worth our attention: government, religion,
law, education and the economy.
The Congress of Vienna was an international conference that was called in order to remake Europe after the downfall of Napoleon I. Many territorial decisions had to be made in the conference that was held in Vienna, Austria, from September 1814 to June 1815. The main goal of the conference was to create a balance of power that would preserve the peace. The Congress of Vienna was held amidst much celebration and extravagance. The Congress's first job was to undo everything Napoleon had done--including reducing France to its old boundaries, and restoring monarchies to every European country. Then the Five set about redrawing the map of Europe to create a balance of power, so that there could never be another Napoleon. The result was forty years of peace
Chapter
7
Conservative Order and Social Upheavel in Europe
The most far-reaching, influential transformation of human culture since the advent of agriculture eight or ten thousand years ago, was the industrial revolution of eighteenth century and nineteenth century in Europe. The consequences of this revolution would change irrevocably human labor, consumption, family structure, social structure, and even the very soul and thoughts of the individual. This revolution involved more than technology; to be sure, there had been industrial "revolutions" throughout European history and non-European history. In Europe, for instance, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw an explosion of technological knowledge and a consequent change in production and labor. However, the industrial revolution was more than technology—impressive as this technology was. What drove the industrial revolution were profound social changes, as Europe moved from a primarily agricultural and rural economy to a capitalist and urban economy, from a household, family-based economy to an industry-based economy. This required rethinking social obligations and the structure of the family; the abandonment of the family economy, for instance, was the most dramatic change to the structure of the family that Europe had ever undergone—and we're still struggling with these changes.
Industrial Revolution: Why England?
While it's hard to pinpoint a beginning to the Industrial Revolution, historians generally agree that it basically originated in England, both in a series of technological and social innovations. Historians propose a number of reasons. Among the most compelling is the exponential increase in food production following the enclosure laws of the eighteenth century; Parliament passed a series of laws that permitted lands that had been held in common by tenant farmers to be enclosed into large, private farms worked by a much smaller labor force. While this drove peasants off the land, it also increased agricultural production and increased the urban population of England, since the only place displaced peasants had to go were the cities. The English Parliament, unlike the monarchies of Europe, was firmly under the control of the merchant and capitalist classes, so the eighteenth century saw a veritable army of legislation that favored mercantile and capitalist interests.
19th Century Revolutions: 1830 and 1848
The LIBERALS, men from the middle class - factory owners, bankers, merchants, from the intellectual elite : teachers, professors, judges - were no longer willing to accept being excluded from the political process and demanded the kings to grant a written constitution. The kings were adamant, claiming to rule by DIVINE RIGHT and refusing to grant the constitution demanded. The early decades of the 19th century were characterized by this controversy; at times the liberals, in assembling and marching on the royal palace demanding the king to immediately grant the constitution, were successful. Often it took more than that. On the side of the liberals there was a willingness to use violence, if necessary, and the FRENCH REVOLUTION had provided the master print as to how to achieve the goal.
Chapter
8
The World and Imperialism to the 1860s
We live in a world today in which the consequences of nineteenth-century Western imperialism are still being felt. By about 1914 Western civilization reached the high point of its long-standing global expansion. This expansion in this period took many forms. There was, first of all, economic expansion. Europeans invested large sums of money abroad, building railroads and ports, mines and plantations, factories and public utilities. Trade between nations grew greatly and a world economy developed. Between 1750 and 1900 the gap in income disparities between industrialized Europe and America and the rest of the world grew at an astounding rate. Part of this was due, first, to a rearrangement of land use that accompanies Western colonialism and to Western success in preventing industrialization in areas Westerners saw as markets for their manufactured goods.
Chapter
9
The Americas to the 1860s
Chapter
10
Ideas in the 1800s
19th Century: Socialism and Marxism
The Industrial Revolution had many profound effects on European civilization. It rendered much of the old aristocracy irrelevant, boosted the bourgeoisie to economic and political power, and drafted much of the old peasant class into its factories. The result was naturally a shift in attitude toward wealth. Capitalist wealth seemed to have no natural limits. Partly because the new industrial modes of production had no pre assigned place in feudal order of things, the industrialists viewed themselves as the creators of their wealth and considered it something to be proud of .
Chapter
11
Power, Nationalism and Imperialism to 1900
19th Century Nationalism and Empire in Europe
This presentation examines a number of extremely important ideas: liberalism, nationalism, socialism, and romanticism. Studying these ideas helps us understand the historical process in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A key aspect of that process was the bitter and intense struggle between the conservative aristocrats, who wanted to maintain the status quo, and the middle and working class liberals and nationalists, who wanted to carry on the destruction of the old regime of Europe that had begun in France in 1789.
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