Lecture 17--Europe 1500-1650
Outward vs. Inwards
Ming China (15th century): For a short time in the early 15th century, Ming dynasty China mounted a series of expeditions across the Pacific to various areas around China. They served as a demonstration of Chinese strength and economic power. If they had continued, they might have begun a process of Chinese expansion a half-century before Europeans began the quest for routes to Asia to bypass Moslem territories. But the experience of Mongol rule under the Yuan dynasty in the 13th to 14th centuries had convinced many Chinese that all other nations were inferior to China and with the fall of the political faction which backed them, these voyages ended and China turned inwards. The Chinese had everything they felt they needed, able to produce everything from wheat to silks and spices at home. And Europe was given its chance to reach out and begin dominating the world.
Europe (15th century): No outside observer would have guessed in 1400 that Europe would go on to dominate the world. Europe was divided among many squabbling states and torn by internal divisions, marked by weak governments and a population still trying to recover from the 14th century devastation of the Black Plague. Even the climate was turning against Europe; European temperatures had been dropping since the mid-12th century, and in the mid-15th century, lasting until the mid-19th century, the temperatures of Europe plunged in the so-called 'Little Ice Age', reducing the growing season of Europe by 1-2 months. This increased levels of dearth and famine. But despite all this, Europe's economy was finally recovered from centuries of decline and was indeed growing, as were the cities and trade. And it was this trade, the desire for goods which could no longer be (or which had never been) produced in Europe which made Europeans turn outwards to get the things they needed.
Rise of International Trade and Exploration
The Silk Road and the Spice Trade
The Silk Road: From Roman times onward, traders crossed central Asia, hauling silk, spices, and porcelain from China and India and Indonesia to Europe.
The Rise of Islam and the Silk and Spice Routes: The rise of Islam put potentially hostile states in the middle of the road. Prices roses and trade was sometimes cut off. Moslems also cut off trade routes across the Sahara to sub-Saharan Africa.
Spices: Pepper (Black Pepper from India; chile peppers were unknown until Columbus, being native to the Americas) and Cloves (Indonesia) were the two most desired spices.
Venetians: The City of Venice controlled the eastern end of the Silk Road, controlling shipping in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Fall of Constantinople: The Fall of Constantinople put even more of the route into the hands of Moslems and helped to prompt a search for sea routes (though this began before 1453).
The Rise of Portuguese Exploration
Prince Henry the Navigator (March 4, 1394–November 13, 1460): This Portuguese prince played a crucial role in the beginning of Portuguese explorations by providing funding and gathering experts to strengthen Portuguese shipping and navigation.
Technical Innovations: New ships (the Caravel) and technologies (the compass and gunpowder) were key to the rise of Portuguese exploration. The Caravel combined European square rigging with the lateen rigging of the Arabs, creating a ship which would sail against the wind and as a result, could return up the African coast against prevailing winds. (South of Western Africa, there is a circular loop of currents and winds which drive you south and block a return voyage.) The Compass strengthened navigation and allowed you to go far from shore more safely. And gunpowder gave Europeans a military edge in foreign lands. The Chinese invented gunpowder and the compass, but failed to use them for voyages of colonization as the Europeans would.
The Rounding of Africa: In 1488, Bartholemew Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, enabling the Portuguese to now have a sea route to India, China, and Indonesia.
The problem of the Indian Ocean: But they had to fight Moslem fleets in a series of wars to take control of the Indian Ocean.
Spanish Efforts
Looking Westward: By the time of Spanish unification in 1488, the Portuguese had a strong lead in controlling the African route to Asia. So Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) proposed to Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille that he could sail west in order to reach the Indies. Most people knew the world was round in 1488, contrary to later myths, but they didn't know how big it was. Ironically, Columbus under-estimated the size of the Earth, leading him to think it was only 2-3,000 miles from Spain to China. If he'd known the truth, he'd have never dared to think he could survive going west.
The Four Voyages of Columbus: In 1492, he set out with 3 ships to head to China; on October 12, 1492, he landed at San Salvador (Watling Island) in the Bahamas. He didn't find any urban civilization like China, but what he did find was enough to send him back 3 more times and to begin creating colonies. Columbus conducted four voyages and served as colonial governor (but was removed in disgrace). His men brought back natives, tobacco, gold, chile peppers (which he stuck the name pepper on, feeling them similar in taste to Indian Black Pepper), and many other goods. Unfortunately, they also brought back syphillis, introduced diseases which began slaughtering Caribbean natives, and because he thought he'd reached India, created the misterming of American natives as 'Indians'.
America: Shortly after Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci (1451-1512) and Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521) explored the coast of South America and began mapping it. Amerigo named the new world after himself and the name stuck. Magellan would go on to attempt to circumnavigate the entire world, only to die in what is now the Phillipines.
Spanish Colonization: We'll examine this more in Chapter 18.
The Ravages of Disease
Thresholds of Disease: As civilization grows larger, diseases can spread more easily without wiping everyone out and killing themselves. Some diseases can't spread easily outside climates adapted to them. (Malaria needs mosquitos to spread, for example.)
How Plagues Spread: Plagues spread by human contact, animal vectors and along trade routes. This had limited the spread of disease in the Americas due to low trade levels; the result was that the Americas had few wide spread disases and that they were vulnerable to ones that Europeans, Asians, and Africans had adapted to centuries ago.
Demographic Catastrophe: The Spanish brought dozens of deadly diseases to America, and over the next two centuries they fanned out across the continent. 30-50% of the population of North America was wiped out. In Mexico, 95% of the population died in the first century of Spanish rule.
Exchange of Animals and Plants
Food Exchanges
The Potato: It became a staple of European diets.
Corn: It became a staple of European diets.
Beans and Squash: Also imported to Europe from the Americas.
The Yam: Brought from Africa to America
Wheat and Spices: Brought to the Americas from Europe and Asia (America had spices of its own also)
Alcohol: Often disruptive to American Indian societies.
The Impact of the Horse and Cattle
End of the lack of draft animals: Agriculture became more efficient and longer distance travel was possible.
Changes for the Plains Indians: They now became highly effective hunters and warriors thanks to horses.
Family Life in Early Modern Europe
Farming: Theaverage European was a farmer who probably either rented his land or possibly was bound to a manor where he worked for a lord, though the latter was in decline by 1500, especially in Western Europe. The average European was poor, making enough to get by in average years, having a little prosperity in good years, and sometimes starving in bad years. Unfortunately for him, due to the Little Ice Age (1450-1850), the bad years were starting to increase. However, he had more freedom than medieval peasants.
Later Marriages: While a man could marry at 14 and a woman at 12, most men were past 25 when they married and most women past 20, later than in the Middle Ages. This happened because you couldn't marry until you could support yourself and this was happening later in life. One in five women never married. Marriages were arranged by the parents, but rarely forced onto couples against their will. In a context of small villages and low migration, almost everyone married someone they had likely known since infancy.
Family Size: Married couples often formed a subunit of a larger family unit which might include one set of grandparents, various siblings of the husband or wife, spouses of said siblings, and various other relatives and hangers-on. The average married couple would have 6 to 7 children, losing half of them, mostly by the age of 5. Anyone who survived past age 10 would usually manage to live into their 50s or 60s. Some families practiced birth control despite Church condemnations but only the wealthy could afford well made condoms (made out of highly processed and chemically treated animal skin or organs) and most popular / cheap methods were not very effective. The most effective was nursing children, and some women nursed longer than today because women who are lactating do not easily become pregnant. Many upper-class women sent their children to be wet-nursed. Ironically, this likely killed many of those kids by exposing them to disease and poor sanitary conditions.
Loving Families?: Early Modern families were more utilitarian than we expect of today's families. People got married in order to survive economically as much as or more than for love. It was hard to build bonds with your children when you knew half of them would die. And children were sometimes sent off to apprenticeships, especially in the cities, at the age of eight. (A measure that might seem cruel but was the contemporary equivalent of your parents sending you to college today—it provided for a better future for you.) Their life was hard and most peasants left little record of their emotional life.
Town Life: Cities were small by modern standards; most towns had perhaps 3-8,000 people. Vilnus in modern Lithuania was one of the largest in Europe with 25,000 people. (Naples was the largest city in Europe with 212,000 people in the mid-sixteenth century.) Cities were governed by the wealthy merchants and guilds and were strong supporters of royal authority in many countries. Urban folk were craftsmen, merchants, clergy, and unskilled labor, and usually apprenticed their children. The major artisan trades were organized into guilds with a lengthy training system.
The Reformation (1500-1650)
Before the Reformation: In the 15th century, the Clergy was powerful, rich, and sometimes corrupt. In cities, they made up 6-8% of the population. They had their own courts, they owned huge areas of land, and they dominated the rhythms of ordinary life through the yearly church calendar and church influence over birth, marriage, and death. Monasteries were large and wealthy (and often corrupt). Church services were held in Latin, though many priests were just barely literate. Those who were well educated led the Church, but were entangled in politics, government, and war. Many grumbled over the major problems of the Church--
Problems of Renaissance Catholism
Temporal Power: The papacy headed a significant state, thus leading to situations of the Papacy getting tangled up in political conflicts, which reduced its religious prestige.
Rising Heresies: As more secular people became literate, they increasingly could read the Bible, and some people interpreted it differently than the Church.
Monastic Corruption: Many of the monasteries were too rich and functioned as welfare programs for younger noble kids instead of being places of holiness.
The Indulgences Issue: Desperate for money, the church was selling indulgences (pardons from time in purgatory, meant to be issued to promote holy behavior)--to raise money for projects such as wars, palaces, grand cathedrals, etc., a complete abuse of the purpose of indulgences.
Northern Renaissance Humanism
Reformers: The Christian Humanists saw the problems of the Church and wanted to fix them. They took the Greek and Roman studies of Italian humanists and applied them to religious problems. They were greatly aided by the increased ease of publishing books, thanks to the Printing Press (15th century import from China).
Desiderus Erasmus (1466-1536): Erasmus "aspired to unite the classical ideals of humanity and civic virtue with the Christian ideals of love and piety." (THOWC, p. 444). The study of the classics and the bible together would enable the reform of society. His piety focused on ethics, not on symbolism, magic, relics, pilgrimages, etc. In his biblical scholarship, he sought to return to the original texts in their original languages and to fix any problems of transcription which might have corrupted them. His biblical works would become the basis of the translations of Martin Luther, Tyndale, the Geneva Bible and the King James Bible, among others.
English Humanism: English humanists, the most famous being Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), helped pave the way for English protestantism. Sir Thomas More himself, though, was executed for refusing to accept Henry VIII's revolt. Like Erasmus, they criticized the accretions of church practice and focused on ethics and a return to the older texts.
The German Seedbed: Germany was a fertile seedbed for the Reformation because it combined:
- A growing literate population, combined with the printing press, which made it easier for new ideas to spread and for translations of the bible to be produced.
- Political divisions which made it hard for central authorities to suppress heresy; German princes agreed that the Emperor needed to be kept weak, which made it hard for him to fight local princes who hid and supported reformers.
- Problems of clerical corruption and a low-point in the morale and behavior of the monastic orders.
- Acceptance of secular influence over the church; because local secular authorities controlled church appointments, they could change the content of religion without their populace necessarily turning on them.
The result was that, unlike in previous centuries, heresies could not easily be stomped out.
Martin Luther (1483-1586)
Origins: Luther was a German Augustinian monk, who came to feel he wasn't holy enough despite being a monk, and who came to criticize the Church, leading to him nailing the famous 95 Theses (a list of complaints about the Church) to the door of his local cathedral in 1517. Efforts to suppress his teachings failed due to protection given him by the Elector of Saxony, even though the Diet of Worms condemned Luther's teachings in 1521.
His Protests: Luther attacked the sale of indulgences, the heavy focus on penances and other 'works' as part of the road to salvation, and the refusal to allow the Bible to be translated into secular languages.
Protestant Theology: Luther emphasized the role of 'faith' over works, attacked celibacy of the priesthood and monasticism, and translated the bible into German. He emphasized that the Bible was the source of our holy knowledge, not tradition or reason.
Justification by Faith Alone / 'Sola Fide': Luther argued that human practices could not contribute to salvation; only God's grace could save. Thus, the whole network of penances, indulgences, pilgrimages, etc, were worthless or even baneful to salvation and could and should be dispensed with.
Attack on Celibacy and Monasticism: Luther's own experience as a monk had convinced himself the monasteries were corrupt and could not save. He also came to feel that the clergy didn't need to be celibate, so long as they were willing and desirous to get married. (He still condemned sex outside marriage.) Indeed, Luther married a former nun, Katharina von Bora, who he had helped escape from her convent with 11 other nuns.
Translation of the Bible into German: Luther discarded portions of the Catholic Old Testament which had been accepted for a thousand years, confining himself to those books of the Old Testament which were not written in Greek (the same canon accepted by Jews at the Council of Jamnia in the late first century ID, rather than the one accepted by the Church at the Council of Hippo in the late 4th century.) He used the same version of the New Testament as Catholics did, though he was said to have rather disliked the Book of James (probably because it contradicted his teachings).