History 351: Seventeenth Century Europe
2014
History 351, 2014
• Syllabus is at http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/351/351%20course.htm
• Lecture outlines at http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/351/351OUTLINE.htm
• Weekly readings are listed on the syllabus.
• Home page: http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/
Click on “Essays and papers” for information on how to do exams and term papers well.
Requirements
• Two Midterms (in class 3/3, 4/16)
• A final (Monday 5/12, 2:45 PM; place to be announced)
• Four credit students do a 5-6 page paper due 3/24
• Honors students do an extra paper, due 5/9
• Contact Irina Tamarkina, the course writing and research specialist, for help with research and writing assignments. Email her at <>.
• Readings: your TA will provide details
• Graduate students: 2 papers, each of 12-15 pages; due 3/24 and 5/9; topics by arrangement.
Introduction: An Age of Revolution
• Intellectual and Scientific Revolutions
• Astronomy : Galileo, Kepler
• Physics and Mathematics: Newton, Leibniz
• Chemistry: Robert Boyle – “the Father of Chemistry”
• Mathematics: Simon Stevin (Dutch; 1585) pioneers the decimal system of expressing fractions
Scientific and Intellectual Revolutions
• Mathematics: John Napier (Scottish; 1614) pioneers the use of logarithms, simplifying complex calculations.
• In 1642, Blaise Pascal (French) invented a mechanical calculator which is sometimes seen as the forerunner of the computer.
• Medicine: William Harvey (English; 1628) discovered and described the circulation of blood.
A Pascaline - a mechanical calculator, invented by Blaise Pascal (1623-62) in 1642
William Harvey’s book on the circulation of blood, 1628. It has been called the most important book in the history of medicine
Scientific and Intellectual Revolutions
• New Instruments: the microscope (Dutch; 1590)
• The telescope (Hans Lippershey; German/ Dutch; 1608)
• Note military use of telescopes; the practical, and especially military applications of science were important (especially to governments)
• The borders between different sciences were not yet clear; scientists had broad interests; science (natural philosophy) was not clearly distinguished from philosophy in general
Scientific and Intellectual Revolutions
• René Descartes (French; 1596-1650) is commonly seen as the founder of modern philosophy. He also pioneered co-ordinate geometry (using algebra to solve problems in geometry), and did important work in optics.
Scientific and Intellectual Revolutions
• Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was a philosopher (and lawyer and statesman) who stressed the importance of experiment in science, and the capacity for science to transform the world to the great benefit of humanity.
• In 1626 he went out into the snow to do an experiment on refrigeration, when he caught a chill that turned into pneumonia and killed him.
Scientific and Intellectual Revolutions
• Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza (1632-77) was a philosopher with a strong interest in the new scientific discoveries. He made his living by grinding lenses and died of lung disease perhaps caused by inhaling ground glass.
• Born into the Jewish community in Amsterdam (Holland), Spinoza was excommunicated from it, and was regarded as an atheist by many Christian groups. Pioneers of new philosophical and scientific ideas were often criticized by the clergy.
Scientific and Intellectual Revolutions
• Thomas Hobbes (1588-1677), the political philosopher, admired Galileo, and served as Bacon’s secretary when he was young. He shared many ideas with Spinoza, and was also accused of atheism. Hobbes attacked the claims to authority of the clergy, and was attacked by them.
Economic change: start of the agricultural revolution
• A downturn in temperature: the “Little Ice Age” and the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715)
• http://depts.washington.edu/schkatz/podcasts/katz0607_parker.mp3: Geoffrey Parker on the first global climate crisis.
• Worsening weather was accompanied by stagnation of the population (unlike the sixteenth century, when population rose sharply)
• In response to stagnating demand for food, people tried to cut the costs of food production, and tried to develop new markets (in cloth and other industrial goods, and in places outside Europe)
Economic change: start of the agricultural revolution
• One way of cutting costs was to reduce wages of agricultural workers, or give them no wages at all but turn them into serfs, forced to work for their lords; enserfment took place in Poland, Russia, and elsewhere in eastern Europe.
• Another approach to cutting costs was to improve agricultural productivity, by introducing new farming techniques; this happened in the Netherlands, England, and some other areas in the west; it paved the way for the agricultural and industrial revolutions.
Economic change: global expansion
• Europeans greatly expanded their trade with distant parts of the world, especially in America and Asia. They set up trading bases and colonies.
• Russians expanded eastward across the land mass of Siberia. They set up a fort at Yakutsk in the 1630s, and reached the Pacific in 1639.
• Europe’s center of economic gravity moved from the Mediterranean to the northwest and the Atlantic.
Military Revolution
• Scientific and mathematical advances often had military application.
• The seventeenth century was an age of almost constant warfare in Europe.
• Armies got larger, and guns and fortifications improved.
• Europeans got better at fighting wars. This was bad news for people elsewhere when they later encountered Europeans.
State building; the “age of absolutism”
• As armies expanded, more taxes were needed to pay for them; bureaucracies grew to collect the taxes.
• States became more powerful and centralized; representative institutions (estates; parliaments; diets) often declined.
• Since many states were monarchies, the increase of state power is often equated with the growth of “royal absolutism”
State building; the “age of absolutism”
• In the course of the Thirty Years War (1618-48) some rulers and their advisors used the war to justify the employment of emergency powers by the state, and the curtailment of traditional liberties.
• A fine example is Cardinal Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal (and Duke) de Richelieu (1585-1642), the chief advisor to Louis XIII of France.
• A parallel figure in Spain (the other major European power) was the Count-Duke of Olivares (1587-1645)
State building; the “age of absolutism”
• Other key figures in the growth of absolutism include Jules Mazarin, Cardinal Mazarin (1602-61) who succeeded Richelieu as the chief advisor of the French monarch; and Frederick William, the Great Elector (1620-88), the architect of the power of (Brandenburg-Prussia (and later Germany).
• Most famous of all is the Sun King Louis XIV (1638-1715) of France, who succeeded Mazarin as his own chief advisor; here he is in 1661.
State building; the “age of absolutism”
• State building also took place in areas that were not absolute monarchies.
• These included Great Britain (England and Scotland ) and Ireland; there it had become clear before the end of the century that the monarchy was not absolute and that the ruler was bound to rule with parliament and within the law.
• State building also occurred in the Dutch Republic, where representative institutions survived.
• The Dutch Republic and Britain proved to be more able to raise money and pay troops than Louis XIV’s France; people were happier to pay taxes where there were institutions which represented them.
• The great exception to the rule that the seventeenth century was an age of state building was Poland. There the state grew weaker, and in the eighteenth century it ceased to exist altogether, swallowed up by its ambitious neighbors (Russia, Prussia, Austria).
Some unifying factors: intermarriage; Latin culture; mercenaries
• Aristocratic and especially royal families tended to marry into similar families across national boundaries.
• Higher education across Europe was conducted in Latin. Scholarly books were published in Latin. It was common to attend university outside your country.
• Lower down the social scale, men often fought as mercenaries for other countries (and other religions) than their own.
• There were many economic links across Europe. A key one was the export of grain from Poland and east Germany westward through the Baltic and then on to the Mediterranean. The grain often went in Dutch ships.
• The same ships brought wool from Spain to the Netherlands where industrial workers turned it into cloth; it was then re-exported round Europe.
Some unifying factors: intermarriage
• The Habsburg (/ Hapsburg) family were fond of intermarrying with itself, but internationally.
• Habsburgs were rulers of Spain and Austria.
• In the late sixteenth century, Philip II of Spain was the uncle, cousin, and brother-in-law of the Austrian Rudolf II.
• Interbreeding took its toll in the form of certain peculiarities such as the protruding lower lip and chin, visible here in the Austrian Leopold I (1640-1705; coin of 1694; a thaler – Joachimsthal – t(h)aler – daalder - dollar).
• Leopold was known as “Hogmouth”.
Some unifying factors: mercenaries
• It was often but by no means always men from lower down the social scale who took military service outside the land of their birth.
• A major exception is Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736). Eugene was born at Paris. His grandmother was a French royal princess, and his mother was probably a mistress of Louis XIV for a while.
• Louis refused to appoint Eugene to command in the French army, so Eugene transferred his loyalty to Leopold (Hogmouth) and Austria, and inflicted multiple defeats on Louis.
Major Geo-Political Changes
• In 1600 Spain was the most powerful country in Europe, though faced with problems (including the Dutch Revolt).
• In 1600, France had just emerged from a long period of religious civil war.
• An important theme of the history of the first half of the century is the decline of Spain and the rise of France.
• French aggression against Spain, the Dutch, and the Holy Roman Empire is a key theme of late seventeenth century history (Strasbourg/ Strassburg; Alsace/ Elsass; Franche-Comté).
Major Geo-Political Changes
• The seventeenth century was the Golden Age of Sweden (Gustavus Adolphus 1611-32; Christina (1632-54), Charles XII (1697-1718)
• The century was also the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic, notable for its economic power.
• The Austrian Habsburgs were Holy Roman Emperors; under Ferdinand II (1619-37) they tried to increase control over the Empire, but later they concentrated on the Habsburg homelands, re-conquering territory from the Turks after the second siege of Vienna (1683; the first was in 1529).
• Russia, Brandenburg-Prussia, and England rose in power late in the century.
Europe: Geography
• Mild, fertile, habitable plains; the Great European Plain
• Gulf Stream
• Mountains: Urals; Pyrenees; Alps; Carpathians; Apennines; Ardennes; Harz Mountains
• Mountain culture: Wales; Basques; Switzerland.
• Rivers: Rhine; Danube
• Trade: efficiency of water transport
• Baltic trade: Hanseatic League; Lübeck
Europe: Geography and climate
• Mediterranean trade; Venice; Ottoman Turks;
• oceanic trade routes pioneered by Portugal; spices and drugs from Spice Islands (East Indies)
• The Sound: Denmark; Zealand; Copenhagen; Scania; tolls on trade levied by the King of Denmark.
• The “Little Ice Age”
• The Maunder Minimum
• The Thames at London froze over in ten different winters during the century; it froze more rarely later and not at all since 1814.
• Londoners sometimes held “frost fairs” on the frozen river (e.g. 1608, 1683-4).
• In 1658 the Baltic froze so solidly that the Swedes were able to march across the Sound and besiege Copenhagen.
The Sound (Øresund), Zealand, and Scania
A “frost fair” on the Thames at London, 1683-4.
Population and the Economy
• Population in the northwest continued to grow to the mid-seventeenth century; elsewhere it stagnated or fell.
• France had the largest population: 20 million in 1600, up to 22 million by 1700 (despite very bad timed in the 1690s)
• Germany had a population of around 16 million in 1600; it was badly hit by the Thirty Years War (1618-48) and fell to around 12 million by 1650; then it rose again, perhaps reaching 15 million in 1700.
Population and the Economy
• Spain’s population fell slightly from about 8.1 to 7.5 million; emigration to America was a factor.
• Italy’s population was stable over the century or rose slightly (13 million in 1600 to 13.3 million in 1700), but fell in the first half; plague was a factor here (the plague of 1630 in Milan features in one of the most famous of all Italian novels, Manzoni’s Promessi Sposi of 1827).
• Italy remained densely populated, with some large cities: Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples.
Population and the Economy
• In Scandinavia, population in 1700 was about 3 million, a little higher than in 1600; but there had been some disasters along the way.
• Population in Poland and Hungary probably fell sharply.
• In the Spanish Netherlands and the Dutch Republic population rose; the Dutch population stabilized after 1660.
• The English population rose from 4 to 5 million between 1600 and the 1630s, and then stagnated.
Causes of Population Change
• A downturn in economic conditions made people poorer, more susceptible to disease, and less likely to marry young and have many children.
• Climate change caused or worsened economic problems.
• Other causes of economic difficulties include warfare, debasement of the coinage, and perhaps the decline of silver imports from America.
• People began to get married later; this happened even in economically prosperous areas (England; the Netherlands).
Causes of Population Change: Disease
• Killer diseases included typhus, typhoid, and smallpox.
• The most feared disease was plague (bubonic, septicaemic, and pneumonic).
• Plague struck especially in towns and other densely populated or enclosed communities.
• But populations could often recover quite quickly from plague.
• In Amsterdam, plague struck in 1623-5 and killed over 10% of the population; the same happened in 1635-6, 1655, and 1664.
• But Amsterdam’s population increased from 50,000 to over 200,000 (through immigration).
• Plague disappeared from much of Europe after outbreaks in 1665-8.
The village of Eyam in Derbyshire; one of the last places in England to be struck by plague (1665-6)